ASPIRE Service Event: On Track for Success

On Saturday December 1 2012, the ASPIRE community joined forces with McNair, SSSP, and NSBE to host a college and career planning event for high school families.  Undergraduates stepped up, by taking responsibility to coach individual students in writing their college essays and developing personal resumes.  The students will interact again by email in mid-January when the high school students will mail drafts of their essays to their undergraduate coaches.  There will be opportunities for additional face-t0-face interactions in June 2013 when the campus student community will support this group of students in a week-long college application and scholarship application completion “boot camp.”  Undergraduates who enroll for the first summer session in Public Policy and Leadership in Education UAPP 467 will have opportunities to engage with the On Track for Success students in a course that focuses on policies and practices guiding national concerns for increasing college access and completion rates in the U.S.

  The On Track for Success students are 11th graders at Newark High School.  Several of them participated in summer 2012 in an academic leadership camp led by ASPIRE officers.  The high school students developed workshops that they are now sharing with their peers at Newark HS.  On Saturday, ASPIRE leaders beamed as their mentees gave an impromptu presentation on their summer 2012 work.   The group ended their presentation by sharing their mantra :  Good Better Best, Never Let It Rest, Until Your Good is Your Better and Your Better is Your Best!!!!!!!