Photo courtesy Opening Minds Through the Arts program

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Gene Jones, the founder of an innovative arts program that boosts academic achievement in the Tucson Unified School District, is being recognized nationally with a $100,000 award.

Jones is a winner of The Purpose Prize given to trailblazing retirees over age 60 who use their senior years to develop creative and effective solutions to social issues in the United States. The prize is given by San Francisco-based Civic Ventures, a think tank and incubator for generating ideas and inventing programs to help society, according to its Web site.

Seven years ago Jones, now 91, started the Opening Minds through the Arts program, known as OMA, in TUSD. The program is used in several district elementary and middle schools, reaching 19,000 students, said Joan Ashcraft, a TUSD employee who manages the OMA project.

The program integrates the arts into core curricula as a way to improve academic achievement. Independent assessment by a nationally known educational research firm bears out the nonprofit's goal of teaching math, science and language through classroom exposure and art, music and movement classes, said Ashcraft.

The program was inspired by ongoing research into connections between brain development and music, according to the OMA Web site.

Jones, a retired businessman, is out of the country and unavailable for comment, but in a July Arizona Daily Star article, Jones said of the organization he founded: "This is the most satisfying thing I've done in my life, by far. I've had the opportunity to help affect so many kids' lives, to make such a difference in their outlook and their chances."

Jones plans to put his prize money back into the OMA program, which has a 2007 operating budget of $700,000, Ashcraft said. Eventually OMA administrators want to implement their program nationwide.

Jones is one of five $100,000 winners chosen from a field of 1,000 nominees. Ten other nominees will receive $10,000 awards.

Jim Emerman of Civic Ventures, is director of The Purpose Prize.

"We created the program because we felt that, as a society, we view creativity and innovation as something that is largely the province of young people, but we saw an incredible creativity and effectiveness — particularly in the area of social innovation — taking place by people in the second half of their life and we wanted a program that shines a light on this phenomenon," he said.

"Gene represents exactly the phenomenon we think it is so important to highlight," Emerman said. "He was somebody who was very successful in a business career, and well into the second half of his life (when) he decided to do something about an area he thought needed attention. He created a program that, aside from being very creative and different, has been able to be extremely effective."

Joyce Dillon, principal at Corbett Elementary, said her school was part of OMA's pilot program and she has seen attendance rates improve, particularly on the two days a week students participate in OMA.

"What makes it work," Dillon said, "is they are supporting the academics in the classroom by using the music or fine arts or dance movement tied to what they are learning."

Plus, Dillon said, "you wouldn't know they're learning, because they are having fun while they are learning."

Andrew Kent, principal at Fort Lowell Elementary, has seen academic improvements at his school. "We're actually beginning to see at our school level there really, truly is achievement in test scores that we attribute at least in part to the OMA project," Kent said. "Students in schools with this type of program truly do appear to increase their achievement."

On StarNet: Watch a video clip of the OMA group in action at azstarnet.com/video.