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Rick Noriega, AVANCE President & CEO, interviewed on CNN Español about AVANCE and his attendance at the White House Hispanic Community Conference that took place on July 11th and 12th. Click picture above to watch the interview.
– By Michelle Klump, The University of Houston
Though they may quibble about the exact details of the beginning of their relationship, UH alums Melissa and Rick Noriega can agree on two shared passions – commitment to public service and loyalty to their alma mater.
It was that Cougar loyalty that initially brought them together.
In Melissa’s version, Rick attended a board meeting of a young alumni group, seeking support for a UH-themed St. Patrick’s Day party he wanted to throw at a local bar. She noticed his nice smile, and the thoroughness of his presentation.
“You would have thought he was moving an army to Germany,” she said. “He had flip charts and schedules and all kinds of stuff. He was very organized.”
In his version, Rick remembers Melissa “picking apart” his proposal, questioning him about mundane details, such as whether he was going to have name tags.
“It turns out, she was the only one that showed up,” he said. “After she came to the party, we started dating.”
The two have been together ever since, marrying on Valentine’s Day in 1991. Over the years, they have become known for their dedication to serving their community.
For Rick, that includes 11 years as Texas state representative for District 145 in Houston; 30 years of military service, including a year in Afghanistan in 2004; and his current work as president of AVANCE, a nonprofit organization that provides educational programs for children and intensive parent education and support in at-risk communities.
For Melissa, that includes 27 years working for the Houston Independent School District, filling her husband’s seat for a year in the Texas House of Representatives while he was serving overseas, and her current role as an at-large member of the Houston City Council.
”We feel called to public service. It is more rewarding than any new job title – knowing that you are advancing the ball down the field and trying to make the world a better place,” Rick said. “That has kind of been our family mission statement.”
While Rick was drawn into political service fairly quickly, Melissa said she didn’t truly contemplate a political career – beyond her year in the Texas House – until she volunteered alongside her husband, who served as the incident commander at the George R. Brown Convention Center following Hurricane Katrina.
”We had all these folks coming from New Orleans – many of them coming with their stuff on their backs or nothing at all, and Houston stepped up,” she said. “I have never been so proud to be from Houston. I decided to run for city council because I saw what Houstonians could do when they set their minds to it. It was amazing.”
In addition to serving the public-at-large, the two also remain committed to serving the University of Houston. Both are lifetime members of the University of Houston Alumni Association, and regularly attend football games and other events on campus. They also make it a point to promote the university and its Tier One efforts whenever possible.
“I feel duty-bound to be loyal and continue to contribute to the university that we love,” Rick said. “In so many different ways, it gave us that really solid foundation to be able to do what we love to do.”
Melissa, the first in her family to graduate from the University of Houston, earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology in 1977 and her Master’s of Education in counseling in 1983. Other family members soon followed. Her two brothers, Charles and Steve, are graduates and both were fraternity presidents. Charles was in the student senate and Steve was Mr. UH and a founder and president of the Young Alumni League. Her father, Charles Meisgeier, is professor emeritus and was founding chair of the College of Education’s Educational Psychology Department.
“There was a time when our son, Ricky, was at the charter school (on campus), my father was in the faculty senate and chair, and both my brothers are alumni – we were all going to the football games,” she said.
As an undergraduate, Melissa was active on campus, serving as president of the Phi Mu Fraternity and vice-president of the Pan-Hellenic Council. She even ran for Homecoming Queen.
“I was very involved with all of the fraternity and sorority things,” she said. “It’s interesting to look back – sometimes people can make fun of that fraternity stuff, but I find as an adult that the things I learned there have been as helpful as anything else I’ve done.”
She spent a lot of time on campus, attending classes, studying and hanging out with friends, playing bridge at the Cougar Den in the University Center’s basement.
“The extra-curricular activities were very valuable,” Melissa said. “I learned how to read a budget, I learned how to plan an event, I learned how to meet people and introduce myself and talk about anything.”
Rick’s introduction to UH began at an early age.
“I grew up, obviously as a Bill Yeoman/Guy Lewis fan. That was our team. I watched through all the national golf championships, and the Carl Lewis years, through the Phi Slama Jama years,” he said. “I remember the first University of Houston football game I attended.”
