Coach K sounds the call, both for stocks and for low-income students

In a move he hoped would resound for higher education throughout the United States, Mike Krzyzewski rang the opening bell Thursday at the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York.

The Duke University’s men’s basketball coach rang the bell in honor of the Emily K Center in Durham. Coach K serves as the board chairman of the nonprofit educational center, which works to prepare low-income students for college success. The center is named for Krzyzewski’s mother.

The event celebrated not only the center and its students, but all students who are the first in their families to go to college.

“It’s not for me and just the Emily Krzyzewski Center, it’s for all these youngsters. They’re hidden treasures throughout our country,” Coach K said before ringing the bell. (Which is technically not a bell, but a screen that he touched.)

The Emily K Center this year marked its first student enrolling in an Ivy League school – the University of Pennsylvania. Its graduates this year also were accepted at Duke University, the University of Southern California and other colleges. Of the 2017 program graduates, all are headed to college this fall, and 97 percent will be the first in their families to do so.

The center, between Duke and downtown Durham, provides tutoring and counseling for students. This year it started a program called Game Plan: College, which provides college advising to any high school student in Durham.

This story was originally published June 22, 2017 at 5:01 PM with the headline "Coach K sounds the call, both for stocks and for low-income students."