(NAME-MCE) CAMP Program PCC Rock Creek Campus

[Anselmo Villanueva]

For more information, contact:

Teresa Alonso 503.614.7443  teresa.alonso1 at pcc.edu
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College struggles to give away $1.5 million in aid Education

PCC's Rock Creek campus offers help for migrant students to attend
college, but few seek it

Monday, June 18, 2007
MELISSA NAVAS

ROCK CREEK -- Portland Community College's Rock Creek campus is
struggling to find enough applicants to fill a program that is one of
few federal efforts nationwide to help migrant students attend
college.

The $1.5 million U.S. Department of Education grant helps PCC Rock
Creek's College Assistance Migrant Program provide financial aid,
tutoring and mentoring services to seasonal and migrant farmworkers
and their children -- and encourages them to keep pursuing their
educations beyond community college. The campus received the grant
last October.

Local articles and radio ads geared toward Latinos in the Portland
area have produced little interest in signing up for the second year
of the program, starting this fall.

"I have all these resources and I'm excited to give them out, but I
just need people to fill out applications and turn them in," said
program director Teresa Alonso, fingering a short stack of student
applications representing a fraction of the 35 freshmen she can accept
for CAMP's fall term.

It's unclear why more students haven't applied. But one requirement is
that students be documented, which could prevent some from qualifying,
Alonso said, though she couldn't estimate how many.

Although parents' legal status is not considered relevant, some
students may be afraid to apply if their parents are undocumented, she
added. Even before a recent immigration raid at the Fresh Del Monte
Produce Inc. plant in Portland, applications were only trickling in.
Alonso said she is unsure how the raids might affect applications.

College can be daunting for migrant or seasonal farmworker students
who may have language barriers and moved frequently. Lack of
consistency can sink grades. Families often have low incomes, she
said.

"CAMP comes in as kind of a savior, as an opportunity for them," said
Alonso, who was once a migrant student herself.

Lisa Ramirez, who oversees the program for the U.S. Department of
Education, says CAMP is important because it targets Latino students,
who have high dropout rates.

"We want all students to be successful," she said. "With migrant and
seasonal farmworkers, they just have extra obstacles stacked up
against them, so we want to give them the tools that they need."

Mariela Lopez is one of six PCC students picked for the program this
past school year who are putting those tools to use.

Lopez, 19, a native of Michoacan, Mexico, moved to Forest Grove in
2000. Her father works in fruit crops.

"I didn't really know the importance of education," said Lopez, who
gave up studying in high school to cut class. "My grades were very
bad."

When her principal threatened to call her parents, Lopez had an
awakening. She thought of her parents, who were working more than 15
hours a day at times and earning a combined $19,000 a year. She would
get an education for them, she decided.

Now she is the first in her family to go to college.

After a two-year hiatus on campus, PCC Rock Creek's program received
the five-year federal grant. Until 2005, the college assisted migrant
students in a joint program with Salem's Chemeketa Community College.
Now PCC has its own program.

PCC was one of eight colleges in the nation to be awarded the
competitive grant last year. There are 42 CAMP programs across the
country. Oregon State University and Chemeketa also offer it, and
Columbia Gorge Community College will select two students for PCC's
program.

The program awards scholarships for tuition and stipends for books,
transportation and $50 monthly for personal use. Total aid varies
depending on financial need. Students also get to tour four-year
universities and receive an emergency fund to pay for health care or
other obstacles that could prevent a student from staying in college.

If it weren't for CAMP, navigating through college would been tougher
for Jesus Andrade, 19. The mechanical engineering major studied at the
Instituto Tecnologico de Morelia in the state of Michoacan before
coming to Oregon last summer to pick blueberries. His family asked him
to stay.

The move was rough for Andrade, who learned English in the past 10 months.

"Sometimes I feel like I just want to go back because I had begun with
a career," he says of his studies in Mexico. "And now I'm just
learning English."

Today, he has above a 3.0 grade point average, as do other CAMP
students such as Lopez.

Now that Lopez is in college, she can't imagine any other path.

"College is very important," says Lopez, who will study at a
university in Rome this summer. "(It) has given me a lot of
opportunities. (It) has shown me a different world."

Melissa Navas: 503-294-5956; melissanavas at news.oregonian.com Navas:
503-294-5956; melissanavas at news.oregonian.com