Diana Vasquez Honored by CLIMB
November 15, 2013
By Thomas Scheck
On November 13th the TJSL Admissions Office and the Crawford Law Institute & Mentorship Bond Program co-hosted a Political Interest Mixer on our campus where San Diego Interim Mayor Todd Gloria and City Councilmembers Myrtle Cole and Scott Sherman fielded questions from the audience. Present at the event were twenty-two students from the Crawford Law Academy, an elective class at Crawford High School for students who express an interest for pursuing careers in the legal profession. The CLIMB Program’s volunteers work with these students every week to help them engage in learning about the law and practical applications of the law to their lives in ways which are meaningful yet fun.
The concerns of TJSL law students and Crawford Law Academy students were overwhelmingly identical; chief amongst these concerns articulated at the event focused on what these politicians were doing to increase the number of jobs and internships throughout San Diego for law students and what internship opportunities these politicians were willing to offer to Crawford Law Academy students and their peers. The panel unanimously encouraged students to become involved in politics as political campaigns would welcome high school students with the motivation to be agents for the public welfare. Students seized the opportunity to network with Interim Mayor Gloria and City Councilmembers Cole and Sherman at the end of the event. Crawford Law Academy students took business cards and some have subsequently expressed their desire to follow-up with these city officials and volunteer in politics.
This event was special for CLIMB for another reason; one of the CLIMB Program’s founders, Diana Vasquez, was honored and presented with an award for her outstanding service and dedication to the CLIMB program from its inception and through her time as a law student. Diana worked to develop the CLIMB program and invested sixty hours of her time every week to ensure the program would be an astounding success. Because of the tireless efforts of Diana and her fellow CLIMB volunteers the Program prospered and CLIMB’s 2013 State Bar of California Educational Pipeline Award was earned through their weekly positive impact in the classroom, year after year, empowering these law academy students to achieve academic and life success.
Any TJSL students interested in volunteering with the CLIMB Program should contact either Thomas Scheck or Frances Maldonado for further information; as well as add CLIMB on TWEN from the course list and friend our Facebook page.