This ed choice scholarship alumni is a licensed clinical social worker with a doctorate, a business owner, and a college professor

Middle school is where Dr. Jasmine Cohen-Young learned to dance. It’s where she fell in love with basketball, a sport that helped pay for college.

It’s where she learned that being challenged academically is a good thing and that an improperly tied knot on a sailboat is a bad thing, especially if a loose rope is the reason the sailboat she was skippering tipped and dunked her into the balmy waters of Tampa Bay.

Middle school for Jasmine was Academy Prep Center of St. Petersburg, where she graduated in 2006. She attended the grades 5-8 private school located near her family’s St. Petersburg home on a Florida education choice scholarship managed by Step Up For Students.

“That (scholarship) was at the core of what I was able to achieve,” Jasmine said. “Without that, it probably would not have happened.”

During the last quarter of a century, the scholarship played a central role in the academic success of thousands of Florida students.

In July, Step Up celebrated the 25^th anniversary of Florida’s historic education choice scholarship program, which began in 2001 with the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship (FTC). Since then, Florida has become the nation’s leader in education choice. Today, more than 540,000 students use one of the four K-12 scholarships managed by Step Up.

Not all will duplicate the success of Jasmine – the first Academy Prep alumni to earn a doctorate degree – but many would echo Jasmine’s sentiments about their school when she said, “I don’t know where I’d be without Academy Prep. It all started there.”

Jasmine’s mom, DeMetria Mond, learned of Academy Prep from a coworker after Jasmine had been accepted to a magnet school. The two visited Academy Prep. Jasmine shadowed students, met with teachers, and aced the entrance exam. That was not a surprise. Jasmine was a straight-A student in the fifth grade and academics were the top priority with DeMetria and Jasmine’s father, James Cohen.

DeMetria was impressed with Academy Prep’s teacher-to-student ratio and the interest the staff and administration took in her daughter.

“It just felt like it was a place where she would be well supported and it would kind of catapult her, really prep her for the high school years,” DeMetria said. “So, we took a chance, and I have not looked back, and I have not regretted it not one iota.

“The (FTC) scholarship that she received, it was to me so much more than financial assistance. It was an investment in her future and a reminder that somebody else besides her family believed in her potential because everybody from top to bottom at Academy Prep was super great when it came to her. So, it helped instill in her the importance of education, discipline, taking advantages of the opportunities placed in front of her. Without that scholarship, we wouldn't have been able to do it.”

Leanne Howard, Academy Prep’s director of graduate support, was a teacher when Jasmine arrived on campus. She remembers Jasmine as a good student who showed potential. Jasmine thrived academically and learned to succeed in the school’s enrichment activities designed to take students out of their comfort zone.

Like sailing.

“I tell people all the time I was on a sailboat by myself in the middle of Tampa Bay because of Academy Prep,” Jasmine said. “We’d be out on the water, going with the wind and putting our skills to the test.”

And if a middle schooler could learn to properly tie knots and work the boom, the sail, and the rudder and stay dry, there’s no telling what they can achieve later in life with the confidence gained on the waves.

In Jasmine’s case, what she achieved has been a lot.

Today, Jasmine, 34, lives in Savannah, Georgia with her husband, Marcus Young III, and their two children. She is a licensed clinical social worker, a business owner, and a college professor, who works with athletes and active military members.

“From a mental health perspective, we're ultimately trying to enhance their wellbeing, not necessarily trying to enhance their performance,” Jasmine said. “For me, as a social worker, I'm looking at total wellbeing. I'm looking at how you're doing, how extensions of you are doing, how is your family, how's your community, what are ways that you can form an identity beyond your current role?

“We look at a lot of identity development because for these individuals, their identities are heavily tied into either their sport, their careers, their active duty, and their businesses. We look at that because at some point in time, they will retire from that. They will transition from that, and helping to develop that identity, and helping to maintain their overall wellbeing, that's important throughout their life.”

After graduating from Academy Prep, Jasmine attended high school at Shorecrest Preparatory School in St. Petersburg, again on a Florida education choice scholarship. She continued to play basketball, which earned her a scholarship to Rollins College in Winter Park. There, she captained the Rollins basketball team as a junior and senior and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in psychology.

She earned a master’s in social work in 2017 from the University of Central Florida.

She began a career as a licensed clinical social worker and in December 2021, founded Minz Matter, a nonprofit that offers mental health education and resources to young athletes and youth sports organizations, mostly in underserved communities.

In May 2024, Jasmine earned her doctorate degree when she completed the social work doctoral program at the University of Kentucky with a 4.0 grade point average. She continues to work with students studying sports social work at the university and teaches two classes – neuroscience and program evaluation.

“I admire her dedication to constantly doing better and doing more,” Leanne Howard said. “She’s kind of a super woman.”

That’s one reason why Jasmine received the Ben Fisher Alumni Mentoring Award last year from Academy Prep. The award is given annually to an alumnus for their work within the Academy Prep community and their own community.

Jasmine regularly visits her old middle school (and high school, as well) to mentor the current student body. She tells them she didn’t have a blueprint to follow, but she had a foundation fostered by teachers and administrators who believed and encouraged her.

“There's no louder voice than having a graduate who has actually done the work and travel the journey speak to our kids,” Leanne Howard said. “Now we have many Jasmines, fortunately, who are following in her path.”

Sharing her story to a school full of students learning to dance or play basketball or tie knots isn’t the only way Jasmine makes a difference. That’s a visible impact. There is also her willingness to help her alma mater by relying on the many friends and contacts she’s made along her journey.

Last year, Academy Prep started a swimming team. When Jasmine learned the swim team from Howard University, the historically Black school in Washington D.C., was in St. Petersburg and training at a nearby aquatic center, she made a call.

“And so, we had the Howard swim team to come to Academy Prep to speak to our budding swim team,” Leanne Howard said. “So, it's just all these little intangibles that we don't really think we’re instilling in our graduates, and then they come back and they surprise you, and they are fulfilling the mission in ways that you certainly didn’t have written down.”

Roger Mooney, manager, communications, can be reached at [email protected].