Jose Duarte, principal of Grover Cleveland Middle School in Dorchester, speaks to Maureen Hickey '99, undergraduate student coordinator, as Jennifer Rifken, coordinator of Early Awareness Programs at Harvard, looks on.

Kaya Stone '00 is his own best example for convincing Cambridge youngsters that getting into a good college is within their reach.

"I never thought I'd be at Harvard," he said. "I grew up around Inman Square and I went to Cambridge Rindge and Latin. Some of these kids live right around the corner from me. Some of them have the same teachers I did."

Stone is a volunteer with a comprehensive college awareness program organized by the Harvard Admissions Office in conjunction with the Office of Government, Community and Public Affairs called "Think College Now!" The program incorporates a variety of activities including visits to campus, tutoring, a homework hotline, e-mail mentoring, parent outreach, and financial aid advice to help Boston-area middle school students prepare for college.

"Think College Now!" began in the spring of 1998 as a result of discussions between Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino and President Neil L. Rudenstine. It was launched as an initiative of the Boston Higher Education Partnership, of which Harvard is a member.

Since its inception, "Think College Now!" has sponsored visits to the Harvard campus by approximately 1,400 middle school students from the Boston area, including every 7th grader in the Cambridge public school system. During the same period, Harvard students working on the homework hotline have answered about 250 calls with an average length of 20 to 25 minutes.

"Think College Now!" is not the first program of this kind that Harvard has sponsored. The first early awareness programs began in 1989 and since then thousands of middle school students have visited the Harvard campus.

The current program, organized by Robert Clagett, program director for early education outreach, Jennifer Rifken, coordinator of early outreach programs, and Kevin McCluskey, director of community relations, celebrated its first year of operation with a dinner last Tuesday, May 11, at the Harvard Square restaurant, the House of Blues. Many of the approximately 45 student volunteers were there, along with Harvard administrators and representatives from area middle schools.

Erica Lewis-Wilson '02, described her experiences meeting regularly with a group of 6th-grade students from the Grover Cleveland Middle School in Dorchester, guiding them around campus, and tutoring them in academic subjects.

"I loved it," she said. "It was a really good experience. I still keep in touch with several of the girls. I think the fact that there were people willing to spend Saturday mornings with them and to act as role models had a really positive effect."

John Clancy, an English teacher from the Robert Gould Shaw Middle School in West Roxbury, said that kids in his 6th-grade class greatly enjoyed their e-mail correspondence with Harvard students over the past year.

"I can't say enough good things about the program," he said.

Although exchanging e-mail messages with their Harvard buddies was a stimulating experience and served as an impetus to practice writing skills, the real excitement came when the class visited Cambridge for a face-to-face meeting with their correspondents.

"It was thrilling for them," Clancy said. "Some of them had never heard of Harvard Square. Some had never crossed the Charles River. They got to sit in a classroom, visit a dorm room, eat lunch in the freshman cafeteria."

After they returned to their school, Clancy said, "They were like heroes who had been to a magical land, and they had the photos to prove it."

Clancy said the experience was valuable from a number of different perspectives. It gave the students an opportunity to form new relationships and to practice social skills. It also helped to "bring the future closer to them, to see different worlds and possibilities."

Bringing the future closer was a theme emphasized by Paul Grogan, Vice President for Government, Community, and Public Affairs, in his after-dinner remarks.

"All of us can remember experiences in our own lives that made us think differently, more expansively about ourselves, that prompted us to say, 'You know, that could be me.' Too often kids in the inner city, because of a sense of confinement, of isolation, don't have those experiences. But programs like this can help make a connection between their lives now and getting there some day."

Clagett, in his remarks, said that the programs created in the past year by "Think College Now!" will serve as models for an expanded outreach effort by the Boston Higher Education Partnership, a collaboration of between 18 and 20 Boston-area colleges and universities to increase early college awareness.

"It's the first time in the history of the city of Boston that there has been this level of collaboration between the colleges and schools," Clagett said.

Harvard's early awareness activities will expand even further if Harvard, in collaboration with the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Higher Education Partnership, receives a special Department of Education grant it has applied for known as GEARUP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), Rifken added.

The grant will allow Harvard to form a partnership with the Cleveland Middle School and follow a class of 7th graders and their parents all the way through to high school graduation, offering counseling, tutoring, and other services along the way.

The federal program is modeled on a privately funded effort called the I Have a Dream Foundation run by New York businessman Eugene Lang, which has been extremely successful in getting kids into college. Clagett said he is hopeful that Harvard will receive the federal grant.