Southern California Workshops a Huge Success!

College Summit Southern California (SoCal) is proud of the huge numbers and successes from its Summer 2011 Workshop Season. During July and August 2011, 215 high school seniors from across Los Angeles County came together to build community, affirm their strengths and chart a course to college.

During the four Summer 2011 workshops – held at the University of Redlands and the University of Southern California (USC) – Peer Leaders crafted their personal statements, learned about potential colleges, learned about financial aid, created their college lists and more. They dug deep to explore their values, goals, and dreams.

Their statements offer stories of personal struggle and hardship, and also of strength, passion, healing, and hope. According to one Peer Leader, “I had always been told college wasn’t an option for a student like me. Now I have the knowledge and confidence to know better!”

For many Peer Leaders, a big part of the workshop experience is staying in the university dorms, attending workshops in real college classrooms and eating in the student dining halls. The University of Redlands has been a working with College Summit since 2009, and continues to support our work by partnering with us to offer these exciting spaces to workshop volunteers and participants. 

Leela MadhavaRau, Special Advisor to the President and Associate Dean of Campus Diversity and Inclusion at University of Redlands, knows the importance of the university setting in motivating our students. “Our partnership with College Summit goes far deeper than simply allocating space during the summer. It is a partnership towards a dream – a dream that allows motivated students to pursue education at the university level.”

Ed Rice, SoCal’s Program Manager, attributes some of our success to our cadre of amazing volunteers. Nearly 60 volunteers from around the country gave their time at workshops as Writing Coaches, College Coaches and chaperones. These volunteers work with Peer Leaders one-on-one and in groups to “help them forge strong self-knowledge and concrete post-secondary visions,” says Rice. 

Our volunteers often say they learn as much from their students as their students learn from them. Joan Stern, who served as a College Coach at USC, sums it up with simplicity:

“Exhilarating, exhausting, emotional, life-changing. Those are just a few adjectives that I would use to describe my experiences at College Summit.”

We’re also proud to have College Summit Alumni serving in important roles. Meisha Reneau, who graduated from Inglewood High School (’08) and is now studying at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandise, served as our Alumni Leader Coordinator this summer. 

Why does Meisha continue to come back, year after year? Because, in her eyes, “College Summit provides hope and love to the students it serves. So many students don’t have the support or knowledge about college and we provide that. Through College Summit, students find a light for a brighter future.” Meisha, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves.