Grant to keep outreach afloat

Disadvantaged students in four Los Angeles high schools have the
opportunity to meet one on one with UCLA undergraduates for
tutoring and college counseling, thanks to a $75,000 grant from the
SBC Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the telecommunications
company.

The donation, announced on Oct. 20, will help extend the
relationship between UCLA’s Early Academic Outreach Program
and participating high schools: Crenshaw, Dorsey, Manual Arts and
Washington Preparatory.

The program already offers academic counseling and tracking
advice to many local high school students to prepare them for the
rigorous University of California admissions standards.

“These students require immediate and comprehensive
academic college support in order to help them meet the stringent
admissions requirements of competitive universities like those in
the University of California system,” said Debra Pounds,
director of the program in a press release. “The funds will
allow us to work more in depth and comprehensively with a subset of
students than we have been able to do in the past.”

She explained that with the help of the Access Granted
program’s 16 tutors and advisers, who are UCLA undergraduate
students, they will focus specifically on math preparation and
college readiness.

Heidi Ramirez, a fourth-year sociology student, was introduced
to the Bruin advisers when she was a senior at Manual Arts high
school.

Ramirez said the advice and encouragement of the advisers helped
her to get into UCLA, and as a freshman, she decided to return the
favor by joining the program.

Talking on the phone from inside the busy college counseling
office of Washington Preparatory, she explained her job.
“These high schools are overcrowded, with 1,000 students to
one college counselor. We talk to the students. We help
ninth-graders plan out their high school career, and then meet with
them once a year to give them recommendations or help them deal
with a bad grade.”

Recent state budget cuts for outreach funding have lead the
program’s supporters to seek alternative sources of money,
such as in late July, when the undergraduate student government
gave up $10,000 of its budget surplus to help keep UCLA outreach
afloat.

But Justin Patterson, the program’s academic coordinator
and author of the grant, reported that they were able to absorb the
cuts and keep the program staff intact, and that the one-year grant
would add services rather than alleviate budget problems.

The $75,000 grant was one of 79 proposals accepted out of 233
received by the National Council for Community and Education
Partnerships, a non-profit organization that manages the SBC
Foundation’s $5 million grant to GEAR UP (Gaining Early
Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs).

The $5 million represents the largest private contribution ever
made to the program, and will help bring technologies to classrooms
and after-school programs, in addition to encouraging new
educational partnerships between universities and high schools.

Though the future of UCLA’s outreach program is still up
in the air, the grant will secure a new level of undergraduate
commitment to these four high schools at least for the coming
year.

Ramirez, who had worried the program would be unable to replace
graduates with new staff, believed the program was “back on
track,” and said she hoped to continue promoting higher
education for minorities long after her graduation.

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