Twenty Denver Public School students will escape the city\u2019s summer heat beginning Monday.<\/p>\n
But it won\u2019t be all fun and games for the first group of Marquez Scholars at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs.<\/p>\n
The 20 students, representing all of the high schools in the Denver Public Schools district, will attend four hours of classes daily followed by structured homework sessions in on-campus residence halls, workshops and field trips.<\/p>\n
\u201cHigh school students today get lots of pressure to go to college but often not real sense of what that means,\u201d Kee Warner, associate vice chancellor for diversity, said. \u201cOur goal is to help these kids put their feet in the water of college education so they can see for themselves the possibilities ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n
Warner, himself an alum of Denver East High School, believes that many DPS students have the brains to be successful academically but are not exposed first-hand to the full range of possibilities for college in Colorado.<\/p>\n
The students, all of whom will begin their senior years this fall, will enroll in an Introduction to Sociology course for which they will earn college credit. The course will be rigorous, offering an idea of what studying at the next level will be like, Warner said. Structured homework sessions are planned as are sessions on preparing for college, leadership and communication.<\/p>\n
But there will still be time for fun.<\/p>\n
The students will have dinner at the home of UCCS Chancellor Pam Shockley-Zalabak, visit Garden of the Gods, downtown Manitou Springs, the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo and the U.S. Olympic Training Center.<\/p>\n
Those experiences are designed as breaks and to highlight connections UCCS has in the community and the path that students need to take if they hope to someday work in organizations such as those they visit.<\/p>\n
\u201cBy visiting the chancellor at her home, I think we\u2019re going to de-mystify a lot about higher education,\u201d Warner said. \u201cThe students are going to hear her personal story and see first-hand that there are people who genuinely want them to succeed and who are willing to help.\u201d<\/p>\n
After 10 days in Colorado Springs, the students will return to Denver and start their final high school year. But that won\u2019t be the end of the connection to UCCS. Students in the Chancellor\u2019s Leadership Class will visit the students in their high schools and at home, offering what Warner calls \u201ca bridge to a smaller scale public university and the options available to them.\u201d<\/p>\n
The program is funded by the Denver Public Schools and the Timothy and Bernadette Marquez Foundation in Denver.<\/p>\n
UCCS, located on Austin Bluffs Parkway in Colorado Springs, is one of the fastest growing universities in the nation. The University offers 34 bachelor\u2019s degrees, 19 master\u2019s, and five doctoral degrees. The campus enrolls about 8,500 students annually.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Twenty Denver Public School students will escape the city\u2019s summer heat beginning Monday. But it won\u2019t be all fun and games for the first group of Marquez Scholars at the University of Colorado at Colorado (Full Press Release)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pressreleases"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/516\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressreleases.uccs.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}