Middle school students in Trinity County will discover how going to college can open careers to them. High school students from Sacramento County will learn how to apply for financial aid. And others never before outside of their home counties in California's remote north will visit one of the world's top universities.

They are among the students that the University of California, Davis, is helping with nearly $15 million in new federal grants.

The grants are from the U.S. Department of Education, and UC Davis is using them to expand its ongoing efforts to prepare more students for higher education and encourage high schools to provide courses to meet university admission requirements.

The largest grant, totaling $12.6 million over seven years, is a matching grant from GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs). It leverages contributions from private foundations and school districts already supporting projects in Northern California.

The Educational Talent Search program at UC Davis -- already serving 1,200 students in Sacramento, Solano, Yolo, Shasta and Siskiyou counties -- is using an additional grant of $2.3 million over five years to serve 1,000 more students in six high schools in north and south Sacramento County. ETS works with low-income or at-risk students with the potential to succeed in higher education; the program provides individual counseling and advising, college field trips and college information sessions.

GEAR UP

The new UC Davis GEAR UP is assuming responsibilities for the services previously offered to 1,200 students through Shasta Community College and is adding 1,800 students in Trinity and Tehama counties. In Shasta and Siskiyou counties, only 16 percent of students have at least one parent who has completed a bachelor's degree. More than 75 percent of entering freshmen at Shasta Community College must take remedial English and math courses.

Also, because of the region's geography, students have little exposure to colleges and universities. And when students make it to college, they usually live too far to commute, thus requiring the added expense of living near school.

With the grant money, UC Davis GEAR UP will adopt one sixth-grade and one seventh-grade cohort from each of 10 middle schools in Tehama, Trinity, Shasta and Siskiyou counties and follow the cohorts through 10 high schools and into college. It will provide students and their families with services and opportunities to help students prepare for college and careers beyond. The support will include mentoring, counseling, tutoring and summer programs to foster success in higher-level math and other college preparatory courses. Information about college and financial aid options will also be provided.

The GEAR UP grant will also help improve teaching and course offerings. For example, Principal Emmett Koerperich of West Valley High School in Cottonwood (Shasta County) said the grant will help his school design math classes to bridge the gap between existing math courses and University of California and California State University admission standards.

Lianne Richelieu-Boren, a fifth-generation native of Redding (Shasta County) and a 1985 graduate of UC Davis, oversees the Northern California programs as director of College OPTIONS at UC Davis. "We have so many kids who graduate with all the courses but one," she said. "That's really just a systemic breakdown."

Koerperich said the funding will also provide teacher training for an English curriculum change from British literature to expository reading and writing.

GEAR UP college trips are responsible for motivating students, the principal said. "A lot of the kids don't get out of the county," he said. "They come back, and the conversations are pretty impressive: They're now interested in going to college."

With $3 million in support from the McConnell Foundation of Redding and in partnership with Shasta Community College, GEAR UP services are being shared in all schools in the region covering more than 14,000 square miles.

The program hired a full-time director in December. In January, the program began holding workshops for sixth- and seventh-grade students, meeting with parents and teachers, and analyzing performance data for algebra and English classes.

The Northern California program expands on the work of College OPTIONS, a UC Davis-led partnership of 13 secondary, post-secondary and private institutions that works to strengthen the college-going culture in Shasta and Siskiyou counties.

Educational Talent Search

Sacramento County schools new to Educational Talent Search this academic year are Cordova, Encina Preparatory, Florin, Foothill, Grant Union and Luther Burbank high schools.

Sam Blanco, director of ETS programs for UC Davis, said the program reached out to new areas where low percentages of students go on to higher education. The program may provide tutoring services in addition to workshops that familiarize students with the different higher education systems in California, help with college and financial aid applications, and build study and life skills.

Sandra Sandoval credits the program with helping her find her way from Douglass Middle School in Woodland to a UC Davis bachelor's degree in community and regional development in 2008. "The staff really got to know me and my family and my circumstances and guided me," she said. "I didn't even know what the SATs were until they guided me through that."

Sandoval, who now works with special needs children at Willett Elementary School in Davis and plans to pursue a master's degree and education credential, said the ETS program fostered her "desire and sense of duty to help people."

College Opportunity Programs at UC Davis

UC Davis serve more than 25,000 students and 44 schools through UC-sponsored college preparation programs in 11 Northern California counties. Five programs -- GEAR UP, Educational Talent Search, Upward Bound, Early Academic Outreach Program and College OPTIONS -- help students learn about college and career opportunities while assisting schools to offer more rigorous high school curriculums that align with UC and CSU admission requirements.

About UC Davis

For more than 100 years, UC Davis has engaged in teaching, research and public service that matter to California and transform the world. Located close to the state capital, UC Davis has more than 32,000 students, more than 2,500 faculty and more than 21,000 staff, an annual research budget that exceeds $684 million, a comprehensive health system and 13 specialized research centers. The university offers interdisciplinary graduate study and more than 100 undergraduate majors in four colleges - Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, Engineering, and Letters and Science. It also houses six professional schools - Education, Law, Management, Medicine, Veterinary Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing.

Source: University of California--Davis