by Melissa A. Collett
Staff Writer
ULV’s sociology department received a $10,000 grant from Southern California Edison to do a follow-up study on a bilingual teaching program at ULV 20 years ago.
Ann Wichman, associate professor of sociology, is conducting the study with Maria Reyes and Natividad Vasquez who are both in the master’s program in marriage and family.
From 1974-1978 ULV had two federal grants. “One was called Saber, which was funded by Title Seven,” said Wichman. The other was given by Ceta.
Title Seven is a federal anti-poverty program. “It (Saber) was designed to train 100 bilingual teachers by providing tuition and book expenses,” she said.
Ceta, a job training organization, funded 25 students to finish two years of college. Ceta helps low-income people receive job training for low-income jobs. This was the first Ceta program to help people get through college.
The students were mostly Latinas working as teachers aides from other districts.
“Most had never thought of themselves as being able to go to college,” said Wichman.
They were chosen by a committee who interviewed applicants. The program was designed to let the students keep their current jobs. The classes were conducted in clusters at off-campus centers in their neighborhoods.
A cluster of 8 to 12 students will take all of their courses together. In this program the retention rate was 99 percent.
There are two main reasons for the follow-up study. One is to look at the students as individuals and to look at things such as who their role models were as they grew up.
The other is to see what it was about the program that produced such a high retention and success rate among the graduates.
Thirty in-depth interviews of alumni of the program have been completed in order to design a questionnaire to mail out to other alumni. The results will come from the 30 interviews and the mail-in interviews.
Twenty years ago it was Skip Mainiero who was first contacted about the program. He was “an instrumental person in the program when it started,” said Wichman. It was Mainiero who first asked Wichman if she would be interested in the study last fall.
Wichman does not know if there will be another program like this at ULV.
“Many women interviewed talked about the need for such a program,” she said. There is a “huge shortage of bilingual teachers and a need to provide more.”
Most alumni of the program stayed in the Inland Empire area working as principals, teachers, counselors and school administrators.
“It’s very rewarding research to be doing. We’ve gained a lot in talking to alumni. It’s enjoyable research. It’s positive.”
