When Carrie Maultsby-Lute visited her dream college as a young woman, she wasn’t sure she belonged. “I was intimidated,” she said.
Maultsby-Lute recounted those feelings to a group of high school students last week as part of the Mills College at Northeastern University’s Summer Youth Employment Program. Students, parents and mentors gathered at historic Mills Hall to celebrate the completion of five weeks of on-campus work and professional coaching with lunch, speeches and a certification ceremony. “This is the first step on your academic journey,” Maultsby-Lute said.
As head of partnerships on Northeastern’s Oakland campus, Maultsby-Lute launched the program at Mills this year along with Alicia Sasser Modestino, research director for Northeastern’s Dukakis Center for Urban and Regional Policy. The high school participants from Oakland, San Leandro and Hayward, California, were selected to work 25 hours a week in the Sustainability, Farm, Facilities, Student Services and Upward Bound departments.
