WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING BLOG (March 2023): CCC Chancellor-Select Sonya Christian

The role of higher education in the Central Valley is increasingly recognized by our state’s elected officials and the public at large. So it carries a particular significance that on Feb. 23, the California Community College Board of Governors appointed Dr. Sonya Christian, chancellor of the Kern Community College District, as the incoming chancellor of the state’s community college system. Dr. Christian is a proven champion of the under-represented populations served by the community colleges in the San Joaquin Valley. For this month’s “What The CV-HEC Is Happening”  blog, CVHEC’s Executive Director Benjamin Duran connected with Dr. Christian to capture her thoughts about her work in the Central Valley, and the California Community College system as a whole, before she formally steps into her new role this June.

Higher Ed in the Central Valley

A look at a tenure of accomplishments by KCCD Chancellor chosen to lead the CCC System – Part 1

 

Benjamin Duran: Thank you, Sonya, for taking the time to speak with us here at CVHEC, and congratulations again on your appointment to the state Chancellor’s office. We are elated to have an administrator from the Central Valley representing higher education in such an important office. What are your thoughts on the work being done in the valley, and how that ongoing work will inform your work statewide?

 

Sonya Christian: Thank you for inviting me, Ben. My focus will be to continue to advance student success and student access with equity … without distractions.  This has been my work as president of Bakersfield College (BC), as chancellor of the Kern Community College District (Kern CCD), and it will continue to be my focus as the statewide chancellor.

The critical challenges we face in the Central Valley are emblematic of the challenges and opportunities we face in California – e.g. the enrollment decline during the pandemic and the basic needs of our students. The challenges are magnified in the Central Valley’s populations with higher levels of poverty, lower educational attainment levels, larger proportions of first-generation college students… and I believe the work we have been doing and will continue to do in the Central Valley should serve as a model for advancing student success with equity in the rest of the state.

Let me take a moment to brag about the innovation that has happened in the Central Valley, and acknowledge the leadership role that CVHEC has had in this work.

Dual Enrollment and Early College

I see Dual Enrollment and Early College as being essential. High school students need to know that they are on the path to college and can succeed on that path. This is all the more important for our first-gen students.

I believe that all our work should be supported by the data. Let me share with you some of the data for the Dual Enrollment/Early College sections in the Central Valley.

  • Total special admit enrollments increased by 25% in 2021-2022; from 74,629 enrollments in 2020-2021 to 93,248 enrollments 2021-2022 (CA state growth was 5%)
  • 21% (93,248 out of 441,691) of all special admit enrollments in California in 2021-2022 were from the Central Valley Region
  • 5 out of the 9 high schools that received the CDE’s California Dual Enrollment Exemplary Award were from the Central Valley Region
    • Arvin High School- Bakersfield College
    • Delano High School- Bakersfield College & Cerro Coso Community College
    • Robert F. Kennedy High School- Bakersfield College & Cerro Coso Community College
    • McFarland High School- Bakersfield College
    • Avenal High School- West Hills College, Coalinga

Transfer

The Central Valley has done remarkable work supporting the detailed institutional clarification and creation of transfer pathways, including the implementation of Program Pathways Mapper.  E.g., about two years after UC Merced, Merced College and Bakersfield College began collaborating on clarifying transfer pathways as part of a Learning Lab grant, enrolling transfer students took a big jump relative to the overall UC system.  In fall 2021 they enrolled 19% more transfers, and in fall 2022 it was 14% more.

In all, UC Merced has published 27 vetted transfer pathways with Merced College and another 29 with Bakersfield College. UC Merced has also been engaging all Central Valley community colleges in linking their program maps to UC Merced to establish a network of transfer pathways for the region.

CSU Bakersfield has also been a leader in transfer pathways mapping with 39 transfer program maps currently linked to Bakersfield College programs.

And CSU Stanislaus has just begun onboarding onto the Program Pathways Mapper, adding more transfer momentum to the region’s guided pathways efforts.

