NELA Center for Student Success

To provide support and services to community members to enable them to be successful, whatever that means for them.

Everyone deserves to go.

The goal of the Center for Student Success is to improve access to higher education for any person in the Portland Metro area community who wants to pursue this path after high school, particularly within underserved groups and for first-generation college students. The Center’s staff is able to help all types of students, from high school seniors to people going back to school later in life. We are able to do this in large part because of our strong volunteer base, which includes ASPIRE mentors as well as tutors.
The ASPIRE program is unique here for a few reasons; we run the program all year round (in fact, our summer program was highly successful last year!), our students come from several high schools in the Portland metro area, and we integrate an ongoing workshop series into the program. The students we serve come from a variety of backgrounds, both socioeconomically and culturally. We pride ourselves on the sense of community we have cultivated here at the Center and seek to provide a safe and nurturing space for everyone.