A college preparatory program run by the University is celebrating the graduation of its first group of high school students this month.
The Oregon Young Scholars Program, founded four years ago by the Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity’s Assistant Vice Provost Carla Gary, began its fourth annual summer research session for high school students on campus Monday.
Gary and other officials welcomed the program’s incoming high school seniors Sunday night for their final summer participating in the two-week session.
“I’m feeling a little overwhelmed,” Gary said. “It’s beyond amazing to me because here (these students) are, going into their senior year, and we’ve watched them develop through their high school careers. It is beyond a gift.”
The program accepts a combination of low-income, first-generation college-bound, or traditionally under-represented high school students from Portland and Lane County public schools. The students spend about two weeks on campus each summer participating in various co-curricular activities and special projects that address academic, career, cultural and social issues, Gary said.
“This program presented (the students) with the hope and desire to achieve more out of life,” said Jo Lynn Crawford, the mother of Noah Cantu, a senior Oregon Young Scholar. “My son was bright, but he lacked motivation. This program, and Carla Gary, inspired him to be more.”
After the death of Cantu’s stepfather last summer, Crawford said that Gary and the other students in the program gave her son the support he needed to get through the emotional time.
“Carla alone is someone you can really tell stuff to,” Cantu said. “She really listens.”
Cantu plans to attend Linn-Benton Community College in Corvallis after he graduates from high school next spring, possibly to begin studying engineering.
“This program teaches you to take life more seriously,” he said. “It shows you that high school and college isn’t a joke.”
Students enter the program the summer after their eighth grade year. To enter they must submit an application and essay to Gary.
Hannah Chapman, a senior Oregon Young Scholar, applied to be part of the program in 2005 after a high school teacher recommended she take part.
“Hannah has always wanted to go to college,” her mother, Cathleen Ellingsen, said, “but I knew that by the end of the program she would have learned what she needed to go to college.”
Chapman initially started the program wanting to be an astronaut, then an mathematical engineer.
“Through the program I realized that music was my real passion,” said Chapman, who now plans on attending Lane Community College before transferring to a university to study music. “I want to be a choir director at a high school and teach piano lessons on the side.”
The program is designed to prepare students to enter college after high school by developing the necessary skills to succeed academically and professionally, according to a program outline.
She explained that many students in lower-income schools are not adequately prepared to enter a university or the professional world.
“You don’t know something until you know it,” Gary said, so along with classes and group projects, the program teaches the students how to dress in a professional setting, how to strike up conversations with colleagues, discuss research, and other professional skills.
During the summer sessions, the students each take a mandatory class in math and writing before separating into various disciplines for more specialized study, Gary said.
This year the specialties include business and finance, urban planning and public policy, and public health policy, among others.
In addition to the two-week summer research session, the students do research projects during the school year.
Chapman said last year the group from Lane County researched the public policies and impact of the University’s proposed new basketball arena, then gave a public presentation on it at the Many Nations Longhouse.
Gary said the students in Portland did a similar project on the construction of Portland’s Pearl District.
The high school sophomores and juniors in the program will arrive on campus Thursday, with freshmen arriving on Saturday.
The program was founded in 2005 in response to a push from the federal government’s No Child Left Behind Act to prepare students for college.
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