Colleges Wooing Minority Students Younger and Younger

David Billups is the kind of high school student that the outreach staff of UC San Diego administrator Victoria Valle Staples works so hard to lure to the La Jolla campus.

Billups, who graduates next month from Castle Park High in Chula Vista, has a solid grade point average and test scores, plays the snare drums for the school’s marching band and plans a career in electrical engineering.

He is also black, and UCSD--through Valle Staple’s recruitment office--targeted Billups early in his senior year to receive special phone calls, letters and tours designed to sell him on UCSD over other universities also eager to have him.

Billups is one of several hundred black and Latino students throughout California that UCSD flagged last fall for red-carpet treatment, and, in his case, the effort paid off by the May 1 deadline for students to decide where they would go. Billups will enroll in UCSD’s Warren College in September.

But, in their attempts to attract more non-whites and non-Asians to the University of California, UCSD and the system’s seven other undergraduate campuses find they must aggressively compete against each other annually for what is a very small pool of only a couple thousand eligible students. They buy computer lists of eligible students, throw lunches and schedule special lectures, distribute fancy brochures and encourage personal contacts from minority undergraduates.

Although the number of black and Latino UC students has grown during the last five years, the percentages still lag considerably behind their representation in California’s school-age population.

UC recruitment counselors, as well as those from the California State University system, have moved to expand programs that tell their story--and that of higher education in general--earlier in the high- school lives of students, and even at the junior-high level. Such programs include writing seminars, campus tours and summer enrichment sessions. Some have been in place several years, especially in the San Diego area. But their effects have been only gradual in expanding the number of UC-eligible students each year.

Increasingly, university officials say they must offer curriculum and other assistance as early as the primary school grades as a way to acculturate Latino and black children to the benefits of doing well, to expose them to science and other potential academic majors and to encourage them to view post-secondary education as a common and reachable goal if planned early enough.

For example, officials at UCSD’s Third College and San Diego State University have jointly applied to the National Science Foundation for $1.6 million to set up a countywide resource center to promote and sustain math, science and engineering courses for students, beginning at elementary levels.

Already, a smaller foundation grant has been given to San Diego State to operate after-school math enrichment for second- and third-graders in the San Diego city school district. San Diego State President Tom Day has put his prestige behind parenting seminars being offered at several inner-city schools to promote parent or guardian involvement in their child’s education. Several UCSD professors spend their own time working with county secondary schools across a variety of academic areas.

“We have an obligation to serve San Diego and Imperial counties with outreach because that is our service area,” Joseph W. Watson, UCSD vice chancellor for undergraduate affairs, said.

The 1988 freshman class at UCSD was 68% white, 20% Asian, 8.2% Latino and 3.1% black. Those figures compare to all UC freshmen, who were 57% white, 26% Asian, 9.3% Latino and 5.3% black. The trend over several years shows a modest increase in Latino students but very little increase in blacks.

“None of us (college campuses) are overwhelmed with under-represented students,” Watson said.

Valle Staples, who heads student outreach and recruitment, has already begun planning her strategy for the fall, 1990, freshman class even though she is still tallying up the number of affirmative-action students, known as SAA students, who chose UCSD for this fall.

She will compile lists of names of Latino and black seniors-to-be whose academic records, received through counselors and through a countywide consortium that helps identify these students, may meet UC admission requirements. Other students come to her attention through the UCSD Early Outreach program, which works with several hundred students targeted for special tutoring, lectures and summer enrichment as early as the ninth grade.

Valle Staples will also send letters to students enrolled in AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination) that most county high schools now offer, a program providing promising minority students with extra tutoring, counseling and encouragement to overcome socioeconomic or other barriers to entering college.

At a Premium

Although many of the early outreach programs are carried out only in San Diego County, UCSD recruiters go after potential senior Latino and black applicants in Orange and Los Angeles counties as well, because of the larger numbers who live in those urban areas.

“Even so, we end up only with a couple hundred applying who definitely can meet requirements, and they are at a premium because every other major university is going after them as well,” Valle Staples said. Because most Latino and black students who are in college-preparatory classes find themselves able to meet UC admissions standards, they usually opt for major universities and leave the Cal State schools struggling even harder to meet their own affirmative-action goals.

The major universities competing with UCSD, in particular UCLA, Stanford and UC Berkeley, have several attractions that UCSD must work hard to counter, including their location in larger urban areas, longer traditions, and major college sports teams.

“UCSD is seen by students as very different,” Valle Staples said. “We have a real challenge to let students know of not only the academic quality here but of campus life as well. And it helps if we can have that message delivered by a person or a student who looks like they do.”

