Roughly 10 percent of UW-Madison students are of minority backgrounds. Those 10 percent may have experienced a different freshman year from the other 90 percent.
The Pre-College Enrichment Opportunity Program for Learning Excellence began in 1999 as a way to help that 10 percent feel more at home on the UW-Madison campus.
The PEOPLE Program, created as part of Plan 2008, attempts to expand the diversity on campuses such as UW-Madison. Through the PEOPLE Program, a group of minority students are eased into the college experience while still in high school. The students participate in four summer sessions on the UW-Madison campus and other sessions throughout the year in their hometowns. The program includes students from Racine and Milwaukee. This year 24 PEOPLE participants came to UW-Madison after graduating high school, marking the first class of PEOPLE graduates to begin college.
\At first I felt out of place, but prepared because of the PEOPLE Program,"" Zina Daniels, a UW-Madison freshman, said. ""I don't feel out of place any more. I feel a sense of belonging.""
Other students involved in the program said they feel similarly. The students said they felt they had an advantage over many other students because they had become so familiar with the campus through their summers spent here.
""In the summertime a lot of us hated to go through the program, but now I look and realize how familiar I am with everything because of the program,"" said UW-Madison freshman Shavonyuette Dotson.
Overall, the students said they feel welcome and at home on campus. However, Daniels said the small number of minority students in her residence hall makes her feel uncomfortable.
""I don't feel like an outsider in classes, but I do in dorm life,"" she said. ""My roommate and I are the only minorities on the floor.
Moises Price-Neuman, a UW-Madison freshman, said he does not feel those who ran the summer programs could have prepared him for just how hard he has had to work this year. Other PEOPLE participants said the academics they have faced this year are more difficult than they first expected.
""The program did help me, but where I'm at now sometimes I feel like maybe it's too difficult,"" Daniels said.
Nonetheless, Dotson and Saif Syed, a UW-Madison freshman, both said they feel the program did its best to prepare them academically. Dotson said she is grateful for the academic facilities and services she became familiar with because of the program.
The students said they are pleased with their first two semesters at Madison and would recommend the PEOPLE Program.
""We all still meet up around once a month and talk about academics and how we're progressing. We're still a family,"" Doston said.
