Young Owls Leadership Program teaches first-gen students how to make college dreams reality

Team-building exercises like these group push-ups in the academic quadrangle were among the most popular activities at this year’s Young Owls Leadership Program. (Photo by Katharine Shilcutt)

After an intense week spent in an immersive university experience — living in Will Rice College with newly met roommates, eating in the Seibel Servery, attending lectures given by professors and learning how to build water-powered rockets in the Ryon Laboratory — Angel Flores was simultaneously exhausted and energized. This was the first year for the soon-to-be-freshman at Milby High School to attend the annual Young Owls Leadership Program (YOLP) at Rice, a program in which high school students from underserved communities in and around Houston learn to become competitive college applicants.

“At first, I was like, get me out of here,” said Flores, a young man with expressive brown eyes, laughing. “I did not want to be here, but on the second day it got better.” He recalled that his favorite part of the week — the nightly reflection sessions, in which campers and counselors alike are encouraged to share their thoughts and feelings with each other — surprised him. “I opened up,” he said, “and I don’t do that that much.”

YOLP offered its first camp in 2012, with programming based on Rice’s Orientation Week. Through this model, high school students are assigned to small “nests” of 10 students, with each of these groups steered by three university student advisers. YOLP, an entirely student-created undertaking still run by students after seven successful years, remains an invaluable resource for first-generation college students such as Flores, who dreams of one day entering the film industry.

“I’ll pay for this camp when I’m rich so everyone gets a chance to go,” Flores said with a grin. Currently, the camp is free for students who are accepted, thanks to sponsors such as the Houston Independent School District’s Department of College Readiness and Emerge.

In fact, the unofficial motto of YOLP may as well be “by first-generation college students, for first-generation college students,” thanks to the student advisers who return to campus in the summer to help run the camp.

‘It’s not just about college applications’

The first day of YOLP featured a majors and careers fair, in which advisers offered advice on how to choose a degree, how to pick a career path and what academic clubs and organizations to join. (Photo by Katharine Shilcutt)

Yemile Bazaldua-Flores is one of those advisers, a Harvard freshman who graduated from Chavez High School in 2017 as one of YOLP’s success stories. Born in Mexico to parents who attended vocational school, Bazaldua-Flores immigrated to the United States as a child in 2007. When she first attended the camp as a high school freshman seven years later, she realized she knew little about applying for or attending college.

Now, as an adviser herself, Bazaldua-Flores is teaching students who were once in her shoes everything from how to fill out the Common Application and write a compelling personal essay to the importance of networking and bonding with your peers. And like Flores, she credits the bonds created during the evening reflection sessions with reinforcing the lessons learned each day.

“Students get to talk about topics that were discussed throughout the day or ask questions and hear concerns about college — and about life in general,” said Bazaldua-Flores, noting that many children don’t always have the support networks in their lives to engage this way on a regular basis. “Teaching them how to reflect on themselves and their lives and what they want is a practice that is very useful for the students’ well-being and also for making sure that the students plan accordingly for what they eventually want to do.”

Often, the simple act of interacting with someone of a similar background and age who has achieved their own college dreams can inspire young students. Many were shocked to find during the first day of YOLP that their advisers were attending or recent graduates of such top-tier schools as Rice, Harvard and Emory. “I’m still very shocked myself,” Bazaldua-Flores said.

“One of the students in my nest told me she now wants to go to Harvard,” she said. “This program really does have an impact on the students.” But what’s most crucial, Bazaldua-Flores believes, is the relationship-building that takes place each year during YOLP.

“It’s not just about college applications,” said Bazaldua-Flores, who plans to keep up with her “nest” of students via Skype and text message. “It’s also a great way to make connections and network with others students and create friendships that are going to last a really long time, to have mentors and reflect on yourself and set goals.”

‘It helps to know that it’s not impossible’

Rice engineering students showed the YOLP campers how to construct and launch soda bottle rockets in the engineering quad. (Photo by Katharine Shilcutt)

Unlike many of his peers in YOLP, Oscar Vasquez was already intimately familiar with the Rice campus. Both his aunt and grandmother worked in Housing and Dining for decades and would frequently bring home Rice Owls gear for Vasquez to wear proudly. Now a rising junior at Sterling Aviation High School, Vasquez was drawn to the engineering portions of this year’s camp.

From the center of the engineering quad on a hot June day, Vasquez and his nest shielded their eyes as they watched soda bottle rocket after soda bottle rocket shoot — each one the design project of a different nest, supervised by engineering grad students — into the sunny sky and flutter back to earth. Later, in the air-conditioned comfort of the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen, the students constructed tiny model bridges in a competition to see how much weight their final versions could bear.

“I loved the rocket-building and bridge-building demonstrations,” said Vasquez, who hopes to graduate from Sterling Aviation with an associate’s degree in 2020, thanks to partnership with the Houston Community College system. And from there, ideally, it’s back to the engineering quad for Vasquez. “If Rice decides to keep me, that would be amazing,” he said.

Joshua Blanco, who’s going into his sophomore year at Sharpstown International High School, found other hands-on portions of the camp equally compelling. A lecture by Senior Assistant Director of Admissions Brandon Mack on completing college admissions forms and writing essays ranked as Blanco’s favorite, followed closely by mock interviews and a presentation on professionalism by Assistant Director of Career Development Marilyn Wade.

“Experiencing life here has really made an impact on where I want to go, because before this I wanted to go to Harvard not caring whether it was hard, because everything in life is hard but it’s not impossible,” said Blanco. “But being here, living here, eating the spectacular food — it has made an impact, and Rice is one of my choices now.”

During the college essay seminar, advisers read their own application essays aloud to the YOLO campers for inspiration and guidance. (Photo by Katharine Shilcutt)

Chinemelum Obijiofor, a Sid Richardson College junior and biochemistry major, was deliberating between Rice and Brown University before her own overnight visit to campus solidified her decision. As a first-time student adviser at YOLP, she was even more convinced that Rice was the right choice by the end of camp.

“I feel like I came into this expecting it to be a summer camp — like I was just going to take care of kids — and I didn’t feel like it was going to be this level of connection,” said Obijiofor.

The daughter of college-educated Nigerian immigrants, Obijiofor grew up secure in the knowledge that one day she would attend a university. And although her parents weren’t familiar with the college system in America, Obijiofor had the resources to apply to college fairly easily; because of this, she decided that, given the opportunity, she’d find a way to help others who didn’t. That came at Rice through the Young Owls program.

“Navigating these kids’ worlds has just been a whole new perspective for me,” said Obijiofor. “It’s been amazing but also very emotionally tiring because these kids have been through so much. And it makes you want to help them even more, because even after everything they’ve been through, they’re still here looking for an opportunity.

“Just being here and watching my kids transform over the week, I see that they’re more confident in themselves and their ability to apply to college,” said Obijiofor, who plans to keep the students in her nest close long after camp is over via Snapchat check-ins. “I want to enter this person’s life and not be a transient fixture; I want to maintain daily contact and keep that same energy to help them with school, help with resumes, just fix them up with the resources they need.”

College isn’t “some sort of far-off place,” said Obijiofor. “It’s something they can actually attain, and when you come here you feel that because you see people in similar situations as you, striving and thriving in college. It helps to know that it’s not impossible.”