Digital Bridge Academy Accelerates College Vision

Hewletts $1M Grant boosts expansion of landmark program

learning, leadership and technology to prepare them for a team presentation at the end of the semester related to a community research project of their choosing. Andrew Martinez, 27, struggled in middle school and high school and certainly wasnt focused on college or a career when he landed in the first WDBA cohort in 2003. His family had moved from Texas to Sweden where he lived for 10 years and he fell in with the wrong crowd. He eventually landed in Watsonville where his father had once lived and he still had family. He couldnt concentrate in school, suffered from attention deficit disorder and struggled to find his way. I had exhausted my resources, Martinez, 27, recalled. I had to create my own future and way here. Its a tough thing to do in the States because there are so many traps for a young guy. In Digital Bridge, Martinez learned to see a bigger vision for himself and his community. It introduces you to things that youre going to do later on, grant writing, understanding systems, how things work, how everythings interconnected. Martinez said. It shows you a blueprint of how society works. Martinez, went on to work in the Cabrillo Learning Center, as well as at a private group youth home and as a group supervisor for Santa Cruz County. He transferred this fall to California State University Monterey Bay where he is studying for a bachelors degree in Collaborative Health and Human Services. He plans to go on to earn a masters degree and work as a counselor. About 175 students have completed the Bridge semester at Cabrillo. The majority of students in those cohorts, up to 82 percent in some quarters, went on to enroll full-time. The phenomenal success rate of the program has drawn widespread praise. The lowest performing cohort of students successfully passed their courses at a rate of 10 percent higher than the general Cabrillo student population, and some cohorts surpassed other Cabrillo students in passing courses by 30 percent or more.

Andres Medina

Andres Medina, 24, who enrolled in DBA in 2005, will be the first in his family to complete college. I went from Cs and Ds in high school to being an A student after one semester, he said. I realized I can do whatever I want to do when I set my mind to it. Medina, who represents Watsonville students on the Cabrillo College Student Senate, plans to transfer to a four-year college and eventually get a degree in counseling.

Andrew Martinez

n researching what it might take for an unlikely population of at-risk adults to succeed in college, Cabrillo College instructor Diego James Navarro realized it would not be traditionally

slow, remedial courses, but rather a curriculum of accelerated immersion that was relevant to students complex lives. He conducted dozens of interviews with community service providers, educators and students, then in 2003 founded the Digital Bridge Academy, which introduces collegelevel curriculum to an adult population that is not traditionally college-bound. The academy is for all students who are under-prepared and who would not be thinking of college otherwise. Students, who range in age from 17 to 55, are mostly from low-income backgrounds, have migrant parents and are the first in their families to attend college. These kinds of students are not being encouraged to go to college, Navarro said. Theyre very bright, but we have to make sure education is relevant to their lives and to the stage where they are in their lives. In an initial bridge semester, students are immersed in language acquisition, research skills and analysis. They learn about styles of

My life is so different now. Diego always taught us to work on our will to succeed, to listen, to be on time. He told us that if you dont know what youre doing, you cant get what you want. Those are real life lessons.
Andres Medina

Currently funded by the Hewlett Foundation, National Science Foundation and the James Irvine Foundation, the program has garnered more than $3 million in funding in the last five years, including a $1 million Hewlett Foundation gift this year to replicate the program at community colleges throughout the state. It is the largest gift of its kind received by the Cabrillo College Foundation. Navarro spent much of this last summer training instructors from other colleges in the philosophy of the program. The program serves a 50-student cohort each year. In three years, the goal is to reach 375 students at Cabrillo through both the Watsonville and Aptos campuses and to scale the program statewide by the summer of 2010, Navarro said.