When Blanca Martinez, community assistant at Cambridge Elementary, reached out to the Office of Community Relations to inquire about T-shirt donations for the school’s College T-shirt Mondays, Chapman Community Relations Manager James Gerrard got right to work on making it happen.

After acquiring over 100 Chapman tees, Gerrard personally visited Cambridge Elementary to pass them out to the students. Gerrard said, “It’s moving to be able to make even a small difference in the youth of our community by inspiring our local elementary students to strive to attend a university.”

All of the Cambridge Elementary students were enthusiastic to pick out their Chapman T-shirts. They rushed to put them on right away.

“Cambridge Elementary is a Title 1 school and has a high percentage of economically disadvantaged families, so for most of our students they will be first generation college attendees. We work hard to motivate, encourage and inspire our students to go to college, and one of the ways we do this is by promoting college T-shirt Mondays. We are excited for our Cubs to rock their cool new Chapman University shirts on Mondays!” said Martinez.

In the future, the Office of Community Relations hope to unite the grade schools of Orange with an event at Chapman to encourage setting goals to receive a college education.