Program paves the way to graduation and great futures

By Judy Lin

When the Academic Advancement Program (AAP) celebrated its 35th anniversary at Royce Hall last week, Ramona Cortés Garza was thinking about her own history at UCLA. The eldest daughter of Mexican immigrants, she was the first in her family to go to college. Her father was a tool and die maker who also worked at a car wash; her mother cared for their four children, plus some of the neighborhood kids.

Making it through UCLA wasn't easy. Through AAP, which helps students from populations historically underserved by higher education, she received tutoring for her demanding coursework as a math and computer science major. But when she hit a rough spot and saw her grades fall, AAP counselors helped her see that what she really wanted to do was find a major she felt passionate about: she switched to sociology, and her grades soared.

Today, Cortés Garza, with a master's degree in public administration, is the executive director of state relations in UCLA’s Government and Community Relations. She is one of 10 staff and faculty who received a Distinguished Alumni Award during AAP’s gala anniversary celebration on Feb. 28 at Royce Hall. Some 35 alumni will be so honored.

"I wouldn't have made it without AAP," she said. "AAP's services were available to engage students like myself and to diversify the campus. You needed a place where you could see people like yourself."

AAP has offered more than 6,000 undergraduates tutoring, mentoring, workshops and summer programs to ensure students’ academic success, increase their ranks in graduate and professional schools, and develop their leadership skills.

UCLA Law Professor Devon Carbado, who also was honored as a distinguished alumnus, credits AAP for making a difference in his life. The offspring of working-class immigrant parents from the Caribbean and England, Carbado is one of the country's most respected critical race theorists, a prolific author and the recipient of numerous teaching awards. In the 1980s, he was a transfer student from West Los Angeles Community College trying to determine his direction in life.

"AAP helped to shape who I am … providing a sense of intellectual and social community," Carbado said. "It facilitated my integration into the broader UCLA community" and helped him find his calling in academia. He graduated with a UCLA degree in history and went on to Harvard Law School.

Manuel Baldenegro was involved with AAP when he helped found the Campus Retention Committee, which is a coalition of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (MEChA), the African Student Union and other student groups. Retention was a personal issue to Baldenegro, having almost dropped out of college. "I had to work full-time as well as go to school full-time," he recalled. "After my second year it was too much," and he left UCLA. He worked in the stockroom of a Westwood grocery store where AAP’s then-director, Alfred Herrera, would run into him. "Alfred would always say, 'When are you going to come back? We want you to come back and finish.' So I did go back.

"AAP, for me, was a great thing," said Baldenegro, who completed his degree in history. He now serves as director of advocacy programs in Government and Community Relations and also received an AAP Alumni Award. "I have a lot of good memories of people there who were very helpful to us as students, very encouraging."

That AAP continues in its mission is essential, said Cortés Garza. "They're reaching out to students like me. I look back at myself and think, 'Gosh, I wouldn’t be able to own a car or a house or do any of this if it weren’t for doors that opened and the people who opened those doors.'"