June 17, 2005

Preuss School At UCSD Holds Commencement Rites July 7

By Pat JaCoby

Seventy-five members of the second class to graduate from the Preuss School at the University of California, San Diego, will receive their diplomas during 4 p.m. ceremonies July 7 on the school’s Manchester Field.

Almost two-thirds of the original 50 students who started as seventh graders in 1999 are represented in the graduating class. And after six years of intense college preparatory classes, 91 percent of the class of ’05 will go on this fall to four-year colleges.

The commencement ceremony will open with greetings by a number of students speaking their native languages—Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Tagalog, Samoan, Japanese, Pakistani, Afghan and Ethiopian.

Also extending greetings will be Doris Alvarez, Preuss School principal; Cecil Lytle, representing the Preuss School Board; Peter Preuss, Board of Regents, and Lesley Fawcett, San Diego Unified School District.

Marye Anne Fox, UCSD chancellor, will present the keynote speech.

Hue Le, who will enter Harvard this fall, will represent the graduating class as valedictorian, and Hanh Nguyen, number two academically and a fall enrollee at UCSD, will be salutatorian. Le plans to major in neurobehavior or psychology and dreams of becoming a pediatrician or family physician; Nguyen hopes to further her talents and early experiences in journalism. Noel Andrade, senior class president and fall enrollee at San Francisco State University, will lead the traditional turning of the tassel ceremony.

A chain of junior students who have earned a 3.5 or better GPA will form a passageway through which the seniors and dignitaries will enter.

A record 57 members (76 percent) of the graduating class were accepted by University of California campuses and of these 32 (42 percent) have chosen to attend a UC campus, including 11 who will join UCSD this fall. California State University campuses accepted 61 Preuss students, with eight choosing to attend nearby San Diego State.

Of the twenty-five members of the graduating class accepted by private universities, 13 have elected to attend either Harvard, Xavier, Colgate, Concordia, ICU Tokyo, University of Virginia, Parsons School of Design, University of San Diego (3) or Howard University (3).

Chartered under the San Diego Unified School District, the mission of The Preuss School is to provide an intensive college preparatory curriculum to low income student populations and to improve educational practices in grades six to 12. The school was established as a charter school in 1998 on the UCSD campus and began accepting students in 1999. It opened with 150 students in grades six through eight, and now is fully enrolled with 749 students in grades six through 12. The Preuss School demographics for the 2004-2005 academic year were 59.5 percent Hispanic, 12.9 percent African American, 21.7 percent Asian, and six percent White.

Students are admitted by an application process and lottery, and participate in a longer school day and year than other district schools. Because of the extended schooling, each student has spent nearly 10,000 hours in class, compared to 8,000 in traditional schools.

Among honors garnered by the school this year were designation as the Urban League “Best Practices School,” taking the Robotics Chairman’s Award, and the naming of five students as “Chargers Champions.”

Media Contact: Pat JaCoby, 858 534-7404