Greetings! On behalf of the Black Student Union (BSU) of Stanford University, I would like to invite you and your high school students to the BSU's Annual High School Conference held on Saturday, April 4 th , 2009 from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM at the Cubberley Education Building on Stanford's campus.

The High School Conference the cornerstone event for Stanford's Black community, and is co-sponsored by the BSU and the Black Community Services Center. Each year, we host close to two hundred high school students from the Bay Area and Los Angeles to raise awareness of the many opportunities available to students through higher education while imparting them with the tools necessary to succeed as young adults. This year we are excited to announce our conference theme, "Investing Today for a Changed You and Changed World".   With this theme, we emphasize the importance of working arduously and preparing one's self today in order to achieve personal success in the future. Additionally, through this theme, we wish to show how we as people of color must honor the work of generations past by continuing to lay the foundation for excellence in our community. This theme resonates with the mission of the BSU and the High School Conference committee to challenge others to succeed as we have been challenged in the past.

  To this end, this year's conference itinerary includes speaker sessions, information on community involvement, and a host of interactive workshops for the participants to attend throughout the day. Past topics have included cultural identity, combating anti-intellectualism, gender issues, interview skills, and entrepreneurial endeavors. In addition to the workshops, we provide a guided tour of Stanford's campus and showcase the social aspects of college life through performances by the historically black fraternities and sororities. Finally, we host admissions officials and university administrators who provide personal consultations with parents on how their student(s) may be competitive applicants to Stanford and other institutions of higher learning. The mission of this program is to expose attendees to benefits of higher education and ensure that that no matter what path the high school students take, be it continuing on to post-secondary education, joining the armed forces or entering the work force, each participant walks away knowing that it is their duty to be productive and noble citizens of the world.

Following this letter is a registration packet for each student to complete in its entirety. Please have your students return the completed forms to and $15 registration fee to the address above no later than March 20 h , 2009.

Thank you for your cooperation and we look forward to hearing from you soon!

Sincerely,

Yvorn Aswad-Thomas                                                            Andrew Levette

Class of 2011                                                                         Class of 2009

Registration Form