College Courses

Valley College, UCLA and a Sun Valley magnet school have joined forces in an attempt to help minorities gain access to higher education through the Early Start program, college officials announced Monday. Francis Polytechnic Mathematics, Science and Technology Magnet will begin allowing ninth- and 10th-graders to take free classes at Valley College to prepare them for the rigors of higher education. Forty-one magnet students have been selected for the Early Start program.

As an inmate in the medium-security Massachusetts Correctional Institution-Norfolk, Tom Farina was serving a five-year term for armed robbery and armed burglary when he turned his life around. He entered the Boston University Prison Program, and by the time he was released in 1985, he was 12 credits away from completing a bachelor's degree, paid for by a federal Pell grant.

House Republicans on Thursday fended off a Democratic effort to force disclosure of a preliminary report on alleged ethics violations by Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.). The 225-179 vote, split largely along party lines, killed a measure that would have required immediate public disclosure of a special counsel's initial findings in a two-year investigation of Gingrich's use of a tax-exempt, nonprofit foundation to finance a college course that he taught in Georgia.

Reductions in summer school classes at Pierce College and rising fees at Cal State Northridge have made the summer offerings at Valley College one of the hottest tickets in town. More than 750 college students from throughout the Valley braved high temperatures and other frustrations as they lined up for hours to apply for 121 classes being offered this summer at Valley College, a sign of the increasing competition for college courses.

The city's brightest students this week are engaged in a rite of passage peculiar to their lot: the advanced placement or AP examination. Fighting the usual springtime distractions, several thousand students in the Los Angeles Unified School District have for the past few weeks been poring over math formulas, writing essays and memorizing endless lists of words and definitions in preparation for the college-level exams.

On these hot summer days, it's easy to envy a guy like John Van Arsdale. In his work uniform--a straw hat, surfing T-shirt, blue shorts and flip-flops--the Cal State Northridge professor heads to work. Not off to some lecture hall or cubbyhole of an office on the CSUN campus, mind you, but a modestly furnished, air-conditioned trailer at the edge of lower Castaic Lake. Van Arsdale, 51, is a professor of leisure studies and recreation, a job that makes work of play.

Pierce College was one of 18 community colleges statewide to be given the latest technology in smog-checking systems, and with it the ability to train smog technicians to implement the new, stricter laws going into effect next year. Since early October, the college's automotive program has used Smog Check II computerized equipment to familiarize currently licensed technicians with it so they will be ready when the new regulations become mandatory in March.

A USC academic advisor responsible for student-athletes allegedly stacked an education class with football and baseball players who were neither required to attend nor complete any course work by the professor to get a passing grade, a Times investigation has found. Records show that of the 40 students enrolled in the class, 30 were athletes, including 14 members of the 1996 Rose Bowl team and eight members of the USC baseball team that finished second in the College World Series last year.

Not long ago, Smith College English professor Patricia Skarda was walking behind two students deep in conversation. A strict grammatical constructionist, Skarda took note of their syntax. "One used 'like' 48 times," she reported, "the other, 37." Skarda was appalled but not shocked.

Room 410 in the English building at the University of Georgia seems drab enough to induce inertia. The concrete-block walls, windowless, are painted a dull yellow. There are no desks, only long rows of tables with chairs bolted to the floor. It does not seem to be a creative atmosphere for a remedial writing course. Just the same, a lively discussion has been engaged, concerning the impending final exam and a standardized basic English test required of all students by the state board of regents.