Photo Courtesy SHAPE Students make Christmas stockings at
a To Help Everyone clinc put on by SHAPE.
By Scott B. Wong
Daily Bruin Staff
As the UCLA freshman applicant pool grows, so does the task laid
out before administrators assigned to diversify the pool of
UC-eligible applicants through university outreach efforts.
“What happens when 40,000 applicants apply for 4,000 admit
spots?” asked Sid Thompson, former Los Angeles Unified School
District superintendent and a current senior fellow of the Graduate
School of Education & Information Studies.
“As competitiveness increases for entrance to UCLA, we
need to do a lot more for at-risk kids to be competitive,” he
continued.
Every year since 1999, UCLA applicant figures have increased by
3,000, according to Jack Sutton, executive director of the
Education Outreach Steering Committee. This year, UCLA reached
40,121 freshman applicants.
In 1998 when the UC Regents implemented SP-1, which ended the
use of affirmative action in admissions, three quarters of
underrepresented UCLA applicants ranked in the bottom half of the
applicant pool.
But SP-1 also mandated the formation of the UC Outreach Task
Force to identify ways the university could remain accessible to
students of diverse backgrounds.
The recent repeal of SP-1 is only a symbolic action because of
Proposition 209, the state voter initiative that banned the use of
affirmative action, said Debbie Pounds, director of the Early
Academic Outreach Program.
“We have to prepare students to be competitively
admissible no matter what proposition is in place,” Pounds
said.
In 1998, $30 million was allocated for outreach programs. Of
that amount, $15 million went to student-centered academic
development programs like EAOP. Another $15 million went to
university-school partnerships, $2 million of which were funneled
into UCLA.
Meanwhile, student-initiated outreach programs aim to empower
students to feel they can aspire and attain higher education
regardless of conditions in their school, said Tim Ngubeni,
director of the Community Programs Office.
“Students are doing this, not because they are getting
paid an exorbitant amount of money, but because there is an
obligation to their communities,” Ngubeni said.
Li’i Furumoto, director of Xinachtli, MEChA’s
student-initiated outreach program, suggests that applicants
recommended by outreach programs receive special consideration in
admissions.
“Our students excel in leadership positions and have
knowledge about their respective communities,” she said.
Student-initiated programs also encompass the Student Retention
Center, designed to keep students at UCLA and to improve the
academic achievement of ethnic populations.
Retention programs include, among others, the African Student
Union’s Academic Supports Program, MEChA Calmecac and the
Samahang Pilipino Education and Retention.
The university’s EAOP, which aims to increase academic
competitiveness for admission to the UC, serves 60 high schools and
their feeder schools in nine L.A. County school districts.
Nearly 50 of the schools located in the L.A. Unified, Inglewood
and Lynwood school districts also receive informational outreach
and academic advisement, a strategy for outreach through which
students showing potential for admission are identified and
assisted in devising an educational plan.
Through university outreach, UCLA has formed longer-term
partnerships with what LAUSD has deemed the “Super 12″
““ high schools in the most underprivileged areas of the
city.
Despite low numbers of minority students at the university,
Thompson said whatever the university provides for the Super 12
schools is valuable.
“These kids have so little going for them that people
working with them as peers are enormous pluses,” he said.
Programs administered by the UC Office of the President, like
the Math, Engineering, Science Achievement program and Puente,
which focuses on teaching and counseling, are offered statewide in
community colleges and K-12 schools.
Progress has been slower at the more competitive campuses, like
Berkeley and Los Angeles, but UC Spokesman Brad Hayward said
that’s not a failure of outreach programs.
“The systemwide picture is that there was a very
substantial increase in intent to register,” he said.
The UC released annual figures last month showing the total
number of underrepresented minorities, including African Americans,
Latinos, Chicanos and American Indians, increased from 4,730 to
5,262 systemwide.
But in a UCLA class of more than 4,200 students this year, only
126 of the 329 admitted African American high school students
signed letters of intent to register at UCLA, the lowest figure in
more than a quarter century, according to UC figures.
“We want quick fixes; we want things to happen
rapidly,” Thompson said. “But to truly affect those who
are disenfranchised, this will be a long haul.”
Current staffing problems and the employment of
emergency-credentialed teachers in schools harm students most, he
added.
Meanwhile, UCLA’s Teacher Education Program requires
graduate students to teach in inner-city schools. Also, 20 L.A.
high schools participate in EAOP’s Career Based Outreach
Program, which provides select high school students weekly meetings
with UCLA undergraduates and other enrichment programs.
Pounds said her office will prepare a CBOP report this fall for
the university on the number of participants who graduated as
UC-eligibles. Last year marked the first time participants of the
program graduated, but that group only participated in the program
for three years.
According to Sutton, of the 116 CBOP graduates, 14 percent
attended a UC, but 70 percent enrolled in a community college or
other four-year school. Seven from the first CBOP class attended
UCLA.
“This is not something we do alone, not something schools
do alone, not something students do alone,” he said.
“It’s that partnership effort we all do across the
board.”