Efforts to recruit low-income and disadvantaged students will be boosted by the University of California, Davis, with the appointment this week of an educational policy expert with classroom and administrative experience to the new post of director of educational outreach initiatives. Faith G. Paul, most recently president of the Public Policy Research Consortium in Northbrook, Ill., will have responsibility for implementing a model outreach program for effecting long-term change in achievement patterns, academic preparation and UC eligibility rates of disadvantaged K-12 students, building on UC Davis' considerable outreach resources. "We are fortunate to have attracted Faith to this new position," said Carol F. Wall, vice chancellor for student affairs. "She brings background that will be critical to the success of the campus's collaborative effort -- her own experiences as a classroom teacher, her professional training at the University of Chicago in educational policy analysis, the perspective gained from her involvement at the national level in other educational outcome efforts, and her demonstrated success in securing extramural funding for efforts such as ours." Paul will foster regional partnerships among schools with large numbers of disadvantaged students, their communities, local businesses and corporate agencies. Initial efforts will focus on two high schools and their respective feeder middle and elementary schools. The goal is to raise the academic performance of an entire school, raising college-going rates of low-income and disadvantaged students in the process. In July, UC Davis announced such an affiliation with Sacramento High School, Kit Carson Middle School and Father Keith B. Kenny Elementary School. Partners also include California State University, Sacramento, the Los Rios Community College District, the Sacramento City Unified School District and the Kelly Foundation, headed by KCRA television owner and Sacramento High graduate Jon Kelly. The Kelly Foundation has pledged $50,000 annually for five years to support partnership activities. A similar partnership is being developed with the Grant Union High School District and the Del Paso Heights School District. "California is at a critical juncture in defining how it will make educational opportunity available to its richly diverse population," said Paul. "The partnership program with UC Davis is at the forefront in addressing this issue. The entire nation will be watching our efforts and our outcomes." For the past five years, Paul has researched rates of high school completion and access to post-secondary education for minority students in metropolitan Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. She has written about such issues as "negotiated identities" (the positive or negative sense of academic ability that students develop from subtle signals and overt information) and their influence on choice of academic program, student expectations and outcomes, the role of counselors and the needs of students and parents, and information gaps that affect major educational decisions by students and parents. She co-directed the Indiana Youth Opportunity Study, funded by the Lilly Endowment; the State Higher Education Systems and College Completion Study, funded by the Ford Foundation; and the privately funded Alabama Higher Education Desegregation Study. She was a senior investigator for the Metropolitan Opportunity Study, funded by the Spencer Foundation to analyze the effect of different higher education arrangements on access and degree completion. "School counselors across Indiana valued our relationship with Faith," said Sue Reynolds, executive director of the Indiana School Counselors Association. "She became one of us as we all strived to raise student achievement." Paul received a doctorate in educational administration and policy from the University of Chicago in 1992, a master's degree in history from the University of Hawaii in 1976, a master's in education from the University of Chicago in 1966 and a bachelor's degree in history and education from the University of Illinois in 1961. From 1961 to 1968, she taught history and social science in inner city and suburban high schools in metropolitan Chicago. From 1968 to 1970, she was a research assistant in the history department at the University of Hawaii at Manoa and from 1970 to 1985 was with its College of Education curriculum, research and development group. From 1986 to 1992, she was a research associate in the political science department at the University of Chicago.