Santiago (left) and Marchesani at their first meeting in 2012 and at their award ceremony. Photographs: Anna Silverstein (left); David Fox (right)

On May 5, at a gala dinner in Boston, Andrew Marchesani ’16 and 11-year-old Ricky Santiago were named 2016 Big and Little of the Year by the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Massachusetts Bay (BIGMB). From freshman year, Marchesani had been a mentor to Santiago through BC BIGS, a partnership between the University’s Volunteer and Service Learning Center and BIGMB that last year paired 265 undergraduate “bigs” with “littles” ages seven to 12. Marchesani was one of 52 undergraduates in BC BIGS’s innovative program that brings children from the Franklin Field housing development in Dorchester to campus. (BC BIGS also sends mentors out to local schools.) Franklin Field littles are bused to the Heights on alternate Saturdays to spend four hours with their bigs in a mix of free time and group activities—performing experiments in a lab with chemistry majors, say, or learning self-defense from the BCPD. This campus-based approach has become a model for other colleges in the Boston area. In remarks at the gala and in an interview from his Indiana home, Marchesani, now a business consultant in Chicago, spoke about the BIG experience:

“Ricky was seven years old when I met him. He was very shy, reluctant to take a role in group activities. We spent the first semester getting to know the campus—I was as new to it as he was—and each other. We played tic-tac-toe and hangman on blackboards in Stokes Hall, counted the Higgins Stairs, and did our best to play two-person kickball. Our conversations mostly involved me asking questions and Ricky answering in as few words as possible. In February, Ricky turned eight and invited me to his birthday party, and on his home ground he became the ‘big,’ proudly introducing me to friends and family. There was an airbrush tattoo artist at the party; Ricky and I and got matching dragons.

“During my sophomore year, we started eating lunch at the tall tables in the McElroy cafeteria, where we could talk one-on-one about family and friends. Ricky shared his frustrations with school—how it felt like the teachers and adminstrators were waiting for him to fail. I tried to offer some perspective but realized I had enjoyed a completely different relationship with my schools and my teachers.

“By my senior year, Ricky wanted to talk about extinction and the megalodon, the presidential primaries, and the latest video game he’d seen online. He got off the bus with plans for things he and I could do, places we could eat. He moved around the campus comfortably, and occasionally he would talk about going to college. After four years of sharing stories from our days and weeks, he had a more complete picture of college life than I did at his age. I knew about the events surrounding an Indiana University basketball game. Ricky knows about the libraries, the classrooms, the dining halls.

“We caught up after Commencement via FaceTime; I don’t think we’ll lose touch.”