Chancellor visits L.A. inner-city schools

  Photo by Bill Short/UCLA Photo Develyn
Smith,a Bruin advisor at Crenshaw High School, talks with
UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale Thursday during
his visit to award Blue and Gold scholarships.

By Scott B. Wong
Daily Bruin Staff

Chancellor Albert Carnesale headed back to high school on a bus
Thursday to award scholarships to students in two inner-city Los
Angeles high schools.

Students from Jefferson and Crenshaw High Schools received the
Chancellor’s Blue and Gold Scholarship, which grants up to a
four-year full scholarship for admitted students living in Los
Angeles who have demonstrated high achievement and financial
need.

In both visits with high school students, Carnesale discussed
the importance of diversity in education.

“We need to prepare leaders from all segments of society,
so we need to have students from all segments of society,”
Carnesale said to Jefferson students.

Immigrants, like Carnesale’s mother and Bronx taxi-driving
father, didn’t believe in “streets paved with
gold,” he said. “They believed their children had an
opportunity to go to school.”

Both Jefferson and Crenshaw are two of L.A.’s
“Super-12″ schools, known for garnering the
district’s lowest rankings in the 2000 California Academic
Performance Index.

According to the California Department of Education, Crenshaw
High maintains a 76 percent African American population, while at
Jefferson High, 91 percent of the students are Latino. Eighty-one
percent of students at Jefferson participate in the free lunch
program.

Twelve out of 33 Crenshaw applicants were admitted to UCLA, as
were 10 of 45 Jefferson applicants. Carnesale awarded three and
four Blue and Gold Scholarships to Crenshaw and Jefferson students
respectively.

This year alone, 97 scholarships have been offered by the
university, 57 of which are four-year scholarships. The university
has already allocated more than $300,000 to the scholarship, but
not all application reviews have been completed.

Accompanying Carnesale on the bus rides to Jefferson and
Crenshaw were former Los Angeles Unified School District
Superintendent and former Crenshaw Principal Sid Thompson, and
Winston Doby, vice chancellor of student affairs.

Teresa Lua, one of four recipients of the Blue and Gold
Scholarship at Jefferson, said it is surprising that Carnesale
would visit and provide scholarships to an inner-city school.

“What’s the good of being accepted to a school when
you don’t have the financial support to go there?” said
Lua. “We need these types of programs.”

In 1998, the scholarship’s first year in existence, the
university extended 250 Blue and Gold Scholarships to high school
students. Recipients accepted 185 of those scholarships.

By 1999, only 185 scholarships were offered, and in 2000, that
number shrank to 106, according to Ron Johnson, director of
financial aid. He said the decrease in the number of scholarships
offered can be attributed to the high number of students who
accepted the award in its first year, far exceeding university
estimates.

Another Jefferson scholarship recipient, Abraham Osuna, said the
money will enable him to work less and apply more time to his
studies.

“Thank you for making our school proud, our parents
prouder and our checkbooks lighter,” he said.

Osuna, who hopes to pursue film studies at UCLA, said he has
never been lucky or won anything before.

“It’s not a lotto ticket,” he said.
“Hopefully, this time I’ve earned it.”

“Once admitted to UCLA, it’s not just a matter of
getting in, but of flourishing,” said Adolfo Bermeo, director
of the Academic Advancement Program.

Bermeo, who also serves as assistant vice provost of student
diversity, told the 300 Jefferson students present about one of
their own, Sally Zuniga, an English teacher and UCLA Career-Based
Outreach Program coordinator at the school.

“Sally made the university work for her,” Bermeo
said. “She decided she would come back to the school she
graduated from.”

Zuniga, who is working toward her master’s degree in
education at UCLA, said her job as an advisor is to do anything to
help students succeed academically and socially.

“It is doable,” Zuniga said to the Jefferson
students. “You will have people at UCLA who will help
you.”

Many inner-city high school students feel college is not
attainable due to a lack of role models, Zuniga said.

She attributes the success of CBOP to college students, who are
close in age and serve as peers to those in high school.

“We’ve been able to attract a little culture of
students who often hang out in our (college counseling)
room,” Zuniga said.

UCLA Director of Early Academic Outreach Program Debra Pounds
said her student staff motivates high school students to take
ownership in the university.

“When a (high school) student comes to campus for the
first time, they can feel like this is their stomping
ground,” Pounds said.

The EAOP, an umbrella over many academic enrichment programs,
forms community partnerships between UCLA and 34 middle and 54 high
schools in the downtown and greater Los Angeles region.

After the Jefferson High visit, Carnesale and his entourage
toured parts of the Vernon Central neighborhood, including short
stops at the Dunbar Hotel ““ whose guests had once included
the likes of Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole
““ and the childhood home of Ralph J. Bunche, a 1950 Nobel
Peace Prize recipient for whom Bunche Hall is named after. Bunche
graduated from Jefferson as valedictorian.

On the Westwood-bound bus ride home, Carnesale said he was
amazed by both recipients’ enthusiasm and humility.

“I was struck how unassuming and modest they were ““
almost not calling attention to their extraordinary
achievement,” he said.

Crenshaw High Principal Travis Kiel said Thursday’s visit
by Carnesale and university administrators was not just a UCLA
recruitment effort.

“They are not recruiting students to go to UCLA,”
Kiel said. “They are recruiting students to go to
college.”