Prominent Long Beach Businesswoman and Philanthropist Named New Member of Non-Profit Education Researcher’s Board of Directors

Press Release

For more information contact:
Julie Gates
Julie Gates Public Relations
562-429-5972
jgatespr@yahoo.com
for MIND Research Institute
Booth #1523 at TCEA

Prominent Long Beach Businesswoman and Philanthropist Named New Member of Non-Profit Education Researcher’s Board of Directors

After working closely with the MIND Institute as a volunteer and donor, Roberta Jenkins of SDD Enterprises and the Roberta and Matthew Jenkins Family Foundation accepts a new role in providing MIND’s successful mathematics education program to local schools

LONG BEACH, CA, June 18, 2007 - The non-profit education researcher MIND Institute, based in Costa Mesa, named Long Beach businesswoman and philanthropist Roberta Jenkins as a new member of its Board of Directors. Jenkins, who co-founded the real estate investment firm SDD Enterprises and the Roberta and Matthew Jenkins Family Foundation, has been actively involved with the MIND Institute and its mathematics education programs for several years as a volunteer and donor. She helped start MIND’s Los Angeles Advisory Council and hosted events through this group to raise the organization’s visibility. She lives and works in Long Beach and gives back to the community through her foundation, which provides scholarships to many deserving, disadvantaged students, enabling them to become productive citizens in society. Jenkins shares a common interest with MIND in improving children’s education. The MIND Institute provides its award-winning math education program, ST Math+Music™, and works with schools throughout California and nationally. The program enables students to play MIND’s unique visual math computer games that are proven to help students increase their math test scores. Through the music component of the program, students are taught to read sheet music and play the piano by a music teacher. Both the Spatial Temporal (ST) games, authored by Co-Founder Dr. Matthew Peterson, and the rigorous instrumental music curriculum engage the brain’s innate capacity to recognize patterns and apply them to learning math concepts such as fractions. ST Math+Music enhances the mathematical reasoning ability for students at all levels of academic and language proficiency. Jenkins’ foundation has contributed a nearly $100,000 to support the MIND Institute. Her most passionate joint project with MIND was providing William Cullen Bryant Elementary School in Long Beach with all of the funds needed to launch and permanently maintain MIND’s successful ST Math+Music program. Today, two years after this partnership started, every Bryant student in grades K to 5 participates in the MIND program to improve their performance in math. “Roberta Jenkins and the MIND Institute together helped children achieve outstanding results," said Ted Smith, Chairman of the MIND Institute Board of Directors. "After only one year in MIND’s proven, high-performance math technology program, Bryant students made an extraordinary 20-percentile-point average improvement on their California Standards Test (CST) scores, and nearly doubled the percent of students who scored proficient or advanced. With Roberta on our Board, we can find additional ways to share our math programs with many more students.” For information about MIND Institute or the ST Math+Music program, please call the MIND Institute toll free at (888) 751-5443 or visit its website at www.mindinstitute.net. The MIND Institute is a community-based non-profit research organization formed in 1998 and based in Costa Mesa, CA. It is dedicated to brain research and to preparing students in grades K-12, regardless of cultural or socio-economic background, for success in school, work and society. MIND has successfully integrated more than 30 years of breakthrough academic research on the brain at the University of California, Irvine, into applied math education programs for elementary school students. Student test results at schools that use MIND’s ST Math+Music program have increased consistently every year. There are currently more than 200 elementary schools in California, Illinois, Louisiana, Texas and eight other states and over 40,000 students in grades K to 5 participating in MIND’s ST Math+Music program.