Uplift Education is thrilled to announce the launch of the Alumni Board. Though the students at Uplift receive an exceptional education filled with hands-on learning experiences, it is just as important for them to build relationships with people in the Uplift community who can inspire and guide them as they explore career options for their future. The goal of the Uplift Alumni Board program is to help innovate and develop new ways to activate, engage, and connect current students and Uplift alumni around the network. This will help strengthen the relationship between students and alumni as well as providing opportunities for our students to learn and grow as young adults preparing for a career.
Uplift has graduates who have entered and progressed in a variety of professional fields, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, and myriad of professions. Capitalizing on the expertise of alumni and their desire to give back to Uplift provides younger alumni to be exposed to more career resources and opportunities, and our driving goal to further strengthen and enhance the overall alumni network, prompted the creation of this dynamic initiative. This opportunity is open to any Uplift alumni interested in helping strengthen Uplift’s postsecondary team. Mentoring relationships can lead to stronger work connections, career development, and identity development.
Uplift believes when you build connections, connections build you, it’s that simple. Mentoring gives Uplift students an opportunity to learn and grow from a valuable partnership with an experienced professional who came through our network that they can look up to and connect with.
Seventy-eight percent of Uplift students are the first in their families to attend college, so earning a bachelor’s degree means traveling a path with many challenges without the benefit of a parent who has been down that path. This is a remarkable accomplishment for Uplift students! This shows that a child’s family circumstance does not have to determine his or her destiny. With the right resources, and support, Uplift students can and do finish college, and have access to greater career choices and opportunities thanks to the support from their Uplift family.
Uplift alumni bring a high value of knowledge and experience. Many of them credit the support they received from Uplift with their success and are ready to pass it on.
Geovanni Murguia, a junior at Babson College and a member of the Uplift Alumni Board, credits his Dean at Uplift Summit, Jonathan Pena, for being his support system.
"He saw something in me that a lot of people didn't," Geovanni said. "He was my mentor. We had deep conversations together and to this day we still stay in contact. The power of someone else telling you, 'Hey everyone else may not believe in you, but I do'; for me, that's what I needed most."
We have 62 alumni who have applied to be part of the board and 32 who attended our first board meeting, and we know this will just keep growing.
Uplift students earn college degrees at a rate four times the national average of their peers and more than twice the average of low-income students in the state of Texas. 100% of Uplift’s eligible high schools were named among the Best High Schools in the nation by the U.S. News & World Report for 2021. All of Uplift’s high schools were within the top 29%.
Uplift was built on a promise that 100% of our students graduate high school and get through college successfully. Uplift classrooms are joyful spaces, where dedicated teachers shared their enthusiasm for learning and challenge their students to excel. We are as committed as ever to doing whatever it takes to help all our students matriculate, persist, and graduate from college, if that is the path they choose. This has been our promise from the start. We have always wanted our students to have the freedom, choices, and security we believe a college degree can uniquely provide.
Uplift Alum, in residency for internal medicine, “Help develop a robust Alumni network for Uplift, which was a crucial stage in my development”.
Uplift student in graduate school and working full-time in tech, “I would love to start giving back. As a first-generation college student, I know how hard it was to find the right mentors and path. I’d like to make that process easier for others”.
Uplift graduation, operations manager, I want to be another form of support for the up-and-coming generation”.
Uplift Education is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to changing the lives of teachers, families, and, most importantly, students. With a network of 45 college preparatory, public charter schools in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, Uplift offers students of any background the powerful chance to study within a multidisciplinary curriculum and prepare for the college career they deserve. Uplift is the largest International Baccalaureate district in Texas and the #2 IB district in the nation because of the number of holistic extracurricular and educational programs. The incredible educators in the Uplift network guide and teach over 21,000 students in Pre-K- 12th?grades, with the majority being low-income and minority students who will be the first in their family to attend college. For more information Uplift’s mission and their blind lottery selection system, visit?uplifteducation.org?or?facebook.com/uplifteducation