UC’s Center for Youth Futures celebrates five years

From mental health to screen time to chronic perfectionism and more, the threats today’s young people face are myriad. But while it’s easy to find persistent news coverage about what’s going wrong for young people, these stories too often fail to address meaningful solutions to these pressing concerns.

Since 2021 the University of Cincinnati’s Center for Youth Futures (CYF) has, as its name makes clear, worked to provide opportunities for today’s youth to discover and pursue exciting futures through education. For the past five years, the center (which operates out of the College of Education, Criminal Justice, Human Services, and Information Technology—CECH) has offered a series of programs to youth in grades 4 through 12 that seek to build student academic understanding and emotional intelligence as well as provide education and career pathway information.

“The conception,” explains center founder and School of Education professor emeritus Ted Fowler, “was to establish a partnership between the university, schools and community to address science and math education needs. That partnership-centered work continued over the years.” While doing this work, it became obvious to CYF leadership that other individuals and programs within CECH were also developing similar partnerships. “The directors of each of these programs were asked if they would be interested in working together to form a university-recognized center,” he says.

The programs included Upward Bound, Breakthrough Cincinnati, Bearcat Academy and the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative, which were all pulled under the banner of the CYF to strengthen the individual impact of each. The resulting partnership between these distinct programs, says Fowler, has been the biggest accomplishment of the center’s establishment. “Ideas and approaches are shared to provide better outreach to the community,” he explains. “Concurrently, the community has a focal point for communication with the university for readiness initiatives and other education collaborations.”

“We were coming out of COVID, and there was a lot of upheaval in the whole education system,” says Sean Kelley, director of the Greater Cincinnati STEM Collaborative. “Though we weren’t sure yet what CYF could be, in that time of uncertainty the center just made sense.  

When Fowler retired from his role as CYF executive director in 2025, CECH leaders made the decision not to seek a dedicated replacement but rather offer a shared directorship to three individuals already leading programs within the center:  Kelley, Tiffany Dolder-Holland of Bearcats Academy and Breakthrough Cincinnati, and Upward Bound director Orville McDonald.

The move, says Fowler, “seemed to be in keeping with the collaborative nature of a center.”

“It just gives us the opportunity to change the trajectory of a young person’s life,” says McDonald, whose Upward Bound program provides academic skills and motivation to first-generation and low-income students. “It made sense to me to be the hub—to bring people, programs and resources together and build an ecosystem around our youth, so they have the support and opportunities they need to see a different future for themselves.”

“I think it’s made us a little bit more intentional in collaborating with each other,” adds Dolder-Holland. Her Breakthrough Cincinnati supports academically motivated middle school youth on their path to college, while Bearcats Academy is a multi-year mentoring program aimed to support area students in becoming competitive college applicants.

“We are our own separate programs, and we do span a plethora of grade levels,” she says. “But being in the kind of co-leadership role, we've been able to look at things through a collaborative lens. We can think about who we work with, the partnerships that we all can tap into, and really think about the different kinds of opportunities that the students we support have when they're all with us.”

Dolder-Holland adds that teacher development is another common factor between all the center’s programs, as each provides tools or trainings for area educators to better serve young people in their schools. “We allow a lot of community partners to really think about how they can change the trajectory of youths’ futures.”

In mid-May of 2026, the center celebrated its fifth year of providing students with impactful, encouraging experiences via a variety of programs at an event in UC’s 1819 Innovation Hub that highlighted CYF alums, program partners and special recognition to Fowler for his work establishing the center. The event was an opportunity to gather in celebration of the CYF’s beginnings, lives the center has changed in its five years and opportunities that lie ahead.

“It's not about the individual organizations anymore, or even the center,” says Kelley. “It's really about the university and how it serves the region; I think we're beginning to see that this impact could be even larger. We walked out of that celebration energized, but also fully aware of the work ahead, feeling like, oh man, we've got a lot to do—like this was the launchpad for what this looks like for the next 5, 10, 15 years.”

Featured image at top: Smiling high school students from the Upward Bound program in a CECH area. Photo/Center for Youth Futures