What are you up to now?
Full time kindergarten teacher.
Scholar Category: Youth Mentoring
Vincent Torres
Brittany Morris
What are you up to now?
Getting my PhD in Clinical Psychology. My research is in reading and executive function in children.
Sarah (McCauley) Brewer
What are you up to now?
Public health research and community-based participatory research and interventions
Kevin McQuirk
Project: My project for the Puksta foundation is a year long mentorship between paired, college and high school students in the Denver Public Schools. The name for my mentoring program is Impact the Youth. Through Impact the Youth, I will immerse high school mentees into the higher education environment on the Auraria Campus. The high school students which Impact the Youth is designed for are minorities, undocumented people, and socio economic disadvantaged students that are in their second, third, or last year of high school. The goal of the project is to present these students multiple options of education through a university or community college. It is designed to show higher education as one of the best career options, encourage them to attend college, and remove any road block in the way of these goals. In Impact the Youth, I will build mentor-mentee relationships with high school students by inviting them attend activities at MSU Denver throughout the year. These activities could be a presentation, laboratory research, lecture, or event on the Auraria campus. This will allow high school students to be familiar with college campus and to experience many opportunities through organizations at MSU Denver. This will also provide high school students the potential to work with on campus organizations that they may potentially become involved with if they attend MSU Denver in the near future.
Inspiration: My experience in through a Puksta alumni’s project at CU Boulder with Juedon Kebede.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to help more underrepresented students enter college and obtain STEM degrees.
Miranda Johnson
Project: My Puksta Project for the upcoming academic youth is called RECIPROCITY, which stands for Reciprocating Progress in the City. The pilot program will involve CU Denver Mentors collaborating with Denver High School students. The mentors will be providing their students with opportunity, community and a sense of importance. It is through new found confidence that our youth will feel empowered to be young leaders themselves. By experiencing service learning and activities outside of the classroom eventually our youth will have the resources to return home to awaken their communities and address the deep and personal roots of their neighborhoods social inequalities.
Inspiration: My inspiration stems from wishing that I had a personal, one-on-one mentor as I was entering into high school and college. Every kid deserves a mentor that inspires them and acts as a resource of support and trust. Unfortunately, not every child has such a guiding individual in their lives due to circumstances at home, issues in their community or simply not having the available resources. I hope my Puksta Project can change that. Even if the impact is small at first, I believe it has the potential to grow and reach more kids each and every year.
Future Plans for Project: In this civic engagement work, I hope to impact the lives of our youth. I want them to walk away from my program knowing that they are capable of social change.
Monay Turnbough
Eduardo Antonio Hernandez
Project: My Puksta project is an after school mentoring program to empower students in believing that education is for them.
Inspiration: I was lucky enough to have a mentor in my life that pushed me to continue higher education. But I believe the conversation can start in middle school instead of junior of high school.
Future Plans for Project: Impacting the students is my main goal. I want to be someone they can talk to and at the same time make them have hope.
Alondra Palomino
Project: This year I really want to put together all of my work that I have done the past year. Ideally, I would love to have a consistent schedule or program in which I continue to facilitate parent workshops on the college application process but also include more diversity into the presentation. I would like to have one presentation every two weeks on different topics. One major topic I would like to discuss would be having a safe space to allow for an open dialogue on the current political climate in which parents can feel free to express their feelings. I also want to have one day where an immigration attorney comes and discusses how undocumented immigrants are being affected and how to help the cause. I have come to enjoy doing the presentations but I also want to have an impact and a project that can be sustainable and I can continue doing past graduation.
Inspiration: My family has always been my biggest support system and inspiration for my Puksta Project and life in general. Coming from an undocumented mother and most of my family belong undocumented, I have always felt the need to protect them and involve myself in organizations and activities that support them. I feel have the duty to prove to them and myself that their sacrifice was worth it. As a first generation student I also want to show my siblings that it is possible to achieve higher goals with perseverance, sacrifice and help with the process.
Future Plans for Project: I hope that through my parent workshops there are parents who feel more comfortable in tackling the college application process and feel more confident in supporting their student through their new journey. I also hope that those parents then can help out other parents and students, becoming into cycle. I want to make sure that even though students are supposed to get post secondary education information in high school there is still a lack of support for those students and it is important for them to have a strong support from their parents.
Suyog Soti
Project: My puksta project is to create a web app to help connect disadvantaged students to experienced mentor from their community.
Inspiration: I have had a lot of mentorship as I was growing up, and I realize the importance of it. I want to pass it on.
Future Plans for Project: I hope to address important issues such as diversity in the tech industry in the future using this app as a platform to connect females to similar mentors in their community.
