SAN DIEGO — A new partnership is giving young students a chance for a better future.
When she thinks about her future, 17-year-old Anneth Chavez Cruz knows she wants to pursue an art career.
“Art just gives me a sense of peace whenever I’m stressed or I just want to get something off my mind,” she said.
Cruz is a senior at Urban Discovery Academy, a public school in the heart of downtown San Diego. They are helping students like Cruz get a head start on college through a new partnership with the University of California, San Diego.
Cruz and other students are taking a web development class through UC San Diego that will give them a career certification they can take with them beyond high school. All UDA high schoolers can also complete university-transferrable credits in a variety of subjects — all for free.
Cruz is aiming to be the first one in her family to graduate from a four-year university and says this extra support gives her hope she can be successful.
“The challenges would be money, of course, the first thing, the tuition,” Cruz said. “I’m a first generation, so I have older siblings but they did not finish college and I always have that pressure on me that I have to go to college and make my family proud.”
Dr. Jenni Owen said Urban Discovery Academy is one of the few K-12 schools in the country to have a top-ranked university embedded on its campus. She said as a charter school, they get students from all across San Diego county and this model ensures all students can access a higher education curriculum — no matter their finances.
“We serve a really wide range of students. Some of them come from very poor neighborhoods, some of them drive across the county to come to school here every day. We’re in the downtown community, so some of our students walk to school, some of our students take trolleys to school, some of our students are homeless students,” Owen said. “We want to make sure that access is there for all students, even the marginalized families in San Diego.”
Morgan P. Appel is the assistant dean of education and community outreach at UCSD. He said being a permanent fixture on an urban high school campus means world-class university education is no longer out of reach for everyone in the community.
“Whether it comes in the form of university coursework or workforce development programs for students, professional development and licensing for teachers, workshops for families, or community members, there is a palpable sense of excitement around the endeavor as all have been involved in contributing to the development of these experiences,” Appel says. “From this work, we at UC San Diego have learned rather a significant lesson. Whilst investing heavily in college readiness for aspiring scholars, we are compelled to hold the mirror to ourselves as well. The question is not ‘Are these young people ready for college?’ but instead ‘Are we at the university ready for them?’”
Students also get help from Reality Changers, a nonprofit that prepares students to become first-generation college graduates.
Even though she’s still a little nervous about graduating high school this year, with this extra support, Cruz is confident in her ability to navigate the pathway into higher education and beyond.
“My hope for the future is that with this class, I’ll be able to be accepted into colleges more with this on my application saying that I have college credits from high school for college,” Cruz said. “And I also want to be able to do what I love without worrying.”
Other benefits of the partnership include free credit-bearing educational workshops for parents, and professional educator training and supplemental credentialing programs for UDA’s educators.