A Vision for the Second Century: Living the Vision

BY LYNETTE MCGLAMERY
Special to the Rice News

Vision point: We must fully engage with the city of Houston — learning from it and contributing to it — as a successful partnership with our home city is an essential part of our future.

Angel Brown, a Brown College junior majoring in English and women’s studies, is always talking about her kids with her friends.

These kids are not her biological children but rather the 16 high school students she lives with in the Houston Scholar Program (HSP), a boarding initiative for underserved students attending some of Houston’s most selective high schools on academic scholarships.

Launched in 2002, HSP is the brainchild of Houston business leader Phillip Franshaw, who had benefited from a private college prep school education despite coming from a low-income family. He envisioned a place where students could live during the school year and focus on their studies — and on preparing for college — without the distractions of sometimes-fractured home lives.

HSP is one of 88 Rice outreach efforts geared toward enriching education for Houston K-12 students and encouraging them to obtain a college education.

Rice became involved with the program when Franshaw approached Associate Provost Roland Smith, whose office is responsible for encouraging and facilitating Rice’s diversity efforts.

”Phillip came to me asking for realistic feedback about his idea,” Smith said. ”But he was so passionate about HSP that the next thing I know I’m on its advisory board and we’re using Rice’s college system as the model.”

With support from the business community and his own money, Franshaw leased a historic house in Midtown, complete with garage apartments that were turned into two large dormitories. Each building has a small kitchen so the kids can fix snacks, a study room with desks for each student, computers with Internet access and bedrooms that hold four people each.

There are four resident staff members, including Brown and Will Rice College junior Grant Belgard, who live with the students and are their mentors, tutors, disciplinarians and friends. They are also the students’ major mode of transportation, driving them to and from school and to their after-school activities.

Dawn Lane, HSP operations manager, who also lives on the premises, said that they specifically recruit university juniors, seniors and recent graduates as resident staff because they can better help HSP students know what to expect when they go to college.

”These young adults are role models for the HSP students,” she said. ”Their intellect, academic successes and college experiences give the high schoolers confidence to apply to the very best universities and to know that they will succeed once they are there.”

Brown had heard of HSP from a friend and would constantly e-mail Sharon Bush, Rice’s HSP liaison who has worked at Rice for more than 13 years, to see if a resident staff position had opened up. Her persistence paid off and she became a staff member in February.

”I wanted to work for HSP so I could make a difference in the lives of others,” Brown said. ”I had an unstable home environment, so I can truly relate to where many of these kids are coming from.”

Belgard said that he wanted to become an HSP staff member because his Louisiana high school had a similar public residential program for juniors and seniors.

”I saw many students take advantage of the offered resources,” he said. ”They not only became the first members of their families to attend college but they also enrolled in some of the best universities in the world.”

Lane said that to become a boarding facility, HSP had to be licensed as a verified foster group home through DePelchin Children’s Center. This means that staff members are actually verified foster parents.

”They have to be at least 21 to be a foster parent, and they fulfill many parental roles,” she said. ”They have to balance being a friend, counselor and disciplinarian — just like a parent.”

Lane said that the parents still retain custody of the HSP students, and students go home Friday nights through Sunday afternoons, as well as holidays, spring break and summer. They can talk on the phone at any time and are invited to attend monthly family dinners around the home’s large dining table.

”It’s inspiring to me the sacrifices these families make for the sake of their children’s education,” she said. ”But they know that HSP gives their teens a place where they can concentrate on the things that will get them into college.”

Most of the students come from KIPP, an academically rigorous college-prep public education program for at-risk kids in fifth through ninth grades. They attend Houston’s top 15 public schools or private schools on scholarship and participate in HSP until they graduate.

Lane said that since there are only a few spots open in HSP when seniors graduate, they must be highly selective in choosing students for this rigorous program.

”These are highly self-motivated teens who know where they want to go and what it takes to get there,” Lane said. ”Most take AP, international baccalaureate or honors classes and participate in multiple extracurricular activities. I don’t know many teens out there who would make this same sacrifice.”

HSP students are required to maintain a 3.0 GPA, attend dinners and monthly inspirational leadership seminars and participate in an internship, community service project or university program during the summer, among others.

For example, Ricky, a senior at Kinkaid High School, completed an internship last summer at a Puerto Vallarta resort designing a computer system to track equipment and computers. Andrea, a senior at Lamar High School, participated in Rice’s business plan competition for high schools.

Lane said that a major benefit of HSP is that students are exposed to college life not only living with Brown and Belgard but also with weekly trips to campus, where Rice students tutor them at Fondren Library

”They see that college students aren’t that much different from them, and they see what it takes to succeed in college,” Lane said.

As a result, virtually all HSP students apply to Rice in addition to other top schools. This year’s four graduating seniors all applied to Rice. One other HSP alumna, Krystine Meyer, is currently a Brown College sophomore majoring in managerial studies and sociology.

Associate Provost Smith said that HSP is a great channel for adding students from diverse socio-economic backgrounds.

”Most of these kids are the first in their families to go to college,” he said. ”They are amazing young people who inspire you with stories of how they have accomplished their goals despite their financial or family situations. Students at Rice and other universities will only benefit from their unique perspectives.”

Lane said 100 percent of HSP graduates have gone to college, and its first college graduate is set to receive her diploma from American University next May.

Both Brown and Belgard said that being on the HSP staff has not taken away from their Rice experience; it only has enriched it.

”I have learned good time-management skills, with the occasional bout of sleep deprivation,” said Belgard, who is majoring in chemistry, physics, and biochemistry and cell biology. ”But it’s all worth it when the students see that I genuinely care, and we form a strong personal bond where they trust me to be a part of the special situations in their lives.”

This article is the ninth in a series that highlights faculty, staff and students who embody the spirit of the Vision for the Second Century.