Our work is focused on program improvement to better serve students and families through research and evaluation. All partnership work is designed to serve the needs of Breakthrough while also promoting academic scholarship.
Our Mission
Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano is an organization that provides programming and supports for aspiring, first generation college students from middle school through college graduation. They recruit exclusively from Marco Forster Middle School, although students may attend four different high schools. In our work together, projects are focused on program improvement to better serve students and families, through research and evaluation.
Our History
The University of California Irvine School of Education began its partnership with Breakthrough San Juan Capistrano in the summer of 2018, at the same time it began a partnership with Marco Forster Middle School. Projects undertaken since then have included holistic evaluation of Breakthrough’s middle school program, facilitating a youth-participatory action research (YPAR) project with a selected group of students to help them learn about the research process, as well as various efforts to understand students’ experience of COVID-19 pandemic.
Who We Are
Dr. Stephanie Reich
UC Irvine
Jennifer Renick
Graduate Student 2018-present
Alex Serna
Breakthrough SJC 2018-2021
ocean.education.uci.edu 