裸聊直播

Students in the GANAS program have a sense of community at 裸聊直播.

• June 5, 2015

An award-winning and innovative 裸聊直播 program focused on supporting, retaining and graduating transfer students is celebrating its first graduating class on Sunday, June 7. The GANAS program (Gaining Access ‘N Academic Success) will honor 27 students, many of them first-generation college students from Latino and low-income families.

The ceremony, planned for 11 a.m. at the New University Union multi-purpose room, marks a major milestone for the highly-successful program, which supports its students by creating a community, providing culturally-relevant upper-division coursework and offering mentoring, academic counseling, and tutoring services to transfer students.

Of the 35 students that were part of the first GANAS program in the fall of 2013, 25 are graduating this month after spending two years at CSUEB. Several others are on track to graduate in the coming years. Two students that joined GANAS this past fall are graduating after just one year at 裸聊直播.

The 70-percent, two-year graduation rate is one of several impressive statistics related to the success of students in the GANAS program. In the spring quarter of 2014, the average GPA of GANAS students was 3.26, compared with 2.96 for the general CSUEB population and 2.85 for Latino students at the university. They’re finding academic success even though 81 percent of students in the GANAS program also work part-time.

“I am extremely proud of our GANAS students’ accomplishments,” said Diana Balgas, a co-founder of GANAS and Special Assistant to the Vice President of Student Affairs. “I am often taken aback in how much they have grown individually and collectively in a relatively short period of time.  We are a familia! I am heartened that many of our first-generation students (inaugural cohort of 2013) paid it forward by proactively looking out, guiding and supporting our second-generation cohort 2014 in making their transition from community college to CSUEB.  Our students are amazing; they are advocates, mentors, researchers, leaders, tutors, artists, and ambassadors for our program and CSUEB.”

Rocio Perez, a 29-year-old undocumented student from East San Jose, credits GANAS for giving her the support she needed to become the first person in her family to graduate college. Perez came to the U.S. when she was a year old and is the eldest of five children, the rest of whom were born in the U.S. and are citizens. She has thrived in GANAS and serves as an Hermana (peer mentor) for the program.

“Neither one of (my parents) went to college, so I’ll be living their dream out for them,” Perez said of earning her degree. “I’ll be that living proof that an undocumented student can make it and graduate, so you can, too.”

Perez, who gave a moving speech at CSUEB’s 2015 Educational Summit, will begin a master’s program in sociology at San Jose State in the fall. She also wants to get her Ph.D. before ultimately opening a program similar to GANAS but focused on undocumented “DREAMers” like herself.

GANAS has earned national recognition from Excelencia in Education, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit and was a finalist at the California Awards for Innovation in Higher Education Showcase.

"Since the GANAS Program was launched two years ago, I have had a front-row seat in the lives of some amazing students,” said Melissa Cervantes, GANAS program coordinator. “To witness the incredible strength and resilience needed to balance their daily lives is humbling. To watch as they push themselves and each other to be better students is inspiring. To feel the genuine caring, cariño, that they have for one another; that is family. GANAS is familia. These students have built a remarkable community within the GANAS Program. Within it they are safe, because of it they are encouraged, and leaving it they are empowered. I am so proud of our graduates. They are going to change the world.”