DMPS, ISU Make College Dream Come True for Students
Students joins ISU and DMPS officials in launching the ISU 4U Promise program.
Good old fashioned radiators were steaming this morning in the auditorium at Moulton Learning Center. But enthusiasm alone might have heated the place during a ceremony that was absolutely futuristic.
Iowa State University made good on a promise first declared two years ago when ISU President Dr. Steven Leath told a school assembly that if kids from Moulton and its neighbor King Elementary stayed in school and worked hard they’d be sure to get scholarships to college when the time came.
Today, on a stage festooned with bouquets of cardinal and gold balloons, Dr. Leath was back to seal the deal between ISU and DMPS. It’s called ISU4U: Promise and it is promising. (For details click here.)
The occasion called for speeches by officials ranging from elementary principals to college presidents and there were those elements. But maybe the audience of primarily 5th graders from the two neighborhood schools best understood and was most impressed by the remarks of two of their own.
Austin Castillo-Leovan and Michael Hardat are both Moulton alums and current ISU freshmen. They were recognizable to many of the kids from their participation in community programs that helped them get where they are and point them in the positive directions they’re heading. They would surely have capitalized on the chance at free college tuition that was formally presented to the kids who sat today where they used to. Instead they earned it in other ways.
“Eight years ago I was right where all of you are,” Austin said. “Teachers struck a spark in me that became a flame and now I have a future that is limitless.”
“We’ve been buddies since preschool,” Michael recalled, nodding at Austin. “I remember our parents encouraging us to get an education and make something of ourselves. When I graduated from high school I was the first one on my father’s side of the family to do so.”
Austin and Michael got the loudest cheers after Michael’s parting advice which he exhorted the crowd to repeat after him: “If you stay ready you won’t have to get ready.” The two young men; real, live odds-beaters, couldn’t have left more vivid footsteps to follow in as they left the stage if they’d had cardinal and gold paint on the soles of their shoes.
Dr. Leath recounted how the idea that’s now coming true was first proposed to him by Ako Abdul-Samad who represents the King/Moulton area in the Iowa legislature. “We have become friends working on this program together,” Dr. Leath said. Rep. Samad was also on hand this morning. He is the founder of Creative Visions, a community agency in the area. An ongoing partnership between public schools and a state university to underwrite college tuition for underprivileged kids certainly qualifies as an upper case Creative Vision.
At times while Dr. Leath spoke one of his hands casually dipped into his pants pocket and it was suddenly easy to imagine it being deep enough to hold college diplomas for an auditorium full of 5th graders. In lieu of those (which remain down the road a ways while these students fulfill their part of the bargain by staying in school and earning the grades that will qualify them for admission to ISU upon high school graduation) lanyards bearing the program logo were passed out to serve as constant reminders.
When the paperwork was finally signed on stage there were the hushed pomp and photographic flash of a bill being signed into law. Dr. Anne Sullivan, the DMPS Chief of Human Resources and an ISU alum herself, sat in for DMPS Superintendent Dr. Tom Ahart who was away in Washington D.C. but was instrumental in forging the agreement. Also among the signatories were six students, three from each of the affected schools. They included Emma, the girl in cowboy boots who wants to become a teacher “because I’m good with little kids,” and Sofia, who plans to become a scientist so she “can cure my grandma,” among others.
There’ll be no stopping them now.
