Jul 15, 2008 12:49 pm US/Pacific
Building a Bridge to Academic Success
Jefferson Award Winner: Dennis Collins
(CBS 5)
From behind the walls of a private Pacific Heights high school come the sounds the learning. But this isn't just any summer school. It's the Summerbridge Program at University High.
The teachers aren't much older than the students, and their lessons are fun: candy used to illustrate volume, hand prints measured in physics.. But make no mistake, academics are taken seriously.
It's exactly the kind of program Dennis Collins envisioned. Thirty-five years ago, he was the founding headmaster of University High School, a highly regarded academic institution, he he says, that wasn't enough.
"There was something powerful here that we were experiencing on a daily basis, and we knew full well that we needed to share that with other young people. So that was the vision," Dennis explains.
So Dennis, along with two fellow faculty members, came up with the idea of Summerbridge, opening the campus to a special summer school for middle school students who are hungry for an academic challenge.
"Seventy percent of these kids come from families for whom they are the first to ever go on to college," he says. "Sixty percent of these kids come from families where English is not spoken in the home."
Sixth, seventh, and eighth graders from public and parochial schools around San Francisco come to University for six weeks, studying math, english, science, and art. During the academic year, they continue to visit for after-school tutoring. It's a three-year commitment, and it's all free.
Dennis says, "These are youngsters who are innately very, very talented, but circumstantially very challenged."
And most of the teachers are getting their first taste leading a classroom. It's what Dennis calls a win/win situation, and what former Summerbridge student Elisa Zhang says brought her back to teach.
"This energy inspires you to just be passionate and be the best you can be, and to just reach higher," says Elisa.
Elisa is now a sophomore at Stanford and credits Summerbridge with helping her get there.
In the 30 years since Summerbridge started, more than two thousand students attend and 92 percent go on to attend four-year colleges.
Eighth grader Richard Falcon says he'll be the first generation in his family to do so.
"These schools like Harvard, Princeton, Yale -- all these schools are like amazing schools when you hear about them," Richard says. "You think, no, I can't do that, but then you see these other kids and it really inspires you, like yeah, I can do this! And it gives you that feeling like anything is possible -- I can achieve greatness just be who I am."
While Dennis Collins has now moved on to other professional challenges, the Summer bridge program he helped start has become a national model, celebrating the potential in every child.
"I've always felt that it's patently unfair not to make this kind of experience available to people for whom the accident of history suggests that they don't have the financial capacity to do it," he adds.
For his support of all students in their pursuit of academic excellence, this week's Jefferson Award in the Bay Area goes to Dennis Collins.
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