Gilbert and Carolyn Krulee

McCormick student John Velez (left) works with Geneva Patterson and Jose Santiago, students at the Noble Street Charter High School.

John Velez and Ellen Worsdall

Helping hands

Northwestern reaches out to Chicago high school

With all these connections, it may come as no surprise to learn that when Noble Street graduated its first class in 2003, the valedictorian, Vanessa Madrigal, opted to attend McCormick. Now that the University's ties to Noble Street have come full circle, the connections are likely to multiply even further.

Noble cause

In some ways, explains Carolyn Krulee, Northwestern's involvement with the Noble Street Charter High School goes back to the 1890s, when the wife of the University's president borrowed an idea from England. A Northwestern professor and family would live in a settlement house in a part of Chicago where the residents needed help. The Northwestern University Settlement House, a graceful structure in the arts and crafts style, was built in 1901 at 1400 West Augusta Boulevard, in what was then a heavily Polish neighborhood. This settlement house became one of Chicago's most important contributions to American social reform, providing the city's poor with educational and recreational programs.

The Northwestern University Settlement House Association is now an independent organization, still dedicated to providing resources to individuals and families in need, with education as a major focus. In April 1998 the city of Chicago granted a charter to the association to open a small high school within the public school system for students willing to learn in a rigorous academic environment, with technology integrated into all subject areas. The result was the Noble Street Charter High School, which occupies part of the site and part of the building of the settlement house.

Because Carolyn Krulee had long been involved with the Northwestern Settlement House Association as well as its related Evanston Women's Auxiliary, she worked with Noble Street from its beginning.

After volunteering her services, she found herself making weekly trips to advise a class of young women in the school's inaugural year. “Because I'd been a counselor as well as an assistant dean at McCormick, I knew how to talk to students,” says Krulee, who admits that she was also not shy about tapping her Northwestern connections to bring in speakers.

Krulee called on Worsdall to speak at the school's first college night, where

she made a huge impression on student Madrigal. “I really hadn't heard about Northwestern until Ellen came to our school,” she remembers. “I became very interested when she started talking about it, and she stayed in touch and encouraged me to visit.” Now in her busy first year at McCormick, Madrigal finds time to tutor Noble Street students in math once a week and to offer general advice to students

contemplating going on to college. “I tell them it's all about time management,” says Madrigal, who says Noble Street's challenging curriculum prepared her well for Northwestern. The school also enabled Madrigal to attend a summer program at Stanford University.

Bringing engineering to life

Like his wife, Gilbert Krulee became involved with Noble Street early on, helping to write a successful grant proposal to the Chicago Community Trust to develop the school's math and science curriculum. “I talked to friends at Northwestern in many fields — civil and environmental engineering, chemistry, mechanical engineering, computer science — and they supplied examples of relevant material to introduce engineering concepts at the high school level,” says Krulee. “The idea was to show how math and science can have interesting applications.” Krulee also arranged for speakers to explain their work to the students.

Worsdall continues to speak at Noble Street's college nights and arranges for Noble Street students to visit the Northwestern campus. Because Worsdall also advises Northwestern's chapter of SHPE, it was only a matter of time before she matched up SHPE's members and Noble Street's Latino population. “Noble Street is doing something very innovative by introducing engineering at the high school level,” says Worsdall. “SHPE's mentoring program helps Northwestern students fulfill their mission of doing outreach and making an impact in the community.”

SHPE president John Velez, a junior majoring in electrical engineering, says that SHPE members visited Noble Street classrooms this year to talk about their own experiences: why they decided to attend college, why they chose engineering. Velez notes that the large percentage of SHPE's members who are from Chicago heard very little about engineering while in high school.

“The earlier we can tell high school students about the benefits of both engineering and college, the better,” says Velez.

He adds that McCormick students try to bring engineering to life by giving examples of the products of engineering, like cars, cell phones, and computer software. “We tell them about the Design Competition with its robots,” says Velez, “and they think that's really cool.”

SHPE is currently trying to organize a junior chapter of SHPE at Noble Street. “It's a way for our members to give something back,” says Velez.

At Noble Street Charter High School and Northwestern, what comes around, goes around.

—Leanne Star