Workforce Development

The 15 colleges in the Central Valley/Mother Lode (CVML) Regional Consortium have been advancing equity and access for students in many areas:

  • Increased the number of students who earned a degree, certificate, or apprenticeship by 5%
  • Decreased the average number of units accumulated by First-Time Associate Degree Earners by 4%
  • Developed over 120 programs in high-priority industry sectors to address skills gaps in the workforce

Here are some examples of great work from our colleges:

  • Fresno City College and its sister institutions, Clovis, Madera, and Reedley, are pioneering an apprenticeship program called the California Tribal Environmental and Cultural Equitable Vocational Training to close equity gaps for indigenous residents in two programs: Environmental Science and Protection Technician and Cultural Protection Technician/Monitor. This project is a collaboration with the California Tribal Emergency Response and Relief Agency (CTUAC) and the California Tribal Unilateral Apprenticeship Committee (CTUAC). The purpose of the project is to recruit 25 apprentices from tribal communities.
  • Bakersfield College hosted the first CVML Apprenticeship Forum in December 2022 to provide best practice strategies in meeting Governor Newsom’s equity goal of having 500,000 apprenticeships by 2029. Additionally, it received the California Apprenticeship Initiative: New & Innovative grant to develop apprenticeship programs in Information and Communication Technology as well as Perioperative Nursing for underrepresented students.
  • West Hills College Lemoore is leading a regional project called Jumpstart for rising seniors to learn about Industrial Automation and gain work experience in an accelerated summer bridge program with Reedley College, College of the Sequoias, and Porterville College.
  • Recently, 9 of the CVML colleges (Columbia, Fresno, Bakersfield, Cerro Coso, West Hills College Lemoore, Madera, Merced, San Joaquin Delta, Modesto, College of the Sequoias, Porterville, and Taft) received the second largest award for the Regional Equity and Recovery Partnership (RERP) grant, a partnership among the Labor and Workforce Development Agency (LWDA), the California Workforce Development Board (CWDB), and the California Community College Regional Consortia via the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. These colleges are coordinating a regional effort to improve job quality and access for women and underrepresented populations to help meet economic, social, and environmental needs of the community.
  • Bakersfield College, Fresno City College, Merced College, Modesto College, San Joaquin Delta College and West Hills College Coalinga are part of the Rising Scholars Network, a CCCCO DEI initiative, that serves justice-involved and formerly involved students earn certificates and degrees to either transfer or to attain a mid- to high-wage job.
  • Fresno City College and Modesto Junior College are two of 14 California community colleges participating in the 3-year College Homeless Housing Insecure Pilot Program to address the 19% of unhoused students.

These selected initiatives make visible the scope of committed work in the Central Valley to support access with equity, and success with equity.

 

Ben: Whoa, that is a lot of data!  I guess that is what you get when you have a conversation with a former math faculty.  Now, Early College and Dual Enrollment has a lot of potential in the Central Valley, and Kern CCD has been one of the leaders in that space for several years. How has your work in this area as President of Bakersfield College and Chancellor of Kern CCD prepared you for this new role?

 

Sonya: It has been the greatest pleasure of my career to be able to give back to the district where I started in higher education as a math instructor. I came to USC as a foreign graduate student and was first hired as a math faculty at BC.  The President at that time, Rick Wright, and the Chancellor Jim Young, sponsored me for my green card.  And now I am a citizen of this amazing country.

The 25,000 sq miles of Kern’s Service area includes rural communities with lower economic and educational attainment levels, and includes a range of strong industries like agriculture, energy, defense and aerospace, healthcare and logistics. The work done by the three colleges in the Kern district – Porterville College, Cerro Coso College, and Bakersfield College – has focused on advancing equity in access to a college education, equity in completing a degree or certificate, and equity in placement in good jobs.  Various initiatives that were started as innovative projects have been institutionalized and are now a part of how we do our work.

The Early College efforts started with our rural communities of McFarland, Delano, Wasco, Shafter and Arvin/Lamont.  Kern has also see

n rapid growth in our health care programs and we are working closely with industry and community-based organizations to move our energy-

related work.

