May 8, 2003
Trip to Yakima Valley highlights important partnerships
Last week, 75 UW faculty and staff from 30 departments took a day out of their normal schedules, piling onto buses and heading to the Yakima Valley to learn more about current UW partnerships in that region and to think about potential future partnerships.
Even a full day’s discussions could shed light on only a portion of the UW’s relationships with the people and communities that dot this agricultural valley. “ The best partnerships provide reciprocal benefits, serving the interests of both the University and the community. Some of these partnerships have existed for many years and some are more recent,” says Louis Fox, Vice Provost for Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies.
On the UW side, the benefits include research opportunities for faculty, unique educational opportunities for students and the chance to work with knowledgeable people from a diverse community unlike what is found west of the mountains. For the Valley residents, the UW brings needed skills and expertise in trying to help a community that suffers from limited participation in higher education, substandard housing and endemic poverty.
The day began at Heritage College in Toppenish, a small town located on the Yakama Indian Reservation. The “Cascade Curtain” is an all too real phenomenon to many people in the Valley, says Kathleen Ross, president and founder of Heritage. Valley residents graduate college at less than half the rate of the rest of Washington. Between 65 and 75 percent of births are paid for through Medicaid. Housing is expensive, with rental prices comparable to Seattle, but much is of poor quality. One of the Valley’s strengths is its diversity. The people of the Valley are a rich mix of cultures, with Hispanics as the largest group, but significant numbers of Native Americans, Filipino and Japanese Americans.
Research suggests that two factors will encourage Valley residents to consider higher education, Ross says — information and the promise of financial support. The federally funded GEAR UP programs work on providing information and encouragement to students, beginning in middle school, to consider college as a viable option and to begin preparing for higher education in their work habits and choice of classes.
GEAR UP in the Valley reaches 5,000 students in eight school districts through several complementary projects led by Heritage College, the UW Office of Minority Affairs and The UW College of Arts and Sciences. The UW Office of Minority Affairs has a strong presence in the Valley, with several other complementary efforts: a regional recruiter, a Native American recruiter, and the Talent Search program, which encourages middle and high school students to attend college.
Heritage College, with an open admissions policy regardless of financial need, provides a starting point for many. The partnership with the UW opens up possibilities, Ross says, by exposing students to broader vistas in higher education and by engaging them in specific projects on teams with UW students.” This is a core part of what a university should be doing,” Ross said. “It should be thinking of other parts of the state, where underrepresented students live, and from which future leadership in the state should come.”
The UW and Heritage have signed a formal partnership agreement and the UW has an official presence on the Heritage campus. The UW-Yakima Valley Community Partnership Office was created by Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies and is led by Robert Ozuna, a well-known leader from the Yakima Valley who graduated from Heritage before earning a master’s degree from Harvard University. This office works to support existing partnership projects and assists in developing new ones. UW@Heritage, a technology center created by the UW, is a state-of-the-art computer classroom linked to the statewide K-20 computer network, supports UW-community partnerships and distance learning activities
Recently, the UW-Yakima Valley Partnership worked with Heritage College to obtain a grant from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development for three related projects: a small business assistance program, job training in computer skills in the Yakama Nation, and a neighborhood revitalization effort to raise the quality of some of the housing stock. UW participants include the College of Architecture and Urban Planning and the UW Business School
Another important initiative of the office is the creation of several technology centers in the Valley. Through a grant from the Department of Education, the Yakama Nation Library now boasts a Community Technology Center, with 20 PCs and five laptops offering free computer access and low-cost classes in basic computer skills. Tribal leaders are working with the UW to develop three technology training and business centers, which they are hoping will be a major source of employment in the future.
Another technology center, scheduled to open shortly with the help of UW’s Information School, is housed in radio station KDNA in Granger, just down the road from Toppenish. Staff and students in the Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies assist with the development, installation, and programming of these centers.
Radio KDNA, founded in 1979, is the only Spanish language radio station in the state and the only fulltime educational Spanish-language public radio station in the country. The station is operated by the Northwest Community Education Center (NCEC), which has its origins in the farm worker organizing of the 1960s. This vibrant and unique community organization is a natural partner for a range of UW partnership projects. Working to fulfill their mission to educate, inform, and motivate the farm worker community to improve their lives, KDNA was a partner in and now leads a UW-initiated project, Novela Health Education, which created health education materials for non-English speaking and low-literacy populations
NCEC also has become a partner with the Business and Economic Development Program operated by the UW Business School. This program provides consulting services, in the form of student teams from the UW and Heritage College, to small businesses in distressed areas. The service provided is impressive: Michael Verchot, who directs the program, estimates that each project results in 200 to 400 hours of consulting. On the open market, such services would be worth tens of thousands of dollars. In the past three years, the program has worked with 11 different clients in the Valley, and has provided business planning seminars as well.
Senior business majors work with businesses that are trying to grow or to create new market opportunities. Amy Loftis, who is majoring in both business and anthropology, worked on a team that consulted with La Petunia II, a grocery store with a broad line of merchandise some of which the owner hoped eventually to market broadly through such national powerhouses as Starbucks. The students did extensive market research and consulted with UW faculty linked by videoconference to facilities at Heritage. Loftis and her team members developed an incremental plan that would allow the business to market its empanadas, a Latin pastry, throughout the Valley.
UW faculty and staff also attended a presentation at the Yakima Valley Farmworkers Clinic, home to a number of long term partnerships with UW Health Sciences. Mark Koday, Director of Dentistry at the Clinic, and Peter Domoto, Professor Emeritus in the School of Dentistry, described an ongoing collaboration in which UW dentists-in-training work in the clinic for a two week rotation. This work is linked to another community partner, Central Washington Family Medicine, a community-based program in family medicine (part of the UW Family Practice Residency Network). The pediatric dental residents on rotation to the Yakima Farmworker’s Clinic also work at the Family Medicine site educating physicians and patients about dental health and learning more about pediatric care in this community.
The visitors that day could view only a sample of the partnerships that link the UW to the Valley. The story of these partnerships continues to unfold as more faculty find matches between the Valley’s needs and UW resources. But the most important result of this initiative, according to Heritage College’s Ross, is its potential effect on students. “Learning about each other is the most important lesson,” she says.
As a part of work to build community-university partnerships, Educational Partnerships and Learning Technologies is completing an inventory of UW partnerships in the Yakima Valley. If you are working on a project that should be included in the inventory, contact Christine Goodheart, Executive Director, University-Community Partnerships (gchris@u.washington.edu). Faculty interested in exploring opportunities for collaboration in the Yakima Valley can contact Christine Goodheart, or Robert Ozuna (rozuna@u.washington.edu).
