Students Organizing for Literacy Inclusion & Diversity (SOLID) hosted the first annual SOLID Steps to College Conference at USC on Feb. 16 (view photos).

The USC student organization invited local high school and middle school students and their families to the USC campus for a day filled with college preparatory workshops and discussion panels with USC faculty, students and administrators. The day concluded with a cultural ceremony featuring Gospel Rap and R&B performances as well as a step show.

“The community needs positive reinforcement and committed peers to guide the next generation,” said Strategic Public Relations master's student Jacqueline Jackson, SOLID vice president and co-founder.

"This event is meant to empower minority youth in Los Angeles," said USC Dornsife student Rikiesha Pierce, President and Co-Founder of SOLID USC.  "As students at USC, we felt it was important to create a space where the community would feel invited, empowered and informed about the path to higher education."

SOLID reached out to more than 20 non-profit organizations, 100 colleges and universities as well as 100 businesses throughout the greater Los Angeles region.

Among those in attendance were URBAN TXT, an organization that encourages teen males in South Los Angeles to become catalysts of change in urban communities, and the Norman Topping Student Aid Fund, the only student-initiated, student-funded, and
primarily student-administered scholarship in the nation for underrepresented, first-generation college students.

Said SOLID’s community outreach coordinator, Charnan Williams, from the USC Dornsife School: “I've been waiting for an opportunity to communicate the importance of higher education to the broader community and this is it!”

The conference represented a significant interdisciplinary collaboration between undergraduate and graduate students from the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism; Dornsife College of Letters, Arts, and Sciences; School of Social Work; Thornton School of Music; School of Pharmacy; and the Rossier School of Education.

The event also drew the support of USC professors and administrators from a wide range of arenas, including the Executive Director of the Black Alumni Association Michelle Turner, Gould School of Law professor Jody Armour, Rossier School of Education Professor Anthony Maddox, Assistant Professor of Sociology Amon Emeka, and Assistant Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity Shana Redmond.

Those in attendance felt this conference was a pivotal part of their education.

“I feel like I got my head filled with knowledge that I otherwise never would’ve learned,” one local high school student commented on a feedback form.

Others said they were better prepared for college after attending the Steps to College Conference.

“Now, I feel like I am on the right track to college,” said another student on a feedback form.

Said SOLID Vice President Jackson: “We need information about higher education and the unlimited possibilities we hold as human beings,” adding that the conference was an opportunity to expose USC to the community that she grew up in.

SOLID members hope to make the conference an annual event, and have already begun thinking about how to make it even better next year.

Photos