Partner Story
AT A GLANCE: PEAK Initiative's Leaders in Training cohort spent five days road-tripping through four states to see just how many versions of college actually exist.
Estevan Galicia Jr.
Michael Chavez
Our Partner
Estevan and Michael lead PEAK's Leaders in Training cohort.
Location: Milwaukee, WI (route through OH, KY, IN)
Audience: Leaders in Training cohort
Focus: College exploration
Program Brief
So when Estevan Galicia Jr. and Michael Chavez planned a college road program for PEAK’s Leaders in Training cohort, they didn’t want to spend a week touring different versions of the same school. They wanted young people to see just how many versions of “college” were actually out there.
Together, we worked with them to build a five-day loop from Milwaukee through Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana. The group visited a huge public university at Ohio State and the tiny Antioch, an experiential 100-person school focused on self-designed study. They toured two neighboring HBCUs at Central State and Wilberforce, explored Louisville’s OYES program, and finished at DePauw. Along the way, they stopped at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, made time to cook, slept in camps and bunkhouses across the midwest, and circled up each evening to talk about what they’d seen.
PEAK built the experience. We helped make the moving parts manageable. While Estevan and Michael focused on their young people, Get Outside Bus helped with routing, meals, lodging, transportation, and all the little logistical pieces that can turn a great idea into a very complicated week.
By the time the bus pointed north toward Milwaukee again, “college” wasn’t one abstract thing anymore. Students had walked the campuses, met people there, compared very different schools, and started figuring out what felt right for them.
PEAK isn’t alone. Many community leaders come to us saying “let’s go to school,” visiting institutions across our route, giving students a chance to explore their futures and the outdoors at the same time.
PEAK isn’t the only community partner to build a college-focused experience with us. Academy of the Americas ran their own version of the idea — take a look:
As a high school teacher in an urban environment serving students from low-income homes, it is difficult to overstate how intimidating it can be to try to plan, coordinate, fundraise, and navigate bureaucratic hoops of taking kids on an overnight experiential learning trip. The biggest gamechanger in my career as a formal educator that made this work not only less intimidating, but actually feasible, was the partnership with Get Outside Bus.
Monica DeGarmo
PEAK was hoping to introduce its students to the college experience, by actually getting them to experience colleges of all varieties.
Taking a group to one school is hard - figuring out how to thread a bunch together is harder!
Get Outside Bus pulled together several route possibilities, flagged the types of schools the trip could cover, and figured out lodging, reasonable travel distances, food and more - plus drove the route and provided all the travel equipment.
Students had the chance to see all kinds of schools: R1 institutions, HBCUs and HSIs, small liberal arts programs, private and public, urban and rural - and came out able to say “this is where I could see myself.”
All the routes there wasn't time to try. PEAK Initiative has also partnered with Get Outside Bus to facilitate their senior trip, where Get Outside Bus supports logistics and risk management on a program flying to New Orleans. PEAK also runs an annual expedition style trip to develop leaders with Get Outside Bus.
