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     by Gretchen Kell
  
     
  
     In the near future, a high school student at a computer in rural Coalinga 
    will be able to find and work 
    with a tutor 160 miles away at the University of California at Berkeley.
  
     A Lodi teacher with no money for class outings will get the chance, via 
    computer, to take students on an electronic field trip through the human brain--a 
    multimedia tour offered by UC Berkeley's Lawrence 
    Hall of Science.
  
     Community college students hoping to attend a four-year institution but 
    frustrated by the academic and financial demands of transferring will be able 
    to ask their computer for available resources to help them go on. 
  
      
    A pilot service project, the 
    Electronic Mentoring, Teaching, and Information Resource Network intends 
    by June 1996 to make the vast resources of UC Berkeley available by electronic 
    access to California students and teachers who need them most. The network, 
    created by Berkeley's Graduate School of Education, will link the campus with 
    eight K-12 school districts, six community colleges, three California State 
    University campuses, science museums, public libraries, and other participants. 
  
     Target groups selected for the project include urban and rural disadvantaged, 
    minority, and disabled students in grades K-12, community colleges, and universities, 
    and their teachers and counselors. Specific target communities include Coalinga 
    High School--a rural school in a low-income, mostly Hispanic central California 
    community, 18 urban schools in the Bay Area, and three schools in the Diocese 
    of Oakland, where many children from under-represented minority groups attend 
    school.
  
     With financial backing from Pacific Bell, the project--one of the first 
    of its kind--seeks to create an electronic community of people seeking and 
    sharing instruction, communication, counseling, mentoring, and consulting 
    through technology.
  
      
    "The program will be unique in both the scope of services offered and the 
    number of students served," said project manager Lisa Kala. "It comprises 
    elements that have proven to be effective--outreach, transition assistance, 
    peer advising, counseling and academic advising, computer skills enhancement, 
    faculty mentorships, research experience, and graduate preparation," she said. 
  
     The California Research and Education 
    Network (CalREN), a trust of Pacific Bell, is financing 81 digital communications 
    lines in the participating schools, libraries, and higher education institutions. 
    Pacific Bell created the $25 million trust in 1993 to encourage the creation 
    of high-speed data communications applications to run on the information superhighway.
  
     The project is managed by a Berkeley campus work group that includes representatives 
    from the Graduate School of Education, 
    Information Systems and Technology, 
    the Academic Achievement Division, and 
    the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics. The group's project managers 
    will be responsible for helping find and install computer hardware and software 
    at sites participating in the pilot program, training people at each site 
    to use the network, and creating ways for participants to interact electronically.
  
     "Our keen interest is trying to take disadvantaged people who ordinarily 
    would not have this kind of access and would not consider or dream of attending 
    Berkeley, and forming links between them and people on campus to make it a 
    possibility," said Tom O'Brien, instructional technology coordinator for UC 
    Berkeley's Academic Achievement Division.
  
     The idea for the network stemmed from Kala's 1993 doctoral dissertation. 
    In studying minority undergraduates at UC Berkeley, Kala found that their 
    success in life had stemmed from the significant relationships they had with 
    parents, friends, peers, teachers, counselors, and teaching assistants. 
  
     "These people provided along the way the kind of academic and social supports 
    the students needed," she said. 
  
     Interested in technology as well as education, Kala decided to help the 
    campus set up an electronic network that would provide scholarly support and 
    development to needy students, and the tools that their teachers and counselors 
    require to help them succeed.
  
     For example, by the time the network is fully established, teachers who 
    participate in the pilot project will be able to use their computers to scan 
    a UC Berkeley repository of cutting-edge curricular materials and also find 
    out about campus conferences and workshops that they can attend electronically.
  
     Teachers will learn from UC 
    Berkeley astrophysicists how to download NASA images of Earth and Mars 
    for use in their curriculum. They also will get help constructing lessons 
    plans using the images, and the science materials developed will be available 
    on the network for other teachers to use.
  
     After 18 months, the pilot program will be evaluated for its effectiveness, 
    but Kala said that it is anticipated that the network will continue and become 
    a model for other universities.
  
     For more information about the Electronic Mentoring, Teaching, and Information 
    Resource Network, contact Lisa Kala at (510) 643-5193. E-mail: Lisa_Kala@maillink.berkeley.edu
  
     
  
      Gretchen Kell is a senior public information representative in 
    the Public Information Office at UC Berkeley.
    
  
     
    
  
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