‘Love in action’: UCSC’s Smith Society, serving students without a traditional family structure, turns 25 

Maribel Rodriguez was one of the first students that UC Santa Cruz’s Smith Society supported. As the group turns 25, the 52-year-old Rodriguez cites Bette Midler, the “Wind Beneath My Wings,” in describing its impact. 

“I’ve always had wings, but they gave me the wind,” she said. 

The Smith Society supports students who come to UC Santa Cruz with little or no traditional family support. It helps them with all that the new college experience can throw at them. Figuring out housing. Getting comfortable with college life and studies. How to prepare for life after graduation. Even finding someone to celebrate a good grade with. 

Since Smith Society’s founding in 1999, about 602 students have participated and found a kind of family to support them and cheer them on. 

On June 9, dozens of people gathered at the on-campus home of Cowell College Provost Alan Christy to celebrate Smith Society’s 25th anniversary. Based in Cowell College, Smith Society was founded by Bill Dickinson, 79, who is considered to be the first veteran of the foster care system to attend UCSC, in 1965.

Dickinson says he found inspiration in the support and respect he received from founding Cowell College Provost Page Smith and his wife, Eloise Pickard Smith, when he arrived at UCSC. In return, Dickinson first started a scholarship with the option for a mentor in 1999, and then expanded the scholarship in 2001 to become a supportive society for those attending UCSC after experiencing the foster care system or the delinquency system or who were orphans. 

Over time, Smith Society expanded to serve students from a much broader range of backgrounds, which Dickinson now describes as, “students who, when they would want to call home, don’t have anyone to call.”

The idea: organize events, mentors and a community of peers with similar backgrounds to provide ongoing help. The program offers research fellowships, hosts weekly lunches in the Cowell Dining Hall, pays for work-study at off-campus nonprofits and provides an annual $750 scholarship to all of its students who enroll. About 60 students participate in Smith Society each year and about 30 work with a mentor. This year, 15 Smith Society students graduated.  

The roots of Smith Society

Dickinson recalled that early in his time at UCSC, he got an initial draft notice to serve in the military as the Vietnam War raged on. Opposed to the war, he told Page Smith he was considering fleeing to Canada or going to jail instead of going into the military. Smith calmly talked him into staying, Dickinson said. In the end, he was not drafted. But Dickinson remembers how Smith, with so much care, knew what he needed at that moment. Smith knew how much theological ideas interested Dickinson, and used a theologian’s theory to talk him out of running. 

“A man of his stature had taken the trouble to know who I am and what I cared about,” Dickinson said. “So much so that for the whole time I was there, when anybody came to Cowell, who was in any way connected with religion, he made sure I spent time with that person. And from that example, I’ve learned with the Smith Society to introduce students to people I know who might have some use to them.” 

The 25th anniversary at Cowell College brought Smith Society alumni, current participants and mentors together to share their stories and talk about the impact of the community on their lives. 

Elizabeth Fabel, 20, who just finished her second year majoring in feminist studies, said listening to people’s stories at the anniversary made her feel “grateful” to have found Smith Society this past year. 

Fabel, who was raised in San Jose, said she went “no-contact” with her guardians when she moved out to go to school and has no support from them. She said she feels Smith Society is like a “big family” and one of its founding volunteers, Cheryl Jones, with whom she has worked for the past year, has been key to that.

This spring Fabel said she’s had a lot of health problems and appointments, and Jones has been there for her, driving her to appointments and always with a smile.

“I had to get an endoscopy [in April], and it was delayed by about three hours, and she just had this big smile on her face the whole time, like, it’ll happen when it happens,” said Fabel. “I call her my honorary mom. She gives us that unconditional love that a lot of us didn’t really get.” 

Jones, who worked in the UCSC financial aid office for over 27 years until retiring in 2012, first met Dickinson when she helped him administer the scholarship. Over the years, she’s served Smith Society students in a variety of ways, including how she helped Fabel. 

She recalls how one year, when there was a 45-minute-long line at the financial aid office, a Smith Society student waited in the line just to talk to her. Jones teared up recounting the story.

She asked him how he was doing, and he said excitedly, “I got a B on my midterm.”

“Then I said, ‘Well, how can I help you today?’ And he goes, ‘I just wanted to tell you I got a B on my midterm,’” she said. “I thought, ‘Oh, my God. He stood in line to talk to his friend from Smith.'”

