Program recruits youth

By Chan Tran
Daily Forty-Niner

The University Outreach and School Relations program provides primary recruitment of middle school to community college students and public relations for Cal State Long Beach.

"This involves making sure that CSULB continues to be a school which invites talented and diverse students to our campus," said Valerie Bordeaux, director of University Outreach and School Relations.

The major components of the outreach recruitment program continues to bring awareness to counselors, students and advisers from outside schools ranging from kindergarten to community college.

Among the components are early outreach (K-8 students), high school outreach (9-12 students) and transfer outreach, which deals with community college transfer students.

"We're building and establishing relationships with respected and diverse individuals," Bordeaux said.

"What we do is very eclectic and very broad base, so it's important to show everything that CSULB has to offer, which includes on and off campus school relations."

The campus has become popular because of the collaborative effort of all officials and faculty, Bordeaux said.

This involves "everybody from the campus police to the student services staff, who provide a safe and attractive environment for students," she said. "Our scope is nationwide at this point."

CSULB President Robert Maxson, in a previous interview regarding the increase of enrollment for fall 2000, corroborated Bordeaux's statement.

"Our campus has become one of the 'in' places to go," he said.

Outreach will continue to evolve in programs and services to increase "the representation of target students at the University."

The program will try to bring awareness to students as young as kindergarten level by taking them onto college campus and making them aware of how college might feel.

"It's important to plant the seed early," Bordeaux said. "Outreach used to go to high school students beginning with ninth graders but it will eventually evolve to the point of us going to kindergarten students.

We want to bring parents and students on campus tours, show to them people from college and information on different programs."

In addition, Outreach also provides publications about recruitment, support and is responsible for the President's Scholar program, Bordeaux said.

The future trends for the outreach program involve E-relations, which deal with Internet communications via e-mail.

"We're going to deal with more sophisticated communications and reach a large amount of students through the Internet," Bordeaux said.