Academic careers are not typically on the minds of any but a few high school students who are already aware of their gifts. But parents and counselors should consider teaching and research as college/career options for their promising students and explore ways to ease the transition - academic, social, and financial - from high school to college and university studies. Here are a few starting points:

• American School Counselors Association
• National Association of College Admissions Counselors

• Chuck Eby's Counseling Resources is a comprehensive annotated Web directory of resources for parents, students, and counselors, including test preparation, college selection, financial aid, career information, and sources for study skill help. Eby, a guidance counselor at Allentown High School in New Jersey, cautions: "Most 'career' sites on the Web are job-hunting sites. In fact, I haven't found much out there in printed matter either. I constantly search . . . for Web information on this subject. It doesn't seem to matter whether I am seaching for minority or majority [student] information, there just isn't that much."

• The Russellville, Ark. schools maintain School Counselor Resources, including links to searchable scholarship databases. Among them is MOLIS, the Minority On-Line Information Service, "a user-friendly, one-stop source of current information about Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Hispanic-Serving Institutions." MOLIS includes an on-line scholarship search which specifically retrieves data on scholarship sources the computer finds relevant to the personal information the user enters on line. MOLIS is a service of Federal Information Exchange, Inc.

• The United Negro College Fund supports the historically black colleges and universities that produce more than 40 percent of the nation's African-American Ph.D.'s. UNCF "provides research and publications on black higher education; administers nearly 300 scholarship and fellowship programs; promotes support of its mission through public service advertising; conducts student recruitment workshops, and offers specialized programs that directly benefit students."

  In early March 1997, UNCF published the first of three volumes in a $5-million study called the African-American Education Data Book, a compendium of just about every statistic known or knowable on the subject. The first volume deals with blacks in higher education, revealing, among other things, that graduation rates are twice as high for those African-American students who receive meaningful financial aid as for those who do not. Volumes II and III, to be published later this year, will deal with K-12 statistics and the high-school-to-work-or-college transition, respectively.

• The Asian American Educators Association in the Los Angeles public schools has found innovative ways to support a scholarship fund that last year awarded ten $1,500 scholarships to L.A. students.

• The High School Puente Program is a demonstration project in 18 California high schools with large Mexican-American and Latino populations that brings together educators and community-based professionals as mentors to enhance student interest in education. The project is directed by Patricia Gandara, associate professor of education at the University of California, Davis, and author of Over the Ivy Walls (Albany: State University of Nerw York Press, 1995), which details the pathways for 50 Mexican Americans who, she says, "shouldn't" have been successful in school, but wound up becoming real scholars.

  Puente (Bridge) has been operating for three years; so far, Gandara says, "retention of students in school has been higher compared to statewide figures, but we are hoping to have some careful comparative data on other things such as progress toward meeting requirements for entry in colleges, gpa's, etc. by the end of [December]. We have produced two interim evaluation reports with considerable data on all aspects of the program and it is being watched very carefully all over the state. We are meeting . . . on Jan. 24 with funders from all over the country to talk about where the program goes next." Contact pcgandara@ucdavis.edu.

• The Urban Partnership Program, established by The Ford Foundation in 1991, aims to help underserved, urban students successfully complete baccalaureate degrees. It operates in 16 cities around the country by linking high schools with colleges and community, corporate, and political leaders.

  The urban centers involved are Seattle, Wash.; Los Angeles and Santa Ana, Calif.; Phoenix, Ariz.; Denver, Colo.; Houston, Tex.; San Juan, P.R.; Memphis, Tenn.; Chicago, Ill.; Minneapolis, Minn.; Miami, Fla.; Richmond, Va.; Rochester and the New York City boroughs of the Bronx and Queens, N.Y.; and Newark, N.J. For more information contact:

  The National Center for Urban Partnerships
  Bronx Community College,
  The City University of New York,
  University Ave. at West 181 St., Bronx, New York 10453
  718-289-5164

• The Native American Preparatory School in Los Alamos, N.M. has designed its program to foster conventional academic skills without undermining Indian identity. "We seek to challenge students mentally through a rigorous academic program. We challenge students artistically with the goal that each student should excel in a chosen art form. We challenge students physically through the use of a wide range of sports games and encourage healthful living. We also challenge students to be spiritually strong enough to achieve all their goals in a changing society. The tasks we present our students will prepare them for the changing future of Native America and the world. This 4C approach (Culture, Community, Creativity and Challenge sets the stage to prepare Native American students for lifelong learning and achievement."

• The American Indian College Fund was established to support the 29 Indian colleges and universities which together created the non-profit Fund. The Fund continued to grow in 1995, its sixth year supporting this country's Native American colleges and their students. The Fund has a three-fold mission: "providing private support ans scholarships, growing endowments for long-term security, increasing public awareness of the colleges' role in improving reservation and Native Life."
  Most recent update: March 3, 1997
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