GSE Grad Starts Program Teaching Practical Skills to Inner-City Youth

Michael J. Ruth has seen life on both sides of the tracks.

Growing up in a single-parent family in the gritty steel town of Norristown, Pa., he walked among the working poor and experienced the difficulties of inner-city life.

But Ruth picked himself up by his bootstraps.

With his six-foot-three, 260-pound frame, Ruth became an All-American nose tackle for Boston College and played professional football for five years, including three with the New England Patriots.

Now, the 31-year-old father of four plans to return to Boston's toughest neighborhoods. With his newly-acquired master's degree from the Harvard School of Education in hand, Ruth hopes to begin a program designed to link schools and businesses together with the hope of finding quality jobs for students.

As an insurance broker for J. Barry Driscoll, Inc. and a student-teacher at Dorchester High School, Ruth says, he has noticed a conspicuous lack of partnerships between schools and potential employers.

"Companies don't know educators," Ruth says. "Students lack the skills needed in the work force and they lose interest in school because they don't see the jobs out there."

Ruth says he hopes to be able to make strides that will help fix this problem.

"My goal is to get the business community and educators together using athletes as a nice tie-in," says Ruth, winner of the 1985 Outland Trophy as the nation's best collegiate lineman.

Many current and former professional athletes give motivational speeches at schools across the country.

But Ruth is in the process of creating a nationwide non-profit group in which professional athletes find business executives and pair them with local high schools.

He says he hopes to persuade businesses to establish internships for local high school students.

Because professional athletes have business connections and are admired by most children, Ruth says, they can jump-start any program.

"Every year, four or five players get cut [from professional sports], go back to their hometowns and want to [help out by making] those connections," he says.

Although Ruth has received little support around Harvard, he says The Boston Globe, NYNEX and BayBank of Boston are interested in his proposal.

Similar programs are already underway in Chicago, Detroit, Dallas and Seattle, he adds.

Ruth says student-teaching in Dorchester, which has one of the city's highest poverty rates and lowest education rates, has reminded him of his own uphill struggle.

But the theology major who seriously considered entering the Roman Catholic priesthood remains undaunted.

"We're taking the first step in the ladder," he says. "All things are possible."