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Occidental Wins Silver Medal For Its School Outreach Programs
Occidental College has been awarded a silver medal from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) for its innovative network of partnerships with local schools in northeast Los Angeles.
The silver medal is one of only three awards presented this year in the “School and College Partnerships” category of CASE’s 2001 Circle of Excellence Awards program. Medals in this prestigious national competition are awarded for “outstanding partnership programs between a postsecondary institution and a elementary, middle, or high school that has produced well-documented, conclusive results."
Based in Washington, D.C., CASE is one of the largest non-profit education associations in the world, with more than 3,000 member colleges, universities, and independent elementary and secondary schools in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and 42 other countries.
Oxy's silver medal was awarded not for a single program with a single school, but for the full range of current partnership programs that serve more than 900 students at 16 elementary, middle and high schools in LA Unified Local Districts E and F that include Eagle Rock, Highland Park, Lincoln Heights and Glassell Park.
These programs include Upward Bound and GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), which help first-generation, low-income middle and high school students to prepare for college; L.A. Bridges, a city-funded middle school anti-gang program; Teachers + Occidental = Partnership in Science (TOPS), a mobile high school science education and teacher training program; and seven student-run programs funded and coordinated by the Center for Volunteerism and Community Service.
“Occidental is committed to the establishment of substantive partnerships with our communities and schools -- partnerships that are responsive to the needs of those living within LA's neighborhoods, and that are designed to create meaningful opportunities for community-based learning for our students,” said David Roth, deputy to the president for community and government relations.
“This recognition comes at an important point in the life of the College, as we redouble our efforts to create progressive partnerships that can help to build and empower Los Angeles' diverse communities,” Roth said.
This year's gold medal was awarded to MIT's Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research for its science education program. The bronze medal went to Duke University’s Retiree Outreach-DURO program.