Collecting a Hard-Earned Gift

They were ordinary students offered an extraordinary deal: Work hard, overcome some steep challenges and win a full scholarship to USC, the private school that stands as an oasis in their gritty South-Central neighborhood.

There was Elva, so unsure of her English that she hardly spoke in class; Johnny, who thought college was just for rich kids; Rina, so worried about failure that she began to lose weight in middle school; and Aaron, whose undiagnosed dyslexia made classes a constant struggle.

In 1990, they were among 50 local sixth-graders chosen as the first to take part in an unusual experiment at USC. The idea was ambitious: to prove that average students, with special preparation, discipline and hard work, could get into four-year colleges--and make it through.

Today, as graduates in caps, gowns and cardinal and gold sashes gather at the heart of the leafy campus for annual commencement ceremonies, Elva Rojas and Rina Granados will stand proudly amid the crowd, a few blocks from the turbulent streets where they grew up.

“I’m going to be pinching myself,” said Rojas, the shy girl who once struggled with spoken English but has grown into an outgoing, even voluble, English major.

She is among three members of the program’s pioneering class of “USC scholars” to collect their degrees this year; a fourth graduated early. And about a dozen others, including Granados, Karina Mendoza and Aaron Gray, will graduate within the next year.

More than a decade after the experiment was launched, the answer to the question is a qualified yes: Disadvantaged students with sufficient support, preparation and encouragement can make it through this four-year university.

But it hasn’t worked out for everyone.

Just 10 students from the original group collected the big prize, a four-year scholarship to USC. That was after surviving six years in a grueling pre-college academy. An additional 12 students who joined that first class as others dropped out also obtained scholarships.

Once they enrolled at USC, some struggled to adjust, feeling a disconnect between the atmosphere inside and outside the university’s walls. Some ultimately dropped out or took time off, coping with illness, pregnancy or other challenges.

The story of these students, their successes and their shortcomings, is one of hard work and long odds, of dreams, and occasional disillusionment.

Entwined with their stories is another tale, not yet complete, of the USC program that has sought to transform middling students into scholars, build a network of support among parents and peers, and in the process, reach into a troubled community and help remake it.

“We wanted to create a vision that had college in it for as many people as possible,” said James C. Fleming, the creator and former director of the program, known as the Neighborhood Academic Initiative.

“We wanted to change lives, and that meant changing the culture, turning it into one that valued education. To a large extent, that’s happened.”

The USC program took a unique--and many would say bold--approach: Rather than focusing on top-performing students, it would tap students with C grades or better who were motivated and willing to commit to hard work. It then would try to boost them to USC standards with rigorous courses, intensive oversight and cultural opportunities--lots of cultural opportunities.

“We used to say, ‘The Getty? Oh God, not again,’ ” Granados joked. “They took us so many times.”

The reward, for anyone who met USC’s requirements, was a scholarship to the university--now valued at more than $34,000 a year. Accepted students who decided to go elsewhere could use the money for two years at a USC graduate school.

The program--funded by USC, the Los Angeles Unified School District and other donors--was about “a lot more than just transforming us into college material,” said Manuel Bojorquez, who graduated in three years and is now a reporter at KESQ, a Palm Springs television news channel.

“It was about changing your preconceptions of who you are and what you could be,” Bojorquez said. “Dr. Fleming told us not to settle for anything, always to keep on moving up.”

Elva Rojas took his words to heart. Rojas, who immigrated with her family from Mexico at the age of 9, was held back a year when she entered school in the United States. Two years later, when Fleming visited her school to recruit his first USC scholars, her spoken English was so poor that she thought she didn’t have a chance.

But she got in, then endured a painful period as her tough academy teachers required her to speak in class, participate in group projects and deliver oral book reports. “They told me I was smart and that it would get easier,” she said.

Finally, it did.

It got easier for Rina Granados as well, but at first it was very hard.

Just before graduating from high school, she learned that her combined SAT test score was 20 points lower than USC’s then-minimum standard of 1,000. As her friends went off to USC, she enrolled at East Los Angeles College, built up her credits and transferred to USC for her sophomore year.

Even after she got in, Granados said she found USC much tougher than she expected. “I had to keep telling myself, ‘I didn’t come this far just to give up,’ ” she said.

She will graduate in December with a degree in public policy and management and a minor in business administration. But today is her chance--and her mother’s--to celebrate.

“My mom is telling everyone she meets, ‘My daughter is graduating from USC,’ ” said Granados, so delighted to be “walking” with her class that she has purchased 30 graduation tickets for her family, friends and former teachers.

