YAKIMA, Wash. -- When Ivan Garcia attended orientation at Yakima Valley Community College four years ago, he received a 10-minute tour and was sent on his way.

Since then, orientation has changed. Incoming students are surveyed on their needs and are given more one-on-one attention by paid student mentors, who are trained for the job. New students also are told where to go for help.

If his own orientation had been this thorough, Garcia believes he would have earned his bachelor's degree by now. Instead, he repeatedly dropped out of school because of financial problems.

Only recently did he turn to the Financial Aid Office, resulting in him receiving more aid than he ever got on his own. An entering sophomore, Garcia is now working part time and majoring in paralegal studies.

"The college is dedicated to helping prepare students," said 23-year-old Garcia, the incoming student body president who is now a student mentor himself. "It's a whole different school."

The changes YVCC is making are part of its ongoing mission to develop its research function, engage entering students and revise developmental math courses -- all to bolster student achievement.

For its efforts, YVCC -- which had an enrollment of 12,688 in 2009-10 -- was recently named one of seven new Leader Colleges in the nation by the nonprofit group Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count. The group includes 130 institutions and reaches more than one million students.

As a Leader College, YVCC will mentor other community colleges and take on a larger role at national conferences. There are 28 Leader Colleges in the country. The others named this year are in Texas, Connecticut, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Vermont.

"It remains to be seen what it will mean to the college," said Tomas Ybarra, vice president of Instruction and Student Services, about the honor. "We don't really have a lot of answers. What we have today are many more better formulated questions."

In 2006, YVCC was one of six Washington state community colleges invited to participate in the national Achieving the Dream initiative. YVCC was chosen because of the socio-economic conditions in Yakima County.

For example, the 2008 U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey shows 18.3 percent of Yakima County residents live below the poverty level, compared with 11.3 percent in the state. And 29 percent of Yakima County residents are without high school diplomas, compared with 10 percent in the state.

To combat these statistics, College Spark Washington in Seattle -- an agency that bestows grants to help low-income students in the state -- worked with Achieving the Dream to supply funding to YVCC. It awarded $450,000 to the school over five years, ending in 2010-2011. The grant cannot be renewed.

The money has helped YVCC gather data and develop a plan to address achievement gaps between white and underrepresented students.

"Our mission is to respond to the needs of our community," Ybarra said. "We knew already that there were things we needed to do better but we didn't have the objective evidence to support what we knew anecdotally."

To that end, YVCC began to study itself and track cohorts of new, degree-seeking students. The preliminary data revealed some startling statistics.

White students scored 5 percent better than Hispanics in both math and English, 12 percent higher in the rate of credits attempted and completed and 16 percent better in the rate of completing certificates and/or degrees within three years.

Both Hispanic and white students had trouble with math, and both had high drop-out rates. Twenty-five percent of the students studied didn't return for a second quarter, and 50 percent didn't return for a second year.

The demographics of the Yakima Valley help explain the differences, Ybarra said, noting that many Hispanic students come from uneducated, low-income families who recently settled in the area.

The most recent breakdown, according to 2008 Census numbers, puts Yakima County's white population at 51.1 percent and Hispanic/Latino at 41.4 percent.

Ybarra said YVCC could have succumbed to the barriers. But instead, it's working to overcome them.

"Even though you have a really steep hill to climb, you are hopeful of attaining your long-term goal," he said. "We are committed to eliminating that achievement gap as best we can."

First, YVCC established the Office of Institutional Effectiveness to gather, store and use data to better understand its students' needs.

Wilma Dulin, faculty director for the office, said the process was overwhelming but necessary. Existing staff formed the office, and YVCC gradually reserved funds to support it for when the College Spark grants expired.

"(Before) we had no confidence in how the data was collected," she said. "Every researcher has their own cocktail on who they include, what they don't include and how they filter things out. If I don't have exactly your recipe, I can't make a comparison."

Because of the center, YVCC can better access data needed for grants, annual performance reports and accreditations. Its analysis of course-taking patterns and degree completion is also leading to suggestions on prerequisites and scheduling courses.

The research has helped YVCC budget its resources, Dulin said. While other institutions have closed tutoring centers or cut back on computer lab hours, YVCC instead cut such areas as goods and services, travel and the number of course offerings. It kept the resource centers intact because of the value they give to students, Dulin said.

"Access without support is not an opportunity," she said. "That is the motto we're living under."

Besides its research center, YVCC has done more to engage entering students. It developed a mandatory orientation for new students, hosted a campuswide assembly to discuss barriers to success and created a community resource guide for advisers.

Students were given more access to mentoring through the creation of additional sessions with existing advisers and help from work-study students.

YVCC also blocked registration for students trying to take classes beyond their skill level and improved the course outline for developmental courses.

Some of the efforts are yielding improvements, while others are not.

Through mandatory advising, an additional 8 percent of students are reporting being helped with non-academic responsibilities. On the other hand, the achievement gap between white and Hispanic students remains steady at 10 percent for the rate of credits successfully completed.

To Heather Gingerich, senior program officer for College Spark Washington, the fact that YVCC is embracing new ideas is a good thing.

"There is no quick fix, no silver bullet," Gingerich said. "Yakima has taken a slow and steady approach, and they're doing a phenomenal job at it."

Revising its developmental math courses has been YVCC's other objective in recent years. It spread a sequence for Beginning and Intermediate Algebra from two quarters to three, developed a new statistics course and created an alternative pathway for students who won't major in programs requiring calculus.

As a result, the overall completion rates in developmental courses have improved, and Hispanic students are achieving at the same rate as white students. Best of all, the achievement gap in math has narrowed from 9.2 percent in 2004 to 3.7 percent in 2008.

"We're seeing some intriguing early signs, but it's too early to see if they are reliable," Ybarra said. "We're not nearly through. We've only just begun experimenting."

* Erin Snelgrove can be reached at 509-577-7684 or esnelgrove@yakimaherald.com.