“If you don’t like my rules, you can go home.”

That’s what Arnie Smith-Alexander tells the students in her program who complain about the six-week, academically-intensive summer camp at Grand Valley State University, Upward Bound.

“And you know what?” she said. “They never do.”

Upward Bound, one of the nine federally funded TRiO programs, uses grants provided by the U.S. Department of Education to help prepare underdeserved and/or first-generation college-bound students in grades nine through twelve for success in high school and enrollment for college nationwide.

Humble beginnings

Initially established in 1965, TRiO came to GVSU in 1978, with Smith-Alexander as the program’s first recruiter, teacher and now director, building the program from the bottom up.

“[Upward Bound] has changed about as much as I have and my hair has,” she said. “It has changed as much as Grand Valley has changed. We were only funded to serve 50 students at the time and we had 10 schools, so we couldn’t have an impact on any one school or any one district. Now we serve one hundred students and we are at two schools, so just the service that we have is more comprehensive.”

Now funded by a $500,000 grant that has to be rewritten every five years, Upward Bound has since become a part of GVSU’s College of Education, with associate professor Paula Lancaster leading ACT prep classes along with students from the WK Kellog Foundation Woodrow Wilson Michigan Teaching Fellows.

Every March, Upward Bound recruits students enrolled in Central High School and Union High School who are a potential first-generation college student or meet the federal income guidelines set by the federal government.

The program is a year-round operation, providing after-school tutoring and academic advising when school is in session, and a six-week summer camp on college campuses in June and July. Upward Bound is required to track these students all of the way through college and report the information back to program on the federal government level to monitor success.

“We become the supporting entity from the time they’re in the ninth grade to the time they graduate to help them get into college,” Smith-Alexander said. “Mr. Brandsen and Ms. Palmer actually teach classes, run after-school meetings four days a week, do community projects with them, meet with them in their homes, look at their academics, help them plan their classes – we become the counselor. We see them every single day.”

The campus classroom

While on campus, students face a regimented schedule of classes, study time, mandatory physical exercise and some ‘structured free time’ if they follow all of the rules. The best of the best students are also granted a small stipend, which fluctuates depending on what year they are.

Alicia Mancio, a Union High School student that is entering her senior year, has stuck with Upward Bound since ninth grade, and has also participated in the GEAR UP/College Day program. Aside from Copeland Residence Hall’s community bathrooms, she has no complaints.

Mancio, whose father immigrated from Mexico and whose mother never made it to higher education, will be the first in her family to go to college. Mancio is the editor of Union’s yearbook staff and an academically-driven student who plans on taking her first college classes at Grand Rapids Community College during her senior year of high school. She said she hopes to go to University of Michigan for political science when she graduates.

“I just think that instead of complaining about things in the system – because I go to Union and we’re kind of just subjects to whatever happens,” Mancio said. “We’ve been through trimesters and now we’re back in semesters and we have this hub program going – so I just feel like if I complain it doesn’t do as much good as if I actually did something about it.”

Danielle Palmer, assistant director of Upward Bound, said the aim of the summer program specifically is to take away the distractions that may prevent students from being successful. Without cell phones or worries about food, sleep or caretaker roles, students can focus on education – which, according to Smith-Alexander, is key.

“It’s not because they’re not smart, it’s not because they’re not ambitious, it’s just because they don’t have the information and the resources, “ she said. “I ask teachers to push them – don’t tell me they can’t do it; there is nothing wrong with their minds. We just have to figure out a way to teach them.”

Josh Brandsen, technology database coordinator and match specialist for Upward Bound, is on his eighth summer working with the program and spends much of his time teaching math classes and offering one-on-one tutoring to students in need.

And with the advent of online classes in Grand Rapids Public Schools, Brandsen said students are in need of face time more than ever.

The Upward Bound family

“The students that we work with – well, I think they appreciate us more,” Brandsen said. “The students are really grateful, because maybe they don’t have as many people that help them. When we help them, they really rely on us. We kind of see it as a family, the students the staff and everybody.”

And with 33 years’ worth of students in her past, Smith-Alexander said that’s exactly what Upward Bound is – a family. In fact, Smith-Alexander has taken in three foster children through the Upward Bound program, putting two of them through college and housing another until his wedding day.

“I remember one girl telling me she was pregnant and we were in the classroom together and I just started to cry,” she said. “It’s not different than if my daughter told me she was pregnant. They become part of your family, your big family. We have a song that’s called the family song and I make them sing it every day.”

Palmer, who is poised to take over for Smith-Alexander as retirement creeps up over the horizon, said the program has changed her for the better.

“I call them my babies,” she said. “I don’t have any natural children, and when people ask me do I have kids, I say, ‘well, I have 85 of them.’”

To read more about GVSU’s TRiO Upward Bound program, visit www.gvsu.edu/ub.

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