The Urban Youth Leadership Academy (UYLA) is designed to prepare middle school students for high school selection and college admissions through their involvement in leadership projects, effective mentorship, and on-campus scholarly activities. Urban Youth Leadership Academy participants are enrolled in a 9-month program that create opportunities for youth to develop personal strengths into leadership skills, foster inverse relationships between youth and their schools and community so they become designers of their environment, and provide access to choice high schools and admissions counseling. The goal of the Urban Youth Leadership Academy is to increase admissions to top performing high schools and to create pathways to college. We provide a cohort of middle school students the opportunity to be leaders by managing a self-designed School Improvement Project. They are awarded a small seed grant and given executive choice in how to plan, budget, and implement their service project along with full access to university resources and personnel to do so. As students redesign their environments, they will become agents of change and begin to rewrite false narratives about their role in the school and community. Here students are introduced to a cross-sector network of African American and Latino men and women who will be able to impart knowledge and wisdom from their experience in navigating social and systemic issues of race, gender, and schooling.
