CVHEC BOARD NEWS: Stanislaus State President Ellen Junn to Retire

CVHEC Board Member is First Korean American Woman to Lead a U.S. Four-Year Public Institution of Higher Education

Stanislaus State President Ellen Junn announced Jan. 18 she will retire at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year capping 39 years of service in higher education – 37 years with the California State University and the last seven at the helm of CSUS.

Pres. Junn, who as a result will also vacate her seat on the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium Board of Directors, shared the news in a video message and letter to campus and community members.

“It is with mixed emotions of anticipatory joy, and the bittersweet sadness of farewells to wonderful campus friends and colleagues, that I share with you the decision that I will retire at the end of this academic year,” Dr. Junn said. “After more than a year of discussions with my family and much planning and preparation, this is now the right time.

“It has been the greatest privilege and honor of my life to serve this remarkable institution of higher learning and to get to know our phenomenal students, dedicated faculty, caring staff and administrators and talented alumni who are the heart and soul of our University.”

Dr. Junn became Stanislaus State’s 11th president on July 1, 2016 when she also joined the CVHEC board.

She is the first Korean-American woman in the United States appointed to lead a four-year public institution of higher education and is the second woman to serve the University as its president.

Prior to joining Stan State, Pres. Junn held high-level administrative roles at five other CSU campuses: Cal State San Bernardino, Cal State Fullerton, Fresno State, San José State and CSU Dominguez Hills.

“I join the CVHEC family in thanking Dr. Ellen Junn for her contribution to improving the well being and future of students in the Central Valley,” said Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director.  “We wish her the best as she prepares for retirement and enters the next phase of her life.”

See the CSUS press release full story.

See Turlock Journal story.

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (January 2023): Kicking Off the New Year with Successful Initiatives

We are happy to welcome you to the 2023 spring semester and our first e-newsletter of the year.  As you will see in this issue, the new year promises to pick up right where we left off when we went into the winter break.

You will read about the successes of our Central Valley Transfer Project which has developed a unique approach with its Program Pathways Mapper to improve the number of Central Valley community college students transferring to the University of California, Merced, and the valley’s California State Universities.

This entry is timely in light of a recent article announcing the UC system’s effort to expand outreach to 65 California community colleges and the release of the report by a joint task force between UC and the community college system recommending that UC increase the percentage of community college transfers who apply, are admitted to and enroll at UC. The UC also has a systemwide goal to enroll one California community college transfer student for every two California resident freshmen.

The Transfer Project provides a historic collaboration between our three segments of higher education to improve this process for students with first round surveys (studies ?) showing a direct correlation between students using the Program Mapper and important student success metrics.

We are also happy to congratulate our CVHEC partner, College Bridge.  Six rural community colleges in California’s Central Valley will partner with 21 high schools to promote equity in mathematics via dual enrollment courses for Black or Latino students thanks to a $4 million US Department of Education grant awarded to College Bridge. This united effort will highlight the good work a group of small rural colleges can do when partnering with their dedicated high school partners.

In this month’s guest blog, Ginny Sandu, a teacher at Sunnyside High School talks about her journey to earn a Master’s degree through our MA Upskilling Program last year, funded by the Fresno-Madera K16 Collaborative. The program increased the number of high school teachers holding Master’s degrees in English and Mathematics in the Fresno-Madera service area qualifying them to teach dual enrollment at their high school campus.  Armed with her new post-grad degree, Ginny was able to begin teaching dual enrollment courses last fall —   exactly what the project was designed to do.

Enjoy Ginny’s story and the rest of the newsletter.  Please take moment to meet our dedicated staff of higher education professionals in this issue’s CVHEC Website renovation presenting our staff page. We are all looking forward to a great 2023!

WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING GUEST BLOG (JAN. 2023): Master’s Upskilling

This month’s What The CV-HEC Is Happening guest blog is presented by Ginny Sandhu, an English teacher at Sunnyside High School in Fresno who earned a master’s degree in December, 2021 through CVHEC’s Master’s Upskilling Program. She earned her bachelor’s degree at Fresno State in 2008 (credential 2009) and has been teaching for 13 years. Here Ginny shares the value of the upskilling program and how it will benefit not just her personal and professional advancement but also her students through dual enrollment.

