Rashad Moungo, 18, a senior at Parkway North High School, recently got a glimpse into his future.
On March 10, Alderwoman Kacie Starr Triplett gave the keynote speech at his graduation ceremony from the Bridge Program, a college preparatory program for high school students sponsored by University of Missouri – St. Louis.
What struck him was Triplett’s analogy of success with the game of basketball.
“When you get the basketball, that’s you getting the ‘rock,’” he remembered her saying. “You have to make a play. You have to make a move. You have a scholarship opportunity; you have your life ahead of you. What are you going to do? To be successful, you are going to have to take risks and take shots. If you set the play up right, then you are going to make that shot and be successful. She opened my eyes to what it takes to succeed.”
Moungo was one of more than 500 students who graduated from UMSL’s “Saturday Academy,” where students learn skills to get into and stay in college. Every Saturday, students attend classes in math, science, writing and other areas critical for a successful transition into college. One hundred percent of the program’s graduates are admitted into colleges and universities.
The program continues to build upon the foundation it established in 1986, said Natissia S. Small, assistant dean of students at UMSL and director of the Bridge program.
“We continue to expand our program offerings to meet the educational, personal and professional demands necessary for students to achieve lifelong success,” Small said.
The program has built-in parent support with Saturday classes once a month focused on the college admissions process, financial aid and other topics.
A typical Saturday for Mark McDaniel, a Bridge graduate and senior at Imagine College Prep High School, began with waking up at 6 a.m. and leaving his house at 7 a.m.
He’d hit up the McDonald’s for breakfast before starting class at 7:45 a.m. Then it was classes in math, science, English and college prep until noon. He feels the program helped him make the transition from high school to a college mindset.
“When you become a freshman on a new campus, and possibly in a whole other state, it’s a whole other ball game,” McDaniel said.
McDaniel plans on being ready when he attends Howard University in the fall, with a full scholarship to study political science.
In fact, his life motto is, “Ignorance will never suffice for success. If you only go towards what is most popular, you will fall off the path you are on and end up becoming another statistic.”
Jamese Randle, a senior at Hazelwood West High School, said she wasn’t excited about giving up her Saturdays at first, but it paid off on her school work.
“It helped me understand things better,” Randle said. “With math, we were able to bring problems in from school, and they helped us work through them.”
Moungo said most importantly, he takes away wisdom from the Bridge program.
“Wisdom is more or less the application of knowledge already learned,” he said. “We were gaining wisdom by seeing real examples of how we apply our knowledge.”
His science class wasn’t about complicated forms or functions, he said. It was about real life examples of how science applies. For example, they learned about the science behind companies that produce potato chips and how those bags affect the environment.
“We learned through science how to apply that knowledge to the decisions we make in life,” he said.
McDaniel said he didn’t feel like he learned anything new but he built on what he already knew. And by doing that, he and the other students were able to make the transition from high school to a “higher level of intelligence,” he said.
“We learned to project ourselves in a more business-like manner,” he said.
Moungo hopes to study pre-law or optometry at Saint Louis University. And he hopes to inspire younger generations, as he was inspired.
“I hope to be as motivational as Kacie because I hope to be a leader for our future generations through hard work,” he said. “I hope to pass on my knowledge to people younger than me, and to be an inspiration like she is. That is my hope for the future.”