But it was an ROTC scholarship that eventually brought Rick to UH fulltime to complete his undergraduate degree.
The son of a post World War II veteran, Rick felt the call to military service during the Iranian hostage crisis in 1979, when he joined the U.S. Army Reserves. During a reserve meeting, an assistant professor of military science at UH showed up, looking for possible ROTC candidates.
“I had two years of community college experience and knew that I wanted to complete my degree, but it was one of those things where I’d take a few hours here and a few hours there,” he said. “Through ROTC, the opportunity for a scholarship allowed me to complete my undergraduate degree and that led to my commissioning as an officer.”
Rick majored in journalism with a minor in military science. He ultimately graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism in 1985. During his time at the university, he wrote for The Daily Cougar for a semester, and earned his commission as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army through the ROTC program.
Longtime communications professor Ted Stanton was one of his favorite professors, in part, because he instilled in him the value of good writing.
“That is something that has stayed with me and is something I use every day,” he said. “Ted was a real stickler for being able to write well, so I certainly credit him with that training.”
Rick worked throughout college, and he appreciated the flexibility available at UH that allowed him to do that.
”My experience was a lot of what I think Mr. Hugh Roy Cullen talked about, of having a quality institution for the working men and women of Houston, where they could achieve their dreams and educational desires while at the same time working,” he said. “So I’m really grateful for the experience and for the university maintaining that value here in the great city of Houston.”
His UH experience also paved the way for his continuing his education at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he earned his Master’s of Public Administration.
Together, Rick and Melissa say UH provided the foundation for much of their later success, adding that they plan to continue to support UH and its Tier One efforts.
“I think the city of Houston and the University of Houston are marching hand in hand toward whatever the future is going to bring,” Melissa said. “I think the world is changing so rapidly that you are going to have to have the kind of intellectual heft … that comes with Tier One status for Houston.”
Rick agreed, adding, “It seems to always be getting better. I truly believe that the best days at UH are yet to come.”
Exclusively featured in The Monitor
SAN JUAN — The warehouse where her husband worked was sold in March, and with three children and no source of income, Martha Edith Cedillo worried about budgeting for school uniforms.
“It’s a tough time for my family,” the 32-year-old said in Spanish. “Luckily, this place is going to help us with the school shirts.”
Cedillo was referring to the new Avance Colonias Early Head Start Center in San Juan, which opened a month ago and had a ribbon-cutting celebration Wednesday.
Made possible through a partnership with the federally funded Early Head Start Program, the city of San Juan and Avance Inc., the center will provide free, home-based education for families with children ages 3 and younger and for pregnant women.
Avance, derived from the Spanish word meaning “to advance,” is a San Antonio-based nonprofit organization that has provided education and family support services to predominantly Hispanic families in low-income communities since 1973.
Its niche, however, is not only to teach the child; it is to educate the entire family, and not just about school. Each participant will be assigned a home visitor who will assist the family.
Cedillo, for example, needed food, so the center provided her with information about Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley, a resource with which she was unfamiliar. Cedillo said she received assistance from the food bank Tuesday.
“There are a lot of people out there who tell you different things, but with (the home visitors) you feel like you have someone who can help you and that you can trust in,” she said.
Richard J. Noriega, a former Texas state lawmaker and former candidate for the U.S. Senate, is now Avance’s CEO and president. He said the center’s location was no mistake.
“We targeted Hidalgo County in large part because we wanted to serve the most vulnerable families possible,” Noriega said.
The county is one of the poorest regions in the nation with an estimated 34 percent poverty rate. That rate is more than three times the national rate and twice the state’s rate. Even more alarming to Avance, 80 percent of the county’s children live in poverty.
Avance’s Parent-Child Education Program, however, lost $45,000 in funding after Gov. Rick Perry announced a spending freeze, Noriega said.
“It’s unfortunate because this is the one critical area that you don’t cut,” he said, adding that the program’s return on investment is $6-8 for every $1 the state puts forward for early childhood development. “It just doesn’t make any sense.”
The facility reached its capacity of 70 participants in less than a month, and there is already a waiting list.