Master’s Upskilling Program leads to

dual enrollment courses; student benefit

 

BY GINNY SANDHU
Sunnyside High School – Fresno CA

My latest academic journey – obtaining my Master of Arts last summer – officially began at National University in January 2021. But as I reflect on the years past, it really started long before that.

Having taught writing-centered courses like AP Language and Composition and Expository Reading and Writing for many years positioned me perfectly to want to improve my art for a very important reason — my students.

I wanted to pursue a graduate program that helped me become a better writing instructor for students who take high stakes courses like the AP courses I taught. So much of who I was (am) as a professional at the time aligned so well with the courses offered in the program (Master’s of English, specialization in Rhetoric) that once I learned about the opportunity, I happily enrolled immediately.

From the start, the program had many entities that were involved to make the initiative a success for its candidates — the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, Fresno Unified School District, Fresno County Office of Education and National University — all supported this enormous effort to help individuals like me achieve academic goals without any financial burden.

Once the courses began, I was assigned a wonderful mentor from Fresno City College, a tenured professor, who supported me with various facets of the program. Some of the concerns he assisted me with were academic while others were career-related. I was able to get feedback on major essays and projects and, any time I felt like I was reaching a point of burnout, his wisdom, knowledge, and experience guided me accordingly.

In my courses, I learned about ancient and modern rhetoric. In one class, I was able to develop a revision method using various research-based approaches that we studied in class.

In another class, we delved into education and technology and how the world of writing is changing because of all the technology that is conveniently available to a modern-day student. We even took a course on Noir as a genre and learned about Film Noir and Femme Fatales. Romanticism came close to being one of my favorite courses, but History of Rhetoric took the trophy for being one of the most informative and enjoyable courses for me. I appreciated learning more about Emerson who believed in the importance of receptivity as we interact with the world, with nature, and believed in the complete submission to the sublime experience as a way to a spiritual clearing.

But it was the History of Rhetoric course that took us through the most beautiful journey starting first with the Greeks then the Romans, and onwards to more modern rhetoricians. The course allowed us to see how rhetoric has expanded over the centuries to include broader concerns of epistemology, social construction, ideology and the study and use of symbol systems. It also allowed me to see the power of language and the many facets of rhetoric as an art form. I came to understand the hegemonic power of political structures in creating metanarratives through language that strive for homogenization of people—thereby reducing people to a single story. This led me to study Plato, Cicero, Quintilian, Lyotard, Nietzsche, Goddard, Said, Sartre, Hegel, Freud, and numerous other philosophers who have shed light on the power structures that are constructed through language.

The most gratifying moment in the program for me was my Capstone project in which I rhetorically analyzed Frantz Fanon’s Black Skin, White Masks. While the labor was long and arduous, I felt well-supported by the faculty in charge and the two months allotted to just writing my thesis.

My hope was to understand how language as a power tool operates in our world and Fanon’s psychoanalytic approach to racism and his characterization of psychic violence through his radical stance against established scholarship allowed me to see that it is indeed possible to challenge oppressive systems and language gives you that ability. Personally, this program gave me the tools to deconstruct language around racial conflicts, such as the ones in Punjab, and the Black Lives Matter movement in the United States.

Currently, I am teaching Dual Enrollment English 1A at Sunnyside High School in Fresno. Like the master’s program, I was fortunate to have been assigned a mentor again, and lucky for me, I got to work with the same mentor as my MA program: I gladly call Jeff Tannen a friend now.

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity to get a master’s degree with so much support built around me — and all of this without any financial investment of my own and entirely online, allowing me the flexibility I needed to sustain a full-time teaching position and be there for my family.

‘First of its Kind’ CVHEC Transfer Project Gaining Statewide Interest

Survey of 5,000 Frosh Shows Direct Correlation

Between Program Pathways Mapper and Student Success

A recent survey shows very positive student success outcomes for the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium’s Transfer Project and Program Pathways Mapper as the consortium continues to lead a concentrated effort to increase the number and success of community college transfers from the nine-county region to four-year colleges and universities.

