Pat Albano started his college career at San Diego State University with high hopes. But by the end of his first year, he had “partied” out of school, having earned a grade point average of just .93. “I was partying too much. I wasn’t on track,” says Albano, a San Franciscan born to Filipino immigrants.

He got back on track when he enrolled at City College of San Francisco upon moving home. There he discovered the Asian Pacific American Student Success (APASS) program, the first retention program in California targeting the academic needs of Asian and Pacific Islander college students.

Laurene McClain, chair of the Asian studies department at CCSF, started the program in 2004 after she discovered that 40 percent of students on academic probation were of Asian ancestry.

“That prompted me to organize this work group, find out their needs and concerns, and how we can help,” McClain says.

She interviewed a focus group of Burmese, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Indonesian, Pacific Islander and Vietnamese students and then went forward with obtaining funding and support from the district.

Asians, who make up 41 percent of the students at CCSF, make up 99 percent of the students getting help from APASS because they’re on academic probation or need assistance in various subjects. APASS, which is open to all students in need, provides mentorship, counseling, transfer information and tutoring for students.

Long viewed as the “model minority,” Asian students’ academic needs have been put on the back burner, says Dr. Minh-Hoa Ta, program director.

The “model minority” myth helped to mask the underperformance of some Asian groups that are not as academically, socially and economically well off as thought. That’s why the University of California last month decided to collect and analyze student enrollment and graduation data of specific Asian subgroups, including Hmong and Filipino.

Andrew Hom, a volunteer at APASS, says the center’s mission has proven to be successful.