Caribou educator Darylen Cote has been honored for her leadership in advancing educational opportunity for young people in Aroostook County and beyond.
The New England Educational Opportunity Association presented Cote with its 2023 Marian Belgrave-Howard Award at its annual conference in Portland April 6. The award goes to
people for “inspiring and enduring contributions…toward the expansion of equal educational opportunity,” according to the association.
The recognition honors Cote’s fierce advocacy for her students as director of the TRIO College Access Services at the University of Maine at Presque Isle, highlighting a 2017 fight with broad national impact.
In nominating Cote, Lynn Ploof-Davis, director of TRIO Programs/Upward Bound and Johnson Scholars at the University of Maine at Farmington, recalled that the Presque Isle program and dozens of others were denied funding for a very small formatting error in their 2017 applications.
“Darylen and her team of professionals, alumni and parents led a bipartisan fight against the [U.S.] Department of Education and ultimately won back funding for hers and other programs,” Ploof-Davis wrote. “I don’t believe Darylen has ever been formally recognized for this work, but her actions and those of her team had a dramatic impact on the way DOE treats evaluation of TRIO proposals.”
The Department of Education later eliminated detailed formatting rules.
In her 15 years as TRIO director at the Presque Isle campus, Cote oversaw two Upward Bound programs and an educational talent search, all of which aim to assist disadvantaged youth with the skills and motivation to attend and succeed in post-secondary education.
Since 1972, her career in education has taken her from a high school English classroom, to advocacy work for teens’ and women’s health, to positions as a civil right liaison with the Maine Attorney General’s office and a curriculum specialist for health education.
“She was a trailblazer way before the formatting issues and, as such, in 2019, was inducted into the Maine Women’s Hall of Fame, right beside Governor Janet Mills,” Ploof-Davis said.
