I may be a little biased, but if you have a problem, it is wise to see how the most sucessful people, the Jews deal with the support, and nuturing of  their Culture with their Youth. 
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Column One 

DAY OF THE JEWISH TROJAN

 USC's recruitment effort makes significant gains, countering the school's 
history of sometimes alienating Jews.

Los Angeles Times 
By Stuart Silverstein, 
Staff Writer
December 11, 2002

In the University of Southern California admissions office, Jessica F. Pashkow works alongside colleagues who specialize in bringing Latino and black undergraduates to campus, a goal of many universities around the country.

Pashkow who is Jewish has a rare job. She recruits Jews.

She urges co-workers --... to alert her to top prospects whose last names end, for example, in "berg," "baum" or "bloom."...

Jews in the past has seen the school as the University of Second Choice. Many people with USC ties privately say the university is trying to win over more Jewish donors too.

At the same time, many top-notch Jewish students came to view USC's undergraduate programs as academically inferior, opting instead for UCLA, UC Berkeley or the Ivy League...

With the 1991 arrival of President Steven B. Sample -- a white Episcopalian with an affinity for Jewish culture and a commitment to diversity -- the university acted swiftly to upgrade its academic standing. It has climbed in U.S. News & World Report's rankings of major national universities to 31st...

One of its important initiatives was to court Jewish Los Angeles, a community known for its success in education, not to mention the arts, sciences, professions and business.

"There was this very explicit, studied, intentional effort to dramatically improve the academic strength of the undergraduate student body, and that meant going out and getting the best students, wherever they may be -- and some of those are Jews," Sample said in a recent interview.

They weren't hard to locate.Jewish neighborhoods are less than 10 miles west of campus. "It's a natural here."In fact, USC sits amid the second largest Jewishpopulation in the nation -- Jews number about 600,000 in Southern California.

Sample had an assessment done of USC's Jewish resources, and found they were surprisingly vast: One-third of the faculty was Jewish, as were one-third of the deans and up to 2,000 of the campus' more than 27,000 students, although many were in graduate or professional schools.

USC officials knew, too, that a good portion of the university's major donors through its 122 years have been Jewish. And although USC leaders say their outreach isn't intended as a fund-raising ploy, they acknowledge that Jews are giving more money to the university than ever.

Sample also determined that USC had an unheralded asset in Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, which is next to USC and offers courses in Jewish studies that USC students can take for credit....

Today, a Jewish touch is evident all over campus.

USC's dean of religious life, Susan Laemmle, is a reform rabbi.  The campus is home to the 4-year-old Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life, which organizes academic lectures and conferences, as well as public forums on issues affecting the local Jewish community.

Efforts like Pashkow's have paid off. USC officials point to an apparent spurt in Jewish freshmen enrollment. According to the university's informal polling, the percentage of Jews in this year's freshman class is 8.2%, up from 4.6% a decade ago. That's still far below the 20%-plus level estimated for some Ivy League schools, but comparable with UCLA, where the latest available survey showed that 7% of freshmen were Jews.

Jews also have become more influential in the leadership of USC. A symbolic breakthrough came in September, when businessman Gold became chairman of the board of trustees. (A Jewish newspaper, Forward, headlined the story: "Once-WASPy USC Names First Jew as Board Chair.")....

In the 1970s, two other controversies drew wide attention and dismayed Jews. A non-Jewish dean of the dentistry school was investigated in 1972 by a university committee after alumni complained that he, among other things, was "pro-Jewish" in his hiring decisions.

Six years later, many Jews in Los Angeles were angered by USC's plan to house a Middle East Center that, at the urging of Saudi Arabian officials, was to be funded by American corporations doing billions of dollars of business with the Saudis. The American Jewish Committee charged that the unusual deal threatened the academic integrity of the university, and later the faculty senate and a USC advisory council both condemned the idea. USC ultimately backed away from the deal.

Although USC's relations with Los Angeles Jews have vastly improved -- especially after an effort to hire more Jewish professors and deans beginning in the 1960s -- old perceptions die hard.

Morton Owen Schapiro, who was dean of USC's College of Letters, Arts and Sciences until becoming president of Williams College in Massachusetts two years ago, said that when he was named to the USC deanship in 1994, "It was shocking how many people would say, 'I can't believe, at Letters, Arts and Sciences, a Jewish dean!' ''

As Schapiro delights in pointing out, he actually was the fifth consecutive Jewish dean of that college.

Many top universities are trying to make their campuses more inviting for Jews by, say, adding or expanding Jewish studies programs. But by assigning someone to recruit strong Jewish students five years ago, USC took an unusual step in the competitive world of college admissions.

Perhaps the only school to rival USC in this respect has been Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Vanderbilt hired a rabbi two years ago as an assistant to the provost to reach out to Jewish organizations around the country, and it is adding three endowed chairs in Jewish studies over the next four years.

At USC, some of the parents Pashkow meets worry that universities may be typecasting Jewish students as high achievers and pursuing them in hopes of raising their institutions' average SAT scores. (Last year, American students identifying themselves as Jewish averaged 1161 on their SATs, 141 points above the national average of 1020.)

But Pashkow, a 31-year-old with a relaxed charm, said that once she explains USC's intent, "they're very happy to know that we're doing this."

The USC application doesn't ask students to specify their religious affiliation, and Pashkow is the only person among the two dozen admissions officers to focus on Jewish recruitment...As a lighthearted reminder, Pashkow circulates around the admissions office a three-page memo called "Jews Clues."

The first piece of advice is to spot names ending in "baum," "berg," "burg," "bloom," "man," "stein," "thal," "vitz" or "witz." Another dead giveaway mentioned in the memo: If applicants mention that they have had a bar or bat mitzvah.

Her co-workers "think it's cute, they laugh at it," Pashkow said. But the memo also prompts her colleagues to put a "JWSH" coding on applications from Jewish students.

The university has gained plaudits, and avoided controversy, by including its outreach to Jewish students and the Los Angeles Jewish community in a broader effort to achieve diversity on campus. USC is well known for its outreach to blacks, Latinos and other minorities, and has more foreign students than any other university in the country. And leaders of various faiths on campus say they do not feel slighted.

Jewish students are responding to the university's interest....and attend religious services with other observant students at the new Chabad house.

Pashkow notes  that residential students who want access to kosher kitchen facilities can live in "SChalom Housing," a floor for observant Jewish students in a university apartment building. (Muslim students live nearby, in a separate wing on the same floor.)...

Day of the Jewish Trojan 
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-me-jews11dec11004425.story?null