For those who arrived right after high school, there were other challenges. A blaze of media coverage about the innovative program had laid bare many private details of the students’ lives for new roommates and others to see.

“People knew we’d gotten full scholarships and thought of us as just the poorest, or the kids of drug addicts or alcoholics,” said Henry Servellon, who switched from engineering to international relations and will finish next year.

Karina Mendoza agreed. “It was pretty intimidating at first,” the English and education major said. “It felt sort of ‘us against them.’ ”

But that feeling didn’t last. Though it would have been easy to remain in a comfortable cocoon of friendships with former academy students, Mendoza, the daughter of a seamstress and a refrigerator repairman, decided early on that that wouldn’t have been a real college experience.

“I made a conscious decision to get out there and say, ‘I’m one of you now, I’m part of this group.’ And it worked.”

Others found different ways of coping.

In a political science class her first semester, Gloria Campos said she suddenly realized that she was the only woman and the only Latina, and began to sink down in her seat.

“Then I started thinking, ‘Hey I fulfilled all the requirements. I deserve to be here.’ Then I realized, how cool is that? I’m the only girl and the only Latina and I’m doing good. I switched my feeling completely.”

Campos, 21, is now dealing with other difficulties. She has missed several semesters at USC because of illness and was recently diagnosed with lupus, a potentially debilitating immune system disorder. Even so, she said, she plans to return to USC in the fall and hopes to finish her political science and international relations major as quickly as possible before heading to law school.

“I’ll get there,” she said.

A few, reveling in their freedom from the strict supervision of their parents or academy teachers, got into academic trouble almost immediately at USC.

“I wasn’t ready,” acknowledged Alfredo Grajalez, who lost his scholarship and dropped out nearly two years ago. “Everything came rushing in . . . the parties, the girlfriends, credit cards. I just couldn’t do it.” Now working for a printing company, Grajalez said he still hopes to complete college one day but does not plan to return to USC. He will attend today’s graduation to honor his friends.

Johnny Chavarria left the university as well, after a disastrous freshman year. But he returned last fall. “I was so busy doing everything else, I was too tired to go to class,” he said ruefully.

Chavarria said he still feels a dissonance between the neighborhood where he grew up and his life at the university. “It’s like I pass through a portal into a privileged world whenever I walk through the gate,” he said. “I still can’t really get used to that.”

In small ways, though, Johnny is making USC his own.

“I like to think of it as the University of South-Central,” he said, grinning.

USC officials say they are proud of the program’s first graduates and relatively satisfied with the graduation rate, which they say is lower at the four-year mark than for other USC students but likely to pull even by five years.

“These kids have shown the discipline and the stick-to-itiveness to make this happen,” USC President Steven B. Sample said of the first graduates. “It’s a tremendous achievement for them.”

With its first graduates notched, the university is evaluating the scholars program, trying to find out what worked and what didn’t.

Officials stressed that USC is not considering withdrawing its support for the program, which last year enrolled 350 students in its pre-college academy and 64 at the university.

Some at USC are troubled that a growing percentage of the academy’s top scholars are opting to go elsewhere. Last year, about half of those accepted to USC and awarded the scholarship decided to enroll, compared with 100% the first year.

“We’re not happy about it,” Senior Associate Provost Carolyn Webb de Macias said. “Frankly, we’re trying to figure out how to say to these kids, ‘You really should just come here.’ ”

Along the way, the program’s leadership has changed, as have some of its offerings.

Fleming, an energetic educator who built the academy from scratch, left more than a year ago. He is writing fiction, working as an educational consultant and considering starting another pre-college academy based on the USC model.

His replacement, Karin Mae, has faced resistance to her leadership from some alumni and parents who quibble with changes she has made in curriculum and staff.

She has eliminated the program’s counseling component, saying that need can be filled by counselors at two middle and two high schools from which students are selected. She also has cut back on the time parents must spend in weekend academy sessions.

Even with all the changes, many say the experiment is worthwhile.

When it launched the initiative, the university didn’t know if the academy scholars could actually cut it at the university, Provost Lloyd Armstrong Jr. said.

“But now we know that it is clearly successful on at least one level: A whole bunch of kids from a neighborhood where almost nobody has gotten degrees before are about to get their degrees,” he said. “And that’s wonderful.”

Aaron Gray, whose dyslexia was first caught by an academy teacher, is now a published poet who will receive his degree in philosophy and psychology next spring. Gray said he wants to become a social worker, counseling those with drug and alcohol problems.

“People gave me a lot,” Gray said. “I want to give a little of that back.”