CAMPUS & CAREERS GUIDE : At Home at School : Residential Programs Give Disadvantaged Students a Boost Into Academic Success

Eugene Conner no longer faces a tedious commute by bus once his high school classes end for the day. If Van Truong wants to stay on campus late, he doesn’t have to scrounge a ride back home. And Mariah Alquiza, who comes from a large, busy family, has no more worries about finding time and a quiet place to do her homework.

Instead, these and five other students at the innovative California Academy of Mathematics and Science--a specialized public high school at Cal State Dominguez Hills--have only to walk from class across campus to the college’s apartment-like housing, where they live four to a unit, with a live-in teacher.

The boarding students, who return home on weekends and during school vacations, can take evening classes at the college, use its libraries and computers and take in campus cultural and recreational activities in their free time.

They have the support and friendship of their roommates--with whom they share cooking, cleaning and other household chores--and round-the-clock access to the dorm advisers, teachers Sandra Elliott, who lives in the girls dorm, and John Hollick, who lives with the boys.

What the high school, known as CAMS, and Cal State have in their unique residential program is something many education reformers have long dreamed about but have been hard-pressed to create--an environment that provides bright but disadvantaged students with a life-changing boost into academic success.

A handful of colleges and universities throughout the nation are offering disadvantaged high school students--usually minorities or others from neighborhoods plagued with poverty, violence and other urban ills--summer residential programs.

For a few weeks, at no cost to their families, students get a taste of campus life, plus intensive help with studying and other academic skills, in hopes that they will gain the desire and preparation to go on to college.

“An interesting thing happens when these students come onto campus,” said Brenda Mattice-Thurman at St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., where she runs the university’s 24-year-old Upward Bound program, which has 105 white and Native American students from rural high schools.

On campus, the students “start taking on a different sense of themselves because of where they are,” she said. The access to campus facilities, the role models provided by the program’s young staff members and the academic assistance combine to “help these students make the decision to go on (to college), and when they do, it’s a good fit because of the experience they’ve had here.”

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Upward Bound is a federally funded program aimed at boosting the higher education prospects of disadvantaged students by pairing high schools with colleges and universities. Participants in the St. Lawrence program--one of the few with a summer residential component--are being tracked throughout high school and beyond. Between 77% and 83% of the seniors from the last three years of the summer program have gone to college, Mattice-Thurman said, adding, “It’s a powerful program.”

Such lessons are not lost on educators who work with some of the nation’s most troubled school districts. When New Jersey appointed Laval S. Wilson in 1991 to direct the overhaul of the 23,000-student Paterson Public Schools, he included in his reform initiative plans for a voluntary, year-round public residential high school on a college campus.

“Residential schools have existed in this country for two centuries, but the special benefits of this type of program are not typically available to poor students, minority students, or students performing below grade level,” Wilson said of the Paterson Residential Education Program. It was launched in the summer of 1992 on the campus of Upsala College, a private institution in East Orange, N.J.

While the summer program has been widely praised during the three years it has existed, Wilson has been unable to raise the $1 million to $2 million he estimates it would take to fund the boarding school year-round.

“It is very expensive, and you can’t do it for large numbers of kids,” Wilson said. “But I’m committed to this project” as a way to “get urban kids into a positive environment where they can concentrate on learning.”

Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash., uses grants from private foundations to bring disadvantaged Portland students to campus during the summer. Middle and high school students live in Whitman dorms and take classes taught by Whitman faculty and teachers from the Portland public schools.

“We’d love to expand it,” said Brian Detman, who oversees the program.

The $30,000 residential program at Dominguez Hills is also funded by donations from charitable foundations. Students pay just $30 a week for food.

The California Academy of Math and Science that the program serves has an enrollment of 500 students from eight public school districts who show exceptional promise in math or science. The school emphasizes individual attention and sends virtually all of its graduates on to four-year colleges.

Principal Kathleen Clark said the 3-year-old residential program is another example of how the rigorous, prestigious school, which emphasizes individual attention, finds ways to help students succeed in their studies.

The residential program is primarily for students who find their home environments too distracting for study. Senior Erika Mesen said her mother objected at first to her moving onto campus, but now, since her grades went from Bs and Cs to mostly A’s, “she’s fine with it.”

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Sonia Claus-Rangel, a sophomore and at 15 the youngest of the residential students, said she sees no drawbacks to living on campus. “I’m glad to be here,” said Claus-Rangel, who has her sights set on UC Berkeley.

Senior David Montano said he feels lucky to get one of the widely coveted spaces in the dorm program. “Sometimes it gets real noisy at home,” he said. “I have three brothers and it was hard to find a place to study.”

For Alex Jensen, another senior, the residential program is what enabled him to stay at the high school after his family moved to Arizona last year. “I miss my family, but it’s great living on a campus,” he said.

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Staying at School Here is a sampling of colleges and universities with residential programs for secondary students. There is no charge to the students, most of whom are disadvantaged.

CAL STATE DOMINGUEZ HILLS * Program: California Academy of Mathematics and Science Residential Program

* Begun: 1992

* In session: Through regular school year.

* Enrollment: 6 to 12, mostly juniors and seniors

* Purpose: For students who want a good study environment.

* Cost: $30,000 per year for dorm and staff costs; financed by the private Crail-Johnson and Knudsen foundations. (Students in this program pay $30 a week for food.) UPSALA COLLEGE, EAST ORANGE, N.J. * Program: Paterson, N.J., public school residential education program

* Begun: 1992

* In session: Four weeks in summer

* Enrollment: About 70

* Purpose: Intensive work in basic academic skills and computers for high school students whose neighborhood or home environment is hindering their achievement.

* Cost: $120,000 a year, financed by school district ST. LAWRENCE UNIVERSITY, CANTON, N.Y. * Program: Summer residential component of Upward Bound, a federally funded program operating year-round at about 120 colleges.

* Begun at St. Lawrence: 1970

* In session: Six weeks

* Enrollment: About 100

* Purpose: To improve the college prospects for high school students with low family incomes.

* Cost: Average of $3,310 per student annually; including such academic-year features as tutoring; financed by U.S. Education Department.