I AM and SummerTIME | About | Students | Mentors | Research | Student Resources | News & Media
I AM and SummerTIME are college-transition programs that help Los Angeles students pursue their higher education dreams.
Both programs are projects of the Pullias Center for Higher Education. In addition to supporting local students toward their pursuit of a college education, the programs allow researchers at the Pullias Center to study how best to support low-income, underrepresented students—and to share those findings with education practitioners and researchers.
Core Team
Outreach Advisor
Lead Researcher
About I AM
The Increasing Access via Mentoring (I AM) program provides free one-on-one mentorship to college-ready seniors at Los Angeles high schools through the college and financial aid application process. This action-based, intensive mentoring model pairs staff and graduate students from the University of Southern California with local students from partner high schools.
The I AM program works with high schools with historically low college-going rates in low-income communities located in central, east, and south Los Angeles. I AM mentors meet with their students each month from September to June, and work with them on writing college essays, determining which college to attend, applying for financial aid, and discussing the myriad of questions any high school senior has about going to college.
The goal of I AM is to increase by 10 to 25 percent the college-going population at target high schools. In addition, I AM prepares students to successfully transition from high school to college. To date, all I AM program students have applied to four-year institutions, and more than 90 percent have attended a four-year institution.
About SummerTIME
The SummerTIME (Tools, Information, Motivation, Education) program provides a four-week writing and college transition program for college-bound students at Los Angeles high schools. The summer program serves low-income underrepresented students, many of whom live in homes where English is a second language and are the first in their families to graduate high school and continue on to college.
The SummerTIME curriculum is an intensive program of college level writing, supplemented with information related to the transition to college. The goals of SummerTIME are to improve students’ expository writing abilities along with their grammar and language capabilities, to increase students’ abilities to revise and evaluate their own work, and to provide students with resources and tools for transitioning from high school to college.
The program has a proven record of improving writing levels; 60 percent of SummerTIME students classified as remedial at the start of the program according to a writing pretest were classified as college-ready on the writing posttest. In addition, SummerTIME students gain college knowledge so they are better prepared to navigate university life.
History of I AM and SummerTIME
The Pullias Center for Higher Education began its SummerTIME program in 2002, when co-director William G. Tierney and then-research assistant (and now Pullias Center faculty member) Zoë B. Corwin, along with other research assistants, got the idea to provide a writing and college transition program for students from local high schools with historically low college-going rates.
Just three years later in 2005, the I AM program got its start. Tierney and then-research assistant Paz Oliverez, who was collecting data for her dissertation work on student financial aid, developed this program both to conduct educational research and to provide one-on-one mentorship to high school students with their college and financial aid application processes.
Since then, both programs have been central to the Pullias Center’s efforts to improve college access for first-generation, low-income youths in Los Angeles. Funded by various grants and donations from The Ahmanson Foundation, College Futures Foundation, and many other organizations and individuals, the programs have changed size and focus over the years. The core aims of the programs, however, have stayed consistent, with I AM providing individualized, personal mentoring and SummerTIME offering writing instruction and college knowledge to underserved Los Angeles students aspiring to go to college.
As of fall 2018, SummerTIME has served more than 1000 students, and I AM close to 2000. To date, all students mentored through the I AM program have applied to four-year institutions, and more than 90 percent have attended a four-year institution. I AM alumni have gained admission to California colleges, both private (e.g. USC, Stanford University, Occidental College) and public (e.g. California State Universities and University of California schools), as well as Ivy League schools and other out-of-state colleges (e.g. MIT, Cornell, Columbia, Yale).
Funders and Grantors
For I AM
Angell Foundation
California Educational Facilities Authority
Citi Foundation
College Futures Foundation
Goldman Sachs Foundation
Los Angeles Scholars Investment Fund
Lumina Foundation
The Earl V. Pullias Family
Sterling-Dorman Foundation
Weingart Foundation
For SummerTIME
The Ahmanson Foundation
Angell Foundation
College Futures Foundation
The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation
Goldman Sachs Foundation
Joseph Drown Foundation
The Kayne Foundation
Los Angeles Scholars Investment Fund
Marguerite Casey Foundation
The Earl V. Pullias Family
The Riordan Foundation
The Sallie Mae Fund
The Skirball Foundation
Weingart Foundation
Private Donors