- Author: Educatiodive.com by Hallie Busta
At a time when higher education can appear bogged down by legacy, the University of California System's newest addition is far less restricted.
The University of California, Merced this summer wrapped up phase one of a $1.3 billion project to roughly double the size of its campus and make room for as many as 10,000 students. It is doing so using an innovative public-private partnership (P3) model that is among the largest of its kind in higher ed. And of all the UC System campuses, it has been the most effective at reaching and enrolling Latinos, who have become the largest ethnic group in California.
In an article detailing UC Merced's rise, The New York Times notes the campus and the system are at a critical juncture: "The future of the state depends on whether the University of California can grow to be more like Merced, and the future of Merced depends on whether it can grow to be more like other campuses."
HIGHLIGHTS Expansion plans: Underserved students: Outlook: |
Located in the San Joaquin Valley a few hours' drive from San Francisco and the state capitol in Sacramento, UC Merced formally opened in 2005 with the goal of improving access to the state's public university system — almost a decade into a ban on affirmative action that notably hampered diversity among campuses in the system.
"Many of these students were not gaining access as they should be to research universities," UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland said. "We were built there to create that access. They came, they loved it and they went back to their communities. So there was a lot of word of mouth."
By a wide margin, it is the smallest of the nine institutions in the system that offer both undergraduate and graduate instruction. It is also in one of the poorest areas of the state, where residents have long had low levels of educational attainment and lacked access to a research university. Many of its students are the first in their families to attend college. And its admission rate is higher and its incoming students' test scores lower than at other UC campuses.
Yet those seeming shortcomings in the ultra-competitive world of higher education admissions have proven to be competitive advantages, Leland said.
Being new means students can see themselves as pioneers and innovators, and the small size fosters community. Raising a campus from the ground up in the 21st century also has let sustainability factor heavily into construction, with all campus buildings currently or expected to be LEED certified.
And the college has been able to focus on undergraduate research from the start. In 2016, Merced attained the status of a "doctoral-granting university with higher research activity," the second-highest ranking from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education.
"When you build a new university from the ground up, you literally build everything," Leland said. "You build your traditions, you build your student organizations, you build your student volunteer connections to the communities. Many students who come here get to be the founders of traditions or organizations that will persist far beyond them."
Leland took the helm at Merced in 2011 with the task of ushering the college into the next phase of growth. While the recession's anemic recovery made that a challenge, it didn't change the need. "We were simply space-starved," she said. "Our students were sitting in hallways studying because there was no other place to go."
Beyond classrooms, the college needed facilities such as research labs, dorms, sports fields and dining halls as well as roads and other infrastructure to support current and future students. And it needed to do so affordably. As part of the deal, the private developer will maintain the buildings over a 39-year period and will be paid in part based on how they perform, Leland said.
"In all the unpredictability in the higher education environment, particularly in the public sector, we have a great deal of predictability around the long-term maintenance of what will be half of our campus," she said.
The expansion is laying the groundwork for future growth in Merced, which Leland and others expect will lead to change throughout the state.
"You see across the UC System a growing recognition that the demographic future of California cannot just be represented on one or two or three of its campuses," she said. "It has to be spread across all of the campuses, from the oldest to the youngest."
Source: Published originally on Educatiodive.com, University of the Year: The University of California, Merced, by Hallie Busta, December 3rd, 2018.
- Author: UC Riverside byTess Eyrich
Marlen Ríos-Hernández is a proud pioneer of a research technique she refers to as “intellectual dumpster diving.” By that, she means she studies trash — but probably not the kind you'd expect.
A Southern California native, Ríos-Hernández is a doctoral candidate in the ethnic studies department at the University of California, Riverside. Before arriving at UCR, she trained as a musicologist — “basically a music historian,” she explained.
As a researcher of punk music, the “trash” she sifts through is more akin to countercultural relics that have been discarded or ignored by traditional archivists. Through her work, she hopes to shed light on some of punk's early pioneers, many of whom have gone overlooked by mainstream chroniclers of the genre who have historically portrayed it as white and male-dominated.
“Punk has always been diverse,” Ríos-Hernández said. “Women, people of color, and queer-identifying people have been part of punk movements across time, and as a punk fan myself, I think it's important to recognize that representation. My work is a way of asking, ‘Who carries the weight of the things that we love?'”
In particular, her dissertation charts the growth of punk scenes in Los Angeles, Mexico, and Latin America from the late 1970s to the mid-2000s. The latter period, she said, holds personal significance for her because it was when she experienced her own coming of age as a punk fan and activist under the George W. Bush administration.
