The Puente Project is a national award-winning program that has improved the college-going rate of tens of thousands of California’s educationally underrepresented students since 1981. Its mission is to increase the number of underrepresented students who enroll in four-year colleges and universities, earn college degrees and return to their communities as mentors and leaders to future generations. The program is interdisciplinary in approach, with writing, counseling and mentoring components.
Started in 1981 at Chabot Community College in Hayward, the program has since expanded to seven middle schools, 36 high schools and 65 community colleges throughout the state. The program was launched as a grassroots initiative to address the low rate of academic achievement among Mexican American and Latino students. In an effort to understand the possible causes of their high dropout rate, Puente Project founders Felix Galaviz and Patricia McGrath reviewed over 2,000 student transcripts. They discovered three key patterns among Latino students: students were avoiding academic counseling, were not enrolling in college-level writing courses and were the first in their families to attend college.
The Puente model is made of three components: rigorous language arts instruction, sustained academic counseling, and community leadership development and mentoring. Puente staff train middle school, high school and community college instructors and counselors to implement a program of rigorous instruction, focused academic counseling and mentoring by members of the community. Puente’s staff training programs have benefited approximately 300,000 students across the state. Today, Puente is open to all students.
Since 1985, Puente has been co-sponsored by the California Community Colleges and University of California (UC) systems. By 2016, 78 percent of Puente participants went to college, with 72 percent completing A-G courses that qualify them for admission to a UC or California State University school. A 2022–23 study showed 80 percent of the students in the Puente Project were admitted to two- and four-year colleges, compared to 62 percent of all California high school graduates. That same year, 73 percent of Puente high school graduates completed the A-G courses while the rate for California underrepresented students and all California high school graduates was 44 percent and 52 percent, respectively.
Middle and high school programs
The program for middle and high school students aims for students to graduate high school and enroll in college with the support their Puente team — a teacher, counselor and the student’s parent. Puente focuses on English language arts, guidance from a mentor and leadership opportunities. Program headquarters are at UC Berkeley and site team partners — consisting of an instructor and counselor at each school/campus site — help to implement the program at middle schools, high schools and community colleges across California, Texas and Washington.
“Puente is an educationally transformative program that is more than 40 years strong,” said Josefina E. Canchola, director of Secondary Programs and Partnerships at the Puente Project’s Southern California office and trustee in the Whittier Union High School District, in a press release. “Puente opens up a path towards higher education in the most-needy communities in California by serving underrepresented students that might not otherwise consider pursuing a college degree. We pride ourselves in nurturing the leadership potential in each of our students and are proud of their intellectual, academic and personal growth and development during their Puente experience.”
The English component of the program is a two-year class sequence that teaches various genres that integrate Latino and multicultural literature and themes of identity and a Puente counselor is paired with the student to support their academic, college and career goals as well as their social-emotional development. The Puente counselor works hand-in-hand with the Puente teacher as an interdisciplinary team that meets regularly, and as needed, with Puente students both inside the classroom and out. The Puente counselor also works closely with parents, providing regular parent workshops throughout the school year. The program also offers structured participation in mentoring and student leadership activities and community service.
Building the confidence of students in their ability to succeed is another outcome of the Puente Project. “Many of my classmates and teachers believed that I had the potential to be successful, but it was not until I joined Puente that I actually started believing it,” said Jocelyn Ramirez, a Puente participant who is now attending UC Berkeley.
