Andriana Alexis ’13

Student Advocate, StepUp Program

Major: Organizational Communication

The StepUP program partners with a number of schools in Portland, including Roosevelt High School where I work, to provide potentially at-risk students with tutoring, leadership development, and support. As a student advocate, each day I work directly with about twenty high school seniors and their parents. I want these students to walk across the stage and graduate.

At UP, I studied organizational communication, and I interned with the East Africa Initiative in Kenya, where I designed, facilitated, and coordinated a peer mentorship program with the youth department of a nonprofit. During my sophomore year, I started working at Roosevelt as a volunteer coordinator through the Moreau Center. During the last semester of my senior year, I was hired to run the academic support program through the SUN (Schools Uniting Neighborhoods) program. A year later, I began directing Roosevelt’s writing center as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer.

Some of my students have had life journeys that have knocked them down a little bit. But they are so resilient and so capable. I want them to know that everything that they want and aspire to they can reach. I value them so much and I want them to value themselves to that same extent.