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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.