TESP and Ford Foundation Grant
At the same time TACS was working on programs to bring Chicano students from the west and south sides of San Antonio to Trinity. The group sought funding for a cohort of selected students to begin studies in the fall of 1971. A major grant from the Ford Foundation and other funding was able to support the tuition of 24 students. This was under a program that TACS and Trinity called the Trinity Educational Services Program (TESP). The program was to include in addition to paid tuition, counseling and tutoring services, transportation, books and supplies, and a “barrio” house which was to serve as a community study center.
Continual funding soon became a problem for the program. TACS scrambled to find additional grants and they only admitted 12 students for the 1972-1973 school year. Former TACS president Jorge Anchando stepped in as the director of the program. The program closed the barrio house and changed its services focusing more on career planning.
It is unclear how many students from the original cohort of 24 and the second cohort of 12 graduated from Trinity.
Two of the graduates enrolled through the program were Andy Hernandez and Elizabeth Ruiz.
Andy Hernandez was a religion, sociology and political science major. Because he was known for social activism, Mario Compean (who helped to establish the Mexican American Youth Organization MAYO) recommended he apply to Trinity through the TESP. While at Trinity, he was an executive officer of TACS and served as a student representative on the student council and a town senator on the student senate. Hernandez also served on the Graduate Dean Search committee, the Scholarship and Student Aid Committee, and a minority council. Hernandez led a lettuce boycott on campus and successfully petitioned to have student activity funds redistributed to better represent the student body. In 1975, during his senior year of school, he became the research director of the Southwest Voter Registration Education Project (SVREP) under Willie Velasquez. The research he began conducting while at Trinity in Tucker Gibson’s political science class was instrumental in establishing the direction of the SVREP.
Elizabeth Ruiz was a music education major. Ruiz grew up in the Edgewood School District and attend John F. Kennedy High School. Ruiz was told of TESP through her neighborhood librarian. While at Trinity, she was the historian for the Trinity Association of Chicano students and an active member of the Trinity choir under the direction of Claude Zetty. She traveled to Yugosolvia with the choir in 1973. After graduation she taught choir for about five years at Burbank High School before she went back to school at San Antonio College to train in Radio, Television, and Film communication. She had a long career as a radio newscaster and announcer at KTSA/KTFM in San Antonio.