Nine Students Honored from Highview Alternative Program

Nine students from the Highview Alternative Program in the Robbinsdale Area Schools earned honors that highlighted hard work and will help to make the future bright.

This is the second year of the BrandLab mentorship program. BrandLab, founded by John Olson of Olson Advertising in downtown Minneapolis, creates opportunities in the marketing industry for students from diverse cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. 

BrandLab encourages problem-solving and creative thinking to solve marketing problems, and provides advertising/marketing curriculum and classroom mentors from the industry. Those mentors visited the classrooms at Highview twice a week to assist groups of students with formulating strategies and conducting research in order to create viable solutions. At the end of the three-week mentorship, each group of students made formal presentations, “selling” their campaigns, to advertising executives at the Olson Advertising Agency.

This year, four Highview students earned summer internships, three students earned $1,000 scholarships, and two students earned a tuition-free summer course at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Those awarded internships are Terry Wilson, Gabriella Morales-Garcia, Sheldon Thompson and Amanda Tate.  Those earning scholarships are Cheyanna Hurd, Brittney Wilson and Maria Elena Hernandez.  The two students who were awarded the tuition-free summer course are Jerry Spizale and Dylan Loye. 

“Over a quarter of the class earned some type of award,” stated Linda Valentine, who teaches the Graphic Design class at Highview. "We are so proud of their accomplishments!”

In addition, all three Highview BrandLab interns from the summer of 2011 have been awarded new internships for the summer of 2012. They include Tom Osmonson, Luis Pineda, and Quincy Jaquez.  Thirteen BrandLab alumni vied for the six positions, with half of those being offered to Highview students.