Treat your neighbor how you want to be treated.

As the NU-ETHS partnership office goes into its fifth year. it cements previous programs and brings in new ones.

“A common misconception about our office is that its goal is to bring more students to Northwestern,” partnership coordinator Kristen Perkins said. “In reality, it is to create a mutually beneficial relationship that shares resources.”

Before the partnership office was established, NU and ETHS still worked together in some aspects with programs funded by grants or NU student volunteers. However once those grants ran out or the students graduated, the programs died. The goal of the partnership office is to have sustainability in the programs.

One example of these longer running programs are events like Kits and Cats day, which, isn’t necessarily supposed to convince students to go to NU, but to give them a feel about what any college would be like.

“It’s helpful for kids who grew up in Evanston to officially see Northwestern and use it as a reference point to set their sites on their own future,” Kits and Cats coordinator Beth Arey said.

There are over 80 different programs between these two schools including Women in STEM, Kellogg connections, which is a mentorship program that brings business majors to work with students, speaker series, and more.

This partnership doesn’t solely benefit the high school. Along with helping a multitude education majors get a start in the field through student teaching, working at a prestigious school like ours looks good on their resume.

Also, it helps NU students connect with students with leadership capabilities.

Will Gaviria Rojas, a graduate student at NU, started a college access mentorship program with ETHS last year in which juniors are provided a NU mentor to help them through the entire admissions process.

“Working with the students has been a great learning experience. It has taught me about the impact that they are making to their peers on campus and to their fellow Evanston neighbors,” Gaviria Rojas said.

Even though recruiting ETHS students to apply to NU isn’t the partnership’s goal, it is a nice side effect of their efforts. Since the creation of the partnership office, the number of applications, acceptances and enrollment at NU has increased every year.

“It’s a world class institution only a few minutes from home,” 2016 ETHS graduate and current Northwestern freshman Jesus Villasenor said.

The partnership office was created in 2012 and unlike other college high school relationships; this one wasn’t focused on recruiting more applicants, but on sharing resources to better both institutes of learning. Five years later, this relationship continues to grow, with more programs being added and old programs being improved.

Based off the success of this partnership, Northwestern has created a new partnership with District 65 that focuses on STEM