When Evanston Township High School science teacher Mark Vondracek wanted to increase the diversity of his Advanced Placement classes, he didn’t try to reform the high school. He started in the third grade.

In 1999 Vondracek helped found Project EXCITE, a program bringing together ETHS, Evanston/Skokie School District 65 and Northwestern to target talented black and Latino elementary school students and encourage them to participate in extracurricular activities.

“The high school is essentially half minority and half white and when you look at the AP classes, it is basically 90-plus-percent white,” Vondracek said. “The holes in the system are very obvious.”

To help solve the problem, Vondracek reached out to NU’s Center for Talent Development The collaborative effort between the school districts and NU received a boost earlier this spring, when the ETHS Alumni Association agreed to fund student tutors with a “mini-grant.”

Starting in third grade, Project EXCITE students attend after-school science and math activities with ETHS teachers. Students in higher grades take weekend and summer classes offered by the Center for Talent Development. A sense of community is stressed at all levels of the program.

“The idea is providing more support and more of a peer group so that they’re in an environment where learning is thought of positively,” said Susan Kuhn, the center’s outreach coordinator.

The oldest children in Project EXCITE are now completing sixth grade. Although the success of the program cannot be measured fully until students enroll in ETHS, participants have already made strides.

In 2002 only two minority students qualified to take pre-algebra in sixth grade; last year, that number grew to 13 students, said Randee Blair, math and gifted coordinator for District 65. Twelve of those were Project EXCITE students.

“If luck is with us and things fall into place, these kids will be encouraging their friends who are not in the EXCITE program to get into the advanced classes,” Vondracek said. “That’s really our long term goal.”

— Greg Hafkin