Emily Lira with her new favorite mascot, the UConn Husky.
Born in New Haven to a family who came here from Mexico, Emily Lira took an AP psych course at Co-Op High School and was hooked. A month from now she’ll be majoring in the subject at University of Connecituct on a full-ride scholarship, the first person in her family ever to go to college.
Cameron Treichel remembers a speaker coming to his middle school classroom and telling him if he does well academically, performs community service, and stays out of trouble, he’d be eligible for a scholarship to help send him to college.
He took all that to heart, especially the community service of which he estimates he tallied one thousand hours while a student at the Sound School. Now he’s headed to UConn, buoyed by a generous financial aid package, as he launches on his journey into computer science.
Cameron Treichel’s Promise-inspired volunteer work was at the Boys and Girls Club and Special Olympics, among other organizations.
Those stories and 354 others were at the heart of the eighth annual celebration of New Haven Promise, the program that guarantees significant college financial help for all city public-school students who keep their grades up and do community service. The event unfolded amid the hoots and hollers of a pep rally and formal presentation that drew hundreds to Southern Connecticut State University’s Lyman Auditorium Thursday evening.
According to a fact sheet distributed by Promise, about $3 million will go in total to this class for the coming academic year in Promise awards, and Promise-leveraged other grants and federal aid.
(l-r)Southern and Western Connecticut State U-bound scholars Rigby Congers and Jamar Nichols helped jazz up the pre-presentation pep rally.
Of course every penny of that translates into not only individual stories such as Treichel’s and Lira’s, but very much family stories as well.
There’s Yuleimi Ramirez Gutierrez, whose Promise scholarship is enabling her to study science at Gateway. “I was wanting to go to Southern,” she said in the Lyman Auditorium lobby before formal presentation of certificates and awards, “but my parents are in a tough situation financially, so I decided to go to Gateway.” She is the oldest of six children and also will be the first in her family to attend college.
Smiling Sound School Promise Scholars Joshua Rodriguez and Johanile Hurtado are headed for UConn and Connecticut College respectively
Her colleague from Hillhouse High School, Ahrtez Moore, is able through Promise and other scholarships to attend Southern, where he is looking forward to taking the courses that prepare him to be a nurse.
He characterized the Promise program as “helping motivate me and my mom. It’s like a push over the edge to put your best foot forward.
A New Haven native, Ahrtez wanted a college experience living away from home and preferably outside of Connecticut. He had his eye on Xavier University of Louisiana.
However, Promise scholarship and the additional aid they leverage do not apply at out-of-state institutions. So he set his eyes on Southern, and timing was on his side.
In a first for the program, both Southern and Albertus Magnus College will be providing scholarship assistance for a limited number of Promise scholars this year to defray costs of housing and living expenses. For its first seven years, Promise scholarships have been limited to tuition assistance.
That has made a huge difference for Ahrtez. He’ll now be able to live on campus — he’ll be away from home but not too far away from the parental perspective — and he said he’s looking forward to his nursing studies, one of the first challenges being getting “used to the sight of blood.”
After the presentations he said he and his mom will be headed for a celebratory dinner either at Red Lobster or Texas Roadhouse.
Two of Hillhouse High’s 44 scholars, Yuleimi Ramirez Gutierrez and Ahrtez moore.
In other interesting Promise factoids, the average high school grade point for the 2018 scholar crop was 3.66; a 3.0 is the minimum required.. Wilbur Cross sent the most scholars into the program, with 86. Of all the neighborhoods in the city, Fair Haven produced the most scholars this year.
The program’s annual Legacy Awards — for Promise college graduates who give back to the program and to New Haven — went this year to Jennifer Gonzalez and Zaamir Ali. A Yale graduate, Gonzalez is now bound for Teach For America CT, and UConn graduate Ali did serious collections research while a Promise intern at the Yale University Art Gallery.
The program’s Champion Award went to Sharon Arnold, a Fair Haven School teacher, for her work on that middle school’s “Snowball” college pep rally. The effort is credited with getting Latino kids in middle school focused early on college aspirations.
Guess where Co-Op High Grad and Promise Scholar Frank Boateng is headed?
Two newly established awards — the Ivy and Elm Awards — went to the Yale Library System and to Cynthia Lowman a career counselor at Yale New Haven Hospital respectively. Both were recognized for providing the growing number of paying and learning internship to the Promise scholars while in college.
Expanding the number of internships for scholars while studying in college — an effort begun in 2014 — continue to be one of the Promise’s ongoing challenges, with a record number of 166 intern placements logged for 2018.
Click on the video to watch an interview with Jennifer Gonzalez and Promise chief Patricia Melton on WNHH FM’s “Dateline New Haven” program.