Alumni

ARC has had over 350 summer graduates and 2,500 academic-year participants since 2004. ARC summer alumni are more likely than their peers to graduate from high school and attend a 2- or 4-year college. They also show significant gains in social/emotional measures. After their summer participation, ARC graduates respond more positively to the statements “I feel good about myself” and “I feel in control of my life and future.” Giselle Ruiz, a Tahoe summer graduate, wrote “I feel like joining ARC has been the best decision that I could have ever made. I will always be grateful for the things that ARC showed me: leadership, teamwork, and true friendship.”

Watch a video profile of two ARC alumni:

Alexis Angulo

Alexis Angulo began his ARC transformational essay with the question “What is home?” He wrote the essay in the final week of the ARC 2015 Yosemite course, which he attended as a rising high school junior. Like many of us in high school, Alexis was questioning his identity and how he fit into the larger world. He had moved from Mexico at a young age to the small agricultural town of Gustine in the Central Valley. Alexis describes Gustine as a “rural place” in a “rural county.” As a sixteen year-old, he was an exceptional student trying to imagine what the future held beyond the fields of almond trees and cotton that surrounded him. Where would home be and what did home mean? [Keep Reading…]

Michelle Lee

As a teenager, Michelle Lee was at the center of a clash of cultures. At home in Merced, as a young Hmong woman, she imagined a traditional path for her future: marriage and nurturing children. She spoke only Hmong at home with her Mom. Meanwhile, at school, she was bullied when she used the language and she felt an intense pressure to assimilate. She began refusing to speak the language of her youth (although, occasionally, she would pick up her ukulele and sing beautiful songs from her Mom’s homeland). She also began pursuing extracurricular opportunities that were new to her parents and six siblings. Michelle says, “A lot of Hmong youth in Merced don’t have a connection to recreation and the outdoors.” As a sixteen year old, feeling in crisis and in the middle of two distinct cultures, Michelle applied to the ARC 40-day Yosemite course. [Keep Reading…]

Maria (Imelda) Valdez

Maria Valdez, known also as Imelda, first heard about Adventure Risk Challenge from a friend back in 2009 when she was a sophomore at Truckee High School. Unsure at first, she applied for the summer course completely unaware of what her experience with ARC would bring. She was excited to be out of her comfort zone, to be removed from technology, and to visit beautiful natural places, but she didn’t know what it would be like to be away from home for 40 days at the University of California’s Sagehen Creek Field Station. [Keep Reading…]