Santos Armenta, 18, enjoys a slide show during the celebration for students from the 1998 C.E. Rose third-grade class.

Mamta Popat / arizona daily star

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The promise made to a class of Tucson third-graders nine years ago was simple — qualify for college and the education will be free.

With 60 of those students poised to graduate from high school and already enrolled in college in numbers far greater than demographics would predict, the outcome is clear — give students hope and they'll succeed, said former UA President Peter Likins, who teamed with a group of Tucson Rotary Clubs to make the scholarship promise under the name Building The Future.

Today, those scholarships are worth more than $5,000 a year.

Likins, who promised nine years ago to waive tuition for any of the 101 C.E. Rose students who graduated from high school and qualified for college, called the results "fantastic."

On Sunday night the Building The Future students, many of them members of Pueblo High School's BTF Rotary Interact club, organized a celebration at El Casino Ballroom, 437 E. 26th St.

The event included dinner and a dance, and students were awarded certificates signed by UA President Robert Shelton stating they're eligible for the scholarship as long as they enroll by fall 2009.

"The C.E. Rose demography and history suggested almost all of the kids in that third-grade class would otherwise have been denied secondary education," Likins said Friday. "If we have succeeded in sparking 40 percent of that class to move into post-secondary education, that will be very heartening results."

Of the original 101 students, the UA's Early Academic Outreach office has remained in contact with about 60 of them.

About 20 students have already been admitted in this fall's freshman class, while best estimates indicate at least another 10 will enroll in Pima Community College and another 30 will be attending other colleges, said Mari Martinez, Building The Future program coordinator and sponsor of the Pueblo BTF Rotary Interact club.

By last fall, at least 41 of the students were on track to enroll at the UA or Pima, so the enrollment figures are expected to rise, said Lori Tochihara, director of Early Academic Outreach at the UA.

The fulfillment of the promise is proof that financially disadvantaged students aren't any less successful, provided they have a message that higher education is attainable for them, Likins said.

"Families of limited means think they cannot afford higher education, so very early in elementary school they shut down that possibility in their minds and then they're not motivated to get the grades and study in school," Likins said. "The lack of hope becomes the lack of possibility. When people have no hope of going to college they behave in a way that shuts down that option."

Likins said the story of the C.E. Rose success needs to be told in bold print.

"It's more important for larger society to learn the lessons these kids are teaching us. We simply need to provide these youngsters with the opportunity and they will respond," he said.

Martinez said while it is impossible to guarantee free tuition for every student who gets accepted into a university, key parts of Building The Future can be applied at any school looking for similar success.

"Mentoring is essential — without the Rotary Clubs mentoring, we wouldn't have had only 10 students out of 101 drop out of school," Martinez said. "The kids knew they had someone to answer to each week and it helped motivate them and keep them focused. It's good for kids to have somebody like that who isn't their mom, who isn't their dad, or their teacher."

About 50 members of five different Rotary Clubs from across the city helped out with mentoring over the last nine years, some mentoring as many as two or three students at once, Martinez said.

Eighteen-year-old Felicia Alvarez said she has seen a change in what students expect of themselves.

"If it wasn't for Building The Future, I probably wouldn't be going to college," said Alvarez, who is to attend Pima this fall. "Everybody always asks about the scholarship and about us going to the U of A, and it's just been something we knew was possible."

"I think the program has this trickle effect," the UA's Tochihara said. "This program helped get students excited about going to college, and the support these students received permeated the whole class."

Last fall, 25 Pueblo students were admitted to the UA, while for 2007 that number doubled to 50.