Bridging EOP’s Past to the Present
and Future:
Challenges, Opportunities,
Responsibilities
40th Anniversary EOP Conference
Tom Brown
tom@tbrownassociates.com
www.tbrownassociates.com
1968
February—three South Carolina State
College students killed and 28 injured
trying to integrate a bowling alley in
Orangeburg, SC.
March San Francisco State students,
faculty, and staff strike to protest racial
discrimination, the Vietnam war, the draft,
and an “irrelevant curriculum.”
April—Dr. Martin Luther King assassinated
1968
Spring—Senator Robert Kennedy joins
Cesar Chavez and 8000 UFW members and
calls Chavez, “one of the heroic figures of
our time.”
June—Bobbie Kennedy is assassinated in
LA after winning the California presidential
primary.
June 17—Associated Students at Cal State
LA provides $40,000 to the Black Student
Association (BSA) and United Mexican
American Students (UMAS) to fund a
“Minority Student Program.”
1968
October 2—300 Mexican students
massacred by security forces at
Tlatelolco ten days before opening of
Mexico City Olympics.
October 1968—San Jose State
students, John Carlos and Tommie
Smith, raise gloved fists after winning
gold and bronze in 200 meter race.
1969
April—California Legislature passed Bill
1072 which establishes EOP at California
State Universities.
June—Stonewall Inn, Greenwich Village,
NY—gays and lesbians fight back against
government sponsored system of
persecution. The rebellion marks the
beginning of the gay rights movement in
the US and around the world.
November—500,000 people gather in DC
for the largest Vietnam War protest to date.
Despite entering with
academic and economic
disadvantages, CSU data
indicated that EOP students
persists to graduation on
par with system-wide
averages…
CSU website
In the struggle for freedom and
justice, we must remember how far
we have come.
We must also remember how far we
have to go.
Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm (D-NY)
It can’t be over as long as we have
young African American boys and
girls who are not able to get the
quality education they need, or are
still being held back because people
are looking down on them.
Colin Powell
August 23, 2008
Forty percent of new students are
the first in their families to attend
college. (National Center for Education Statistics,
1996, 1998, 2001)
Often, they are not as
academically or socially prepared
as others and are prone to drop
out.
Watson Scott Swail, President
Educational Policy Institute
Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/19/04
77% of high income students
54% of low income students
graduate in six years.
The Education Trust, January 2005
Disparities in race and
income persist in who
enrolls in college and racial
gaps remain in who
completes degrees….
National Center for Public Policy,
December 2008
Institutions are far more likely
to attribute attrition to student
characteristics than to
institutional characteristics.
What Works In Student Retention, 2004
What happens to students
after they enroll frequently
has a more powerful impact
on whether they stay and
achieve their goals or leave.
Tinto 1987, 1993
Mexican-American high school
students and their white peers
desire equally to go to college,
but the former see more
obstacles in their path.
McWhirter, Torres, Salgado, & Valdez
Oregon State study, 2007
Most of the Latino
achievement gap is the
result of what happens after
they begin postsecondary
studies.
Latinos in Higher Education:
Many Enroll, Too Few Graduate
PEW Charitable Trust, 2002
African American students are
more likely to find faculty
members remote,
discouraging, and
unsympathetic.
Exploring Distinctions in Types of Faculty Interactions
Among Black, Latino/a, and White College Students.
Cole and Anaya, 2001
Even the most nontraditional students can be
transformed into powerful
learners through in- and
out-of-class academic or
interpersonal validation.
Dr. Laura Rendon, 1994
EOP provided me with an
environment of support and what
I now know to be “validation” that
could I could be whatever I
wanted to be….
Dr. Mario Rivas, CSUH EOP Alumnus
More than anything, EOP provided
me with a sense of belonging and
belief in my own ability to succeed.
I don’t think I would have been
successful without the competent
caring personnel in EOP at Cal
State San Marcos
Susana Gonzalez, 1997 EOP Alumna
Cal State San Marcos
Conservative elites,
challenged by the postwar
rise of a college educated
majority, have put that
majority back in it’s place…
Christopher Newfield, UCSB
Unmaking the Public University, 2008
Conservative
Disposed
to maintain existing views,
habits, conditions;
Resistant to change;
Opposed to change;
Reluctant to accept change or new
ideas.
