Renato “Ray” de los Santos was studying for his masters in education when put his dissertation at the University of Texas on hold. It was only supposed to be for a year; his commissioned work proposal had received federal funding to begin services to help low-income youth forge a path to higher education and worthwhile futures. But once he began what was supposedly a short-term project, he was never able to pull himself away from it.

“Those one or two years turned into 15,” de los Santos said. “I never did finish that dissertation, and it’s been a labor of love here with the community, with the schools.”

De los Santos, District Director of Dallas’ League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), also serves as the field director for LULAC’s National Education Services Center in South Dallas–a program that can make the difference between a young high school student attending college or dropping out before even their senior year.

De los Santos’ explained the national, federally-funded Upward Bound program was established to “work with low income children who…have been recommended by faculty or counselors as having potential for college.”

This Dallas chapter having grown over the past decade and a half, de los Santos’ Upward Bound program now provides one-on-one mentorship for high school students beginning their freshman year, with pairing tailored to the student’s career interests. The mentorship works in line with the weekly Saturday classes in a variety of study skills, test preparation, and goal setting and implementing.

“[When the program first began here], in Dallas, there were large numbers of students who were dropping out…a lot of students who were very bright…but were limiting themselves because of a lack of education,” de los Santos explained. “We had schools like Sunset High School which, at the time, was graduating about 36-37%.”

Now, the South Dallas area high schools are graduating “around 72%,” with an ultimate goal of 90% graduation rate.

“We are hopeful that the community will rise to that challenge,” de los Santos said.

Upward Bound, according to the Dallas program’s Student Advisor Dolores Manglona, really does require full collaboration from all those involved in its many facets.

“On every level we connect–we get the school involved, the parents involved, and of course the community resources,” Manglona said. “It takes everyone to move this job.”

Manglona, now in her second year working with Upward Bound, matches her students to mentors she sees as as good fit in terms of interest, skill set, and both short- and long-term goals that the student has and that the mentor is working to achieve.

For students who otherwise might not even see college as a possibility, the mentor program provides a focused and personalized path to making higher education a reality. Having a tangible success story for the youth to work with is essential, and one aspect Manglona said is often absent in the community.

“There’s not a lot of role models,” Manglona explained. “Our kids can perform…our job is to make sure they see that and take the steps in that direction.”

The Upward Bound program works specifically with first-generation college prospects from low socio-economic status nationwide. Many of these youth are from immigrant families who are sometimes told, sometimes by their own teachers, that their options are limited and not worth pursuing.

Manglona said that this is the false mindset the Dallas Upward Bound particularly works to break.

“We keep them focused not on what they can’t do, but on what their resources are [and how they can succeed].”

Daysi, who works as the Administrative Assistant at the LULAC offices, has seen first-hand some of the road blocks that can occur in lower-income schools with limited budgets and resources.

“We’ve been going over their working documents [at school] to make sure [our students] have gotten all their credits,” Daysi said, “[but we’ve found counselors have missed credits]…which puts them at risk for not graduating on time.”

Studying to be a high school teacher herself, Daysi said she understands the difficulties that come when a school has a limited budget.

“Most of the time, counselors stay busy,” Daysi said. “They don’t have time to check all the students.”

According to a report on the educational opportunities for first-, second- and third-generation immigrant youth written by the National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy, 30% of all low-income youth age 16-26 are first- or second-generation immigrants. In Texas alone, immigrant youth make up 32% of the 16-26 years age range.

The study reported that Texas is one of 10 states with the majority of the immigrant youth, and those 10 states are responsible for educating the near-entirety of the country’s immigrant population. Notably, the recession beginning in 2007 forced spending cuts on education, making it that much more difficult to provide high-quality education for public school students, especially those in low-income areas.

However, graduation rates from higher learning institutions for first- and second-generation immigrant youth has increased over the past decade. One possible reason is more and more early-intervention programs that better prepare students for the next step after high school.

The study’s “findings…reinforce the need for accessible pathways that allow students to build their credentials as they make the transition” to higher education.

Dr. Ann Batenburg, Clinical Assistant Professor at SMU’s Simmons School for Education, spoke to the benefits and challenges that come with facilitating successful mentoring programs that could help students move beyond their current circumstances and successfully complete college.

“Many mentoring programs fail because it is simply very difficult to generate a relationship between two strangers out of nothing,” Batenburg said.

Batenburg explained that the deciding factor in the success of such can often depend “on the quality of the mentoring programs, how much training the mentors receive, and how well the program is monitored.”

“[Successful mentorship] is a relationship born out of a mutual interest and level of expertise,” Batenburg said.

Raymond Reyes, a student in de los Santos’ program from 2000 to 2004 and a graduate of University of North Texas, now works as a mentor for students in Upward Bound wanting to pursue a major similar to his. He said he realized first-hand how key such programs are in applying to, attending, and succeeding in college.

“My goal now as a mentor is to become a leader and a role model,” Reyes explained. “My main goal is to try to help them reach their goals and dreams so they can accomplish them.”

Reyes spoke to the importance of listening to the youth in the program to understand where their potential lies. When participants grow up with limited knowledge of what is available to them and how far they can take themselves when embracing opportunity, Reyes explained that breaking down the student’s societal- or even self-imposed limits is critical.

“[I emphasize] being a risk taker in life and not being afraid of what life brings them to,” Reyes said.

Nelly Perez, mother of Joseph Villegas, a sophomore in the program, said “everything’s positive” that is being facilitated by and resulting from her son’s participation in de los Santos’ Upward Bound.

“He is gaining more knowledge of school, he’s learning to interact with other people, not just the crowd he interacts with at school,” Perez said.

The program’s opportunities for mentors and peers with shared goals and work ethics has brought immense benefit, according to Perez. She explained that it’s easy to “get involved with the wrong crowd,” but Upward Bound provides an environment with like-minded individuals all fighting for their futures, to “do better and do good.”

“Being focused on LULAC and being concerned about his grades…that really helps him a lot because he knows he needs to do well to go to a college or university.”

De los Santos emphasized the program’s best success results from work with mutual commitment and follow-through, and often facilitates its own growth through that success.

“[Upward Bound] allows young people hope, and through that, they become the guides for others to reach out for hope as well,” de los Santos said.

The director himself said he is “the product of a program very similar to” Upward Bound. De los Santos said that while “it’s sometimes easy to forget those things that helped us become who we are,” he runs this program because he always remembered how he got to where he is.

“I haven’t forgotten and I don’t want to forget,” de los Santos said, “because I know how important is was for me. I know how important it could be for other persons.”