Marquette is offering five to seven middle schoolers at Bruce-Guadalupe Community School the chance to gain automatic enrollment in the College of Engineering.
The agreement is to enroll those selected from the charter school, beginning with its class of 2016, but only if they achieve academic success in high school after getting the offer. The selected students won’t be required to attend Marquette, and the amount of offers could increase as the years go on. The partnership was announced in a June university news brief.
Zuleyka Rios, admissions counselor for Marquette’s multicultural community outreach, said the selected students will still have to go through Marquette’s application process.
“Students will have to write essays, get letters of recommendations and do well on standardized test scores when applying,” Rios said.
Rios said the selected students will have to meet certain conditions that other applicants are required to as well.
“They will have to have a certain score on the ACT, a certain GPA and take certain math courses,” Rios said. “We will continue to work with them in high school, but it will pretty much be the same as when we review normal applications for the College of Engineering.”
Bruce-Guadalupe is K-8 and predominantly serves low income Hispanic students. Many of those students can be the first in their families to attend college.
Mark Federle, the associate dean of academic affairs in the College of Engineering, said it’s great the university is providing this opportunity for young students. He said many students at Bruce-Guadalupe do not have any knowledge of what an engineering career entails.
“It’s exciting to give these middle school students a chance to become an engineering student at Marquette,” Federle said.
Federle said the agreement fits the university’s mission well, including the goals of having diversity and inclusion.
“The opportunity to serve a group of students who aren’t the biggest part of the College of Engineering is satisfying,” Federle said. “In some cases we might be able to change the course of their families.”
Rios said while in high school, the selected students will be tutored by Marquette engineering students who will act as role models and help keep the students on track. Marquette will also provide them professional advising, career exploration, financial assistance, shadowing experiences and access to academic and career fairs, according to the university news brief.
Rios said the initial goal is to create student awareness about engineering careers and help students focus on those careers while in high school. She said the hope is that the students will attend an engineering school after graduating, even if it isn’t Marquette.
Rios added the partnership will help the Milwaukee community.
“Serving the Milwaukee community is obviously something we want to do,” Rios said. “If we can do that and bring more diverse students to Marquette, specifically engineering, I think it’ll be great.”
Marquette joins two other universities who have guaranteed admission partnerships with Bruce-Guadalupe: Carroll University in Waukesha and Alverno College in Milwaukee.
