GANAS Graduate Pathways

As we enter our 60th year as a land-grant public research university, UCSC is further embracing its role as a comprehensive public university serving a growing and increasingly diverse population of students before and beyond the bachelor’s degree. In the latter case, we seek to help students complete their advanced degrees and become the future faculty of color and knowledge-producers throughout academia and the professional workforce.

The GANAS Graduate Pathways Project draws on UCSC’s strengths as a research institution to enhance the graduate school pipeline for degree completion for Latinés, students of color, and low-income students by addressing the following four gaps in services, infrastructure, and/or opportunities.

Grant goals	Anticipated impact
Goal 1: The relative lack of representation of Latiné graduate students at UCSC and in higher education nationally, and which is reflected in the equity gap among faculty across the University of California.	Increase Latiné graduate students’ sense of belonging to UCSC by 12%
Goal 2: The gap in rates of advancing to candidacy and degree attainment between White and Hispanic/Latiné doctoral students.	Increase the number of Latiné graduate students enrolled at UCSC by 35%
Goal 3: UCSC graduate students, including Latiné, low-income, and students of color, experience writing challenges.	Increase Latiné graduate students’ writing proficiency by 3 percentage points.
Goal 4: Non-academic barriers, including financial planning/literacy, basic needs, and lack of personal support, can impede students’ progress and completion, especially those who are Latina/o, low-income, and students of color.	Increase graduate degree completion for Latina/o, low-income, and graduate students of color by 3 percentage points.

Grant initiatives

The GANAS Graduate Project has been designed to unleash the potential of UCSC as a public Hispanic-Serving Research Institution (HSRI) – one of the few HSIs that is an R1 doctorate-granting university (indicating “very high levels of research activity” in the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education) – by increasing the readiness of Latiné, low-income and students of color to succeed in graduate programs through four graduate degree completion programs.

Financial planning/literacy, holistic, and basic needs counselor

The GANAS Graduate Services Counselor (GSC) serves as a one-stop center for graduate students to address non-academic challenges that impede transition and degree completion. Services emphasize financial planning, budgeting, cost-control strategies, borrowing, and financial literacy.

Doctoral Summer Bridge Program

A one-week residential Doctoral Summer Bridge Program focusing on students’ transition to the graduate school environment to help them complete master’s or doctoral degrees.

VOCES Graduate Student Writing Center

The center provides all graduate students with an array of writing strategies designed to address conceptual thinking, reading/literacy, and multiple forms of writing needed at various stages in graduate student development.

Graduate Student First-Year Experience course: Induction to the discipline through collective learning

These graduate seminars are designed to introduce first-year graduate students to a discipline through a team-taught approach.

Latiné Initiative for Future Teachers (LIFT) credential and master’s degree

This initiative provides any scholar interested in teaching with a streamlined pathway to the Master’s in Education and Teaching Credential (MA/C) Program, as well as mentorship and financial support while they are in the program.