Our program on April 2nd was presented by Alvin Abraham. He is the dean of a special program at St. Thomas
College. His program is designed to help disadvantaged students in college so they get their four year degree.Their program is in the second year, and features a strong counselling component. Students are assigned to a staff member who monitors their classroom performance, and helps keep them on track. If a student starts to slip academically, or skip classes, or shows signs of pending disaster, the advisor steps in to help put the student back on track. The program covers the first two years of college where most of the prerequisite classes are taken. Students then continue for the final two years in their chosen major.
The program is designed to reduce failures among the disadvantages students, and the student pays lower fees, and probably has a part time job to provide income. The cost quoted for tuition was one-third of the cost of the standard program.
STRIVE on April 4th was devoted to the year-end survey, evaluation of the 2018-19 Program by the STRIVE Students and parting words of challenge and .jpg)
encouragement from STRIVE Mentors Dick Glover, Nick Wegleitner, Lou Graber, Don Draayer and Steve Frazier. The STRIVE Luncheon will be on May 21st and held at MCE at noon in Deephaven.
encouragement from STRIVE Mentors Dick Glover, Nick Wegleitner, Lou Graber, Don Draayer and Steve Frazier. The STRIVE Luncheon will be on May 21st and held at MCE at noon in Deephaven.
ny is a salesman for a vender of solar systems, and he told us the why, when, and where of the business. He went through the financial reasons for switching to solar, including tax breaks and reduced reliance on our current power sources. 
March Service Project for Excelsior Rotary was to serve dinner for the Tree house Program on Thursday evening of March 14th. Tree House is a youth outreach program for troubled youths in our community and the Minnetonka chapter meets weekly at the Excelsior Covenant Church. The 32 students and several counselors enjoyed Taco’s in a Bag meal with sides of salads, yogurt, chips, cookies and refreshments. For some of the students it was their first time having Taco’s on a Bag and they really like it and many came back for seconds. Rotary’s serving crew were Karen Frazier, Molly Swenson, Bob Boyer, Randy Schumacher and Steve Frazier. It was a fun experience and the servers recommend that we continue this as one of our regular service projects.
y, March 14th was on Ethics and Values and presented by Excelsior Rotary’s own resident Chaplain Greg Hayek. Greg spoke about how he had become a Chaplain and his journey. He discussed with the students Rotary’s “Four Way Test” and how important this commitment is that Rotarian’s make weekly in their business and personal lives. Greg focused particularly on “Is it the Truth” and sited many examples of people in the news this week that were caught not telling the truth and how 
one lie leads to many other lies to cover the first lie. In discussion groups following Greg’s presentation the STRIVE students echoed how telling the truth may be tough in the first instance but it is a lot better than living a lie.
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