Nine members of the campus community were among the presenters at the July National Council for Community and Education Partnerships/GEAR UP Conference in San Francisco.
GEAR UP is a federally funded college access and success program serving approximately 700,000 low-income students starting in seventh grade that follows them through high school graduation or the first year of college. Cal State Fullerton’s program was begun in the late 1990s.
Taking part in the conference proceedings were:
- Dawn Person, director of the Center for Research on Educational Access & Leadership, and Melba Castro, director of Educational Partnerships, were discussants on “Academic Self-Confidence, Academic Community Engagement and Pluralistic Orientation as Predictors of College-Going Culture Among a GEAR UP Cohort”;
- Adriana Badillo, director of the University’s GEAR UP program, Dawn Person and graduate assistant Yazmin Duarte were speakers at the “Latino/Latina Parent/Family Engagement Showcase”;
- Mandy Paterson, a curriculum development specialist, and academic tutor Danny Juarez from CSUF’s GEAR UP program discussed “Social Justice and the Four Cs: Empowering Students to Be Agents of Change Through Communication, Collaboration, Creativity and Critical Thinking”;
- David L. Pagni, professor of mathematics, Evelyn Soqui, assistant director of GEAR UP, and Eric Tenorio, GEAR UP academic coordinator, spoke on “Helping Academically Struggling Students: A Tale of Two-Intervention Programs, One Rural and One Urban” with representatives from the Lake Chelan school district; and
- Evelyn Soqui was a speaker at the session on “Living a 21st-Century Experience: Taking Students Into the Real World With Mentor Programs Driven by Sustainable Partnerships.”