Highlights from Symposium

Dr. Leonardo de la Garza, Chancellor of Tarrant County College District in Fort Worth, opened the day with an inspiring keynote address. He described how El Paso Community College, when he served as its president, recognized the severe need for education for homeless adults and set up a program to meet those needs. Dr. de la Garza relayed some of the challenges that the program and its developers met early on and how the community rallied to overcome the naysayers.

Dr. George Fair, dean of the School of General Studies and Director of the Communications & Learning Center at The University of Texas at Dallas, presented information about a very successful partnership he has had with four school districts—Greenville, Sherman, McKinney, and Plano—over the past several years. Fair is contracted by the districts to operate a homeless education program for students in need of these services. The program provides tutoring, clothing, supplies, counseling and other services to help the students enroll in school and stay there.

Judy Mozley, a research associate with Atlanta Research and Education Foundation, Inc., outlined a research project she is working on in conjunction with the Veterans’ Administration Medical Center (VAMC) in Atlanta, Georgia. The four-year project, which is studying the impact of education on the rehabilitation of homeless veterans with substance abuse and psychiatric problems, is the outgrowth of an education program for homeless veterans begun at the Atlanta VAMC in 1997. Initially consisting of college-level computer classes offered on the VAMC premises, it now funds two years of education in technical schools or colleges for formerly homeless veterans receiving treatment through the VA Homeless Program. Preliminary findings indicate that veterans in the education program have far greater rehabilitation success rates than Homeless Program participants who do not continue their education. The formal research will help to establish whether these results can be reproduced in a statistically significant sample of homeless individuals and whether the positive outcomes are truly the result of the education intervention or whether other variables influenced the outcomes.

Francine Pratt, director, and Barbara Saldivar, assistant director, both of the Community Services Development Center at The University of Texas at Arlington, presented information about an AmeriCorps program that provides academic tutoring and mentoring to youth through the Arlington Independent School District and its McKinney Homeless Grant Program. These youth consist mainly of homeless students and those who are at risk of being homeless. AmeriCorps-UTA members provide a year of service while earning an education award that can be used to pay off guaranteed student loans or to pay for future costs at a college or vocational school.

Eric Samuels, Survey Project Director with the Texas Homeless Network, presented information on the recently released statewide homeless survey. Samuels described the history of the homeless survey and shared many of the significant findings. He also offered suggestions to participants on how they can use the results of the survey in their local communities and how they could set up their own survey.

The symposium showed that higher education can indeed play an integral role in the development and implementation of services for persons experiencing homelessness and that more must be done to make connections between colleges and communities.

Dr. Sally Schultz, who is a professor at the School of Occupational Therapy at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, provided useful information about a program that she is working with in cooperation with Trinity Works, a nonprofit in Dallas. The program helps clients, who consist of ill, impoverished, abused and dysfunctional individuals and families, become self-reliant, productive citizens through a series of skills assessments and intensive training.

Schultz, whose specialty areas and research interests include psychosocial dysfunction, emotional/behavioral disorders, adults with severe chronic mental illness, forensic psychiatric rehabilitation, psychosocial intervention in the public schools and occupational adaptation, helped participants better understand how occupational therapy can be used to help persons who are experiencing homelessness.

Marilyn Small, executive director of Jacob’s Ladder in Dallas, an organization whose mission is “to serve educationally disadvantaged adults with basic interpersonal and life skills necessary to move toward economic self-sufficiency,” relayed information about a partnership her organization has formed with Dallas Community College. The primary focus is on preventing homelessness for women living in poverty or abusive situations, or who are without opportunities to benefit from the strong job market. The organization is funded by a two-year grant from Dallas County Work Source as part of the welfare-to-work consortium. It is located at the Bill J. Priest Institute, an academic and technology training center for the Dallas Community College District, which provides GED preparation, basic computer skills training, and advanced career training. Along with the educational piece, the program features a course on survival skills for women, case management and an intensive mentoring program staffed by volunteers from the community.

Lynn Slater, an instructor at El Paso Community College and Vice-President of the Technical Education Division of the Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE) as well as a founder of the Occupational Opportunity Center, presented highlights from The Texas 21-Step, a report he developed in the summer of 2000. The report focuses on actions that higher education institutions are taking to work directly with homeless people. While conducting his research, Mr. Slater uncovered a complete continuum of care for homeless people offered through Texas’ colleges and universities—it just happens to be located in various communities across the entire state!

Slater also shared information about the Occupational Opportunity Center (OOC) for the Homeless in El Paso, a central city El Paso Community College (EPCC) campus for the homeless that he co-founded. The OOC now provides a number of services, including education job placement, substance abuse counseling, medical, veterans’ opportunities and a computer lab to over 2,600 individuals each year, making it perhaps the largest college-operated homeless service project in the nation. The OOC has a staff of 31 that is funded by a collection of grants and is operated as a partnership between EPCC and the El Paso Coalition for the Homeless.

Tim Stahlke, Support for Homeless Education: Linking Technology Resources to Shelters Program Coordinator at the Charles A. Dana Center, located at The University of Texas at Austin, presented information about a program designed to increase the educational achievement of students who are experiencing homelessness. The project was awarded a two-year, $272,000 grant from the Department of Commerce in 1998 as part of a nationwide competitive grant program administered by Telecommunications Information and Infrastructure Assistance Program (now known as TOP—Technology Opportunities Program). This project, named SHELTRS (Support for Homeless Education: Linking Technology Resources to Shelters), provides new technology resources and expands existing technology resources at four homeless shelters in Austin, Texas. Because of high mobility, gaps in attendance, and the trauma engendered by homelessness, students in homeless situations who are living in these shelters may lag two or three years behind their peers. Mr. Stahlke showed how by developing computer networks at each shelter, along with educational and technical support, this unique project provides personalized tutoring related to the state-mandated curriculum and gives the students access to the same information and resources available to their peers who have computers at home.

Next Steps

In their evaluation of the symposium, participants offered support for the concept and recommended that the symposium be continued next year. They also recommended that other follow-up activities take place, such as forming a task force on higher education and holding mini-symposia around the state. The symposium showed that higher education can indeed play an integral role in the development and implementation of services for persons experiencing homelessness and that more must be done to make connections between colleges and communities.

If you are interested in discussing how to develop a collaboration between colleges and organizations in your area, please contact Barbara James at (512) 475-8765 or email her at babawawa@mail.utexas.edu.