Doby adjusts to new city, outreach position

  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.