Rueben Martinez is known for his many callings: Barber. Longtime bookstore owner. MacArthur award winner. Speaker at high schools, colleges and universities across the country. Holder of more honorary degrees than he can count.
And now Martinez, 68, is a college professor. A presidential fellow, to be exact.
Starting next month, Martinez will be responsible for Chapman University's efforts to recruit first-generation students, especially Latinos, into science and math programs.
University administrators said the fellowship is part of a twofold strategy of boosting its science enrollment while more aggressively recruiting students from such central Orange County communities as Santa Ana, Anaheim and Orange -- where the 6,000-student campus is located.
Martinez said that during his visits to high schools, he likes to conduct one-on-one interviews with rapid-fire questions to find out about students' interests and determine how serious they are about pursuing their education.
"What I tell these kids today is that a college degree can be a reality," he said. "I tell them: 'If you don't like high school you're going to dig college, man.' "
After cutting hair for decades, Martinez began selling books out of his barbershop in 1993, and he later moved into a storefront on downtown Santa Ana's Main Street. His shop, Libreria Martinez, has become a pillar of the Latino literary community.
Martinez was thrust into the national spotlight in 2004 when the MacArthur Foundation awarded him a $500,000 fellowship for promoting literacy. The unrestricted money, spread out over five years, has gone to start a nonprofit group that offers after-school classes and tutoring as well as paying some of his bookstore's bills.
University administrators said they enlisted Martinez to work against an image of private universities as exclusive bastions that are out of reach of low-income high school students. Chapman's $36,000-a-year price tag doesn't help, they said.
"First-generation students, they hear the word 'private' and they hear 'country club' and exclusive and 'not available,' " even when administrators explain that more than 80% of students receive some sort of financial aid, said Mike Pelly, Chapman's vice chancellor in charge of admissions.
Chapman has become a school with an increasingly national reach, best known for its business and film programs. More than three-quarters of its students are from outside Orange County. But administrators believe they may have gone too far.
