William Franklin: Educational Opportunity Program Director Witnesses Change in History and on Campus

To William Franklin, the idea of change, which was the theme of President Barack Obama’s campaign, took on even greater meaning as he watched the presidential inauguration from the National Mall. The South Los Angeles native met several attendees who had previously been in Washington D.C. on another historic occasion: the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.

“[The inauguration] meant a lot to me personally, but it meant even more to them, given the historic nature of their time in Washington [before] under totally different circumstances,” says Franklin. “Even though I didn’t go through the struggles of the 1960s... those times always resonated with me because of how people had the wherewithal to, in spite of legal, emotional and psychological duress, persevere. It was interesting to see it from their eyes, in terms of what this moment meant.”

Franklin, who is the director of the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) and
TRIO programs at California State University, Dominguez Hills, has the chance to witness change everyday in the students he and his staff help. He says that in the year that he has been at CSU Dominguez Hills, one of the priorities of his office has been to retain students who may not make it through the critical first year of college due a need for remedial skills.

“We wanted to ensure that students, if they’re the first in their family to go to college, they’re not the first in their family to leave after one year of being in college,” he says. “No one is going to say, ‘If you don’t finish philosophy in a year, you’ve got to go.’ But they certainly do say that with math and English, so that has been our concentration.”

Last year, with funding from Verizon, Franklin developed the BEST Academy, a seven-week summer program focused on preparing students for their freshman year through a UNV 101 course meant to develop intellectual, social and personal skills, and intensive math and English courses. He says that initiatives like this show students that EOP seeks to “consider them as our partners in this endeavor and making them equally as responsible [for their education].”

“I’ve been very mindful about replacing old practice with best practice,” he says. “You can’t win if you just focus on, ‘We’ve always done it that way.’ That is the change I’ve brought to EOP as well as being very transparent about our results.”

Franklin says that while access is no longer as much of an issue in terms of students of color since programs like EOP were established in the 1960s, support for those students is always a priority.

“Sometimes, students aren’t successful because they just don’t feel like they’re being treated well,” he says. “Access without the kind of support they need is not opportunity. As we give them access, knowing the schools and the neighborhoods and communities that they come from, they still need to have a lot of support in the form of programs and services that meet their unique and diverse needs.”

Franklin earned both his bachelor’s degree in psychology and master’s in educational psychology from CSU Northridge and received his doctorate in psychological studies in education with an emphasis in child and adolescent development from Stanford University. He has taught as an associate professor in child and family studies at CSU Los Angeles, and in human development at the Center of Collaborative Education and Professional Studies at CSU Monterey Bay. While there, he also served as interim director of the Liberal Studies Institute. He has also taught at Stanford and Santa Clara University. His research interests include adolescent development, child development, African-American family, early childhood themes and life cycle issues, adolescent risk and resilience, at-risk youth, juvenile justice, and positive youth development.

An EOP alumnus himself, Franklin says that special focus on young African Americans and Latinos is what is needed now.

“We can clearly see that there are more students of color than ever going to four-year universities and two-year colleges,” he says. “But when you begin to... look at the numbers of who is retained and who graduates in four to six years, we’ve got some work to do... with males of color in terms of both access, retention and graduation.”

Franklin, who is currently working with Mark López, executive assistant to President Mildred García, on establishing a support program for young African Americans and Latinos at CSU Dominguez Hills, says that he saw a change among young men of color in his personal mentoring work. A volunteer for the Ujima Project, a program for young African American males in the Inland Empire, he says that the election of President Obama has had a profound effect on how the youth see their futures.

“They’ve begun to look at their lives a little bit differently and understand that, ‘I can’t keep blaming my lack of effort and failure on outside entities. I need to take some responsibility,’” he says.

- Joanie Harmon