With the Governor’s ambitious climate agenda, I see community colleges as providing the necessary infrastructure and engagement for all of our communities, offering educational attainment with equity, and creating economic mobility with equity. Kern has established a satellite presence of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory called the California Renewable Energy Laboratory (CREL).

And I have to mention the deep work that Kern has done using the Guided Pathways framework, work that has resulted in significant improvements in student success outcomes with equity.

This work was done to meet the needs of students of the colleges of the Kern Community College District (KernCCD)and the Central Valley. But of course the fundamental needs are in common to students at colleges across the state. In that regard meeting the needs of the populations we serve at the Kern CCD and the Central Valley has prepared me well for the work ahead.

 

Ben: Throughout your career as an administrator, you’ve demonstrated a forward-thinking, outside-the-box approach. What are some of your other big priorities as you step into your new role as state chancellor this June?

 

Sonya: At the February 23rd, Board of Governors meeting where I was appointed, I made the following comment:

The Board of Governors is tasking the 11th Chancellor of the California Community Colleges to be both implementer and visionary, all at once, to further advance the next frontier of student success with equity.  Our work then is twofold:  (1) Implement the Vision for Success with equity, fidelity, at scale, using the identified metrics, and (2) expand the canopy of community college learners , to accelerate the socio-economic mobility for our most marginalized communities through partnerships that will reach working adults, disconnected youth and others left behind.

Let me call out a few specific pieces of work:

One of my first priorities will be to work alongside the Cal State and UC systems to improve intersegmental transfer from the community colleges into four-year institutions. We’ve talked previously about implementing the Vision for Success and the Governor’s Roadmap with equity and at scale, and that includes the community college transfer students moving to a four-year university and completing their bachelor’s degree.

Workforce Development has been on the top of my mind the last few years.  Systematically providing opportunities for working adults, disconnected youth and other learners who previously have been bypassed, is the next wave of our Guided Pathways work.  Our work today is creating the future of learning where there are many more flexible onramps to educational pathways that lead to quality jobs.

The Governor’s Roadmap calls out four priority sectors – healthcare, climate action, education and early education. Community colleges – together with our partners – must lead the way to meet these goals.

At Kern, I have been working on the Climate Action agenda specifically in the areas of Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Clean Transportation, and Grid Resilience.  I believe that Community Colleges are essential in advancing the state and federal goals for decarbonization and climate action, and it will be especially important to support the clean energy transition in the Central Valley.

Last and certainly not least, supporting our students with their basic needs by providing customized support for the diverse students we serve.  This includes the work we have started with mental health support, affordable student housing and the Cal Grant Reform.

 

Ben: Sonya, I am glad you mentioned transfer.  You know that CVHEC has identified this as a priority and has done great work on transfer pathways.  How do you see this playing out at the state level?

 

Sonya: Increasing baccalaureate attainment has always been a priority for me, ever since I started as President of BC.  Many of the underserved rural communities in Kern’s service have low educational attainment levels – this is why we launched, with urgency, the Rural Initiative as an equity imperative to advance educational attainment levels with the goal of advancing the socio-economic standing of these communities.  In this work, we specifically focused on: (i) increasing baccalaureate completion by creating transfer pathways from high schools through the community college to a four-year university as well as (ii) bringing bachelor’s degrees closer to home by developing local Community College Baccalaureate programs that lead to high-wage jobs.

The transfer legislation SB 1440 and the creation of the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) helped Kern increase completion rates of the transfer degree.  The graph shows the number of ADTs awarded at Kern increased from just over 1,000 five years ago in 2017-2018 to just over 2,500 in 2021-22; that is an increase of 146%.

And for California Community Colleges as a whole, the five-year increase from 36,101 ADTs conferred in 2016-17 to 62,934 in 2020-21 represents a 74% increase.

As more and more students complete the ADT, we need to ensure that the number of applications to our transfer institutions is increasing, as well. This will be a priority for me as I transition to my new role.

