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Press Releases Spring 2005
CONTACT: Cathy Summa, Director, Marketing & Communications
(831) 479-6158
casumma [at] cabrillo.edu
April 19, 2005
Cabrillo Program Receives $250,000 Irvine Foundation Grant
Watsonville Digital Bridge Academy will serve as model for other colleges
APTOS,
WDBA, which focuses on knowledge-based careers for students who wouldn’t normally see themselves in college, has reported unprecedented success.
“The grant underscores the extraordinary success of this unique program in serving a population that is usually ignored by educational institutions. All of us at Cabrillo are very proud of how much has been accomplished in a relatively short period of time,” said Cabrillo College President Brian King.
The funding will allow several California community colleges to participate in Cabrillo’s first Digital Bridge Academy Training Institute to begin this summer.
“This means that other communities whose community colleges serve high-risk students can now begin to serve them in a way that meets their needs and aspirations,” said James Diego Navarro, a 20-year veteran of the high tech industry who founded the Digital Bridge Academy in 2002.
The Academy, a semester of college-level learning designed for students with at-least a ninth grade reading level in English, aims to provide high-risk students access to high-paying jobs and prepares them to transfer to a university. More than an academic boot camp, the bridge semester is aimed at rekindling each student’s passion for learning. It offers motivational, peer support, vocational, and academic resources while teaching students about themselves and how they learn individually.
“We have developed the program to serve students and we now have to develop the capacity to meet the needs of an institution that wants to replicate this program,” Navarro said. “This grant allows us to determine what an institution needs and to test various approaches to meeting their needs, Navarro continued.”
Many Academy students didn’t complete high school, speak English as a second language and are the first in their families to attend college. In class, they reassess previous educational experiences and recognize their own and others’ learning and interaction styles. Understanding their true abilities and motivation profiles teaches them how to operate in the kind self-managing work team culture found in many modern workplaces that offer better opportunities, Navarro said. “Students gain the ability to succeed in college and in knowledge-work cultures, which are often quite different than the cultures from which they grew up.”
More than 90 students, age 18-54, have been involved in the program since its inception. Of those, more than 90 percent qualify as low income and have other challenges in their lives that have obscured their educational success.
“Many of our students have lived colorful lives,” indicated Navarro who serves as director of the program.
Despite worries about retention with this population, the rate of students completing the bridge semester has climbed from a surprising initial 83 percent to more than 90 percent.
“We keep modifying the program,” Navarro said. “It’s a research-based design so we monitor various aspects of the curriculum, support systems and the internships that we provide.” Students complete the bridge semester and go into regular Cabrillo courses while continuing an Academy seminar with their original cohort and working in the Academy office as an intern. Most have stayed active with the Academy through internships or other support peer programs. Ninety-four percent of the students who completed the Academy’s Bridge semester are still going to college.
The program was originally launched through grants from the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation. Last year, the California Chancellor’s Office provided a Vocational and Technical Education Act grant of $200,000 to support a particular focus on the 17- to 25-year-old, out-of-school population.
The new funding from the James Irvine Foundation is part of $7.5 million in new grants provided to nonprofit organizations in support of the Foundation’s mission to expand opportunity for Californians.
“California’s educational system should offer young people multiple pathways to successful careers,” said James E. Canales, Foundation president and CEO.
For more information about the WDBA contact James Diego Navaro at 831-477-5166.
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About the James Irvine Foundation
The James Irvine Foundation is a private, nonprofit grant-making foundation with offices in San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Foundation was established in 1937 by James Irvine, a native Californian who devoted most of his life to business interests in San Francisco and the development of his 110,000-acre ranch in Southern California, which was among the largest privately owned land holdings in the state. With current assets of more than $1.5 billion, the Foundation expects to make grants of $61 million in 2005 for the people of California. For more information about the Foundation, go to www.irvine.org or call (415)777-2244.
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