January 20, 1995 Contact: Gary Kliewer (408/459-2495)

SEMINAR SPEAKER TO ADDRESS UNIVERSITY'S SHIFT TO URBAN, ETHNIC STUDENT POPULATION

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

SANTA CRUZ, CA--Leticia Quezada, the first Latina to serve on the Los Angeles City Board of Education, says ethnic minorities are still greatly underrepresented in the UC system, but that will change with the coming generation of urban students. "The university is not ready," Quezada warns. "It's going to create a culture shock, both for the students and for the university."

In a free public lecture titled "Ready Or Not, Here We Come: Urban and Ethnically Diverse Young People Are Tomorrow's University Scholars," Quezada will present her views on Friday, January 27, 4:30-5:30 p.m. in Classroom Unit 2.

"I'm coming from the perspective of the Los Angeles city schools, where 90 percent of the students are ethnic minorities," Quezada says. "Two-thirds of these urban young people are Latino. We need to talk about what needs and assets they will bring to the university. It's not that the issues are not known, but I want to put an accent on this reality."

Quezada's talk will be the second presentation this academic year in the Chancellor's Distinguished Seminar Series on Mission, Quality, and Diversity, established last year by UCSC Chancellor Karl S. Pister and UCSC's Academic Senate. Pister created the seminar series to encourage campus dialogue on themes that he views as critical to UCSC's success. The seminars are the public part of a program in which prominent women and minorities spend a day with faculty and students to discuss how to improve the quality of higher education in the United States.

According to Quezada, the first language for 47 percent of the Los Angeles student population is not English. While most of them speak Spanish, the remaining 10 percent speak 95 different languages. "Language means culture," Quezada says. "The university has to create a bridge to those communities."

Many students from Los Angeles come from segregated, virtually all-Latino schools. When they come to the university, especially to UCSC, the students have to adjust, says Quezada. But nowthe system has to change. "It's much better to prognosticate changes that must be made--to meet the students half way."

Quezada, who has a master's degree in education and graduated with honors from UCSC with a B.A. in psychology in 1975, will serve on the school board through 1995. She also currently sits on the board of the UCSC Foundation and is a member of the systemwide UC Latino Eligibility Task Force.

Elected Los Angeles City Board of Education president in 1992- 93, she was reelected by her colleagues to serve for a second term in 1993-94. The board is responsible for educational policy decisions that affect 800,000 students enrolled in over 850 elementary, middle, senior high, and adult schools in the largest school district in the state.

As president, she led the board through the adoption of a restructuring of the district to permit broad local-school decision making and increased parent involvement. She successfully fought a statewide initiative that would have enabled the transfer of public school funding to private schools as well as a legislative effort to break up her school district. And she worked to secure funding to recover from the 6.8 Northridge earthquake that damaged 200 schools.

Quezada has also long been involved in feminist Latina efforts, having served as national president for Comision Femenil, one of the oldest Latina feminist activist groups in the country.

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