Overseen by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Early Head Start is a community-based program for low-income families with infants and toddlers and pregnant women. Its mission is to promote healthy prenatal outcomes for pregnant women, enhance the development of very young children and promote healthy family functioning.
Exclusively Featured on Latinovations’ La Plaza Blog
Latinovations/La Plaza
Independence Day, celebrated on the Fourth of July, commemorates the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. But who will be responsible for the future of our independence?
Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States and by the year 2050, nearly one in three Americans will be of Hispanic origin.
Just in the 2008-2009 Texas school year, 51% of kindergarteners and 65.4% of pre-kindergarteners were Hispanic, the demographic with the highest state dropout rate. These statistics foretell the future.
“More than half of Hispanic and approximately 46 percent of African American ninth-graders leave the system before they reach 12th grade,” according to a 2005 Texas Supreme Court ruling on public school finance. We hear different studies everyday that at least half of all Latino students will not complete high school.
These facts have obvious negative economic and national security implications. We will need these students to lead government, business and to populate our Armed Forces.
According to the Alliance for Excellent Education, America loses more than $26 billion in federal and state income taxes each year from 23 million dropouts.
Seventy-five percent of young Americans are unqualified to join the military, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The three primary reasons being inadequate education, criminality and physical unfitness.
Public policy isn’t what is said but rather what actually occurs. Public policy in Texas and this country therefore is that we allow half of our children to fail, and apparently that’s okay.
What do we do? Almost every education challenge has been solved somewhere in America. Do we have the political will to do something? Do we have the same kind of will to save an American generation as our forefathers had in seeking independence?
I am committing my public service to something that works—early childhood education.
The best time to influence a child’s intellectual development occurs during the first five years when the brain is under intense development.
For 37 years we at AVANCE have been doing an intensive parent-child model that addresses this in predominately Hispanic communities— a program built on the mother as the first teacher and home as the first classroom.
Dallas ISD tracked AVANCE children and demonstrated a 95%high school graduation rate. In El Paso, AVANCE graduates consistently outperform district and state averages on third grade TAKS tests.
Nobel laureate economist James Heckman estimates, for every dollar we fail to invest in early childhood education, we will be forced to pay up to $8 in other social needs. Heckman stresses that early intervention reduces crime, grade repetition and special education costs. It also promotes high school graduation, college attendance, prevents teenage births, and raises test scores.
Though financial consequences are obvious and tangible, this call to action is about our investment in national security.
Most understand the importance of education in the success of America’s economic engines—the need for educated workers, the importance of continued innovation driving our prosperity —but we fail to recognize its impact on national security. The future safety of our nation depends on it.
Rick Noriega is President and Chief Executive Officer of the national non-profit organization, AVANCE, Inc. This community-based organization focuses on offering early childhood education, parenting and comprehensive family services to predominantly Hispanic families.
Noriega has proudly served in the National Guard and Army Reserves since 1980 and now is a Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard. He served in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom, as commander of the Kabul Military Training Center for Afghan forces. Noriega also served as Laredo Sector Commander during Operation Jumpstart in 2006. He recently relinquished command of the 1-141 Infantry Battalion (First Texas), 72nd BDE, 36th IN DIV.
Upon his return from Afghanistan in 2005, Noriega was appointed by Houston Mayor Bill White as Incident Commander of the city’s Hurricane Katrina relief efforts at the George R. Brown Convention Center. His leadership was crucial in transforming the Convention Center into a virtual city that cared for nearly 30,000 evacuees, and then was dismantled within a month.
Noriega is a Houston native with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Houston and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University. He is a graduate of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College and earned a certificate in Advanced International Affairs from the Bush School of Government at Texas A & M University.
Exclusively featured in Latin Connection Magazine
By: Melissa Mireles, Media Relations – AVANCE, Inc.
For over 37 years AVANCE, Inc. has provided low-income, at-risk families with hope. Hope for a better future and the means in which to achieve personal levels of success.
The 501 (c)(3) non-profit organization offers comprehensive early childhood and parenting education and family support services to primarily Hispanic communities. With a research-proven program model that is preventative, community-based and two-generation focused, AVANCE provides parents with the tools to become active participants in their children’s lives and provides children (0 to 3 years of age) with the education needed to become prepared and engaged students. The Parent-Child Education Program reports more than 90% of AVANCE participant children outperform peers in Reading, Math, Writing and Science.
