School work: for many students across Colorado, it's simply back to school this time of year, but for students at a new high school in Northwest Denver, it's back to business.

• Author: Bronikowski, Lynn

On a typical school day, Micaela Escontrias is like any sophomore making her way through high school halls and classroom academia. But one day a week, she works on the 18th story of a Denver skyscraper mapping oil wells for Tipperary Oil Co.

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"I'm doing things I never thought I could do--staying busy all day working on a computer mapping Felder wells and holding wells," said Escontrias, the daughter of a single mother who moved to Denver two years ago from Chicago for a better life. "I'm now thinking of going into the energy field. There's not a lot of young people going into that field so it would be a good one for me.

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"Or maybe I'll become a lawyer."

Escontrias is one of 200 students enrolled this fall at Arrupe Jesuit High School in Northwest Denver, an inner-city college-prep high school created by the metro-area's business community to not only address Denver's 20 percent dropout rate, but to expose students to the real-world of business in an effort to grow a future workforce.

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"It's a life-changing thing for me because without it I don't think I would care much about going to college but now I want to be nurse," said Alisha Taylor, a sophomore, who worked in Great West Life's human resources department during the last school year and was hired on through the summer. "My supervisor Lori Collier in health and wellness made me feel like part of the company, not just an intern. There are not that many black women who have that kind of job and I see her as a role model."

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At the heart of Arrupe, which opened in 2003, is a corporate work-study program in which students job-share to cover a standard 40-hour workweek at 51 companies and agencies throughout the metro area. The $19,500 annual salary that the companies pay for the position goes toward tuition costs at Arrupe where academic schedules are structured so each four-student team can work without missing classes. In the fall of 2006--just three years after opening--Arrupe is expected to be self-sustaining and at full capacity, with 400 students working at 100 companies.

"It's truly the business community responding to a problem in the inner city," said the Rev. Steve Planning, president of Aruppe Jesuit. "Not only are these students getting help with their tuition but they are seeing the careers we want them to aspire to." About 80 percent of the Arrupe's predominantly Hispanic student body lives...