Projects > University of California, Santa Cruz


UC Santa Cruz is part of the 10-campus University of California system. The Santa Cruz campus has a tradition of being community-oriented and committed to diverse faculty, students and ideas. The campus has multiple connections to community-based organizations, school districts and other partners throughout the Central Coast and Bay Area regions.
 
The project at UC Santa Cruz, titled "Building Partnerships to Improve Social, Economic, and Educational Outcomes in Communities across California and the Nation," focuses on strengthening University-community partnerships at UCSC that are oriented toward educational equity. The effort and the partnerships are being advanced by two campus organizations that each work on educational equity issues from different, yet complementary angles, both involving community partnerships: the Center for Justice, Tolerance, and Community (CJTC) and the Bridging Multiple Worlds Alliance (BMWA).
 
Under the Engaged Institutions grant, CJTC is strengthening its partnerships with three community-based organizations, providing them with research, data analysis, and capacity building resources on an ongoing basis. The community organizations include the Live Oak Resource Center, Communities Organized for Relational Power in Action, and Bay Area Environmental Health Collaborative. CJTC also convenes public events on issues relating to educational equity. For example, the Center brought Connie Rice and Bob Moses to speak on campus in Spring 2006.
 
BMWA is using the grant resources to expand its research about pathways to success in college and further develop its partnership with the Cabrillo College Advancement Program. The faculty director of the center is also highly involved in system-wide educational policy through the University of California Office of the President's P-20 initiative-an effort to align statewide curriculum from preschool to graduate school.