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Coalinga-Huron-Avenal House Celebrates Quinceañera/Reunion
by Aurelio Cisneros
Gary Soto chats with Nancy Mellor at CHA House reunion
In 1987, the first middle school and high school students came from the towns of Coalinga and Huron in the San Joaquin Valley to spend their summers learning at UC Berkeley. They attended the Academic Talent Development Program (ATDP), the School of Education’s intensive institute for highly motivated young people. That summer and each year since, Central Valley students have stayed in a sorority or fraternity house at UC Berkeley, first dubbed Coalinga-Huron House.
About 300 students from the Valley have now gone to ATDP. Over 95% of the students who have attended at least one summer at CHA House have graduated from four-year colleges, including such prestigious campuses as Cal, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Cornell, and Swarthmore. At Berkeley, the middle school and high school students take a demanding six weeks of courses, studying, taking walking trips all over the Bay Area, playing sports in Memorial Stadium, laughing, sharing ideas, and maybe shedding a few tears at the end of an exhausting but unforgettable time together.
Cut to July 3, 2003. The dorm is now called Coalinga-Huron-Avenal House (CHA House), since a new town has been added to the feeder area. CHA House has been in existence sixteen years and saw many new and bright faces attending ATDP in summer 2003.
Nina Gabelko Dr. Nancy Mellor began this venture with the idea that all students could and would succeed in this rigorous program. To celebrate the successes over the years, Dr. Mellor and the other CHA House board members (Addie Holsing, Dr. Nina Gabelko, Maria Morales, and Ana Spathis) decided to hold a quinceañera/reunion at the Clark Kerr Campus. Although a quinceañera usually celebrates the coming of age of a young Mexican woman, the board felt that CHA House had also come of age and needed a celebration to mark this important milestone.
Guests were invited until the very last minute, but almost every person who was contacted managed to attend. Gemma Rodriguez, now a teacher in Patterson, California, was a student in the program in the late 80s and later worked at CHA House as a counselor. She had fallen out of contact with the program and was located only the day before the event, but still succeeded in attending with her newborn baby girl.
The reunion included an all-American feast and speeches by former CHA House members Vinh Lam and Juan Morales. Lam is now assistant principal at Alameda High School. Morales, who was born in Mexico and came to the program as an English-learner, currently works for the Bay Area office of the federal Food and Drug Administration after graduating from Oberlin.
At the reunion, Lloyd Nebres provided one of his signature slide shows. Guests included Anne Wallach, the founder of ATDP; and celebrated author and poet Gary Soto, a former CHA House board member who once invited the entire group to his home for dinner. Among these honorable guests were all the familiar faces of alumni of CHA House and ATDP.
The quinceañera was not only to reminisce about the time spent at CHA House and ATDP, but also to inform the alumni that their involvement and support is needed and appreciated.
As the night wound down at the reunion, old memories of summers past began to fill everyone’s conversations. Graduates remembered how in 1995 there was an earthquake at 3:00 a.m. and all the students had to flee the sorority house barefoot in the cold. Students also recalled Dr. Mellor’s keeping the lid on their youthful exuberance, such as putting a limit on late-night card games or computer use after hours.
The students who attended this year understood from those recollections that being a part of the program is something special and worthwhile. As for the alumni, they know that preserving the future of CHA House is of the utmost importance.
Aurelio Cisneros is a graduate of CHA House and USC and now works as a teacher in the New Hope Elementary School District near Sacramento.
return to BEL Fall 2003 contents return to GSE publications
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