Letter from the President

March 2010

Greetings:

March is a great month at Chicago Scholars.  One-hundred anxious high school juniors have just received invitations for personal interviews, the last step in our selection process.  Thank you letters were dropped in mailboxes this week to celebrate the accomplishments of our college peer mentors.  The sun is making an appearance in time for St. Patrick's Day celebrations. And, we get to observe Women's History Month to acknowledge the young women in our program who are making a difference in the world!

Our website features just a few of the many women Scholars who are doing amazing work in college and careers. It's so exciting for me to see their confidence and the energy they devote to pursuing big ideas and plans.  They expect to succeed in a world that will treat them as equals and that will acknowledge them as leaders. It wasn't always that way.  Just two decades ago these women would have been tagged by my former male colleagues as having "bear's breathe" and then patted away.  Not anymore. That is a very good thing for women - and for men.

Hillary Rodham Clinton, now Secretary of State, got it right in her 2005 speech before the United Nation's Fourth World Conference by declaring "Women's Rights Are Human Rights." Indeed they are.

I can see this dynamic playing out at every workshop we hold where young men and women demonstrate respect toward one another, listen to each other, and work together to make common dreams possible.  This is nowhere more evident than with own Chicago Scholars Class Officers, elected representatives of their peers who hold tremendous responsibility for helping us shape the policies, programs, and activities that affect their peers.  Researching, deliberating and making decisions side by side, the young men and women officers are charting a path for their peers and this organization. One day, I expect they will be charting a path together that will better their communities, inspire new creative works of art, lead new medical innovations and assume even larger leadership roles that may even impact our world.  These young people "get it" and that is a wonderful thing to celebrate this month with spring just around the corner.

To all of you making history this month - thank you!