Jake Curhan, one of Cal's mid-year enrollees, takes a lot of pride in being selfless and helping others for a greater goal. He's going to fit in perfectly with the Cal football program.

A native of Larkspur, Calif., Curhan donated his time tutoring first, second and third-grade students during his freshman and sophomore years at Redwood High School. He volunteered through a program called Bridge The Gap, a college preparatory and youth development organization that provides programming aimed at preparing Marin City students for college success.

“Bridge The Gap is a really cool program,” Curhan said. “They help these kids who traditionally don't have that high of a success rate academically. They start them in this tutoring program when they're young and try to get them all the way up to college. They've been pretty successful. I would go over there a couple times a week, helping them with their homework.”

While Curhan originally got involved in tutoring in middle school because his school mandated community service hours, he chose tutoring because he enjoys being around kids. He wanted to do something that wasn't just helpful but also fun.

In addition to the tutoring, for the past two years, Curhan and a friend of his spearheaded their high school club called The Environmental Action Club, which was designed to bring environmental awareness to his high school peers.

The club would organize events like Ride Your Bike To School day in order to get students to drive their cars less. They would also organize activities during lunch time to get students to stay on campus, another way to encourage less driving.

“We started compost, encouraged people to ride their bikes to school and we helped get electric car charging stations on campus,” Curhan said. “We had what we called a Sustainability Week, where we tried to get everybody to stay on campus for lunch every day that week and we provided new activities or fun things to learn. We'd have people come and speak to the student body about work they've done or what we could do as high school students.”

His skills on the football field, his drive to help others, his emphasis on academics and his selflessness made him one of head coach Sonny Dykes' targets to join the Bears in 2016.

“Jake is the kind of guy that we're looking for,” Dykes said. “He's a very good football player. He's a big guy and he can do the things that we want offensive linemen to be able to do. The great thing about Jake is that early in the process he knew what this university was going to do for him and for his life when he was done playing football. His parents did a really good job of giving him exposure early to different schools and determining what's really important through the recruiting process. He had a really clear vision for what he was looking for. So when we offered him a scholarship, he knew the value of the education and how fortunate he was going to be to stay in the Bay Area and be close to his friends and family. He's such a great fit for our program. He'll do a tremendous job for us.”

Eventually Curhan wants to get involved with extracurricular activities at Cal besides football and school, but right now he's just trying to get acclimated to life in Berkeley. Figuring out what he wants to study and adjusting to football at the collegiate level are the first two things on his to-do list right now.

While Curhan doesn't know exactly what he wants to study at Cal yet, academics played a huge part in his decision to become a Bear and he's excited about all the different study options he has in front of him.

“The academics at Cal were a huge part of my decision,” he said. “I looked at all of my offers and it came down to no matter where I was going to go it had to be a good academic school. All of my options were good academic schools, so at the end of the day, Cal's football program was looking the best and the close proximity to home is nice to have with how busy we are. I wanted to take advantage of my parents being able to drive over or me being able to go home for a little bit.

“Cal has a lot of good options for academic career choices, but I have no specific path right now. I want to take different classes and see what I like and what I don't like.”

The lessons that Curhan learned in high school through tutoring and his environmental club will help him grow quicker as he adjusts to college life and college football.

Curhan said he gained patience through his tutoring and he earned experience in leadership through his environmental club.

“With tutoring, it was fun to be around the kids, but it was hard because you need to be patient with them,” he said. “On the environmental side, it's less personal work. You aren't interacting with people as much as you're trying to find solutions to problems, and then actually trying them. With tutoring, it's more one-on-one. Football is an emotional game, but you need to maintain your composure. The same rule applies with tutoring little kids. On the environmental side, since I was a co-president I learned a lot about leadership and how to work with people.”

No doubt when Curhan hits the books and the gridiron he'll be a step ahead of the rest when next season comes around in the fall.