CVHEC coordinators Stan Carrizosa and Tom Burke present the Transfer Project and its Program Pathway Mapper to the consortium board of directors at its quarterly convening Dec. 8 in Clovis.

This successful effort is also being recognized widely as the Transfer Project team delivers presentations statewide about the project that began in 2019 — in response to grave concerns for the low number of Central Valley community college transfers to the valley’s University of California campus in Merced – and has grown to nine community colleges and three four-year institutions (see breakdown below) with others inquiring from throughout the state.

In the first round of results being compiled for the project’s two pilot colleges – consortium members Bakersfield College and Merced College – the data in a sample of over 5,000 incoming Bakersfield freshmen shows a direct correlation between students using the Program Mapper and important student success metrics, reports Stan Carrizosa, the consortium’s southern regional coordinator who is the CVHEC Transfer Project lead.

“This includes a significant increase in the number of ‘on-path’ courses successfully completed each semester, elimination of the achievement gap for underrepresented students in their on-path completion rates and a sharp reduction in the total number of units-to-degree completion for all students using Program Mapper,” said Carrizosa who presented an update at the CVHEC Board of Directors winter meeting Dec. 8 along with Tom Burke, CVHEC’s Transfer Project coordinator.

The project’s Pathways Program Mapper is a public internet-based software application that presents students with pre-approved course sequences aligning the community college Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) with the upper division requirements by major, for successful degree completion.

Now, what started as a pilot project to increase transfers to UC Merced has grown beyond the Central Valley to regions statewide, the pair reported to the board, with invitations last fall for CVHEC’s Transfer Project team to present at conferences and workshops including the Lumina Foundation State Policy Retreat 2022, the Association of Chief Business Officials and the annual convention of the  Community College League of California.

“We have also been working with representatives from the California State University Chancellor’s Office to come together and combine our respective efforts in this area, further streamlining and strengthening our transfer pathways model,” said Carrizosa, who is also president-emeritus of College of Sequoias.

“Our Transfer Project Team now convenes representatives from CVHEC, the UC and CSU creating an intersegmental collaborative group that is indeed the first of its kind,” he reported. “In most districts where we are engaging in this work, we are also reaching out to include local K-12/high school districts to align with their efforts as well.”

Burke added that, in addition to the two trailblazers  Bakersfield and Merced, five fellow CVHEC members are scheduled to go live this semester:  Porterville College, Reedley College, Clovis Community College, West Hills Lemoore College and Madera College. Taft College and West Hills Coalinga College will begin the onboarding process this semester.

Four-year partners who are fully up and live are the University of California, Merced and CSU Bakersfield with Stanislaus State beginning the onboarding process this semester. All are CVHEC members as well. And many others are in communication.

“Most recently we have received encouraging feedback from CSU Monterey Bay, UC Irvine and private colleges including Fresno Pacific and National University,” said Burke, who is also chancellor-emeritus of the Kern Community College District.

Burke also reported that the team’s efforts are now being incorporated into the state-funded K-16 Regional Collaboratives including most recently the Kern County collaborative.   

“These efforts have led to specific state funding for the Transfer Project through line-item support to implement the Program Pathways Mapper, the software vehicle that brings the intersegmental pathways together in a user-friendly, internet-based application,” Burke said.

Now that the first round of results is showing very positive outcomes and state legislation such as Senate Bill 928 for transfer reform providing solid ground support, the interest in CVHEC’s Transfer Project is high and the team stands ready to present.

“As the SB 928 begins to get legs with the formation of a statewide task force to study how to increase transfers, we would welcome an opportunity to share our work,” Burke said. “We have a model including protocols/processes to create intersegmental transfer pathways and proven solutions to the challenges they are still trying to define.”

For information about the project or to arrange a presentation, contact Carrizosa at scarrizosa44@gmail.com.

