USD students in Linda Vista
Toreros look beyond campus to engage with and serve the larger Linda Vista community
Glenn McDonell / Asst. News Editor / The USD Vista
As one drives up Linda Vista Road, a stately welcome sign for the community of Linda Vista comes into view featuring the slogan “Home of the University of San Diego” in bold letters. While the campus is immersed within this neighborhood of 50,000 which boasts its name, students who work in Linda Vista every day have sensed a lack of connection between the university and its surrounding community.
Junior and Behavioral Neuroscience major Alexandra Unapanta currently works part-time as a classroom mentor at Linda Vista Elementary through the Mulvaney Center’s Youth Engagement Initiative (YEI).
During team meetings, Unapanta and her coworkers have discussed the relationship between students and the surrounding neighborhood.
“When we get together we discuss USD student perceptions of what’s up the hill from campus, and how students talk about Linda Vista,” Unapanta said. “We’ve all found that a lot of students don’t know what’s there when you turn left on Linda Vista Road or whether it’s dangerous or unsafe. I think there’s a huge lack of USD students who are willing to take that push and go into the community.”
Linda Vista is a moderate-to-low-income area of the city that has recently been experiencing stressors ranging from rent hikes to school closures and family trauma related to federal immigration enforcement. In the month of March alone, reports have circulated detailing tenant protests and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids in the apartment complexes across from the Rite Aid and Skateworld, only about a mile up Linda Vista Road from the USD campus.
According to information provided by the Mulvaney Center on the YEI program, 80 percent of the classroom mentors in Unapanta’s role are first generation college students, students of color, and/or low-income students. For Unapanta, the desire to engage with students at Linda Vista Elementary stemmed from her own experiences growing up.
“I could have done my FWS (Federal Work Study) job in an office where I would be able to do homework, but I decided I wanted to do this instead,” Unapanta said. “I think if I hadn’t had some of the same experiences as these kids growing up and coming from a similar background maybe I wouldn’t have pushed myself out of this bubble.”
Much of the work Unapanta does at Linda Vista Elementary involves helping teachers to manage the challenges of dealing with students who are behaviorally or socially challenged.
For Unapanta, the opportunity to assist in this capacity has complimented her studies back on campus.
“Because of my background as a BN (Behavioral Neuroscience) major, I’ve become kind of like a therapist or a psychologist in my role as a mentor,” Unapanta said. “I work with the teachers to figure out the best options for our kids. The school counselor has been overloaded this year and so the teachers really rely on me. It’s been very eye opening.”
Unapanta spends 10-15 hours of her week mentoring students in grades K-4. She believes that the experience of leaving campus and going up the road to participate in the neighborhood has been personally enriching.
“With the stresses and business of school it’s easy to get stuck in this beautiful bubble of campus,” Unapanta said. “We at USD are surrounded by so many privileges whether or not we recognize them. Going into Linda Vista is very life bringing. People up the road have completely different life stories and go through completely different things.”
Senior Christina Kimsey is aiming for a dual credentialed Masters in Curriculum and Instruction in SOLES. She has been a co-worker of Unapanta’s at Linda Vista Elementary since her first year at USD.
In order to further her in-classroom experience, Kimsey has been given the opportunity to conduct lessons and collaborate with teachers to provide specialized support for students who are experiencing trauma in their home lives.
“I’ve been with students and followed them on their journey from being innocent second graders up until now, and I’ve noticed how many of them have to face adult situations really early on,” Kimsey said. “They bring a lot of the issues from their home into school. It really goes to show how you lose a lot of your innocence when dealing with poverty.”
Linda Vista Elementary staff are in many cases the main source of support for students whose families are struggling with anything from food insecurity to family separation. Kimsey says she has often tried to step in and provide for their basic needs, whether in the form of donations, free meals, or simply companionship for the children.
“I had a homeless student who was often absent, and we’ve had plenty of students with holes in their shoes, or who haven’t had breakfast, or who just want to sleep because they weren’t able to at home for whatever reason,’” Kimsey said. “I remember two years ago I had a student whose dad had recently been deported, and it was really hard for him to talk about it. I try to be as supportive as I can in those situations but it’s really tough.”
Austin Galy, who graduated in 2016 with a sociology degree and is currently pursuing a masters in Peace and Justice from the Joan B. Kroc Institute, now serves as Assistant Director for Student Leadership & Learning at the Mulvaney Center. In this position, Galy supervises both Unapanta and Kimsey in their work as student mentors.
Galy believes that students in the YEI program have the ability to directly improve outcomes for children in the Linda Vista community.
“I look at our work-study students and volunteers as silent heroes because they recognize the social privileges they enjoy going to a school like USD and yet they choose to take time out of their day to connect with people who are going through some of the same challenges they have gone through,” Galy said. “They want to get to know the students because at one time they saw themselves as that student. The relationships they build can really inspire youth and transform their lives.”
As part of his role, Galy has facilitated the student-worker focus groups which Unapanta has participated in.
The feedback he has received from the students he oversees has led him to believe that there is room for more direct engagement between USD and the Linda Vista community.
“I would like to see the USD community as a whole work more diligently and be more present to the challenges that exist in Linda Vista, because there are a lot of them,” Galy said. “We need to push ourselves to embody our values and increase our connectivity to our partners in the neighborhood. I will say we can all do better.”
According to Christopher Nayve, who serves as the Associate Vice President of Community Engagement and Anchor Initiatives, USD students and faculty contribute more than 300,000 hours of public service hours in the surrounding community every year. If the university is truly going to work toward its goal of becoming an “anchor institution” for the surrounding community, students will likely engage in many more partnerships like the YEI in the coming years.