The Community College Baccalaureate is important to me.  I remember the excitement that rippled through California’s Community Colleges in 2015 when SB 805 passed that launched the 15-college baccalaureate pilot program.  And later in 2021 with AB 927 institutionalizing the pilot.  In the Central Valley, Bakersfield College is providing high-wage, workforce-focused baccalaureate degrees and has two baccalaureate degree programs: Industrial Automation and Research Laboratory Technician. Also, Modesto Junior College offers a Respiratory Care B.S. degree, and other Central Valley colleges are developing baccalaureate degree programs.  The Community College Baccalaureate will be a priority as I transition to my new role.

 

Ben: As always, it looks like you have an ambitious agenda, and I’m excited to see how the community colleges evolve to support students with equity under your leadership. The Central Valley stands ready to support you in your new role.  Thank you again for speaking with us. I know you’ll continue to make the Central Valley proud!

WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING GUEST BLOG (February 2023): College Bridge and Dinuba HS

This month’s “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” guest blog is presented by Agustina Sanchez, a counselor at Dinuba High School in Tulare County who has participated in the College Bridge Math Pipeline Readiness Project (M-PReP) since it was implemented in 2013.  During the three-year project in concert with CVHEC-member Reedley College, Dinuba students not only acquired the necessary skills to become college-ready, but also passed college-level math classes through M-PReP, all in the span of their senior year. Mrs. Sanchez, who earned a bachelor’s degree at Fresno State in 2001 and master’s and PPS Credential in 2003, has been counseling for 19 years. Here she shares her experience with College Bridge and how its life-changing strategies helped high school students through initiatives such as M-PReP and its new Dual Enrollment Math Bridge Project announced last month. 

Hard Pass? No more!

A rural Central Valley high school teams with College Bridge and

a CVHEC member for student math success through dual enrollment

 

BY AGUSTINA “AUGGIE” SANCHEZ
Dinuba High School – Dinuba CA (Tulare County)

Hard Pass! This was the typical response I received when registering high school juniors for a senior year math experience.

AP Calculus?  AP Statistics?   Pre-Calculus? No. No Way. Hard Pass!

As a high school counselor, I knew that our college-bound students were going to see math again (and, most likely, again and again). I did everything in my power to get college-bound students to take a math course, and while some took my advice, many did not because they “didn’t want a hard senior year,” or they would “just wait and take their next math in college.”

In fall 2018, I was introduced to a new partnership for Dinuba High School (DHS) with College Bridge. The goal of this partnership was to increase the number of students in a senior math experience, namely Dual Enrollment (DE) Math.

The concept was actually quite simple.

DHS partnered with a local community college to offer Dual Enrollment (DE) math courses to our seniors in areas of statistics, college algebra, college trigonometry and calculus.  College Bridge literally created a bridge between DHS and Reedley College to ensure our students’ success in this area. Our senior students enrolled and successfully completed these DE math courses with a C or better, many of them finishing their general education math for their bachelor’s degree while still high school students.

To build a foundation for student success, College Bridge created a system of support in all areas —  administrative, instruction, counseling and student learning:

  • To train in course curriculums, from statistics to calculus, DHS teachers received professional development in cohort with Reedley College professors.
  • Reedley College faculty not only came to mentor our teachers, but they were also released from the college to come and teach weekly at DHS while our teachers observed.
  • Reedley College faculty members then observed our teachers in action and guided them throughout the semester until our instructors demonstrated comfort in, and a comprehensive understanding of, curricular content and methodology.
  • To engage students,  a counseling mentor was provided to help promote, market, entice and enroll students into courses.
  • Parent nights were held, classroom presentations were conducted in Math 3 classes,  and College Bridge helped interested students complete the necessary steps to apply to Reedley College.
  • Our DHS math instructors taught the Reedley College content three days a week, offered tutorials the other two days, and additional after-school assistance was available three times per week.
  • Students were monitored and interventions applied early to ensure positive student learning outcomes.

DHS now had a new approach and convincing talking points to encourage students to enroll in a senior math experience:

  1. Do you want to complete your math for your bachelor’s degree here at DHS?
  2. This is your chance to complete your first year of calculus at DHS with the support of our teachers.
  3. Why wait until you get to Reedley College or Fresno State; this is your chance to finish your math here at DHS with your teacher’s support and interventions.