Webster’s Third International Dictionary
Their weapon has been the
“culture wars” on both higher
education and the progressive
trends it fosters…and has led
to the abandonment of
egalitarian and democratic
impulses…
Christopher Newfield, 2008
As more students of color and
the poor have prepared
themselves for the
opportunities of state
universities, those universities
have become richer whiter and
richer.
Chronicle of Higher Education
October 2008
The average institutional grant
to high income students is
larger than the support offered
to their low income peers.
Gene Nichols
Chronicle of Higher Education
October 2008
La lucha continua, siempre!
When first admitted to EOP I had
mixed feelings and didn’t know if I
should be embarrassed.
After experiencing a few days I not
only felt proud to be admitted to
EOP, I felt it was a blessing….
Tirhas Yohannes, CSUN EOP
I never cared about going to
college until I realized how hard
the “real world” would be without
an education. The EOP 4 Bridge
Values—respect, responsibility,
attitude, maturity—helped me
succeed. Professor Omatsu
helped me realize my potential.
Solomon Miranda, CSUN EOP
The Ramirez Family
CSU Chico EOP
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
Carmen—Civil Engineering
Jesus—Mechanical Engineering
Francisco—Mechanical Engineering
Ignacio—Construction Management
Teresa—Talent Search at UC Berkeley
Lorena—completing a Master’s in Psych
Augustin—”the baby” graduated in May
As long as education is
viewed as a contest between
competing groups…
we will have problems.
Cookie Newsom
Director of Diversity Education & Research
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Chronicle of Higher Education, January 2004
Not a “zero sum” game,
with winners and losers….
Compete
Com = together
Petire = to seek
Create Unum from the Pluribus
One from the Many
Educate
ducare—to lead
The majority of new students
entering are underprepared for
college-level academics.
But students are not alone;
colleges, too, are
underprepared…
Most faculty have no particular
training to teach underprepared
students.
Strengthening Pre-Collegiate Education
Carnegie Foundation, 2008
We build beautiful campuses,
 We hire distinguished faculty,
 We develop a challenging
curriculum…
then the “wrong” students show up!
Dr. Betty Siegel, Past President
Kennesaw State University
Redefining “excellence…”
The New American University
measures its academic quality
by the education its graduates
received rather than by the
academic credentials of the
incoming freshman class….
ASU: A New American University
Many non-traditional students
want their doubts erased about
their being capable of learning….
This is especially true for first
generation students, Hispanic and
African American students….
Laura Rendon, 1994
Hope a better predictor of first
semester college grades than SAT
scores.
CL Snyder
University of Kansas
HOPE…
believing you have the will and the
way to accomplish your goals,
whatever they may be.
My first day, I looked around this
beautiful, lush, rich campus and
thought, “What the hell am I doing
here?” It’s only a matter of time
before they realize that I’m not
one of them. I am not rich. I don’t
have a loving family to go home
to on holidays. [Only] foster
parents who don’t want me, a
stepdad in prison, and a dead
mother...
And, I am not smart. I scored
580 on my SATs….”
Professor Tammy Ramos
BA and BS, St. Mary’s College of California
JD, Notre Dame Law School
Optimism a better predictor of first-year
college grades than SAT scores or high
school grades.
Martin Seligman
University of Pennsylvania
OPTIMISM…
Having a strong expectation that things
will turn out all right, despite setbacks
and frustrations.
The next time you tell Tammy’s
story, tell mine:
I scored 700 on my SATs and I
have a Ph.D. in Biology from the
University of California, Davis….
Dr. Robert Urtecho, Dean
Reedley Community College (CA)
EOP Success Stories
Eric Guerra, Legislative Director,
EOP Cal State Sacramento
Dr. Jamillah Moor, President,
Los Angeles City College,
EOP Cal State Sacramento
What you need to know about
someone is whether s/he will keep
going when things get frustrating.
Achievement is not just a function of
talent, but also of the capacity to
stand defeat.
Emotional Intelligence
Goleman, 1995
There are within us
seeds of who we
might become.
Thich Nhat Hanh
The task of the excellent teacher is
to stimulate "apparently ordinary"
people to unusual effort. The
tough problem is not in identifying
winners: it is in making winners
out of ordinary people.
K. Patricia Cross,
Professor of Higher Education Emerita
University of California, Berkeley
There comes that mysterious
meeting in life when someone
acknowledges who we are and
what we can be, igniting the
circuits of our highest
potential.
Rusty Berkus
For all those whose cares
have been our concern…
the work goes on, the cause
endures, the hope still lives,
the dream shall never die….
Senator Ted Kennedy