Ellington

The Dream Project is determined to reach out to more high-school juniors and seniors as it implements an innovative plan to aid the greatest number of students possible.

The new approach, called “saturation” by Dream Project leaders, involves working with an entire graduating class. In the past, they have offered their services at high schools to any student wishing to participate, but there have been issues of self-selection bias and only reaching those who would go to college anyway, said Matt Harris, assistant director for program management at the Dream Project.

After receiving a $972,000 grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation a little more than a year ago, the Dream Project — an outreach program that pairs UW students with first-generation and low-income high-school students to help them go to college — has been making adjustments as it continues to grow and work with more schools and students.

The new plan in the proposal excited the Gates Foundation, which was interested in seeing if the rate of students enrolling in college directly after high school could reach 85 percent, rather than the 65 percent it’s at now, Harris said.

This change has jump-started a demand for increased recruitment and mentors at the UW. Although the Dream Project has surpassed its goal of 480 mentors for fall quarter, it would like to get closer to 700 by spring as it saturates more high schools, Harris said.

The Dream Project is an open class at the UW, offering credits and leadership experience to interested students. Mentors can work their way up to becoming a school lead, who oversees all mentors and events at one high school.

Laura McDowell, a junior at the UW and the school lead for Renton High School (RHS), said she is still in need of more mentors for her team. So far, the project has 48 mentors for RHS but would like closer to 100, “but 50 is better than 40 is better than 30,” she said. “Our 48-strong is a good 48-strong.”

McDowell organized a kick-off event at RHS to bring everyone together and start getting the students motivated and thinking about their future. Along with other speakers, she managed to include an appearance from the UW’s mascot, Dubs.

Damien Pattenaude, principal of RHS, has high hopes for the Dream Project’s involvement at his school this year.

“I’ve really been impressed with the leadership at the Dream Project in terms of their preparation for saturation and their communication with us so that we can help to build an effective program for our students,” he said.

Another major aspect shifting within the program is changing the academic culture of the school and serving each student’s individual needs.

The Dream Project is focused on “shifting the whole entire focus of the high school to say every student is going to have a post-high-school plan, every student is going to graduate from this school, and every student who is able or who wants to make it to higher education will get there,” Harris said.

The Dream Project is also focused on meeting students where they are with goals for after high school.

“How are we as a program going to evolve to meet this huge variety of needs?” McDowell said. “Because it’s no longer just like [an] ‘I want to go to college’ need, it’s an ‘I need to graduate high school’ or ‘I need these scholarships,’ or even beyond that [like] ‘I want to learn how to manage my own credit card.’”

Pattenaude and Deborah Atkins, who works in the career center at RHS, appreciate the more one-on-one interaction between the students and Dream Project mentors.

“If [the students] don’t have the support system or network there to help them, a lot of them will just settle,” Pattenaude said. “And sometimes settling means, ‘Well I could go to a university, but I’ll just go to community college’ or settling means, ‘I think I’ll just go ahead and get a job’ and, while there’s nothing wrong with that, what we really want to do is we want our students to have every option open to them … and the Dream Project is critical in filling that gap.”

Reach reporter Erica Thompson at news@dailyuw.com.