Increasing access to and awareness of higher education for residents of west Salt Lake neighborhoods grounds all of UNP’s efforts, making it UNP’s key focus. Each year, only about 500 Of Utah’s high school students of color graduate academically prepared for college, a mere fraction of the state’s 33,000 high school graduates. A recent informal survey found that only 550 students from two of Salt Lake City’s west side zip codes (84106 and 84116) were enrolled at the University of Utah for the 2005-2006 school year, while an east side zip had over 2,000 attendees.

Several initiatives, guided by the Youth Education and Success (YES) Committee, seek to address this disparity by raising opportunities for West Salt Lake residents to pursue higher education. They include:

• on-site academic consulting;

• the creation and distribution of age-appropriate materials in English and Spanish about higher education preparation;

• community and group presentations on preparing and accessing higher education;

• bringing together University and west Salt Lake residents in various venues on and off campus, (such as See U at the U days, Community Day, and Partners in the Park);

• and research project funding aimed at developing strategies to increase higher education as a personal option for youth living in west Salt Lake neighborhoods.
  

“UNP does a lot of wonderful things. For one, they help to provide University faculty with multiple faces of diversity—ones they rarely see in a classroom. Secondly, they offer west side communities the ability to dream, hope, and believe they can overcome the perceived barrier that low-income kids don’t go to college. With an acquired expertise, UNP lights the way for how things should get done.”

Victoria Mori, Executive Director, Guadalupe School