On Dec. 1, Delta College played host to 30 high school students from across Stockton affiliated with the AFFIRM program, in hopes of peaking the interest of the young students in college with a tour of the Electrical Microscopy labs within the Microscopy and Allied Sciences building adjacent to the Holt parking lot, which is the only department in the United States that offers entry level experience with the tools necessary for Microscopy.
The students were chaperoned by students associated with the EM department.
The AFFIRM program is a program dedicated to African American youth, helping them with a college transfer plan, complete with a year of transferable classes taken within the 30 student coalition.
AFFIRM pushes the students to not only achieve associates degree at Delta, but also to go onto various universities and earn Bachelor’s degrees and beyond.
According to Jonathan Harris, a Delta College counselor AFFIRM doesn’t just help students gain their associates degree, “in the meantime we also do field trips, and we take them (the students) on little tours like this one so they can see what delta is all about.”
AFFIRM works with as many universities as they can in the hopes of assisting African American youth, as the choices from students are always a diverse list, from UCLA, UC Davis, to the various historically black colleges such as Cheyney University of Pennsylvania.
The students themselves hope to gain the experiences of what college might be like.
“I want to gain a basketball scholarship, and earn my Master’s in Mathematics,” said Ronnie Smith, one of the students on the tour.
Tarell Lee, another student, said he joined the group of students brought by AFFIRM to learn what Delta offers, as he intends to use Delta as his stepping stone into higher education, with his eyes set on Oregon state or USC.
Billy Whitting, another Affirm student has his eyes set on becoming an electrical engineer.
He was curious about coming to the campus in hopes of seeing what he would be working with in terms of tools, as well as find out what CTE courses he would be required to take.
DeMille Carpenter, a chaperone with the students, said, “my hope is that after this tour, the students get an idea for what they want to pursue as a career, and that they have the option here at Delta to pursue.”