 

Related articles:

• Pilot CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project improves process for students  

• Charting Better Maps to Degrees

• CVHEC BLOG: ‘WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING’ (Dec. 2021)

• CV-HEC BLOG: UC Enrollment Push Supported by CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project and New Mapper Software

• CVHEC NEWS: Lumina Policy Retreat Presentation

CVHEC Partners With College Bridge in Grant Supporting DE Courses from Six Rural Community Colleges at 21 Service Area High Schools

 

 

(UPDATE May 26, 2023) – See Math Bridge Kickoff May 18 coverage.

 

BY TOM URIBES
CVHEC Communications Coordinator

(JANUARY 24, 2023) — Six rural Central Valley Higher Education Consortium member institutions will partner with 21 high schools to promote equity in mathematics via dual enrollment courses for Black or Latino students thanks to a $4 million federal grant awarded to CVHEC partner College Bridge.

The Dual Enrollment Math Bridge Project, with a total budget of $6.7 million, was awarded the five-year US Department of Education grant in late December for the six colleges to provide college-level math classes that will improve and support college readiness for underprepared students in the colleges’ respective service areas beginning next fall.  (This federal grant supports 60 percent of the total project budget with the remaining funding coming from non-governmental sources).

The participating CVHEC colleges are: Cerro Coso, Columbia, Madera, Reedley, Taft and West Hills College Coalinga. The names of the participating high schools will be released in February.

“For this grant, Dual Enrollment Math Bridge will include nearly 8,000 low-income, Black or Latino 11th or 12th grade students who lack access to rigorous math courses,” said Dr. Lynn Cevallos, founder and president of College Bridge, a California non-profit based in Los Angeles County dedicated to forging a path towards both college access and success for underrepresented students.

“This DE Math Bridge project is an innovating high school intervention that will close equity and attainment gaps in college math and college completion at the 21 Central Valley rural high schools within the six colleges’ service areas,” she said.

Cevallos created College Bridge in 2011 with the mission “to transform the K-16 educational system by identifying and eliminating barriers that prevent underrepresented students from progressing to and through college.”

CVHEC is assisting the Dual Enrollment Math Bridge project by using its role as a convener to bring the higher education and K-16 representatives together with College Bridge, Cevallos said.

CVHEC is made up of 30 institutions of higher education in the Central Valley’s nine-county region from San Joaquin to Kern Counties including 15 community colleges and four multi-campus community college districts. The presidents and chancellors of each institution serve on the CVHEC Board of Directors. CVHEC also created the Central Valley Dual Enrollment for Equity and Prosperity (CVDEEP) Task Force made up of valley educators and policy makers that the consortium convenes to address dual enrollment issues as well as issued a white paper in June 2020.

Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director, said the DE Math Bridge project “will prepare and guide students as they transition to college or university equipped with math credits and confidence.

“The DE Math Bridge creates a model for meaningful dual enrollment pathways and expansion that can be replicated in other regions of California serving underprepared students,” Duran said.  “We commend College Bridge for its leadership in serving Central California students as well as the leadership of our member community colleges in collaborating with their K-16 districts and College Bridge.”

Cevallos said the Dual Enrollment Math Bridge Project goals include three student-level goals with implementation of classes planned for the fall 2023 semester:

  • closing equity and achievement gaps in mathematics, improving rates of underrepresented students pursuing STEM majors and completion of college transition plans;
  • professional development goals to creating sustainable continuous improvement models for intersegmental math, counseling and administration teams;
  • and two goals focused on sustainability and scaling.

The project is based on an evolving series of longitudinal research/practice projects that College Bridge has successfully implemented since 2013 — the Math Pipeline Readiness Project (M-PReP), Cevallos said.

“Nearly 2,000 underprepared students participated in previous versions of M-PReP with 84 percent passing a college-level math course through the program.”

One M-PReP success story occurred in 2018 at Dinuba High School, a Central California rural high school that served 1,988 students at the time (82 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged and 93 percent Latino).

For more information about the DE Math Bridge Project, contact Owynn Lancaster, vice president of Academic Strategy at College Bridge: Owynn.lancaster@college-bridge.org.

 

For CVHEC media inquiries: Tom Uribes, CVHEC Communications/Media coordinator (tom@uribes.com or text 559.348.3278).

See the College Bridge press release.

 

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