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Two of Summit School District’s students never thought college would be in the cards for them. Now both of them are graduating as The DREAM.US scholars, an accolade coveted across the nation.
Only around 1,300 students in the U.S. receive the honor each year. The recognition is accompanied by a full-ride college scholarship meant to give immigrants a path to post-secondary education. 
Summit’s recipients, Alex Licea and Fernanda Fuentes, will not only be the first in each of their immediate families to go to college, but also the first to graduate from high school. Fuentes will be heading to Metro State University to study nursing, and Licea will be heading to Colorado University Denver to study architecture. 
Summit School District Pre-Collegiate Program Director Danelle Hicks said it’s a path she has watched the two pave for themselves. She said they had more hurdles to clear compared to many of their classmates because they needed to stand out if they wanted the type of scholarships they were after. 
“They have to commit to a lot of community service. They have to have excellent essays. They have to be involved in honor societies and have good grades because they know those are ways to get more advantages to get into college,” she said.
She said while other students might be able to rely on their parents for help applying to scholarships, colleges and things like Federal Student Aid, they couldn’t. As the two oldest children in their families, these concepts were new. Still, The Dream.US scholarship wasn’t the only one the two walked away with, with Fuentes getting seven more during the Summit Foundation Scholarship night and Licea receiving an three more. 
Hicks said if there’s a word that describes both, it’s independent. 
Fuentes said not only did she have to navigate the process of going to college independently, it was this way for numerous aspects of school.
“My parents have seen me do a lot of things that they didn’t get educated in. … It’s been a struggle for them to see me struggle and then not being able to do anything,” she said. 
Hicks said Fuentes is one of those students who made an active effort to make sure she’s well-rounded. Not only is she a member of numerous clubs and activities through the school, but she’s pursued Certified Nursing Assistant and Emergency Medical Responder certifications.  
“She’s done ambulance ride-alongs, helped with training staff how to do CPR, and then she’s also really involved with the (Summit County community at-large),” she said. 
Fuentes is a longtime volunteer with programs like SOS Outreach, a outdoor-based youth mentor program, and Mountain Mentors, another youth-focused mentoring organization. Additionally, she helps provide care in local clinics by translating between caregivers and patients so people get proper health care. 
Hicks said Licea is “one of those students that teachers rarely have to check in on. He’s always on top of everything. His academics are always excellent. He really prioritizes his grades in making sure that he has the top grades.”
She said he looks to position himself as an “advanced” student whenever he can by enrolling in the most difficult academic offerings, like those through International Baccalaureate and Colorado Mountain College. He also works with his dad, who has a career in construction, on blueprints outside of school to get more of an understanding of building processes so he can be more prepared to study architecture. Licea said the construction documents his dad would bring home caught his eye at an early age and ultimately piqued his interest in architecture.
Licea has also been involved with school activities and does it all while maintaining a job where he works up to 30 hours a week, Hicks said. 
Fuentes and Licea said independence was key in making their college dreams happen, and they luckily had a bit of a blueprint to follow. The two, despite not being related themselves, share a cousin who is also a The Dream.US scholar, Citlali Licea. They said Citlali kept in communication with them throughout the process and passed along mistakes she felt she made during it. They said they knew Hicks would end up being an advocate for them before even getting to know her based on Citlali’s experience. Licea said Hicks has firmly established herself as an advocate in immigrant spaces, helping educate students who are immigrants on all the opportunities available to them.
Support from Hicks and years of hard work were all made worth it for Licea when he opened the email notifying him that he was awarded The Dream.US scholarship. It prompted immediate tears from his mother, he said. 
“This was her dream … I wanted to make that dream happen for her,” he said. 
Fuentes celebrated for Licea, thinking at the time that he was the sole recipient. She didn’t receive an email from the team behind the scholarship. 
“I thought, well, ‘It is what it is’,” she said.
Hicks thought this was strange, so she had Fuentes log into the portal through The Dream.US to check there. Sure enough, she received the scholarship, too. She was shocked to see she had been awarded it after telling herself she hadn’t for several days. Similar to Licea’s experience, this was followed by tears of pride from her family.
Now, a new bar has been set in the Fuentes and Licea families — and it’s a high one.
“They’re both the oldest siblings in their family. So they’re both establishing, for their younger siblings, the pathway on how to get there and showing them the ability to make it happen,” she said. 
Licea said college was never an expectation in her family, but she’s helped make it one. She said she was excited to even get a “Wow, I want to be like you,” from her younger siblings.
The two say they look forward to applying the skills they gained from their time in the Summit School District — and building even more.









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