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  ALICE LAM Winston Doby, a former UCLA administrator, speaks with the Daily Bruin last year.

By Robert Salonga

Daily Bruin Staff

Settling into his new surroundings, Winston Doby knew it would take some time to adjust from life in Los Angeles to life in the Bay Area.

After serving as vice chancellor of student affairs at sunny UCLA for nearly 20 years, he now finds himself having to warm up his car for several minutes before going to work.

“It’s very cold,” Doby said. “I woke up this morning to find ice all over my car.”

Since January, Doby has been the University of California’s vice president for educational outreach in the chilly Oakland-based UC Office of the President. Doby heads the UC’s outreach effort to the state’s K-12 and community college systems to get educationally disadvantaged students into college.

Despite the near-freezing climate – there have even been reports of snow in Northern California – Doby said he enjoys exploring a different culture after living in Los Angeles for most of his life.

From his office, he can just step on the nearby Bay Area Rapid Transit – affectionately known as BART to its patrons – and is swept across the San Francisco Bay.

“It’s just great. I’m minutes from San Francisco and Berkeley, being exposed to different things, especially the museums,” Doby said.

On the business side of his intrastate relocation, Doby faces an outreach task hampered by budget shortfalls and an ever-increasing student base: California added one million students to its K-12 public school system in the last six years.

Additionally, outreach funding has received cuts of $2 million this year and $4.2 million for 2002-03 because of the state’s dormant economy.

Though funding is crucial, it is not the most integral piece of the outreach puzzle, Doby said.

“I have lived through earlier budget crises; things will turn around,” he said.

One of his more passionate goals for outreach is to instill a “college-going” culture in the state’s schools so that students see college as a “natural outcome of the high school experience.”

“We want all students to think of themselves as college material, and hopefully they can convince their siblings and even parents that college is not beyond their reach,” Doby said.

He realizes that he “may not revolutionize the environment overnight,” but that by starting small to build a college-going subculture, it will slowly spread.

Meanwhile, UCLA is searching for his replacement. Claudia Mitchell-Kernan, dean and vice chancellor of graduate affairs, is taking on the student affairs role in the interim.

The additional responsibility entails overseeing a wide range of student issues, including health services, class scheduling, student and campus life and dormitory programming.

“It’s important that I collaborate with the (student affairs) faculty, since a lot of the operations fall on them,” Mitchell-Kernan said.

She currently splits her day, handling student affairs in the morning before heading off to work with graduate issues in the afternoon.

“I also have more to take home on weekends and evenings,” Mitchell-Kernan said.

On the graduate side, she wants to bring more attention to the issue of graduate aid support. She recently served on the UC-wide Committee on Growth and Support of Graduate Education to press the need for increased budget allocations and fund-raising to attract top-caliber graduate students to the UC.

“Support is critical,” she said. “Graduate students are often self-sufficient and should be able to pursue their degrees on a full-time basis, not by working at McDonald’s part-time.”

The issue is especially crucial since the economy has sparked a nationwide influx of graduate school applicants, with preliminary statistics released last week reporting more than a 30 percent jump in graduate hopefuls.