At CSUMB’s Upward Bound program, guitars can be instrumental in more ways than one.

When Blaise Skelton was hired to take over CSUMB’s Upward Bound program in April 2024, his new colleagues, they would later tell him, thought for sure he would fail, and that 2024 would be the program’s last year at the school.

Only nine local high school students had signed up to take part in Upward Bound’s summer curriculum at CSUMB, where recently the number had been in the 20 to 30 range. Classes started in early June, so Skelton had just five weeks to turn things around.

He clocked 178 hours of overtime, working from 6am to 11pm and meeting with parents of prospective students at night in Starbucks parking lots, selling the program and earning their trust – Upward Bound summer students spend five nights a week at CSUMB for five weeks, and parents needed to feel they would be in good hands.

By the time classes started, Skelton had 37 students enrolled, and this summer, he’s got 60.

Upward Bound is a federally funded program that’s been around since 1965 to provide select high school students with opportunities that will help them attend college. CSUMB’s funding – about $700,000 annually – allows its program to serve a total of 134 students from four specific high schools, selected for their low college attendance rates: Soledad, North Monterey County, Pajaro Valley and Watsonville. Eligible students must have a minimum of a 2.5 GPA, a recommendation from a counselor and the sign-off from the principal. To complete the program, one must attend the CSUMB summer session twice in four years – during the school year, there are monthly workshops on things such as financial literacy.

One of the core classes at CSUMB’s Upward Bound is learning to play guitar, an offering made possible by the program’s partnership with the local chapter of nonprofit Guitars Not Guns, whose teachers have been teaching classes at CSUMB since 2014.

In watching students progress, one in particular amazed Skelton: “He was the shyest student in the world,” he says, but in the safe environment of the classes, he flourished, and when the Guitars Not Guns students graduated from the program in July and put on a concert, that shy student was exuding confidence, and put on a virtuoso solo performance that brought the house down. “The music was a vessel for that,” Skelton says.

This year there are 23 students enrolled, and they’re in their second week of classes on a visit June 24, a Tuesday. All the guitar students gather in a theater before breaking up into three classrooms generally based on skill level.

In one of those classrooms, just next door, intermediate students are practicing a blues pattern in the key of G.

Omar Rodriguez, a 16-year-old rising junior at Watsonville High, saw the flyer for Upward Bound at school, and says before this class he’d only touched a guitar once. He wants to learn, he says, as a potential side hobby and to play for his family at special events. Has he progressed so far? “Definitely.”

William Cruz, a 15-year-old rising sophomore from Pajaro Valley High, isn’t yet sure of all he’d like to do with a guitar, but knows he wants to learn how to play “Cinco Centavitos.”

Off in a different group, volunteer instructor Jeff Richman is teaching three girls. Bianca Garcia, a 15-year-old rising sophomore from North Monterey County High, has always wanted to learn to play guitar. Garcia’s dad has long worked for Al Jardine, so she wants to learn Beach Boys songs, particularly “Don’t Worry Baby.”

All the guitar students who complete the classes will have a graduation ceremony July 17, where Guitars Not Guns will provide each of them with a free Yamaha acoustic guitar, a Gator bag and a tuner, gifts all made possible by the work of Steve Vagnini, who founded the local chapter in 2009.

The nonprofit continues to work elsewhere in the county, giving lessons and handing out guitars – 600 total to local students in the last two years – but Vagnini is thrilled Skelton has brought Upward Bound back on the upswing. “It’s such a great program,” Vagnini says.