
Lorena Villarreal spotlight
Major Lorena Villarreal sent the following note: This summer was amazing. I worked with Leadership Enterprise for a
Diverse America (LEDA), a non-profit college-prep program based in
New York City, which seeks to redress inequality of higher educational
opportunity for low-income high school juniors across the United
States, whose socio-economic, racial and/or ethnic background is
currently under-represented at the nation's top colleges and
universities. This summer, the program hosted 60 students at
Princeton University where we lived for 8 weeks. The students learned
about leadership, ethics, and politics, while having SAT & ACT prep
courses as well. We traveled to Maryland, Connecticut, Washington DC,
Pennsylvania, New York and visited several top universities such as
Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Columbia, Swarthmore, Johns Hopkins,
Georgetown, and Wesleyan.
I participated in this program as a scholar during the summer after my
junior year in high school (2005); i can honestly say that LEDA helped
me get into Rice and I wanted to give back to this amazing program in
any way I could. It was great being able to return to LEDA and work
as an RA at the dormitory where we all stayed, which allowed me to see
everything from a different perspective from the one I lived four
years ago. I had a group of students assigned to me and this proximity
gave me the opportunity to witness their transformation as individuals
into a tight-knit community. It was beautiful. I learned so much
from working with talented and driven students and met so many amazing
people that touched my heart. I would not trade this summer experience
for anything.