Tipper Gore Salutes Grads of Training for the Future

By Jean Hennelly Kieth

In the Training for the Future computer lab prior to the graduation ceremony, soon-to-graduate Rita Callaghan, who hopes to work in medical reference, demonstrates her skill at Microsoft Word to Tipper Gore. Program instructor Lisa Bellafato looks on.

Tipper Gore (CAS '70) spent a significant part of her November 12 visit to her alma mater chatting quietly with some special students. Keynote speaker at the Training for the Future graduation ceremony, she had asked to meet the program's graduates. And so she sat at a student terminal in the computer lab at 930 Commonwealth Avenue to view the class's video, presented by program instructor Lisa Bellafato, and then visited with students individually, discussing their new computer expertise and their job goals.

The fourteen students, ranging from twenty to fifty years old, all live with severe psychiatric illness. They had spent an intensive year learning industry-standard computer use and other office and personal skills to prepare themselves for meaningful, competitive employment. For some, the task had seemed at first impossible: to attend classes regularly, let alone learn challenging material, even when dealing with illness and medicinal side effects. They prevailed. And thanks to their achievements and the energetic networking in Boston's business community by job developer Robert Salafia, all of the graduates are either in job internships or starting jobs at U.S. Trust, Lotus Development, Boston University, the March of Dimes, the Jewish National Fund, and other organizations.

The first program of its kind in the country, Training for the Future was initiated at Sargent College's Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation by Program Director Larry Kohn in 1993 and developed in partnership with IBM. It is supported by a broad coalition of corporations, foundations, individuals, and the federal government.

At the afternoon graduation, Provost and Dean of Arts and Sciences Dennis Berkey and Sargent Dean Alan Jette greeted graduates and their proud families and friends. Kohn then told the audience, "The Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation offers hope; Training for the Future nourishes that hope." Parent Thomas Oliphant thanked the "amazing graduates" for demonstrating "guts," "fortitude," and community spirit. Student speaker Arthur "Joe" Wyse (SAR '83) received a standing ovation for an account of his odyssey from undergraduate days, through years grappling with severe depression, to a hard-earned "renewed hope, vision, dignity, and self-confidence." He called Training for the Future "topflight," praising the staff's open-door policy and the students' creation of an empathetic, caring community. "Hope began to well up from a very deep place in each of us. This program works; I am living proof." Wyse is now a teaching assistant in Training for the Future.

Gore, who credits BU with kindling her ongoing interest in psychology during her undergraduate years, spoke of strides being made nationally in treating mental illness as a part of illness in toto. Describing the fight to eliminate bias against those with mental illness as "one of the last social revolutions," Gore said, "Human beings have a right to develop to their full potential. It is cruel to deny a job on the basis of mental illness." She called Training for the Future a "truly creative and innovative program" and applauded the program's corporate sponsors. To the graduates she said, "You have given meaning to many."

To resounding applause, each graduate received a certificate and personal citation from Bellafato.

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Copyright © 1998 by Bostonia Magazine. Posted with permission on the Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation website. This article may not be published, reposted, or redistributed without express permission from Bostonia magazine. Bostonia Magazine is the Alumni Quarterly publication of Boston University.