The Student Outreach and Retention Center (SOAR) is a on-campus center dedicated to supporting student initiated outreach and retention programs as well as student leadership. Their mission is to cultivate a community of authentic student leaders that aspire to develop innovative student-initiated outreach and retention programs that foster critical dialogue, mentorship, and shift the educational paradigm to improve college access, readiness, and retention rates for historically marginalized communities in higher education. Their programs focus on K-14 academic preparation and access, advocacy for UCI student retention efforts, effective mentorship and coalition building, sustainable student leadership development cultivating and supporting students, and ideation based on student needs. The founding of SOAR arose in part from the July 20, 1995 decision from the UC Regents to eliminate affirmative action and the 1996 passage of Proposition 209, which eliminated the consideration of race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in areas of public employment, public contracting, and especially public education. After this decision, Student Initiated Outreach centers began to crop up at universities across the UC System, whereby students passed referendums to support diversity outreach efforts on their own campuses. In 2004, student leaders at UC Irvine from ASUCI, Cross-Cultural Center and other organizations began to run campaigns for student fee referendums which would provide funding for the center and programming. These campaigns were unsuccessful for many years, until 2011 when the referendum achieved a majority vote, but failed to pass due to the election not meeting the quorum of 25%. However, after seeing the continued efforts of students, Vice Chancellor of Student Affairs, Thomas Parham, allocated soft funds for three years to start the SOAR Center. The center officially opened in Fall of 2011 under the Center for Educational Partnerships. In spring of the same year, students developed a coalition and ran the SOAR Up campaign which focused on outreach and retention of under represented minority students as well as the roots of future programming. This referendum passed with 74.49% support. In the following years, the center began providing services and programs to the undocumented community at UCI, opened a food pantry, and oversaw the Gateway Scholars in partnership with Student Success Initiatives and Pathfinders-Peer-Educator program. In 2017, SOAR moved from the Center for Educational Partnerships to Student Life and Leadership. This collection contains SOAR digital slideshows, photographs, and other digital files detailing the history, work, and events put on by SOAR.

0.3610 Gigabytes (52 digital files)

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