UCSD Academic Connections 4-week program goes virtual
EL CENTRO – Nineteen high school students from throughout the Valley participated virtually this summer in the annual University of California, San Diego Academic Connections program.
Kylie Lyerly, Calipatria High School junior, said she had applied to the four-week program in the hopes of obtaining college credit after having heard about it from a classmate who had previously attended.
The 16-year-old said she had also been excited about the opportunity to temporarily reside at the campus’ dorms with other participating students from around the country during the program’s duration.
And though the COVID-19 pandemic would prompt UCSD to transition the program to an online platform, it proved to be just as instructive and gratifying for her.
“The instructors really surprised me with how enjoyable they made the class and how they really got me engaged in the lectures,” Lyerly said.
The self-described
“shy” student enrolled in the course titled “Introduction to Human
Emotion: An Emotional Approach to Critical Thinking and Critical Writing,” and found herself utterly fascinated and fully engaged.
“Everybody was hanging on to every word the instructors said and they were interested in what you said,” Lyerly said. “That really pushed me to participate more and more.”
The Academic Connections program has been available to Valley students for the past six years and typically provides participating ninthto 12-grade students an opportunity to take college courses while temporarily residing on campus with students from across the country and globe.
When it became apparent in April that COVID-19 might preclude the university from offering summer programs on campus, UCSD officials considered either suspending Academic Connections altogether or finding another way to host it.
With the university’s previous online delivery models serving as a guide, UCSD was able to present instruction for the summer program that remained dynamic, engaging and, most importantly, student centered.
The foundation established for the summer program also opened doors for potential yearround programming in the Imperial Valley, said Morgan Appel, assistant dean of Education and Community Outreach at UCSD Extension.
“The consensus among faculty and staff was immediate: explore creative online delivery options to ensure that our longstanding commitment to supporting students, teachers and parents in Imperial Valley would be realized,” Appel said in a written statement. “After all the lifeblood of Academic Connections – and UC San Diego more broadly – is innovation.”
Since becoming available locally, more than $450,000 in Academic Connections scholarships have been awarded to nearly 200 Valley students, UCSD officials said.
When the scholarship program was initially offered to local students, its intent was to provide a full scholarship to a student from each of the Valley’s high schools.
Today, it continues to offer those seven full scholarships, as well as partial scholarships for Migrant Education Program students and other local students who are interested in attending.
Two additional full scholarships include the Martin Luther King Jr. and the Imperial County
Office of Education’s Foundation for Education scholarships.
Josue Pimentel, Brawley Union High School senior, was this year’s ICOE Foundation for Education scholarship recipient.
The 17-year-old said his father had recommended he apply for the program after his father had heard about his boss’ daughter’s experience in the program.
Since Pimentel is hoping to pursue a career as an architect, he decided to enroll in the program’s introduction to mechanical engineering and materials science course.
And even though the latter part of the 201920 school year at BUHS had already transitioned to online learning on account of the pandemic, his Academic Connections experience presented new opportunities.
The class was the first engineering course of any kind that he has taken, and involved lots of mathematics and research.
In contrast to the remote learning activities he participated in the last school year, the university’s summer program also provided numerous occasions for interactive group breakout sessions.
“It was pretty far from what I was used to,” he said.
San Pasqual Valley High School junior
Aysha Kenney Rios was selected the recipient of the program’s Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship, which was added for the first time this summer.
The student-athlete and aspiring plastic surgeon said she applied to the program out of a desire to learn not only from the instructors and the coursework, but from her interactions with students as well.
And although her original expectation had included learning about the social experiences of a campus dorm resident, she had to settle for online interactions with her diverse classmates.
“I was pleased to meet students from California, Egypt and New Jersey, and to work with them throughout this course together,” Rios said in an email.
Rios enrolled in the program’s critical thinking class, offered by the campus’ philosophy department, and learned all about the brain and the psychology of reasoning and decision making, how to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments, and how to construct arguments in order to decide what to believe or act.
“The biggest challenge I faced was to adapt to contemporary work by the instructors,” Rios said. “Everything was new so I was a bit overwhelmed at first but after a couple of days, I got used to it.”
2020 UCSD Academic Connections participants
• Aysha Kenney Rios, San Pasqual Valley High School, Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship (full scholarship)
• Josue Pimentel, Brawley Union High School, Imperial County Office of Education’s Foundation for Education Scholarship (full scholarship)
• Jocelyn Cortes, BUHS, full scholarship
• Sarah Huang,
BUHS, Meet You Halfway scholarship
• Janessa Contreras, Calexico High School, full scholarship
• Aylin Esquivies, Calexico HS, Meet You Halfway scholarship
• Kylie Lyerly, Calipatria High School, full scholarship
• Maria Valverde, Calipatria HS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Angela Loya, Holtville High School, full scholarship
• Mariela Cardenas, HHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Rafael Espinoza, HHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Mariel Estrada,
HHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Michelle Gallegos, HHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Armando Lazos, HHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Jaziel Carrazco, Imperial High School, full scholarship
• Maya Xander, San Pasqual Valley HS, full scholarship
• Itzel Beltran, Southwest High School, full scholarship
• Adriel Ballesteros, SHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship
• Marcela Meza, SHS, Migrant Ed. scholarship