Vahac Mardirosian papers, 1964-2007

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Summary

Creators:
Vahac Mardirosian
Abstract:
Reverend Vahac Mardirosian has been a major advocate of Mexican-American educational reforms in Los Angeles and San Diego school districts since the early 1960s. This collection contains material related to his pastoral work, his involvement with the 1968 East Los Angeles walk-out demonstration and organizations he helped found and run, including the Hispanic Urban Center Board of Education (founded 1970) and Parent Institute for Quality Education (founded 1987). Materials include clippings and press releases, letters and statements, notes, sermons, evaluation reports, reading score percentiles and rankings, memoranda, fact sheets and administrative documents, and cover a wide variety of educational topics including bilingual education, integration, teachers' attitudes towards Mexican American students, parental involvement, and reading achievement.
Extent:
3.75 Linear Feet (7 document boxes and 1 half document box)
Language:
Materials are in English.
Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Vahac Mardirosian papers (Collection 1887). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of Caliofnria, Los Angeles.

Background

Scope and content:

This collection contains material related to Vahac Mardirosian's pastoral work, his involvement with the 1968 East Los Angeles walk-out demonstration and the organizations he helped found and run, including the Hispanic Urban Center Board of Education and the Parent Institute for Quality Education. Materials include clippings, press releases, letters, statements, notes, sermons, evaluation reports, reading score percentiles and rankings, memoranda, fact sheets, and administrative documents, and cover a wide variety of educational topics including bilingual education, integration, teachers' attitudes towards Mexican American students, parental involvement, and reading achievement.

Biographical / historical:

Reverend Vahac Mardirosian has been a leading advocate of educational reform in Southern California, especially in the Mexican American communities, since the late 1960s. Of Armenian descent, he was born in Alepo, Syria and raised in Mexico City and Tijuana. He became ordained as a Baptist priest in California in 1946 and went on to serve the Mexican American communities of Topeka and Chicago, before returning to California in the 1950s. In 1968 he became involved with the walk-out protests at Garfield High School in the East Los Angeles School District. He acted as a mediator with administrators and became a representative of parents and students in his role as chairman of the Educational Issues Coordinating Committee (EICC).

He founded and acted as executive director of the Hispanic Urban Center in Los Angeles in 1970, which focused on in-service education for teachers, seeking to enhance their perceptions of Mexican American culture and improve teacher/student relations. In 1987 Mardirosian started the Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE) to address underperforming schools in the San Diego School District in response to concerned parents. PIQE offers a 9-week program to help improve education through the joint collaboration of parents, students and teachers and emphasizes the role of parents as advocates for their children. In 2006 California State University (CSU) began working with PIQE to provide funding and support of outreach and training for low-income families.

In 1988 Mardirosian received recognition from Phi Delta Kappa for his service and leadership in educational reform and in 1998 CSU awarded him an honorary doctorate for his impact on the lives of parents and children of California. In 2010 Mardirosian received the "Remarkable Leader in Education" award from the University of San Diego.

Acquisition information:
Gift of Vahac Mardirosian, 2011.
Processing information:

Processed by Yasmin Damshenas in the Center for Primary Research and Training (CFPRT), with assistance from Kelley Wolfe Bachli and Megan Hahn Fraser, December 2011.

The processing of this collection was generously supported by Arcadia funds.

Collections are processed to a variety of levels depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived user interest and research value, availability of staff and resources, and competing priorities. Library Special Collections provides a standard level of preservation and access for all collections and, when time and resources permit, conducts more intensive processing. These materials have been arranged and described according to national and local standards and best practices.

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Arrangement:

Arranged in the following series:

  1. Pastoral Work
  2. East Los Angeles High School Walk Out
  3. Hispanic Urban Center Board of Education
  4. Parent Institute for Quality Education (PIQE)
  5. Biographical Materials

Physical location:
Stored off-site. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.
Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Access and use

Restrictions:

Open for research. All requests to access special collections materials must be made in advance using the request button located on this page.

Terms of access:

Property rights to the objects belong to UCLA Library Special Collections. All other rights, including copyright, are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.

Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Vahac Mardirosian papers (Collection 1887). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of Caliofnria, Los Angeles.

Location of this collection:
A1713 Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1575, US
Contact:
(310) 825-4988
AskLSC@library.ucla.edu
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