Profiles of Engagement:
Engaged Scholarship at Work at Centro Latino

Helping her students to sound out a word, write their name, or just convince them that they could still learn after so many years reminded UCLA student Michelle Smith Meza of a promise she had made to herself as a child.

"I told myself that if I ever was in the position to help other people, I would," she said.

For Robert Rodriguez, the son of Mexican immigrants, the satisfaction of teaching literacy came from knowing his efforts would yield concrete results.

"I know how much these skills mean to my students," he said.

Since 1991, Centro Latino de Educación Popular has eased the transition into America for thousands of Central American and Mexican immigrants by providing access to free educational resources. For Smith Meza and Rodriguez, the chance to be a part of that process as summer interns was just as transformative.

"To see students come alive with excitement as they learn is thrilling," said Smith Meza. "I feel like I'm lucky to be here."

More Than a Feel-Good Summer

But the summer at Centro Latino was more than a chance for real-world experience. The internship was tied directly to UCLA's mission of engaged scholarship -- a commitment to fostering meaningful relationships between the university and its neighboring communities.

One component of engaged scholarship involves training UCLA students to become civic-minded. That means providing experiences in the community that instill the value of civic engagement. The students were selected for the internships by Dr. Kathy O'Byrne, director of UCLA's Center for Community Learning.

The university also practices engaged scholaship by sharing its teaching and research resources with greater Los Angeles. The university's Center for Community Partnerships makes this possible by supporting and enabling partnerships between UCLA faculty and local non-profit organizations to work on specific projects for the public good.

In the case of Centro Latino, UCLA professor Dr. Concepcion Valadez, an expert in bilingual education and language acquisition, helped design a computer literacy program designed to teach the non-profit's Spanish-speaking students how to read and write in Spanish. Valadez helped Centro Latino launch the program, which is called ¡LEAMOS!, is is currently working on a comprehensive evaluation.

A Self-Sufficient Program

The strength of ¡LEAMOS! is that it drasticaly reduces costs associated with teaching, said Melanie Stephens, Executive Director of Centro Latino. Instead of employing a language specialist to lead students through hours of repetition, ¡LEAMOS! does the heavy lifting.

The program is broken up into 43 individual lessons. Students enroll in morning or evening classes, supervised by a teaching intern, and work through each lesson at their own pace.

Even though the program is designed for independent study, some of the students were not ready to work on their own. So, teaching interns played a vital role. Five days a week, interns Smith Meza and Rodriguez pitched in with everything from pointing out how to hold a pencil to helping them turn on the computer.

"Most [students] have never had much encouragement," added Smith Meza, pictured below.

Virtually all of the students grew up in extreme poverty. Many had to drop out of school at a young age. Some never went to school at all.

"The two biggest motivations you hear from the students are that they want to help their children with their schoolwork, and they want them to have a better life than they had," Stephens said, adding that 80 percent of all students complete the ¡LEAMOS! program.

To keep students focused, Rodriguez used an assortment of tricks. One of his favorites was to show students how to breakdown a word into parts, sound out each part, then put the parts together.

Rodriguez also devoted the last ten minutes of each class to dictation.

"Nobody raises their hands to volunteer," he said. "But when someone finally does, and gets it right, everyone claps their hands and celebrates."

Making a Difference

¡LEAMOS! has been so successful at Centro Latino that the program is now being used in about 30 other libraries, adult education centers and non-profit organizations.

"We are thrilled with the directions things have gone," said Stephens, pictured near the top of the article with interns Smith Meza and Rodriguez.

For UCLA, the internships were also a success. By enabling the students to take part in the ¡LEAMOS! project, the value of civic engagement hit home -- so much so that both Smith Meza and Rodriguez are preparing for careers in community involvement.