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Thursday, March 19, 1998

Planning to increase diversity with community programs

OUTREACH: New project will give schools direct link to college students

By C. Judson King

The University of California has ambitious plans for enhanced outreach activities. These programs should help make the academic preparation of California's high school graduates more uniform and thereby help us maintain a diverse student body, reflective of the states' population.

In July 1995, when the regents called for no consideration of race, religion, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in admissions, they chartered a task force to develop proposals for new directions and increased funding for outreach to pre-college students. The regents affirmed that we should strive to have a diverse student body. Diversity is vital because it enriches the academic experience. The UC must be open and accessible to all.

I am pleased that I was able to co-chair the task force on outreach. I was joined by 33 other administrators, students and representatives of the business community, other sectors of education and state agencies. The regents adopted our recommendations in July.

We found that the case of differences in educational motivation and achievement are many and complex. UC should be able to do most about improving and evening out the quality and level of preparation afforded by our schools. Our principal goal is therefore for each of the UCs to create partnerships with the community to help high schools and associated feeder elementary and middle schools. We will pick the partner schools from those that are educationally disadvantaged by any of several measures. Among those, we will pick schools where leaders demonstrate a serious interest in working with us to improve.

In addition, we will evaluate our student-centered development programs such as Mathematics Engineering and Science Achievement and Early Academic Outreach Programs, and will build upon those that accomplish the most, as well as start new programs. We will also increase our supply of information to students, families and schools, as well as recruitment of undergraduate, graduate and professional students. Finally, we want to bring the university's intellectual horsepower to bear on the causes of differences in educational outcomes in our society, and we will structure research along those lines.

We estimate that we need to spend another $60 million per year to carry out the plan. This will about double what we spend on our current outreach programs. We expect to get these funds through a partnership as well - state funds to UC, funds from our K-12 partners, the business community and the federal government.

The job will be challenging, but it is surely a well-paced effort. Many of the university's outreach programs rely on students as tutors, mentors and university representatives. In addition, student creativity and initiative are an important source of developing outreach programs. To spur thinking, we recently have provided each chancellor with $10,000 to support student work in this area. We hope students will join in partnership activities and in other ways to expand outreach.