By VICTOR MORALES, Staff Writer
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Printed courtesy of Imperial Valley Press, El Centro, CA

When Andrea Garcia was in the eighth grade at Wilson Junior High School in El Centro, she took extra English and algebra classes.

The classes and other programs would give her a tremendous advantage four years later when it came time to apply to college.

“It was really helpful,” she said. “It really prepared me for high school and I got to know what I needed to do to get into college,” the 18-year-old El Centro native said.

Today, Garcia is a freshman at San Diego State University-Imperial Valley campus, majoring in liberal studies with the goal of becoming a teacher.

Garcia’s experience is the result of the Imperial Valley College-Going Initiative, an extensive collaboration that goes all the way to the University of California. It includes the countywide school system, colleges and the business community.

The initiative has been on a road map to change the Imperial Valley culture from one that has had historically low college-going rates into one producing more college graduates.

Garcia’s fortitude and preparation is what the initiative and its annual Higher Education Week, which begins today, wants to achieve among the county’s 36,000 kindergarten-12th grade students.

Implemented for six years now, the initiative is making a difference.

“We have the data that shows we have made significant progress in our students attending and applying for college,” said Javier Ramos, coordinator for the CollegeGoing Initiative.

Imperial County now ranks seventh in the state for students graduating high school and directly going to college.

“The increase has been so dramatic that Imperial County now ranks as one the top counties in the state in terms of college-going rates,” said Blas Guerrero, director of regional academic initiatives for the University of California’s office of the president. “This model is being replicated throughout the state,” he said.

The success is attributed to the collaboration between all the entities involved. Before the College-Going Initiative was implemented, schools, colleges and other interested entities all were competing for students. That proved counterproductive, Ramos said.

“We would not have been able to get these results by just concentrating on our own programs,” Ramos said. “Now we are using each others resources and there is no more duplication.”

That cooperation is bringing 21 college recruiters to the initiative’s four-day college fair held at all county high schools throughout the week.

Far away campuses like UC Berkeley and Davis and California State University Humboldt and Chico have committed to attend. Local universities like UC San Diego and Riverside and California State University San Diego and San Bernardino also have committed.

For Garcia and others, the initiative was the key to successfully achieving college student status.

“They made it so important of what they needed know. The counselor did not even get it right. She was informed better than they,” said Andrea’s mother, Elizabeth Garcia, of the initiative’s program.

“That’s exactly what it’s supposed to do regardless of the path they take, whether it’s getting more info for community college, university or vocational college,” Ramos said.

>> Staff Writer Victor Morales can be reached at 337-3452 or vmorales@ivpressonline.com