Youth Programs
College Opportunity Programs
Welcome to the College Opportunity Programs! We are a program of the School of Education. Our mission is to increase student preparation for postsecondary opportunities through academic enrichment, academic advising, motivational activities and K-12 partnerships. These federally funded programs—Educational Talent Search, GEAR UP and Upward Bound—are administered by the UC Davis School of Education and serve middle and high school students in Colusa, Glenn, Sacramento, Shasta, Siskiyou, Solano, Tehama and Yolo counties.
Words Take Wing
Honoring Diversity in Children’s Literature
Since 2005, more than 20,000 Sacramento-area school children have benefited from Words Take Wing: Honoring Diversity in Children’s Literature. This annual celebration, held each February, gives students the opportunity to hear about the personal journeys and creative processes of acclaimed authors and illustrators of diverse children’s literature whose stories about Native American heritage, Asian culture, African American culture, and Latino identity, among many others, allow them to explore a wide range of perspectives and world views.
Young Scholars Program
Applications for 2026 are now closed. Thank you for your interest!
2026 program applicants will be notified about their acceptance to the program no later than April 15, 2026. (We are working to send notifications as early as April 1.)
Welcome to the UC Davis Young Scholars Program, a summer residential research program designed to introduce approximately 40 high-achieving high school students to the world of original research in the biological, agricultural, environmental, and natural sciences.
YCCS Educator Resources from the Center for Community and Citizen Science
With Youth-focused Citizen and
Community Science (YCCS), youth contribute to authentic science.
They can do this through data collection, but also interpreting
or sharing findings. But what does this mean for science
learning? To answer this question, we have been researching
implementation of YCCS projects to explore when and how YCCS
works best.