What began in a 500-unit public housing development serving 35 families has grown to more than 100 program sites across Texas as well as in California and New Mexico, serving tens of thousands of families annually through its signature Parent-Child Education Program and other diverse family-strengthening programs.
The organization is proud to have Texas Democratic Nominee and Texas House member, Rick Noriega as President and CEO of AVANCE. The Houston businessman and politician is spearheading national expansion efforts and looks forward to bridging the east and west coasts by providing AVANCE services and support throughout the U.S.
In honor of Noriega, AVANCE hosted an intimate mixer on March 9 at Absolutely Everything Catering and Restaurant. The event allowed various San Antonio community leaders to formally meet and greet the new President and CEO while getting a first-hand account for what AVANCE provides to local communities. Nine AVANCE toddlers between the ages of 24 and 36 months cheerfully welcomed Noriega by singing their signature “AVANCE Estrellitas” song in both English and Spanish for the President and his guests. Former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Henry Cisneros served as keynote speaker while Senior Vice President of IBC Bank – San Antonio, Eddie Aldrete emceed.
Opinion/Editorial By: Rick Noriega
Featured in: The Houston Chronicle, San Antonio Express-News, El Paso Times and Rio Grande Guardian
Early childhood education is not just an education imperative—it needs to be a national security priority.
Seventy-five percent of young Americans are unqualified to join the military, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. Three primary reasons are inadequate education, criminality and physical unfitness.
According to the U.S. Army Accession Command, approximately one in four young Americans lack a high school diploma, one in 10 possess a criminal conviction and 27 percent fail physical requirements due to obesity.
I want to focus on education. A high school diploma requirement can sometimes be waived but roughly 30 percent of potential recruits with a diploma fail the Armed Forces Qualification Test. The 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress reported the majority of U.S. eighth graders scored below proficiency in math (69 percent) and reading (70 percent).
Couple these facts with upcoming U.S. Census data estimating tremendous growth in the very communities needed to populate our Armed Forces. The students we will need in uniform tomorrow are increasingly failing in school today. In the 2008-09 Texas school year, 51 percent of kindergarteners and 65.4 percent of pre-kindergarteners were Hispanic, the demographic with the highest state dropout rate. These statistics foretell the future population of military recruits.
The research behind early education is irrefutable. In the Institute of Medicine report, From Neurons to Neighborhoods, brain scans and neuroscience demonstrated the best time to influence a child’s intellectual development occurs when the brain is under intense development, which occurs during the first five years.
We at AVANCE have been doing an intensive parent-child program that addresses this in predominately Hispanic communities for 37 years—an approach focused on the mother as the first teacher and home as the first classroom.
Our results? According to a 17 year reunion study of the first cohort of families, 94 percent of children who successfully completed the AVANCE Program graduate from high school. In Dallas, AVANCE children are excelling in their studies. In the 2007-2008 school year, 97 percent of AVANCE child graduates (kindergarten to eleventh grade) were promoted to the next grade.
Nobel laureate economist James Heckman estimates, for every dollar we fail to invest in early childhood education, we as Americans will be forced to pick up at a rate of eight dollars to address other social needs. Heckman stresses early intervention reduces crime, grade repetition and special education costs, promotes high school graduation, college attendance, helps prevent teenage births, and raises test scores. Though our financial consequences are obvious and tangible, this call to action is not about our nation’s financial security but our investment for our national security.
Most people understand the importance of education in the success of America’s economic engines—the need for educated workers, the importance of continued innovation driving our prosperity but we fail to recognize its impact on our military. Improved educational outcomes increase military abilities to recruit the warriors we need to ensure America’s safety. Justly, I feel understanding the importance of an educated pool of recruits for our military forces and public safety professionals (firefighters or police) are integral. The safety of our future and our nation depends on it.
Rick Noriega: He is the new National President/CEO of AVANCE Inc. an Early Childhood Education Program. He is a Colonel in the Texas Army National Guard and an Administration appointee to the Military Leadership Diversity Commission.
