"Getting Into College and Staying There," a new 12-week home study program on CD, was created to help keep college freshmen out of remedial math and English classes.

The SAT score-boosting program, conceived by E.F. "Gene" Lucas, is targeted to high school students who plan on attending college.

Students entering the California State University system are required to take an English Placement Test and an Entry Level Mathematics test. Students who fail those tests are required to take remedial course work.

But students who have scored well on their high school SATs are exempt. An English SAT score of 550 and a math SAT score of 560 exempts incoming college students from having to take the EPT and ELM tests.

That's where "Getting Into College and Staying There" comes in.

"We want to get kids to get their SAT scores big enough so they can be exempt from the EPT and ELM," Lucas said.

Last year, Public Service Media Inc., a non-profit corporation, was established to manage the project.

Lucas turned his home office into a studio, recording a promotional video CD with a digital camcorder and computer, and lessons through Microsoft PowerPoint with embedded audio. He created and labeled the discs himself.

The 36 classroom-like PowerPoint lectures, instructed by Lucas, Robert Main Ph. D. and math specialist Ann Eggen, are offered on CD.

Main is professor emeritus of Instructional Design and Technology at Chico State University. Lucas, after retiring from a Silicon Valley engineer and manager position, worked 5 1/2 years as a career counselor in Shasta County before returning to Chico State and receiving a master's in instructional technology. Eggen, who has taught mathematics for 20 years at Butte and Shasta community colleges, is another member of the team.

"We're not soap salesmen," Lucas joked.

On the promotional video CD, which has been given to many area schools, Lucas gives a grim assessment of life without college.

"There is no success in the 21st century without post-high-school education," he says. "All the good jobs that used to be available to high school students have gone overseas and the choices have become, be educated or be poor."

Eggen teaches the math course, Lucas teaches the verbal half of the English course and Main instructs the writing portion of the course. During Main's 12 lectures, students write and submit via e-mail, three writing assignments that will be graded: a general essay, a research paper and a college entrance essay.

"Dr. Main estimates 30 percent of the (college) dropouts do so because they can't cope with the writing (demands)," Lucas said.

Of the 1,877 students who enrolled as Chico State freshmen last fall, 669 (35.6 percent) required remedial English and 551 (29.4 percent) required remedial math. Statewide, the numbers were higher.

And Lucas sees a day when colleges may stop offering such course work that gets students college-ready.

"There could be no more remedial classes in five years; you don't pass, you don't get in," he said.

Even if, after taking the 12-week course, students don't score high enough on their SATs to be exempt from college entry exams, they are likely to do better on those exams as a result of their preparatory work, Lucas said.

The home-study program, which costs $70, includes CD lessons, the promo video CD, a copy of Research and Education Associates' "The Very Best Coaching an Study Course," which serves as the text book, a calculator and a copy of Strunk and White's "The Elements of Style" writing guide.

Thursday's article in Style, titled "Pumping up those SAT scores" stated that a SAT math subscore of 560 would exempt a student from the California State University entry level mathematics placement test. Since August of 1999, the SAT math subscore for exemption from this test has been 550.