A Preview Brightens Their College Prospects

Oxnard teenager Miguel Navarrete stepped foot for the first time Monday on a university campus. And the one thing he knows for sure is that he’ll be back.

It may not be at Cal State Channel Islands, where the Rio Mesa High School senior is taking part in a first-time effort to jump-start the college careers of area high school students. But after touring the fledgling Camarillo campus, Navarrete said there’s no doubt a four-year degree is in his future.

“I have a chance to go past high school and do something no one else in my family has done,” said Navarrete, 16, who is among nearly three dozen juniors and seniors, many the sons and daughters of immigrants, participating in the Summer College program.

“I don’t know whether I’ll get another chance to experience college before it’s my turn to go,” he said. “This is just such an awesome opportunity, I didn’t want to let it go by.”

While scores of youngsters spend their summer lounging on the beach or earning extra cash, those enrolled in the inaugural Summer College Class of 2001 have signed on for an intensive, five-week session of career exploration and academic preparation.

Students will spend their mornings hearing from guest lecturers about opportunities in everything from criminal science to public administration.

And they’ll spend the afternoon taking a college-level anthropology course that upon completion will earn them three units of college credit and fulfill a general education requirement for university freshmen.

The summer program, at a cost of $750 per student, is being partially underwritten by the Cal State Channel Islands Foundation and VCBio, a group created two years ago to nurture Ventura County’s burgeoning biotechnology industry.

Of the 34 students who are participating, 22 are migrant education students sponsored by the Oxnard Union High School District. Several of those are visiting a university campus for the first time.

For academic planners at the Channel Islands campus, the summer program lets them showcase the budding university, set to open for the fall semester of 2002, and start recruiting now for future students.

But it also allows them to fulfill the university’s fundamental mission: to get local youngsters excited about learning and believing that a four-year degree is within reach.

“We want to reach out to students who either haven’t given college much thought or who know they want to go, but just need someone to show them the way,” said Barbara Thorpe, head of academic planning for Channel Islands.

Count Oxnard teenager Daisy Mendoza among those headed for a four-year degree.

Born in Michoacan, Mexico, and the youngest of four brothers and sisters, Mendoza was a straight-A student last semester.

Her siblings are attending community college. But the 16-year-old Hueneme High School junior has set her sights higher, hoping to attend Stanford University after she graduates.

“I just want to go the extra mile, I want to be someone,” she said. “Basically, I want to give my parents back what they are giving to me.”

In their first day in a college environment, the students quickly learned such dreams don’t come easy.

Anthropology instructor Geri-Ann Galanti, a professor at Cal State campuses in Los Angeles and Dominguez Hills, told the students Monday that she would be teaching them the same anthropology course she teaches at the college level.

Morning instructor Rosalind Raby, a Cal State Northridge professor who is coordinating the career exploration component, told the youngsters that because they are now college students, they are expected to show up to class everyday and on time. And she told them they are expected to participate, to ask hard questions, to squeeze everything they can out of their college experience.

“It’s time for you to take off your high school hats and put on your college hats,” she said. “This is going to be a family. After five weeks of being together all day, believe me we are going to be a family.”

That all sounded pretty good to 15-year-old Anna Flores, who lost her father to cancer a year ago.

Although he never pressed her about college, the Rio Mesa High School junior said she has never had any doubt that one day she would attend a university. But now she’s thinking of studying medicine, to find ways to help those suffering from illness.

“I just want to see what college is all about and to understand what I’ll be faced with,” she said. “I just want to challenge myself to go as high as I can.”