Jones became involved in the community by chance because of her work at the university. She said she feels incredibly lucky to meet Smith Society students, watch them grow into adults and meet them when they return for events like the anniversary. She is one of about 120 mentors who have participated in the program since its founding.

In the first year or so of Smith Society, Jones knew about student Maribel Rodriguez’s needs and called her to let her know about funding available from an alumnus (Dickinson). 

Rodriguez remembers the call, and how she found out she could use that money to buy a computer. 

“I’m like, ‘Really, a computer? Whoa. And what do I need to do?’” recalled Rodriguez. “Cheryl said, ‘All you need to do is pick up a check and that’s it.’ And that’s what I did. I went and bought my computer, and then I learned through her the name of this person was Bill.” 

Rodriguez then met with Bill Dickinson, and he became her mentor for the rest of her time at UCSC. 

“Smith Society is a group of people that care about those that do not have the luxury of having the structure of a family,” she said. “It’s love in action.” 

About 13 years earlier, in her hometown of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, Rodriguez had been homeless, dealing with a difficult family situation. She decided to leave, and connected with a woman who helped her cross the border into the United States. She crossed as an unaccompanied, undocumented 13-year-old. 

Reaching UCSC was a huge accomplishment for her, but she still needed the support of family structure to get her through it. Rodriguez said Dickinson, and the people he introduced her to, changed her life. 

When she was finishing up school, she didn’t know what she was going to do and she considered going into the military. Because of her interest in religion, Dickinson encouraged her to apply to Harvard Divinity School and connected her with his friends. Shortly after, she was on her way to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and had a home to welcome her there. 

“It repositioned me in a place that I hadn’t envisioned for myself,” she said. “I was lost and they helped me find myself. I’ve been enriched by the experiences that unfolded because of that.” 

Rodriguez now lives in Exeter, north of Bakersfield, and is a social worker in a dialysis clinic: “I feel like this is my way of loving others and offering support when they’re forced to reckon with life.” 

What’s next for Smith Society

As Smith Society celebrates 25 years, it’s entering a phase where many of its 30 or so mentors and volunteers, who’ve been with the organization for years, are beginning to move away or age out of the work. Jones and Dickinson said one of their main challenges is getting new volunteers to help plan events, be mentors to students, drive students to appointments and take up leadership roles. 

Jones said volunteers can sign up for a broad range of opportunities that have differing time commitments: “We want volunteers to spend as much time as they want to, it is up to them.” For example, mentors may spend a few hours per quarter keeping in touch with their mentee, or the mentor can also attend the weekly lunches, which would add time. She said Smith Society will figure out, based on what volunteers want to give, how they can best contribute their time. 

This year also marks a new development that they say is filling a significant need: the launch of an academic success program led by Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology Professor Grant Hartzog and Cowell Provost Alan Christy, who is starting his 30th year working at the university.

Christy said he and Hartzog will help mentors, and generally Smith Society members, know which faculty or staff are best suited to answer questions about potential research or any academic opportunities that Smith Society students might be interested in. 

They’ll also help oversee how the program is working, how to ensure funds get to where they need to be used, looking into data and any trends of how students are doing to continue improving the program. 

Christy said it makes sense that Smith Society is housed at Cowell College – whose theme is “The pursuit of truth in the company of friends.”

He recalls a story of how the founder of Smith Society’s mentoring program, historian Gary Miles, became ill and was hospitalized several years ago. Miles’ wife called Christy to tell him and he told her he would be there in the morning to visit. 

When he arrived at Miles’ room at the hospital, another man, one of Miles’ mentees from Smith Society, was already there. The man, who was living in Boston and working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, got the phone call around the same time Christy did, but had beaten Christy to the hospital to be by Miles’ side.

“I think about that story a lot as a way of illustrating how strong the bonds can be between Smith students and some of the volunteers,” he said. “People who’ve been in foster care, or wards of the state, often don’t have the same kind of family resource network to back them up. … Smith Society volunteers are there to help them out, and in many ways, just be that source of friendship, mentoring – somebody that they can turn to when they need somebody – which we all need at different times.” 

To learn more about volunteering and mentoring opportunities, reach out to smithsociety@ucsc.edu. To donate, visit its website, SmithSociety.ucsc.edu.

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