As a Colorado Springs native, Marynn Krull ’26 has wanted to give back to the community that raised her since entering college. In fact, one of the reasons she chose to attend CC was because she wanted to remain local and continue to help her hometown thrive.
Krull is doing just that and more, as she’s spending three months this summer working as a Public Interest Fellow with Educating Children of Color (ECOC), a 501(c)(3) organization working to dismantle the cradle-to-prison pipeline for children of color and children in poverty through education. Krull has experience in activism and grassroots organizing with youth and issues around education in Colorado Springs, so working with ECOC was a natural fit for her.
“I’m really passionate about education and the power of strong mentorship because my mom is a teacher in Colorado Springs and an incredible force for good in her schools,” says Krull, a prospective International Political Economy major and Journalism minor. “I’m inspired by her tenacity to help kids from all walks of life, despite all the barriers public educators face.”
As ECOC’s Summer Leadership Academy Program Assistant, Krull spent the majority of her time at the beginning of her fellowship remotely planning the Summer Leadership Academies, as this was the first time ECOC offered programs during the summer. The planning encompassed work such as organizing a budget, recruiting college mentors and volunteer speakers, creating curriculum and a program schedule, and reporting on what the organization is doing through a newsletter.
Now that the Leadership Academies have begun, she’s working in-person with the kids, college mentors, and guest speakers. She was especially looking forward to seeing all their hard work come to fruition, but she also enjoyed engaging with guest speakers during the planning stages and getting to watch members of the Colorado Springs community pitch in for the kids.
The Leadership Academies are multi-day camps for local middle and high school students that focus on teaching communication skills, financial education, constitutional rights, grit and perseverance, and how to write essays or scholarship applications.
Sixty students from three District 11 middle schools attended the four-day Summer Leadership Academy at Doherty High School in June, which was geared towards STEM and focused on the theme of flight. Students observed metamorphosis and learned about the life cycle of butterflies. They also learned about the biochemistry of miracle berries and were taught about their constitutional rights in encounters with police. Students attended a fitness session and learned how to box. Additionally, they learned about mental health and suicide prevention and got to visit the U.S. Air Force Academy Planetarium.
Krull decided on the flight theme because it relates both metaphorically and literally to a lot of the subjects they were discussing with the students. The first session Krull designed involved butterfly science, a butterfly release, and a mental health project on the ‘butterfly effect.’ The second session included a lab where students dissected owl pellets and a biomimicry lesson about what principles leaders can take from how starlings flock in a murmuration. “This biomimicry lesson was actually inspired by and adapted from a lesson I did in my CC120 FYP, Practicing Togetherness,” says Krull, who added that the lesson used excerpts from Adrienne Marie Brown’s Emergent Strategy.
Krull recruited nine college mentors who worked with the students in facilitating programming, leading activities, and being a resource for post-secondary success. One of the college mentors she recruited is ECOC executive assistant Aleah Cordoba ’22, a CC graduate and former Political Science Department paraprofessional.
While Krull served as a college mentor and facilitator throughout the actual academy, her primary job was planning it, which she says was a massive success. The June 2024 Summer Leadership Academy was also considered a success by the students themselves, as shown in pre- and post-knowledge survey data collected by ECOC. In these surveys, over 70% of the students reported being better prepared for high school because of the Summer Leadership Academy and 80% reported being more empowered to overcome setbacks and achieve goals because of ECOC. Over 90% of them reported that they benefited from the guidance provided by the college mentors.
The second Summer Leadership Academy of the year was for high school students and had a focus on restorative justice practices. Krull served as one of the primary coordinators for this program. The High School Restorative Justice program was a partnership with Harrison School District 2 to train high school students to become peer mediators within their schools and communities as part of a new initiative in the district. The five-day program began with the regular ECOC curriculum about grit, leadership, and goal-setting, and ended with a college Q&A and a trip to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo.
During both the High School Restorative Justice program and the Summer Leadership Academy, ECOC Founder Judge Regina Walter ’80 guided students in discussions on students’ constitutional rights and her career as a judge. She also led the Summer Leadership Academy middle school students in a Q&A about juvenile justice.
In addition to all her work with the academies, Krull is working with a group to establish a separate committee on the nonprofit board in order to create a sustainable funding system.
Krull’s fellowship was part of CC’s Public Interest Fellowship Program (PIFP), which connects students with opportunities in Colorado nonprofits. “It’s honestly incredible and rare as an undergraduate student to be able to work a paid full-time internship,” says Krull. “PIFP has been really incredible so far and I already feel like I’ve learned a lot. The application process was rigorous, but rightfully so; nonprofit work is inherently rigorous.”
While both the PIFP application process and the day-to-day work at ECOC is intense, Krull feels that the Block Plan prepared her extremely well to take on these challenges.
“Planning a Leadership Academy with food, guest speakers, field trips, and programming for 100 middle schoolers in about a month is exactly the kind of work the Block Plan prepares me for. It’s taught me how to take on big tasks in short periods of time,” says Krull, who added that she utilized several on-campus resources throughout the PIFP application process, specifically the Career Center.
“Working at Educating Children of Color has been life-changing, truly,” says Krull. “I’m so inspired by all of the incredible women I’m working with – especially our founder, Regina. They bring so much passion and institutional knowledge about
the education, college, and juvenile justice systems. And it’s been incredible to get to give back to the city, schools, and teachers that raised me. Now being on the flip side of these mentorship and summer enrichment experiences, I realize just how much care, hard work, and money goes into helping students overcome adversity to succeed. It was an absolute privilege to get to be ECOC’s first summer Public Interest Fellow. I’ve learned so much already and I have so much more to experience in the coming weeks.”