Conversations with Marina: Jimena Velo
Diamante Scholar’s own Jimena Velo tells us that her six siblings would describe her as helpful, ambitious, hard working, and funny. Get to know her, and the Diamante Scholar experience better in one of our video interviews.
Student Guest Post: Majors Exposed
This post is brought to you courtesy of Selvin Ayala, Class of 2020 Mount Diablo High School. His intended major is English Education, and he's looking forward to completing his course of study at SF State, where he just started this fall. You can read more of his...
The (Un)Importance Of College Majors
There is a concept in higher education referred to as “summer melt,” describing a phenomenon that despite being college eligible and sometimes even enrolled in college, students end up not attending – “melting” away during the summer due to jobs, distractions, family demands, or losing focus. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “nationally about 10 to 20 percent of college eligible students melt away, most of which are low-income minority students planning to enroll in community college.” (reference https://www.ed.gov/content/summer-melt). The Diamante Scholars summer component is a deliberate initiative to prepare students for the transition from high school to community college and also prevent the summer melt.
Diamante Scholars Complete Their Summer Internships!
We are so excited to congratulate our Diamanté Scholars. The inaugural class of DVC Diamanté Scholars completed their summer internships earlier in August, and thoroughly enjoyed their work experiences.
Scientists are awesome
One of the amazing opportunities in our modern moment is having the time and space to reflect on the people around us who lift us up, who move us forward, and who keep us - as a society - solving problems even in the face of overwhelming adversity. Chief among those...
Resliency and Inner Strength – Guest Post By Deli Moussavi
Now more than ever resilience and inner strength are critical skills and capabilities students need to create a career path and a life that challenges and fulfills them while bringing to life their gifts, voice, and heart’s desires. This is why Diamante Scholars has made teaching resiliency a core element of the program’s supplemental curriculum. Resilience is a critical life skill, it’s what helps you see failure as instruction, as data, as the source of where success will come from.
Black Lives Matter
When we founded the Diamante Scholars a year ago, one of the core tenets of the program is that it “helps high school students with overlooked and unseen potential find a path to higher education and career success.” Overlooked. Unseen potential. What has happened in...
Congratulations to Our Class of 2020!
To our graduating class of 2020 - we are so proud of you! Thank you so much for having such brave hearts and brilliant minds. We are so excited to support you as you forge a path into your incredible futures.
Summer Reading List
Summer is upon us, and while our normal sunny endeavors may look a little different this year than they have in the past, there’s at least one tradition we can get behind – the summer reading list. The team at Diamante Scholars would like to share a few of the books we love with you. Some of them are old favorites, and some are newfound gems. Adventure on!
Raise your hand, or shout it out: Structured inquiry to solve hard problems
Here’s some advice for how to get information when working toward a big, ambiguous goal. When all else fails – the right question is to find someone you trust and ask them “I don’t know what I’m doing, but this is my goal. Can you help me figure out where to start.” If you just do that the rest of the questions will come.
Do what others doubt
On a beautiful early spring evening we marked the beginning of a whole new future for 33 high school seniors. These are students who have been overlooked, who if you just examined grades or test scores these students would not seem remarkable. And who up until now did...