CSU's Hearst Award Cites Cal State L.A.'S Diaz As Inspiration

Child-Development Senior Looks Back To El Salvador, Ahead To Helping Youngsters

In El Salvador 18 years ago, a grandmother worried whether her two-year-old granddaughter Ana would ever learn to walk. Maybe not, a doctor had said.

But the little girl did; and now, as a 20-year-old child-development senior at California State University, Los Angeles, Ana Jessica Diaz approaches life with a steady and determined pace, and she plans to earn her bachelor's degree next June. Down the road, after graduate school, she hopes to direct a children's center.

Inspired by her perseverance, California State University Board of Trustees will bestow upon Diaz its 2006-07 William R. Hearst/CSU Trustees' Award for Outstanding Achievement. Accompanied by her husband and mother, she will be one of 19 students from throughout the 23-campus CSU system whom the board will honor at its meeting in Long Beach.

As an infant, Diaz suffered through frequent episodes of high fevers and illness. As a toddler, she struggled to stand on her feet. At age five, she and her family moved from El Salvador to Los Angeles. Soon thereafter, leg braces strengthened her ability to walk.

Diaz, who still resides in Los Angeles, remembers learning a new language and acclimating to a new surrounding. "At school I had a tough time because the kids made fun of my custom-made dresses, and of my accent," she said. "My mom never had enough money to buy me a good backpack or good shoes. My clothes were mostly handouts. My family didn't own a car. They still don't, and my husband and I don't."

Diaz, the first member in her family to graduate from high school, attended Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles, and volunteered for Generation Earth and at UCLA Medical Center, California Hospital and Saint Thomas Church. Then she became a Certified Nursing Assistant.

Now, as she pursues a bachelor's degree at Cal State L.A., she works as a substitute teacher at Bright Horizons, Paramount Studios' children's center, where she helps preschoolers develop mathematics skills.

"But, of course, they don't know they're doing math," she said. "To them it's just sharing…. When I was a child, my mom would teach me math with sticks and a song. Now I tell her it was age-inappropriate: She was trying to teach division to a five-year-old."

Diaz credits Yafen Lo, an assistant professor in Child and Family Studies at Cal State L.A., for teaching her how to create and execute lesson plans, skills which landed her the preschool position. "And Professor Lo taught me that I love teaching," she said.

Cal State L.A. child-development instructors Reginald Clark, Alicia Fernandez and Veronica Medrano also taught her critical lessons and offered support, she said.

Funded by personal contributions from the CSU Trustees, other friends of the CSU, and an endowment established by the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the award provides $3,000 scholarships to students with financial need who demonstrate superior academic performance, community service and personal accomplishments. Diaz is the fourth CSULA student since 2000 to receive this award. Other recent recipients include William George Vine, Dion Davis and Alfredo Ruben Gay.

"If I look back on life," Diaz said, "I have knocked on doors and some have been shut down on me. But I keep trying, I don't give up, and I have been very blessed that people have believed in me and have taken a chance on me. That has changed my life completely."