Local educators show Valley students path to Ivy League

Published online on Sunday, Jun. 22, 2008

Two Fresno County educators are dedicated to helping Valley students attend some of the nation's most elite universities.

Martin Mares of Parlier Unified and Diana Rodriquez of Fresno Unified begin by telling academically talented students and their families about those schools in the Ivy League.

Poverty and lack of college-going role models keep many students from knowing their options. But, Rodriquez said, “I want poor kids to know as much as rich kids. They have a right to know.”

Eight universities — Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, Pennsylvania, Princeton and Yale — make up the Ivy League in the northeastern United States. The Ivy League is both an athletic conference and a term that has come to represent academic rigor and selectivity in admissions.

“These schools prepare the leaders of our nation, and they provide the opportunity to rub shoulders with the country’s elite and powerful,” Mares said. “It’s important that our Valley kids have those opportunities. I believe our students have the right to be at that table.”

Mares, learning director at John C. Martinez Elementary School, started the Parlier Ivy League Leadership Project in 1992. Each year, he works with 25 to 30 high school students from Bakersfield to Merced — most from small towns. He said he also has started training teachers in Arizona and Texas to duplicate the program.

Rodriquez, a counselor at Sunnyside High School in southeast Fresno, works with about 40 students from the Fresno metro area each year.

Participants must have A averages. Counselors and other faculty at Valley schools refer students to the programs, and Rodriquez and Mares also make presentations to students.

The programs include some Saturday sessions about academic planning and other issues. Mares and Rodriquez each take students on springtime tours of Ivy League schools.

About 100 of Mares’ students have been admitted to or graduated from Ivy League schools or other East Coast colleges, he said. Rodriquez said 25 to 30 of her students have been admitted to Ivy League schools, and most have graduated.

Rodriquez started out assisting Mares on the East Coast tour and then started her program — the Ivy League College Forum Tour — in the mid-1990s. Two programs would serve more students, she said.

Rodriquez remains passionate about helping Valley students get to the Ivy League.

“The Valley is as important as anywhere else in the country,” she said. “We want to tap that kid who needs a clearer understanding of what it takes to reach what has only been a dream.”

Both Rodriquez and Mares said there is nothing wrong with Valley students attending schools in the University of California or California State University systems.

But, they add, Ivy League schools are looking for smart students from low-income families to help diversify their student bodies.

Brown University, for example, will award $68 million to nearly 2,300 students in the 2008-09 school year based on the students’ financial circumstances. Grass-roots efforts similar to the Valley’s programs encourage students elsewhere in the country to consider Ivy League schools, too, said Jim Miller, dean of admission at Brown.

Former Fresnan Janete Perez, 25, attended Brown out of McLane High School after touring the school with Rodriquez. “Mrs. Rodriquez made it seem like going to Brown was an attainable goal,” Perez said.

She studied computer science at Brown, graduated and then got a job with Microsoft Corp. in the Seattle area.

Perez, whose mother is a restaurant server and whose stepfather works as a bartender, is a program manager working on software development.

Through the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers, Perez counsels Hispanic students in the Puget Sound area. She encourages them to pursue careers in science and engineering.

“When you talk to kids, it does the same thing that Mrs. Rodriquez does,” Perez said. “It empowers them with information.”