Program characteristics

The CARA Program (Community-based Action Research & Advocacy) is a certificate program.  The program is based at Oakes College, one of ten residential learning communities at UCSC. Oakes College, founded in 1972, has a tradition of community engagement and educational justice; its mission is one of “intellectual, academic and personal inquiry rooted in the possibility of effecting positive social and political change.”  The CARA program seeks to create Oakes-sponsored courses in community engagement for social justice, and articulate them with similar courses campus-wide, including those in students’ major departments.  

Goals include: encouraging cohort formation among under-represented students; mentoring and empowering these students for purposeful education and professional pathways; enhancing academic viability and development of campus support for engaged scholarship. 

Audience served

The CARA program seeks to connect under-represented students and support them in their goals.  Key groups include: first-generation students; students of color; those whose identities and cultures are marginalized or misrepresented by dominant discourses; and any students who lack opportunities to gain professional or research experience in public service fields.  Only Oakes students are eligible to earn the CARA certificate at this time. However, CARA classes are open to all UCSC students and students can petition to have courses count toward majors in departments such as Community Studies, Education, Sociology, and Latin American/Latino Studies.

Primary program components

The program uses two interdisciplinary themes of skill-building and critical analysis for course development: critical literacy, and critical geography.

Foundational courses:

• The Oakes Core Course, a first-quarter required course in critical thinking and academic literacy.
• The Corre la Voz Program (CLV) is an intensive after-school program for dual-language multi-modal literacy mentoring after-school.  This upper-division seminar + field study is repeatable, includes opportunities for paid student staff, and is offered year-round; it is funded by the UC Links program.  CLV offers intensive professional development, faculty mentoring, and community; it has been operating since 2009.
• “Community Mapping” is an upper division systems analysis course.  Students work in small research groups, learn social research methods, and present their findings and action proposals visually.  
• “Social Geography and Justice” is lower division and more traditionally placement-based.  Students work with local organizations, learn local history, and learn to write field notes.

Participation benefits

Students who participate in this programming have higher levels of academic determination and diverse citizenship (openness to others’ ideas and perspectives, and belief that one can make a difference in the world) compared to those who do not participate in this programming. These students also have higher GPAs if they take the class after their first year of college, report more interactions with faculty, more multicultural competencies, and more gains in foundational college competencies (e.g., critical thinking, oral communication, research) compared to those who have not taken these classes.