Drop-out rates are high in community colleges, and many graduating high school seniors are incapable of completing college math courses, education experts say.
Using digital media, a newly endowed chair at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies is looking to address these issues. Louis Gomez, a new professor in the Graduate School of Education & Information Studies, said he plans on working with the UCLA Community School to improve the community college system.
Gomez was appointed to the new MacArthur Chair for Digital Media and Learning this fall, after he joined the GSE&IS faculty. Because Gomez comes from an academic background split between technology and education, he was chosen for his abilities to bring people from different fields together to solve problems, said Noel Enyedy, who chaired the search committee for the MacArthur chair.
“We think that he will be able to spark conversations in people who normally wouldn’t be working together,” said Enyedy, who is also an associate professor in the GSE&IS.
While at UCLA, Gomez said he wants to examine the community college system more closely to solve the problems of high drop-out rates and the inability of students to pass college math classes.
Gomez has also joined the board of the UCLA Community School, which teaches K-12 students from underrepresented communities, said GSE&IS dean Aimée Dorr.
“I guess I’m hopefully going to start conversations about how these organizations should be run,” Gomez said. “I care about building tools for the students to be able to succeed with later.”
Besides working with education, Gomez, who has a long experience working with new technologies, said he would try to incorporate more social media into the way students learn.
“Because of networks and social media, we can think of new ways for students and faculty to work with people whom we normally can’t work with,” he said. “Physical distance and social distance can be bridged more easily.”
Gomez’s extensive work in the fields of education, technology and psychology will help bring about cooperation between different departments to resolve issues, said James Stigler, a UCLA professor of psychology.
Stigler and Gomez are currently working together on building a more efficient model for schools to follow when they are teaching students math and English skills, Stigler said.
Gomez will also begin to teach classes at the GSE&IS in winter quarter, he said.
The MacArthur chair was created after the original chairholder at UC Berkeley retired three years ago. The UC administration decided to split the endowment money that had accumulated to create several chairs across UC campuses, Dorr said.
Along with the chair in the GSE&IS, the UCLA School of Law also has a new MacArthur chair, she said.
The chair comes with a $1 million endowment fund and the interest from the money can be used to fund research, Dorr said.