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May 1, 2000
Ian's Story
By Dr. Karen Morell, Director, TRIO Programs
Ian arrived in the Seattle School District as a needy ESL student. He, his mother, and two siblings emigrated to the US from the Philippines from a semi-rural area outside Manila in 1993. His father left for work in the Middle East to help support the family when Ian was very young, returning to Manila shortly before Ian and his mother and siblings decided to move to America to better their lives.
Ian beat the odds. While many of those in the 1993 ESL course still struggle to communicate at the most basic level, Ian was able to score 620 on the verbal portion of the SAT and had a 3.977 GPA at high school graduation. He received an Honorable Mention in the 1999 ThinkQuest competition and today is the webmaster for the University of Washington's Undergraduate Admissions' site, the university in which he is a freshman.
Ian accomplished all this by a high level of persistence, curiosity, and adaptability. In addition, he used every resource offered by the University of Washington's Upward Bound program, a federally funded TRIO program designed to support the higher educational aspirations of low-income students. One of the greatest challenges Upward Bound offered Ian was ThinkQuest.
The Upward Bound program established a structure to encourage students to create a ThinkQuest team and a class gave students the necessary skills and resources. Ian did most of his entry work on a computer he learned to build in another Upward Bound class. Ian joined a ThinkQuest team, with one other Upward Bound classmate, and a third student to create the team that produced A Bow of the Head, an introduction to the great religions of the world. He was driven, in part, by the desire to create better understanding among different peoples.
By participating in ThinkQuest, Ian learned the challenges and potential of collaborating with others and the need for hard work to meet deadlines. As designer of the site, both in terms of its graphical design and its logical structure, Ian often worked through the night. The site is so economical and elegantly structured that it can fit onto a single floppy disk. He desperately wanted to continue work on the site for a few more weeks after the August 1999 deadline because the experience taught him what still had to be done improve the site. But not one to be saddled with regrets, he instead has chosen to work with this year's group of Upward Bound students, applying for the regional competition and ThinkQuest, to make certain they understand the demands of researching and creating for the web.
He will work officially and unofficially on several sites, while maintaining his new job as Webmaster for the Office of Admissions and pursuing his college degree. Ian also used what he learned through his Upward Bound classes, and ThinkQuest, to volunteer as Webmaster for the Unemployment Law Project and will continue to give others the benefits of his skills.
Upward Bound sent Ian to the ThinkQuest Conference in Los Angeles in November 1999, with a few other students. The experience taught Ian that he could fulfill his dream of starting his own web business, just as some of his fellow ThinkQuest participants have already done. He plans to become both a college student and an entrepreneur. Already a success beyond the wildest dreams of his family, Ian has the experience, skills, and love for creating new work with a new vision that may allow him to become a leader in the New World that his generation will forge.
Email: Karen Morell
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