Low-income students see success in CSin3 program
Source: Joe Rodriguez
Alonzo Mendoza and other students practice pitching themselves to potential employers during a workshop at California State University, Monterey Bay near Monterey Friday. Mendoza is one of the students taking part in CSin3, a college program that guides kids from farm worker and working class families to a degree in computer science in only three years. Patrick Tehan
Three years ago, nobody was brash enough to tell Monterey philanthropist Andy Matsui that he was asking for a miracle. After all, he had given millions in college scholarship money to low-income farm boys and girls in Steinbeck Country, and nobody wanted to say no to the kindly man with the fat checkbook.
“I had my own doubts,” said Sathya Narayanan, a computer science professor at Cal State Monterey Bay. “But it turned out it was not the complete pipe dream as some people said.”
What Matsui, an orchid grower who founded a nursery chain bearing his name, believed in has come true. In late May, 22 students from farmworker and working-class families in and around rural Salinas will receive diplomas in computer science from Cal State Monterey Bay, which they earned in only three grueling years.
Maritza Abzun, a 20-year-old senior, is heading to Chicago this summer for a computing job with JP Morgan Chase. Daniel Diaz, 21, will start a computing job with Uber in San Francisco after graduation, not far from where Maria Rivera, 21, will be working for Salesforce.com. Alonzo Mendoza, 22, plans to stay in Salinas, where he grew up in a farmworker family. He has landed a computing job in data visualization with Driscoll’s, a large strawberry and berry grower in nearby Watsonville.
They were among the first students in “CSin3,” shorthand for the computer science in three years program that emerged from Matsui’s remarkable challenge. Twenty-two of them, or 69 percent, will graduate on time. Five more are on track to graduate in 2017, which would raise the overall graduation rate to 84 percent. Only four have dropped out.
“That’s impressive,” said David Lopez, director of the Center for Latino Education and Innovation in San Jose and a former Fresno State professor of education. “This program clearly shows that we can work together and break through the usual systemic and institutional challenges in support of student success.”
Less than 20 percent of freshmen graduate in four years in the California State University system, and only about 28 percent of community college transfers finish on time. CSin3’s graduation rate even tops the University of California schools, where 62 percent earn diplomas in four years.
The lack of diversity in Silicon Valley technology companies has been a running issue for years, with very little headway in adding more Latinos, blacks and women to an industry dominated by white and Asian men. CSin3 suggests an even deeper diversity is possible: adding minorities from rural and working-class backgrounds.
“Diverse entrepreneurs come up with solutions to real problems from their lived experiences,” said Freada Kapor Klein, a partner at Kapor Capital in Oakland. “Unless we have entrepreneurs from all backgrounds, we won’t have tech solutions that work for everyone.”
For example, she said, working-class techies in “Fintech” are devising financial programs for low-income families. And former farm boys and girls in the emerging “AgTech” field are working to get healthy, fresh food to poorer communities at reasonable cost.
“I hope we have proven the caliber of these students and convinced those people who were doubters,” said Teresa Matsui, president of Matsui Nursery Inc. in Monterey, the orchid magnate’s daughter and spokeswoman.
She explained how her 81-year-old father, a second-generation Japanese American who still works seven days a week, came up with the idea.
“He was kind of frustrated that a number of his students could not finish their degrees in four years or dropped out,” she said. “Why not use the downtime in summer to accelerate their graduation?”
Seeing the phenomenal growth of Silicon Valley only an hour’s drive away, the grower challenged Cal State Monterey Bay and Hartnell College, a nearby community college, to propose a three-year program in technology. Two professors stepped up, Narayanan and Hartnell’s Joe Welch. The orchid philanthropist pledged a total of $2.9 million toward the program, which pays for faculty and up to $30,000 in scholarship money for each student.
The students became a “cohort” not unlike Marine recruits in boot camp. The summer before the program started, instructors drilled them on math to get them ready for calculus. Once off and running, the students took every class together, including requirements like English and history. They studied in groups and cheered each other on. A full-time counselor kept a close eye on them. Thanks to Matsui’s scholarship money, part-time jobs were forbidden.
Dropping out was not an option, but that’s what Maria Rivera pondered at her first speed bump.
“I just couldn’t get some of the code,” she said, referring to a tough, first-year class called Introduction to Data Structures. “I got really down and didn’t think I was going to make it. But hours and hours of mentoring got me through it.”
Narayanan and Welch realized a mistake and moved the Data Structures class to the second year. But overall, the blueprint based on getting a good start, staying together and vigilant guidance worked. The Matsui scholarships helped the students finish in three years.
The strict supervision at Hartnell gave way to three semesters at CSUMB, where the CSin3 students melted into a student body. Narayanan still pushed them to get through the three-year program, but the students required less mentoring after the nurturing at Hartnell.
Already, word of the first class’ success has spread, especially among girls in the Salinas Valley. Half the students in the next three CSin3 classes are female, and 70 percent are Latino.
Although it was difficult for the first group to find summer internships, CSin3’s success is drawing more Silicon Valley recruiters to Cal State Monterey Bay.
“I had no clue how incredibly challenging this would be,” Narayanan said, “or how incredibly rewarding.”
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