Texan Teens Discover Yard, Boston

While many of her classmates gravitated to Wall Street upon graduation, Emily L. Nielson ’04 decided to head to the impoverished border town of Roma, Texas.

Now, as a Teach for America corps member, she is bringing a group of 15 promising students from her high school back to her alma mater to stoke their educational ambitions.

In the week since their arrival last Saturday, the students will visit MIT, Wellesley, Boston University, Boston College, Tufts, and Northeastern as well as Harvard.

Nielson said she chose those universities because she wanted to expose them to selective colleges they would not usually consider.

To come on the trip, interested students had to interview with Nielson and complete an entrance form based on the Common Application.

Each applicant also raised at least $800 for the trip, performing a number of tasks from selling candles to organizing volleyball tournaments, Nielson said. According to one of the students, Heberto Alanis, they also received some donations from local businesses.

During their visit to Harvard on Monday afternoon, the school group took a tour of the College, stopping at the major landmarks and even visiting a Fuerza Latina meeting.

Undergraduate Minority Recruiting Program Coordinator Mirla Urzua ’07, who organized the tour for Nielson, said she was impressed by all of the students.

“They were just so intrigued by the campus,” she said. “Some of them had never left Texas before. They were just so far away and everything I told them, from the random stories about the ‘Statue of Three Lies’, to Widener and how he died in the Titanic, was just marvelous to them.”

Nielsen explained that about 40 percent of Roma High School graduates enter college, but far fewer graduate once there. She began organizing the trip this fall in order to encourage students to start taking the college application process seriously.

A former Social Studies concentrator, Nielson teaches geography at Roma as part of the Teach for America program, which she joined after graduating in 2004.

The Teach for America program recruits and trains college graduates to instruct in low-income communities like Roma.

“Part of being a good teacher is setting high expectations,” said Nielson.

Teach for America Recruitment Director Joshua Biber called the students on the trip and Nielson’s efforts “exceptional.”

Roma students expressed a great appreciation for the entire experience, and especially for visiting the Harvard campus.

Alanis, who said he hopes to study medicine, said that he had not considered Harvard before arriving, but has since changed his mind.

“In 2012,” he said as the students were introducing themselves to Fuerza Latina members, “I will be graduating from Harvard.”

—Liz C. Goodwin contributed to the reporting of this story.