Rayanna Sandoval grew up on the Sycuan Reservation in East County and will be a senior at Steele Canyon High School in Spring Valley this fall. She knows what she wants for her future.
"Being Native American especially and living on a reservation, I just want to go to college," she said. "It’s just in me to want to go to college and come back and apply whatever I learn in college to my reservation."
But she said that's not the case with all of her friends on the reservation.
"College is looked at as maybe too expensive or people are just done with school, and that’s really not how it should be," Rayanna said.
A new program aims to change that. UC San Diego Extension is launching a partnership with the Sycuan and Viejas tribes to provide college preparation classes. Students will take classes and go on trips to places where they can learn science firsthand, including the Biosphere 2 in Tucson, Arizona.
Gabriel TeSam, a Viejas Tribal Council member, said "a lack of enthusiasm for college" exists on his reservation.
"I think we kind of got stagnant and were happy where we were," he said. "We didn’t want to look to better ourselves."
TeSam didn’t go to college himself but is hoping the chance to travel through UCSD Extension will motivate Viejas students.
"It goes to show college isn’t just a lot of studying, hard tests. There’s fun things you can do," he said. "You can go out and find an interesting way to study, do experiments."
Going to college is important for the future of his tribe because it draws in new perspectives, he said.
"Not only for the younger kids, they get to see and experience these things, but maybe their parents or someone else might say, ‘Hey, look what my kid is doing,’ and realize that they may be able to continue their education as well," TeSam said.
Two-Year College Degrees
Here is the ethnic or racial makeup of young adults, ages 25 to 34, with two-year college degrees:
Asian: 60%
White: 44%
Black: 28%
Native Americans: 24%
Latino: 20%
Total: 39%
Source: 2013 U.S. Census Data
UCSD Undergraduates
Here is the ethnic or racial makeup of the 2014 undergraduates at the University of California, San Diego:
Asian: 45%
White: 22%
Latino: 16%
Black: 2%
Native American: 0.4%
Source: UC San Diego
Twenty-four percent of Native Americans ages 25 to 34 have at least a two-year college degree, according to U.S. Census Data from 2013. That’s compared to 39 percent of all young adults.
Less than 0.5 percent of UCSD undergraduates were Native American last fall, according to university data.
Increasing that number is one of the goals of this initiative, said Ed Abeyta, assistant dean of community engagement for UCSD Extension.
"We don’t just want to be the campus on the hill," Abeyta said. "Instead, we want to be able to showcase our abilities to reach out and celebrate the cultural richness and heritage of our community."
UCSD Extension also partners with other groups, including the college prep program Reality Changers in City Heights, to further broaden its reach.
"UCSD at times has not been open and engaged, and for us to be recruiting and inspiring the next generation of leaders this is where that pre-engagement, that hands-on approach to science and research, occurs," Abeyta said.
This summer, eight students are visiting Biosphere 2, while others head to Washington, D.C., and Hawaii. The one-week program costs $2,600 and uses no state funding. Students’ trips are paid for with a combination of grants, money from the Viejas and Sycuan tribes, and the students themselves.
Next year, all of the Viejas and Sycuan high school students will get the chance to go on a summer program.
Bringing these students to UC San Diego benefits the university as well, Abeyta said.
"We have gained a lot of knowledge just in our short time with Sycuan and Viejas," he said. "Their perspective has been important because it gives us an insight to a different view and lens into science."
Ivan Barrett is part of the program and lives on the Viejas reservation. He will start high school this fall and wants to be a football star in college, but he is also excited to do hands-on science at Biosphere 2.
"We go in different biomes like the rainforest and ocean biomes, and we collect samples from the reef and trees and we analyze them into the labs," Ivan said.
For Rayanna from the Viejas reservation, she will be going to Hawaii through the UCSD Extension program. She said she has to take advantage it.
"My community nowadays, I’m given so many opportunities, for example this UCSD Extension program, that my parents, my grandparents were not given," Rayanna said. "I feel like every opportunity that’s there I should immediately take it."
