Upward Bound Students Lead Local Clean Up
Castleton Upward Bound students from seven local high schools, including Fair Haven, Granville, Mill River, Poultney, Proctor, Rutland and West Rutland, recently worked together with the Castleton Women’s Lacrosse team, Service House and Sustainability Club for a fall clean up effort on campus, at the Castleton Community Center and along Main Street.
On campus, students picked up over 40 pounds of trash from walkways, parking lots and the rail trail, as well as helped clean out the gardens surrounding several resident hall buildings. At the Community Center, students cleaned up the walking trail, and raked leaves at various homes and buildings along Main Street.
Upward Bound students Patrick Cote-Able and Sam LaFontaine led the garbage pick-up on campus, while Calvin Brooks and Bahdja Sehli managed the groups that worked on the campus gardens, and Micheal Mead, Bayan Alsairy, Bria Willis, Katie Feeney, Emily Johnson, Erin Shuttle, Nadine Downing, Nicole Adams, Megan Wood and Grace Johnson organized the groups at the Community Center and along Main Street.
In addition to their recent spruce up of the community, over 300 bulbs were planted and will bloom on the west side of campus this spring, thanks to the program. The bulbs were purchased with funds from an award Upward Bound students won at the High School Greening Summit.
Upward Bound is a federally funded TRiO program at Castleton that offers challenging pre-college experiences to students of high school academic ability from Fair Haven Union High School, Mill River Union High School, Poultney High School, Rutland High School and West Rutland High School. The goal of the program is to generate the skills and motivation necessary for success in high school and college through a six-week semester residential program and an academic year component.
ABOUT THE CASTLETON UPWARD BOUND PROGRAM
Castleton Upward Bound, established in 2003, has served more than 200 local high school students. Since its inception 75 percent of Castleton Upward Bound students have enrolled in college immediately following high school graduation, compared to just 35 percent of low-income Vermont high school graduates.
For more information on the Castleton Upward Bound program, please contact the Director of Upward Bound, Jennifer Jones at (802) 468-6400 or via email at Jennifer.jones@castleton.edu.