Denver Urban Scholars to Expand Programs with Support from the Foundation & Associates

Building community for a better tomorrow is a core value at Opus. It inspires our work and expands our impact beyond the buildings we create, improving lives and making our neighborhoods better places to live, work and raise families. Keeping with that tradition, the Opus Foundation recently awarded a $40,000 Impact Fund grant to Denver Urban Scholars to expand their programs at KIPP Denver Collegiate High School.

Denver Urban Scholars (DUS) partners with low-income, high-performing Denver metro area schools to unlock student potential through programs that create pathways to college and career success. Instead of potentially dropping out of school or getting lost in the current system, students are empowered to succeed through individualized case management, mentoring, academic support and financial assistance.

Once accepted into the individualized case management program, each student is matched with a clinical case manager who serves as the student's personal advisor, coordinating everything from learning disability testing and tutoring, to college prep coaching and enrollment assistance. A significant level of commitment is required from students and their parents, and adequate progress needs to be made to remain in the program.

The DUS model has proven success. Over the past five years, 93% of DUS students enrolled advanced to the next grade level, 90% graduated on time and 89% of those enrolled in college.

KIPP Denver Collegiate High School is a college preparatory public charter school in southwest Denver. It serves about 380 students. The Opus Foundation Impact Fund grant will allow DUS to increase the number of students enrolled in the individualized case management program at the school, as well as deepen the impact of other DUS programs and services provided to students and their parents.

Because DUS programs are a good fit with the Opus Foundation’s focus area of youth development, this is the fifth grant they have received from the Foundation in the past five years. To date, they’ve received $177,683.

“Opus is a model for our corporate partner program at Denver Urban Scholars,” said Patrick Byrne, president and CEO of DUS. “In addition to generous monetary gifts from the Opus Foundation, the people of Opus have spent time one-on-one with the students, volunteering their time and hosting special learning events.”

Recently, DUS students participated in a half day event hosted by our design-build and development associates at The Glenn multifamily development in Centennial, Colo. The students donned hard hats, were given a tour of the site, and Opus associates enlightened them about the many careers in the world of real estate, and how they relate to the building under construction. (Read more about that in an upcoming blog post.)

Building community through Foundation initiatives and associate engagement, we partner with impactful organizations to help people achieve their highest potential.

The Opus Foundation is building community for a better tomorrow by supporting projects and programs that make our communities better places to live, work and raise families through grants to nonprofit organizations in the areas of early childhood education, youth development, workforce development, community revitalization and pressing/emerging needs. Read more about the Foundation’s work.

• More about The Glenn at The Jones District