Minority Students Make Inroads With Area Companies

The next time you run into an exceptionally talented and intelligent black, native American, or Hispanic high schooler, give Sonia Ellis a call. That’s how Michael Wells wound up updating and interpreting blueprints for The Southland Corporation’s huge Cityplace development. And why Martin Aranda is set to begin his fourth summer of career development training at Arthur Andersen & Co., the giant accounting firm.

Ellis is constantly on the lookout for minority high school students who-like Wells and Aranda-exhibit raw talent and leadership potential. As managing director of the Dallas/Fort Worth affiliate of INROADS, a national nonprofit network of twenty-six affiliates in mostly major cities, she matches the students with area corporations.

Wells is an architecture major at Texas A&M. Aranda, a native of Mexico and a North Dallas High graduate, works full time at Arthur Andersen during the summer and part time during the school year while majoring in accounting at SMU. “The closest thing to this type of experience I could have gotten at SMU would have been an internship in my junior year.” he says.

Candidates for the INROADS program must rank in the upper 10 percent of their graduating classes and/or have an SAT score of 800 or above, or an ACT composite of twenty or above. They must plan on attending a four-year accredited college with a major in business, engineering, or other technical field. Many interns, after graduating from college, take full-time positions with their sponsors.

Members of this elite group may have met the challenges of high school only to be stonewalled by demanding business and engineering college curricula because they lacked early educational guidance. The result is low self-esteem and cultural shock in the college environment, says Ellis. “That’s where INROADS steps in as a ’buffer’ between student and environment. We try to identify exceptional students at an early stage and prepare them for collegiate and corporate structures.”

Since its founding in Chicago more than sixteen years ago by white businessman Frank Carr, INROADS has placed more than 2.500 minority students nationwide in some 800 sponsoring corporations, most of them Fortune 500 companies.

The Dallas/Fort Worth INROADS affiliate opened in 1981 with the help of a $100,000 challenge grant from Mobil Oil, Fifty-four Dallas/Fort Worth companies, among them Northern Telecom, RepublicBank, and ARCO, employ at least one INROADS intern.

Last year INROADS screened nearly 250 candidates referred by Dallas/Fort Worth counselors and community leaders before selecting 114 interns to interview for thirty-eight positions. Participating businesses make sponsorship donations of $2,500 for each intern hired.

“Of course the ultimate choice is theirs,” says Brenda Lockhart. a staffing representative at Northern Telecom, “but our intent is to ask them to stay. They are acquainted with the company’s environment, policies, and job responsibilities. So what better reason can you have to ask them to stay?”