Broadened horizons: summer program prepares students for higher education
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MISSION VALLEY — Su-san Perez-Tenas always had big dreams when she was a student attending Polson High School. But a summer program called College Horizons gave her the confidence to dream even bigger. That summer, Perez-Tenas went from walking the hallways of high school to navigating the prestigious halls and campus of Harvard University where the workshops were held that year.
Each year College Horizons, a nonprofit organization that provides a week-long, intensive college preparatory summer for high-achieving American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian students, partners with 45 to 50 colleges and invites selected high school counselors, American Indian educators and educational partner volunteers to provide expert one-on-one advising to students entering college or graduate school.
The program has partnered with Harvard University, Princeton University, Duke University, Johns Hopkins University and Brown University, to name a few.
This year, five students from the Mission Valley have been selected to attend the summer program. The students include: Paden and Nikko Alexander, juniors from St. Ignatius High School; Mahalia Hendren, a junior from Arlee High School; Samuel Bixby, a sophomore at Ronan High School and Angela North Piegan, another Ronan sophomore. All five students are members of the Salish Kootenai College Upward Bound program, which is where they learned about the College Horizons program.
“This is a good program to get me prepared for college,” said Bixby, who is eyeing North Carolina, Notre Dame and Oklahoma as potential college contenders. “I knew I wanted to go to college when I was 10 or 11, when I (saw) a lot of kids where I grew up in Wyoming dropping out,” Bixby explained.
“I knew I didn’t want to do that; I wanted to graduate.”
Bixby said he would like to go into the medical field to study to be a nurse or doctor. He learned about the College Horizons program when he attended Upward Bound at SKC.
“At first I was unsure about Upward Bound, but it really interested me. I took summer classes, and they talked about college the whole second month during the two-month program,” Bixby shared, adding that Upward Bound took students on trips to tour colleges in Idaho and Washington.
“I hope it gets me ready for college,” Paden Alexander said of his acceptance into the program, adding that he plans to attend the University of Montana to study environmental science.
Twin brother Nikko Alexander echoed Paden’s expectations of the program.
“This is a really big step towards getting into college and graduating. This program will help a lot when it comes to financial aid and applying and taking the SATs,” Nikko said. He is eyeing such colleges as Stanford or Yale with the hopes of becoming a lawyer, police officer or physical therapist.
SKC has sent a total of six students to College Horizons since 2007. This year’s group is the largest selected for the program, which is being hosted at Kenyon College in Gambler, Ohio, and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, Penn.
“The College Horizons program is selective,” said Joanne Morrow, Salish Kootenai College Upward Bound instructor. “(The program) selects only about 200 total to attend two different sessions of this incredibly intense five-day summer college-prep program. All five of these young people are exceptionally bright students who are committed to working hard for academic success in the college-preparatory programs at their high schools.”
“It was really cool, especially going to Harvard,” Perez-Tenas said. “I had the opportunity to meet other Native Americans who were driven to go to college.“
Though Perez-Tenas, a 2009 graduate of Polson, did not end up at Harvard, she was accepted at her first and only choice — Gonzaga University — where she is a junior and anticipates graduating next year with a double B.A. in criminal justice and sociology.
“I didn’t even apply to go anywhere else,” Perez-Tenas said of her choice school, which she selected because of its reputation and proximity, only three hours away from home. In addition to a full-time student, she is a mother to a 9-month-old daughter. Perez-Tenas said with the help of her daughter’s father and scholarship money she received from being named a Gates Millennium Scholar, she is right on track to graduate, despite new responsibilities and a full academic schedule.
“Joanne’s just awesome,” Perez-Tenas said of the Upward Bound instructor, adding that Morrow stayed after school to help her with math homework and provided transportation to SAT testing.
Helping students attend and graduate from college is a major goal of Upward Bound.
Supplemented with the College Horizons program that seeks to give students enough information to apply to colleges that suit them best, and obtain the funding to allow them to attend and graduate, equals success for many students who have attended both programs from the Mission Valley.
College Horizons is open to current high school sophomores and juniors. Students work with college counselors and college administrators officers in a five-day workshop to create individualized programs that help them select colleges suitable for them and receive adequate financial aid. Students research their top 10 schools, complete college essays, resumes, the “common” college application and the preliminary FAFSA, in addition to receiving interviewing skills and test-taking strategies for the ACT and SAT.
Statistics indicate that the Native American high school graduation rate is 51 percent and approximately 5 percent go directly to four-year colleges, with only 10 percent of those students graduating in four years.
Of the 2,000 Native high school students accepted by College Horizons, 99 percent have been admitted to college; 95 percent attended a four-year institute; and 85 percent have graduated in four to five years. College Horizons was founded in 1998 on the idea that bright and talented Native American high school students do no receive quality college counseling and academic advising.
“(College Horizons) gave me a lot more confidence with my essays and application,” Perez-Tenas said. “And the fact I attended at Harvard … made me feel really smart.”
