Features: Center of Success
UPWARD BOUND: “I found out who I was,” Monroe says of her experience in working with the Kearns Center’s Upward Bound programs at Rochester’s East High Shcool. “I hope to be a leader for life.” (Photo: Adam Fenster)Imani Monroe is upfront about her “rough background.” Growing up in an unsupportive home, while dealing with identity issues stemming from her adoption, she feels as if she has had to raise herself.
The senior at East High School in Rochester credits her four-year involvement with the Upward Bound program with opening doors she didn’t realize were accessible to someone like her.
The Upward Bound staff, she says, provided the support she needed when her grades drastically slipped last year, when she wondered whether depression and stress would cause her to be “another student who failed.”
“The people there said, ‘We’re not going to let that happen. We know you have something in you that drives you, and we want to help pull it out of you.’ And I said I was going to fight back and succeed,” she recalls. “I want to break those stereotypes, make myself proud, and better my future.”
At the end of every marking period (she’s consistently on the honor roll), Upward Bound leaders tell Monroe they’re proud of her. When she feels she needs extra help in a subject, they provide tutoring. Buoyed by comments that she’s an inspiration to others, Monroe joined the program’s Student Leadership Council and is serving as president for the 2013–14 school year.
Her Kearns Center connections led to an internship this past summer with an asthma study team at the Medical Center, an experience she says gave her great insight into both medical research and working in an office setting.
Monroe plans to become a detective to provide protection and justice for others.
“With Upward Bound, I found out who I was,” she says. “I feel like with the support that was given to me, I should pay it forward. I hope to be a leader for life.”
