The Desert Sun
by Dennis A. Britton
February 27, 2008

 

CVEP Wins Key College Grant
Planning funds will help valley's underserved youths obtain degrees

The Coachella Valley Economic Partnership on Tuesday received a one-year, $210,000 planning grant to establish a college scholarship program that could end up providing $10 million in grants over a decade.

Pathways to Success, which aims to help the valley's underserved students achieve college degrees via scholarships and support services, received the grant from the College Access Foundation of (California).

"The core underpinning of the Coachella Valley Economic Partnership is (to help create) an educated and skilled labor force," said Jim Ferguson, chairman of its board. "That presupposes our best and brightest going to college and preferably going to college in the Coachella Valley."

After the planning phase of Pathways to Success is completed, the College Access Foundation will consider providing $1 million a year for 10 years.

John Soulliere, executive director of the partnership, called the grant "historic on many levels."

"Never before has an outside foundation focused on one region and offered such a dramatic level of assistance to change college-going behavior," he said.

An integral part of CVEP's mission has been to help diversify the Coachella Valley economy and to meet its work-force educational needs specifically in the health care, multimedia and film, and technology industries.

"If we are to capture and sustain those knowledge-based industries, we must have a college-educated work force," said Terry L. Green, who developed Pathways to Success.

Jay Sherwin, vice president of programs at the College Access Foundation, said the Coachella Valley was chosen for its first "place-based initiative" because "we have been extremely impressed with the spirit of collaboration there."

He said the grant will help CVEP "establish guidelines and create structures for a scholarship program that would provide both financial aid and essential academic and social support to low-income and first-generation college-goers."

Green, who for 18 years was associated with College of the Desert and for 13 years at UC Riverside's Palm Desert Graduate Center, will be assisted in the project by Ernesto Rios, a graduate of Coachella Valley High School, COD, UCLA and UCR's Palm Desert Graduate Center.

Green, a member of CVEP since it began, was also instrumental in developing CVEP's Career Pathways Initiative that the James Irvine Foundation funded to help develop the local work force.

Education key to growth

John E. Husing, president of Economics & Politics Inc. and who created an economic report card for the Coachella Valley seven years ago, has said the valley has a less-educated work force primarily working in tourism, construction and retail jobs that pay less than $30,000 a year.

Husing said a poorly educated work force hampers growth. He said 40 percent of valley firms said their greatest challenge was a limited work force and more than 65 percent said new hires lacked basic skills.

Soulliere said the College Access Foundation targeted the Coachella Valley as an area "capable of coming together to link education, business and philanthropy toward the common goal of sending more students to and through both two-year and four-year colleges."

CVEP has earlier received grants from the Irvine Foundation and the Ford Motor Company Fund, in addition to support from the Desert Healthcare Foundation.

The College Access Foundation, which has an endowment of about $485 million, will review progress on the $210,000 planning grant in November, Sherwin said.

CVEP received the entire $210,000 Tuesday.

Sherwin said the foundation found the Coachella Valley to be "one of the best areas around the state to lay the groundwork" to build educational success.

In February, the foundation awarded a $145,000 grant to the Catch The Dream program, a collaborative project of the Coachella Valley Unified School District, Coachella Valley High School and the Coachella Valley Education Foundation.

It was the third grant to Catch The Dream, which helps create a college-going culture to increase the number of students going on to four-year colleges and universities. In May 2006, it received $82,500 and, in September 2007, it was awarded $155,000.

Seven years ago, 16 percent of Coachella Valley High School graduates went on to four-year colleges. In 2007, that climbed to 23 percent, according to the College Access Foundation.