UW@Heritage: Robert Ozuna back home heading up high tech facility

By Steve Hill
University Week

Robert Ozuna’s first job with the UW looks a little bit like his last teaching job with Heritage College.

Ozuna, who in April became the first director of the UW@Heritage College, is a Heritage graduate and was working as an adjunct faculty at his alma mater before taking his current position. With the new job, he’s more involved than ever in the operations at Heritage - a four-year liberal arts college in Toppenish. The campus is the only four-year higher education institution based in the Yakima Valley, serving primarily multicultural constituents.

Robert Ozuna

“It’s been great to reconnect,” he said recently from his office in the new Digital Learning Center on the Heritage campus. “When I taught here as an adjunct I was on a hurried schedule. Now I have more time to sit down and plan and talk with people about their needs.”

Their needs invariably revolve around technology. That’s why the UW Office of Educational Partnerships and Heritage College teamed up to form the UW@Heritage. The center opened its doors March 1, one month before Ozuna’s hiring.

The joint venture was established to help students from underrepresented groups access higher education programs and support services. A grant from the UW’s Tools for Transformation fund, coupled with a gift from the Microsoft Corporation, made it possible to open the Digital Learning Center, a state-of-the-art computer classroom.

The high-tech facility might be taken for granted at the UW, but it’s been a shot in the arm for students and faculty at Heritage. In fact, it’s the backbone of the UW@Heritage. Four computer science classes, for example, are currently using the center.

“In the past they haven’t been able to offer these classes because of older equipment and no high-speed Internet access,” Ozuna said. “Everybody here loves this lab. It’s got an LCD projection screen, which is great for training. You can’t compare it to anything else we’ve got here.”

Among other uses, the lab is Heritage’s gateway to the K-20 network, which gives faculty and students access to information and research throughout the state via the Internet, videoconferencing and satellite-delivered video programs.

Ozuna and some social work faculty and students at Heritage have already used the facility to teleconference with their social work counterparts in Seattle.

“It was dynamite,” Ozuna said.

The meeting was successful because it brought diverse perspectives together to consider common issues. The Heritage contingent consisted of five minorities while the UW group was mostly white and middle class.

“We had an interaction on race and racial issues and you could just see the differences in terms of the questions asked back and forth,” Ozuna said. “We’re a rural community, but we’re a diverse community. You don’t always get that in Seattle. One person in the Seattle group talked about issues from a gay perspective. That’s something we don’t talk about as openly in a rural setting. It led to a good healthy discussion and both sides learned from it and said we need to do this again.”

Ozuna expects that the teleconference was just one of a host of successful applications of the new technology.

“The faculty are very interested in using technology more,” Ozuna said. “They want to put more materials on the Web. They would like to interact with students via e-mail. They want to use PowerPoint in the classroom. And students are the same way. They want to use the Internet to do research. They want to learn to do PowerPoint presentations.”

Ozuna and the UW@Heritage will also play a critical role in the University’s outreach efforts in the Yakima Valley. For example, the University’s Business and Economic Development Program is designing a course with Heritage students and faculty that will bring Seattle students to the community to work with minority business owners in the area as part of a service-learning project.

The Toppenish community has been largely receptive to the UW’s increased presence in the area, Ozuna says, because he is one of their own.

“I open with, ‘I know you think we’re the University and we’re going to come in and tell you what to do, but I’m from this community. I’m here to determine what your needs are.’ It’s not a case of let me tell you what to do. It’s more, let’s figure out together what we can do.”

Ozuna grew up in the Yakima Valley, went to college at Heritage, then left briefly to earn his master’s degree from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His return to the Valley, he said, was a given.

“I’m from here and I have a large and very close-knit family,” he said. “I believe we lose a lot of talented people from the Valley. I’ve chosen to come back to be with my family and to help any way I can. I want to help our people succeed.”

Outreach worker joins Ozuna

Robert Ozuna isn’t the only UW employee at the UW@Heritage College.

Roy Garcia joined Ozuna about three weeks ago. Garcia, while technically an employee of the UW’s Office of Minority Affairs in Seattle, will be headquartered at the Heritage College facility. Being in the Yakima Valley can only help as Garcia tries to recruit students from the area, Ozuna says.

“So far it’s working out great,” he said. “In the past we had to get outreach coordinators all the way from Seattle. This is much more efficient.”

And Garcia is already taking advantage of his proximity to students that would otherwise be a day away for UW recruiters.

“He’s already been from Yakima all the way to the Tri-Cities. He’s really getting the word out that he’s here and he’s a resource for students interested in the UW.”

Ozuna said the UW@Heritage is likely to add one more employee, a program assistant, in the near future.

“As we pursue more funding opportunities we’ll be looking at some additional resources,” Ozuna said.

Steve Hill