CSUB's Educational Opportunity Program celebrates 50 years

EOP prepares for 50th anniversary in 2020

By California State University, Bakersfield

October 4^th, 2019

As CSU Bakersfield prepares for its 50th anniversary in 2020, another celebration is currently taking place – the 50th Anniversary of the statewide Educational Opportunity Program, better known as EOP. Students, staff, alumni and trailblazers from the Civil Rights movement gathered in Long Beach recently for a celebration of EOP’s long tradition of changing lives through continuous innovation.

As the intensity of the Civil Rights Movement grew in the 1960s, one of the emerging issues was the lack of access to higher education in California’s underserved and rural communities. These students had the motivation and desire to obtain a four-year university degree but lacked the financial means and academic support to encourage their success. Senate Bill 1072, which passed in 1969, provided for EOP to be established on each state university campus, including one that was still under construction — Bakersfield.

“EOP and the university are inextricably bound,” reflects Steve Walsh, current EOP director for CSU Bakersfield. He points out an original front-page headline from 1970 celebrating the opening of CSUB, now part of the EOP 50th history display. “When this campus opened, it was a community celebration. People who were economically place-bound now had a university down the street, and EOP students had an open door to opportunity that did not previously exist.”

Walsh is only the fourth director of EOP since 1970, following the original director and CSUB track coach Charles Craig; Lee Adams who served from 1972 until his untimely death in 2000; and Keith Powell who was the director from 2000 until 2011.

“It’s a life-calling,” Walsh said. “EOP represents a constant fight to provide access and innovative, impactful services to the high-potential children of our neighbors, foster youth, and graduates of our area high schools.”

E.J. Callahan, EOP graduate and director of the CSUB Student Union was a first-generation college student. “EOP has shaped my life into what I am happy to call triumphant. … I am the first in my family to graduate from a four-year university, and because of this I am forever grateful to EOP.”

Callahan was a participant in, and eventually worked for, a groundbreaking program that first began statewide in 1985 — the Summer Bridge Program.

Now a best-practice employed by colleges and universities across the country, Summer Bridge has served as template for many, serving everyone from honors students and STEM majors to middle-school students, but its roots are in EOP.

For 35 years, Summer Bridge has allowed students to live on campus while taking their first CSUB courses in the summer before their first year begins. Irene Ramey, EOP graduate and head counselor at South High School recalls: “EOP gave me the confidence and assurance to attend CSUB. Its Summer Bridge Program gave me a glimpse of collegiate life and reaffirmed that I was capable of handling what was to come.”

CSUB President Lynnette Zelezny sponsored five CSUB EOP students to attend the 50th Anniversary Conference, and she attended the gala celebration on the final night. Many campus Presidents, CSU administrators, and political figures were in attendance as well. In his remarks, Chancellor Timothy White did something unprecedented — he gave credit to EOP for programs like Summer Bridge, outreach, advising, tutoring, and peer mentoring, admitting they are all now CSU best practices that were stolen outright from EOP.

The Comment drew an ovation from the 450 attendees – nods of long-awaited recognition from some, and shrugs of bashful acknowledgement from others. It was a fitting tribute to hundreds of thousands of lives changed, to 50 years of progress in educational equity, and to a program that Kern County, the CSU, and all of California will need for another 50 years.