Vanessa May, now a UCSD sophomore from San Fernando, originally thought she would attend Cal State Fullerton but came to the La Jolla campus “just to take a look” during her senior year and found herself “impressed by a black young man” who told her both the good and bad points about attending the university.

Billups of Castle Park High said that a campus tour arranged through his school “caught my interest . . . it was the first time I had ever been here and I found the people I talked to were sort of friendly, easier to communicate with than I thought. And having someone I could call with questions about my application, that was really helpful.”

Multiple Acceptances

Billups’ counselor at Castle Park, Willie Lassiter, said universities “spend an awful lot of time with students individually and in groups, especially in getting them the opportunity to see what a college campus is like.”

Many students receive multiple university acceptances, and only in the spring do they begin to focus on where they will go. UCSD increases its contacts during that period, and it holds a two-day open-house in mid-April, during which students are paired with undergraduates and spend the night on campus and attend classes with them.

“We’re not trying to scare anyone, but we want the students to know that the university is a serious business and, by going to as many classes as possible, they learn now that they must continue to work hard,” Michael Kane, academic adviser for UCSD’s Third College, said.

“Also, we get that connection going with other undergraduates, because they are our biggest support group.”

The effort is also intended to show students that counseling and academic assistance is available even after they get to campus, should they run into problems with studies or social adjustment, Kane said.

Cesar Vallecillo, a senior at Tribuco Hills High in Orange County, made up his mind during the two-day open-house. Vallecillo was impressed, in part, because non-SAA students with solid academic backgrounds whom UCSD also wanted as freshmen were invited as well by Valle Staples.

“The mixing is deliberate,” Valle Staples said. “All these kids have the same aspirations and, in all of my recruiting, I am careful not to reinforce stereotypes” of students not being qualified. “So I won’t have a reception just for affirmative-action or non-affirmative action students.”

Vallecillo said he realizes he is a role model for Latinos. “If more Hispanics like myself can go to college, fulfill my dreams and goals, then maybe we won’t be such a minority. If I can make my mark, we won’t be on the bottom of the list.”

‘The Narrowest Way’

Because so few Latino and black students are at UCSD, Third College Provost Cecil Lytle said the stereotype of being unqualified is hard to break.

“There’s a feeling that you’ve gotten in somehow unfairly,” said Lytle, “and it is always drawn in the narrowest way so as to not see that ability and motivation can be measured in a variety of ways.”

In addition to campus perception of minorities at UCSD, Vice-Chancellor Watson said that, until recently, UCSD had fewer academic offerings than Berkeley or UCLA and was still seen largely as science-oriented and with unappealing extracurricular offerings to ethnic minorities.

“Now perhaps a black student may still be the only black in a class but not the only one in a department, and I would call that a hopeful sign,” Watson said.

UCSD, as do all UC campuses, admits 6% of its freshman class on the basis of individual talent or special criteria, which can encompass athletes or musically talented students or ethnic minorities whom counselors say have the potential to succeed in college even though they started too late in high school to meet all admissions requirements.

“By no means is every (minority) student a special admit,” Watson said. “But let’s be honest, if we are going to have reasonable numbers of certain ethnic groups on our campuses, for the next decade we are going to have to admit students who do not meet all the eligibility requirements.

“But I also want to say that we are still admitting relatively good students . . . to not admit these people would be justified only if the view of their lower eligibility is seen purely as personal consequences of student actions and not reflecting at all the circumstances outside of the family” such as the poorer state of inner-city schools and neighborhoods.

“I think to just have the university cut out a generation of people and prolong a problem would not be the way to act.”

But, because Watson and others are uncomfortable with prolonging special admissions, they are pushing the university in the direction of a more active role in public schools to prepare more Latino and black students. They make no promises of instant success, conceding that many individual programs have existed over the past decade, seemingly doing little to increase overall numbers.

For example, recently established programs to guarantee students admission to UCSD as juniors if they take a prescribed two-year course load at community colleges have led to more white and Asians transfering than blacks and Latinos, Watson said.

“The major thing to improve matters is really going to be getting students the right study habits to achieve, beginning at the primary school level,” Watson said.

“We run into somewhat of a dilemma here,” said Lytle of Third College, who helped prepare the math-science grant proposal to the National Science Foundation. “Our normal function is not to teach math in the fifth grade, but we do have an obligation to share our resources. So, while we can’t go out and do the curricula at the (kindergarten) through 12th grade, we can take initiatives in setting forth ideas and showing that we care in a broad sense.”

Watson said that, for example, although the chemistry department at UCSD has no inherent responsibility to interact with elementary schools, the university teacher education program “can serve as the vehicle for bringing in teachers from chemistry.”

NO PLACE LIKE HOME

Quality Quinn Sharp is launching a project to steer as many of San Marcos’ minority students as possible to college, without leaving home. Page 4.