Georgetown formally announced this weekend that it will expand a university college-preparatory program for District of Columbia public school students, after receiving a $10 million gift for the program.

The donation, from the Meyers Foundation, will allow an additional 500 public school students to participate in the program – renamed the Meyers Institute for College Preparation – over the next 10 years, more than doubling the present enrollment.

The MICP, part of the Center for Multicultural Equity and Access, provides academic, psychosocial and family support to low-income public school students in grades seven-12. Most of the students live in Ward 7, a southeast D.C. ward that is among the city’s poorest. The program began in 1989 and has been known in the past as the Educational Community Involvement Program and Institute for College Preparation.

The gift was formally announced at a ceremony on Saturday in the Bunn Intercultural Center Auditorium, which hosted speakers, including University President John J. DeGioia, Daniel Meyers, a trustee of the Meyers Foundation, Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) and representatives of Ward 7.

“We believe in your brains, your drive and your ambition,” Meyers said at the ceremony. “This isn’t a gift – this is an investment.”

“We can succeed if we have the help that we need,” Ward 7 Councilmember Yvette Alexander said. “We have the highest number of school-aged children. We also have the highest unemployment rate and the highest adult illiteracy rate.”

The MICP includes a Saturday academy and summer institute, both of which meet on Georgetown’s main campus. During the academic year, students study English, math and Spanish, and in the summer they study those subjects as well as science and an elective over the summer.

Classes are supplemented with activities that focus on college preparation, including college tours, summer study abroad opportunities and a residential Summer Institute at Georgetown.

The program also remains involved with students during their first year of college, helping them to communicate with advisors, financial aid officers and admissions offices.

“I’m just basking in the moment to know that there can be 500 more students standing in my place,” said Dominique Cauley (COL ’09), an alumna of the institute who spoke at the ceremony. “Through the generous donation that has been given to our college prep program, Georgetown University will be able to continue its work in Ward 7 and be the X factor that will allow young men and women to share in the dream of a college education.”

“This program is important because it takes the Jesuit ideals that we value so much and puts them into action,” she added.

Only 29 percent of students who enter ninth grade in D.C. public schools and charter schools enroll in postsecondary education programs within 18 months of graduating high school, and only nine percent earn a postsecondary degree within five years of enrolling in college, according to the 2006 report “Doubling the Numbers for College Success: A Call to Action for the District of Columbia.”

“We’ve got to do something about it,” Norton said at the ceremony. “Much of my own work cannot succeed without what the Meyers Institute and other like organizations are doing.”