CTD Alum Urges Middle-Schoolers from Alma Mater to Seek Life-Changing Experiences

By Ed Finkel

About a decade ago, Jae Rule was a middle-school student at Chicago Jesuit Academy (CJA), which connected him to the Center for Talent Development. He took a summer course on forensic science and spent part of the summer living on Northwestern’s campus, with the support of scholarship funds from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

Now, the college graduate works as a development officer for his former middle school, where he encourages students to follow in his footsteps toward what was, for him, a life-changing experience on a number of levels.

“I’m back at a place that changed my outlook on life,” Rule says of the tuition-free middle school, geared toward those who might not otherwise be able to access a private education. “[I’m] trying to give back to a community that gave so much to me. I expressed my passion about providing mentorship and opportunities similar to those I was afforded as a student to other Black youth and figured out that CJA might be the perfect place to start.”

High on the list of those opportunities was the chance to spend three weeks at Northwestern “living amongst people who, in my daily life, I wouldn’t see,” he says. “I lived in a pretty homogenous neighborhood, mostly people who looked like myself. [At CTD,] I met people from India; I met people from different socioeconomic backgrounds.”

While he found forensic science “super-interesting,” Rule, whose mother was a police officer, says the coursework was only part of the appeal. “CTD just allowed me to learn about myself, to have the space to learn independence, and how to be successful in an environment that was not super-familiar to me. … I was doing homework every night, going to class every morning, and I had to figure out how I was going to fill my free time. I had to make friends and step out of my comfort zone. As a 12-year-old, those were not skills I had mastered.”

Living away from home gave Rule the confidence to go away to boarding school for high school, when he attended Culver Academies in Culver, Indiana. “There were people from 47 different countries at my boarding school,” he says. “Talk about living in a diverse community. Had I not had experiences like Northwestern, that would have been the first time living with people who weren’t from my community.”

Rule then received a full-ride scholarship to attend Central Michigan University as a “diversity champion, quote-unquote,” he says. “My main goal was to learn more about different cultures and to speak up when there was wrong happening—or to just learn how to make a community diverse and healthy, and be respectfully curious, and learn a lot about different people.”

Upon graduation last May, Rule already had been offered his full-time position at CJA, where he’s continuing the pipeline of smart, ambitious students who want an academic camp experience, particularly those who seem like good candidates for boarding school.

“I had no idea what boarding school was when I went to CTD,” he says, reflecting on “how drastically different my life looked because of that one experience at CTD. … It guided all my next-steps afterward. Having that opportunity, and how eye-opening it was for me, the only thing I could think about, before I graduated, was the fact that so many people deserved that opportunity—deserved to dip their toes in the water, and try things, and step out of their comfort zone. It’s so important in the development of students and our youth.”

Working in the College Persistence Office at CJA, Rule sensed the same transformation among the students who attended camps, including CTD, this past summer. “They came back from camp, and they all were super-excited and wanted to go back,” he says. “They met so many new friends, and pushed themselves outside their comfort zone. That means the world to me.”

Rule’s advice to middle- and high-school students is to push beyond their comfort zone to experience personal growth. “If you’re comfortable doing it, it’s probably not something you need to be working on,” he says. “These are the times you’re supposed to be developing these skills—take advantage of every uncomfortable situation.”

His advice to parents is a corollary to that. “Don’t be afraid to let your students get a little bit of freedom, and let them do their thing, and grow, and learn,” Rule says. “You’ve got to be willing to be uncomfortable, so your kid can be uncomfortable and grow.”

As for students themselves, he adds, “You learn so much about yourself. You get the space to grow. You get this space for freedom, and to decide what you want to do. Those are important skills to have in the professional world, and whatever world you enter after CTD.”

If you know a student who could benefit from a CTD program, particularly a residential summer camp experience like Jae Rule described, please direct them to our website. The 2023 summer programs are open for registration from mid-January through early June, but courses are filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Financial aid is available, but we strongly encourage early application since funds are limited.