Contributed photo
At Q House's college fair on Wednesday.
Hundreds of high school students met with representatives from dozens of higher ed institutions Wednesday at the Q House’s latest annual college and community resources fair.
Dixwell Alder Jeanette Morrison said that more than 500 people visited the fair, which ran at the 197 Dixwell Ave. community center from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Vanessa Newman of Higher Heights Youth Empowerment Programs Inc. said that students from nine different high schools in New Haven and Hamden attended Wednesday’s event, which also featured more than 50 colleges.
Those colleges spanned from Maine to Pennsylvania, and included University of Bridgeport, Southern Connecticut State University, various University of Massachusetts schools, University of Rhode Island, and many more. Newman said college representatives provided information about their respective institutions, and offered some on-the-spot acceptances.
“It’s important to bring resources to our students,” Newman said about Wednesday’s fair, and to show them the “endless possibilities for them to succeed.”
Morris thanked Mayor Justin Elicker, New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Supt. Madeline Negron, and Asst. Supt. Paul Whyte, among others, for visiting the fair. She also thanked the Hillhouse cheerleading squad for serving as the “hostesses” of the event, and the Q house’s youth council for organizing this fair in partnership for the second year in a row.
“This generation of young people, they don’t know a Q house,” Morrison said, noting that the Dixwell community center closed in 2003 and reopened in 2021. “A lot of these young people were born during that time. To be able to come into this amazing building right in their community, that in itself is just awesome.”
She also spoke about how visiting a college fair in October 1985 is what inspired her to eventually go to Morgan State, and then get her master’s degree. A college fair and the educational opportunities that followed “changed the trajectory of my life.”
Morrison said that Wednesday’s college fair was just the latest entry in the year-long celebration of the Q House’s centennial, as the original community center was founded in 1924.
Click here, here, here, here, and here for recent articles about events at the Q House, ranging from farmers markets to jazz concerns to basketball summer camps and health fairs and the rededication of an adjacent plaza to writer-historian-community leader Daniel Y. Stewart.
Alder Morrison, Mayor Elicker, and Asst. Supt. Whyte (far right) with Q House's youth council members.