“There was a huge anti-war movement going on at the time, and my brother had been deployed to Iraq,” Ríos-Hernández said. “I got involved in the punk scene in South Gate with many of my friends who came from similar backgrounds — first-generation students, mixed-status families. Punk helped us during what was an especially difficult and terrifying time to be an immigrant or come from a mixed-status family in America.”
The punk scene quickly became both her preferred creative outlet and port of entry to social justice work. Bands like the Casualties, the Germs, and the Devotchkas were among her original favorites, but it wasn't until she found Alice Bag — a Chicana pillar of the Hollywood punk scene — that Ríos-Hernández's scholarly research began to take shape.
This year, Ríos-Hernández will work to complete her studies at UC Riverside as the recipient of a $20,000 dissertation fellowship from the American Association of University Women. Designed to tackle some of the barriers women face in education, the association's dissertation fellowship program is dual-sided, enabling recipients to pursue both academic work and community projects that empower women and girls.
Along with finishing her dissertation, the fellowship will allow Ríos-Hernández to continue her work as a mentor for other first-generation humanities students who want to pursue graduate school. She also recently started as a staffer at the Chicano Student Programs office, where she serves as its graduate student events and programs coordinator.
As a researcher, she said, one of the highlights of her current work involves leading students from a variety of arts and humanities departments through interactive, punk-inspired lectures. One tackles a dance style called the pogo — think of it as a less aggressive, more equitable predecessor to moshing — which Ríos-Hernández detailed in an essay recently accepted for publication in “The Oxford Handbook of Punk Rock.”
Investigating so-called “trash” like the pogo and its transformation into moshing is part of an effort to encourage students to question why things are remembered the way that they are. And for those who want to continue their education in punk, Ríos-Hernández has plenty of resources to recommend, beginning with Bag's memoir, “Violence Girl,” and the 1981 documentary film “The Decline of Western Civilization.”
“Recordings of many L.A. punk bands are very rare, but what's happening now is that the punk elders who are still with us are putting their recordings on the internet or writing their memoirs,” Ríos-Hernández said. “It's a really vibrant time to be listening to what's coming out about the L.A. punk community.”
The renaissance of sorts has been a boon for her research. Still, Ríos-Hernández admitted, she sometimes feels torn between her more scholarly pursuits and the age-old punk mentality that places a premium on resisting conformity.
“It's been really interesting writing about punk music as a graduate student and trying to make a career out of it, because punk traditionally goes against being part of the system,” she said. “But maybe because I've gotten this far, I feel like I have a responsibility to do this work right — a responsibility both to fans of punk and to the people who made this music in the early days and continue to make it now.”
Likewise, Ríos-Hernández added, she feels a profound responsibility to UC Riverside, the place she affectionately calls “the unsung hero of the UC system.”
“I wouldn't trade my time here for the world,” she said. “I fully intend to come back after I graduate — that's my dream.”
Source: Published originally on news.ucr.edu A Ph.D. in punk? Only at UC Riverside, by Tess Eyrich, October 15th, 2018.
/span>- Author: Education Dive by Halona Black
Dive Brief:
- The University of California has received criticism for not adequately serving Latinos, the state's largest ethnic group, since affirmative action measures were banned from use in admissions decisions in California's public institutions in 1996, The New York Times reports.
- The university system's newest campus, UC Merced, most closely resembles the diversity of California with an undergraduate Latino population of 53%. UCLA and UC Berkeley, the system's flagship campuses, serve Latino populations of 21% and 13%, respectively.
- While Merced lacks traditional markers of academic excellence including star faculty members, better than average admissions test scores and a high graduation rate, Latino students are attracted to Merced because professors and administrators have created programs and services that directly cater to them. This includes parent workshops in Spanish during student orientation, culturally appropriate celebrations, availability of cultural foods and more.
Dive Insight:
Studies show that the growing racial disparities in higher education occur amongst not only student populations, but faculty members and administration as well. This may have serious implications on the success of racial and ethnic minorities who may also be first-generation college students or come from low-income families.
Current research on the success of African American college students points to elements like the development of relationships with faculty members, involvement in minority student organizations and management of relationships with family and friends back home as essential parts of a plan to attract and retain a diverse student body.
Changes in student demographics are expected to continue to have a direct impact on retention in higher education during the next few years. Texas A&M University – San Antonio is an example of an institution that has a multi-year rebranding project centered on ensuring that the campus is a welcoming environment to the city's large military population and underserved minorities.
Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana published the results of a 2016 study of the 21st Century Scholar initiative to improve student success outcomes across its 32 campuses. The program administered by The Indiana Commission for Higher Education reported results of an increase in first-year persistence of 8.8 percentage points, up from a historical average between 36.9% and 45.7%. The scholars who participated in the program were Pell eligible and first-generation college students. Participants received executive-style coaching to support them not only in academics, but in other areas of life that may have been hindering their success.
Source: Published originally on www.educationdive.com, How to best serve Latino students, by Halona Black, August 2nd, 2018.
- Author: Inside UCR by John Replogle
RIVERSIDE, Calif. — The University of California, Riverside has been listed among ten top-performing colleges nationally for Latino student success according to findings released today in Washington, D.C.
The Education Trust, a non-profit think tank based in Washington D.C., looked at 613 public and private four-year colleges nationwide and singled out ten campuses nationwide as models for promoting Latino student success. Rather than ranking schools strictly on national averages, The Education Trust compared institutions of similar size, SAT scores, and number of Pell Grant recipients and then highlighted those campuses with significantly higher than average graduation rates among Latino students. The findings are published in, “A Look at Latino Student Success: Identifying Top- and Bottom-Performing Institutions.
UCR is widely respected as a national model for student success across ethnic and economic categories. According to the most recent national data, the six-year graduation rate for Latino students in the U.S. is 54 percent. The rate at UCR is nearly 20 percentage points higher at 73 percent.
In addition to performing higher than national averages, UCR is one of few institutions nationwide to have eliminated achievement gaps across ethnic groups and income levels. In 2016, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities honored UCR with the prestigious “Project Degree Completion Award” for innovation in improving student success.
“Being named a top-performing institution is a testament not only to our students but also to the faculty and staff across campus dedicated to helping our students succeed,” said UCR Chancellor Kim A. Wilcox. “The disparities in student success are a national crisis in higher education in the U.S. The Education Trust's analysis is critical in identifying the schools like UCR that are moving the needle on graduation rates so that our successes can be emulated across the country.”
In March, The Education Trust released a similar report covering African American student success. UCR was one of just three schools to be named top-performing institutions in both reports.
Founded in the early 1990s, The Education Trust is a national non-profit advocacy organization that promotes academic achievement for students at all levels of the education system, particularly for students of color and low-income students.
Source: Published originally on ucrtoday.ucr.edu, UCR Identified as National Leader for Latino Student Success, by John Replogle, December 14, 2017.
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice. Adaptado al español por Leticia Irigoyen.
Las estudiantes de postgrado de la UC Berkeley Kristal Caballero, Elsbeth Sites y Sonya Zhu son las becarias de la GFI y trabajarán con académicos y personal de ANR para abordar el tema de cómo alimentar de manera sustentable y nutritiva a una población mundial que en el 2025 alcanzará los ocho mil millones de personas.
Las becarias de la GFI son parte de un grupo de 50 estudiantes y graduados de la UC que trabajan en proyectos relacionados con los alimentos en los 10 campus de la UC, la oficina del presidente de la UC, el Laboratorio Nacional Lawrence Berkeley y la UC ANR.
Las becarias de la GFI se reúnen en conferencias, viajes de estudios y eventos para hacer contactos. La primavera pasada, UC ANR llevó a cabo el recorrido de becarios por el delta de los ríos Sacramento-San Joaquín para aprender más sobre la relación entre alimentos, agricultura y medioambiente.
Las becarias de la GFI 2017-18:
Kristal Caballero, de San José, es estudiante de postgrado de la Facultad de Salud Pública de la UC Berkeley. Con su trabajo en el equipo de Comunicaciones Estratégicas de UC ANR, Caballero se enfocará en esfuerzos de divulgación de información y educación para educar al público sobre nutrición, seguridad alimentaria, programas federales de alimentos, desperdicio de alimentos, obesidad infantil y temas relacionados. Caballero utilizará una variedad de herramientas de comunicación para publicar los resultados de la investigación del Instituto de Políticas sobre Nutrición sobre temas relacionados con la nutrición y alimentos y para informar a los legisladores.
Sonya Zhu, de Iowa City, Iowa, es estudiante de postgrado de la Facultad de Políticas Públicas Goldman, de la UC Berkeley. Zhu conducirá un segundo análisis del estudio Comunidades Saludables en el Instituto de Políticas sobre Nutrición, un estudio observacional de más de cinco mil niños de entre cuatro y 15 años que fueron reclutados en 130 comunidades de todo EUA entre el 2013 y 2015. Ella examinará el efecto que tiene la inseguridad alimentaria en el hogar en la conducta dietética y actividad física.