“Coming from a poor public school, a lot of kids were content with staying in town and not doing more than that. Because of the people who influenced me, I was able to move beyond that,” Yada said. “I’d like to assist these students in any way to do the same thing.”

Roca said she hoped she would be able to make connections with students struggling to learn English because she immigrated from Cuba six years ago without knowing a word of English.

Tuesdays and Thursdays, Crimson Summer Academy is extended to 8 p.m. to accommodate speakers from the Harvard faculty who will stress issues relating to citizenship, Rodbury said.

In the coming week, for example, students will be addressed by Cabot Professor of Social Ethics and Pforzheimer Professor Mahzarin R. Banaji on Tuesday, and Associate Professor of Urban Planning Jerold S. Kayden on Thursday.

Students will return to the program for six weeks during their second summer, but that year’s curriculum is not yet determined.

In the third summer, the students are to be guaranteed admission to the regular Harvard Summer School program along with other rising seniors, but will still receive mentoring and financial support from Crimson Summer Academy.

Rodbury said that although Crimson Summer Academy is not the first college summer program for underprivileged students, she hopes there are innovative elements of Crimson Summer Academy that other schools might want to consider.

“We are grateful we had a lot of successes to look at, like the programs at Andover and MIT,” Rodbury said. “Harvard is so rich with resources, and we wanted to structure a program that other schools might want to emulate.”

Rodbury said she hopes other schools will take notice of Harvard’s effort to reach out to low-income students, and of some of the program’s more unusual aspects, including interdisciplinarity and the use of individual mentors.

Roca said Crimson Summer Academy has an advantage on the Princeton summer program she attended four years ago because there, students had to pay.

Rodbury said she has already been contacted by other schools interested in piloting Crimson Summer Academy, and Fraser said he was optimistic about the infant program.

“With the resources at Harvard and the team we have assembled, we could make it one of the benchmarks for this type of venture,” Fraser said.

—Staff writer Alan J. Tabak can be reached at tabak@fas.harvard.edu.