Students do research for the public good

When Corina McIntyre signed up to become a California JusticeCorps student volunteer in 2011 through the UCLA Center for Community Learning, she was ready to hit the ground running.

 

“I just thought it was a fantastic opportunity to work with low-income people who are in crisis and in need of assistance,” recalled McIntyre, a philosophy major. Assigned to the Van Nuys Self-Help Legal Access Center, she helped people fill out legal paperwork to get a divorce or establish paternity. Litigants seek assistance because they can’t afford an attorney and must represent themselves in family court.

But she soon found out that, while as many as 100 people a day came to the center to start the multi-step process, not everyone made it to the finish line. Although the staff recognized the problem, no one had figured out why some people fell through the cracks and never returned.

No one, that is, until McIntyre received a scholarship in 2012 from the Astin Civic Engagement Program, run by the Center for Community Learning. That gave her the opportunity to methodically dig out answers to the legal center’s vexing problem, with guidance from a faculty member and staff attorney and financial support from the UCLA program.

 

Now in its fourth year, the Astin Civic Engagement Program is unusual for its approach in combining civic engagement with high-quality research to benefit students, community organizations and the public. Commitment to public service is a top priority at UCLA, said Center for Community Learning director Kathy O’Byrne, “This is where UCLA students can engage in hands-on, on-the-ground work to improve the quality of life for the diverse communities of L.A. It’s going places you would not have otherwise gone. It’s meeting people you would not have otherwise met.”

Created with support from Chancellor Gene Block and funding from the UCLA Foundation, the program is named for Helen and Alexander Astin, professors emeriti in education whose work in higher education and engaged scholarship is well-known.

 

Over three quarters, scholars — chosen from applicants who are UCLA seniors with a solid track record of participation in the community — take a course in civic engagement, intern at a community organization and then delve into a research project that they have conceptualized and set up.

“These are not research projects where you write a paper that gets thrown on a shelf or turned in for a grade,” said O’Byrne, who supervises the program with Douglas Barrera, assistant director. “These projects address existing problems and make change happen. All of these students wear their optimistic, hopeful, action-oriented, civic engagement, change-maker hat.”

In applying for the program, students choose the community-based organization they will partner with — many are already volunteers there — as well as the research question they will work on, Barrera explained.

For undergrads, who are more accustomed to coming up with answers than questions, this is a new way of thinking, O’Byrne said. “When you turn the tables on them and ask, ‘Tell me what you care about and who you really are,’ it’s challenging for them.”

Students selected to become scholars earn academic credit and a $6,000 scholarship. With the help of their faculty mentor and staff at the community organization, they complete a high-quality, data-driven research project.

McIntyre’s research project — to survey litigants who came to the self-help center to file petitions for divorce or paternity about why they failed to complete the process — uncovered a series of stumbling blocks, misunderstandings and missed opportunities.

 

Some people, for example, didn’t realize they had to file the forms they were given with the court; many stopped trying after the court denied them waivers of the $395 filing fee, unaware that the center could assist them with resubmitting their requests. Others failed to return to the center because they couldn’t serve the opposing party, another block the center could have helped them overcome.

“I found out that 30 percent of those who didn’t complete the process incorrectly believed their cases were moving forward,” McIntyre said. The center is now working on measures to better educate litigants about the process, revamp volunteer training and track litigants’ progress.

McIntyre valued her Astin experience so much that she decided after graduating from UCLA in 2012 to continue volunteering at the center while simultaneously interning at the Santa Barbara County Public Defender’s Office and preparing to apply for law school. With the help of other volunteers and UCLA service-learning students, she is currently revising the center’s handouts and creating a simple checklist for litigants to follow. And she’s training new service learning volunteers, mostly undergraduates from UCLA.

“It’s been such a rewarding experience,” said McIntyre, who was mentored by assistant professor Robert Chao Romero of Chicana/o studies and Roberta Stovitz, a staff attorney at the legal center.

On Wednesday, May 29, six of this year’s Astin Civic Engagement Scholars will present the results of their research projects at a poster session. To honor their achievements, their posters will be on display at Powell Library.

“It’s been an amazing experience,” said Cynthia Carvajal, a graduating senior who's been working with undocumented students at her former high school in El Sereno to track their attitudes about going to college in light of changes in legislation and President Obama’s deferred-action directive.

Carvajal, a political science and Chicano/a studies major, found that, while the undocumented high school students she surveyed were interested in going to college, they had little to no knowledge about AB540 or the California Dream Act. “Some of them had no idea they could apply for financial aid or pay in-state tuition,” said Carvajal, who was undocumented herself until just before she graduated from high school.

To better prepare them for college, Carvajal taught seven after-school seminars covering the history of immigration, President Obama’s directive, related legislation and other topics. Surveyed after they completed the seminars, the undocumented students said they felt much more confident about the possibility of going to college.

Headed soon to Columbia University to work toward a master’s degree in educational policy and social analysis, Carvajal is hoping to share her findings with high school counselors and teachers and to stress the need to give undocumented students more specific information to support their college-going ambitions. “Although there are 26,000 undocumented students graduating each year from California, only 2 percent to 7 percent will attend some form of college,” she said.

Alma Nuñez, another graduating senior and Astin scholar, also returned to her high school for her research. She observed a popular and successful math teacher daily for two months as he introduced 30 ninth-graders to Algebra I concepts. "He brings math to life,” said Nuñez, by using real-life examples to illustrate math problems and connecting math to their own neighborhood experiences.

 

He also institutes peer-to-peer teaching in the classroom. “When it came time for students to start doing their own work, the teacher would encourage students to walk around and talk to each other and share their strategies” for solving problems. “They responded really well to it.  It gave them a sense of independence, empowerment and responsibility.”

 

The same could be said of the Astin program’s effect on scholars.

 

Said O’Byrne, “It’s such a great educational opportunity for the student who gets the benefit of knowledge from both sides — from faculty mentors and from their community partners… people who have worked on certain issues in Los Angeles, like homelessness and poverty, for their entire careers.”
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The research showcase will be held Wednesday, May 29, from 4-6 p.m. at the Faculty Center. It is open to the public.