Needless to say, senior math enrollment increased.

In our first year of implementation, DHS just focused on Math 11 (Statistics).   College Bridge took things a step further, deeply investing efforts in the “striving math student.”  A pre-Statistics course was offered in the fall and then the magical Math 11 (statistics) DE in the spring, thus preparing students for a full semester before enrolling them into the DE course.

Our more advanced students took the Math 11 DE in the fall term, and a Quantitative Reasoning course in the spring (non DE). DHS senior students achieved their goal and entered college “math done” for their degrees.  Over the next three years,  DHS added algebra, trigonometry and calculus to DE math course offerings.

Now, nine years after the first implementation of College Bridge, dual enrollment math is still strong.

We have two full-time teachers who teach DE courses for a total of 10 sections and are currently registering current 11th graders for next year. Our student math conversations are not difficult; many students have already made a DE math choice, and compelling arguments and evidence — including the pros and cons of dual enrollment math — typically convince those students who are hesitant to choose the path to college credit.

The senior math experience “hard pass” era is no longer viable. Instead, our current students will “hardly pass” up this amazing opportunity to excel. 

WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING GUEST BLOG (January 2023): Master’s Upskill

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 Upskill 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.

WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING BLOG (December 2022): Year-In-Review/Silver Edition

Celebrating Our 25th Edition with a Look Back at 2022 E-Newsletter Stories

The December “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog is presented by Tom Uribes, CVHEC’s communications/media coordinator who joined CVHEC in 2020 after serving as a California State University public affairs specialist for two Fresno State offices in a 30-year career from 1988-2017: the University Outreach Services and University Communications offices, where he also served as the University’s public information officer for two decades of that career. Among his current projects is editor of the CVHEC e-newsletter which presents its 25th edition with this issue. His blog looks back at some of the newsletter stories published in 2022.

By Tom Uribes
CVHEC Communications/Media Coordinator

With the close of 2022 – and near resumption of post-pandemic “normal life” – we present our now annual review of top stories featured in the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium e-newsletter for this December issue: our 25th edition!

This Silver Edition of the CVHEC e-newsletter crowns a venture that started when I signed on with the Consortium in March, 2020 just as the pandemic broke — sending me back home after just one day in CVHEC’s office in Fresno to work out of a hastily revived bedroom office.

Under the direction of my new CVHEC boss at the time, Virginia Madrid-Salazar (who I had hired as one of my first news interns when she was a Fresno State student in the late 80s), we published our first issue in June 2020 and when Virginia left us in August 2021 to play lawyer, Ángel Ramírez assumed this CVHEC communications partnership as my lead. His able and competent guidance and leadership has continued the solid foundation started by Virginia for the growth of this e-newsletter into this, its 25th edition.

We hope you enjoy this milestone issue — a compressed journey through the past 12 months of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium. Topics range from our Dual Enrollment Convening and Legislative and Policy Summit in in the spring, the historic CVHEC Board of Directors quarterly meetings, the appointments of new campus leaders, the growth of our “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog first introduced in 2021 and more.

We strive to tell the CVHEC story: bringing together 30 Central Valley institutions of higher education through its board of directors made up the presidents and chancellors in the nine-county region who make history every time they meet to deliberate, act and speak as one voice on higher education issues and policies affecting our region — a feat not seen too often throughout the academia CEO world.

We presented our first year-in-review looking back at 2021 in January with Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director, ushering in the New Year in his monthly director’s message:

“We at CVHEC wish you a dynamic start to the spring 2022 semester with hopes of reaching some sort of a new normal that will lead us to working, meeting our students and convening in-person in the near future,” Dr. Duran messaged that month. “While the pandemic has put the squeeze on all of us the past two years, we are more determined than ever to conquer that challenge as we have so many others.”

CV-HEC BLOG: Dual Enrollment – An Equity Change-Maker

Our first CV-HEC Guest Blog of the year in February featured a guest writer who was instrumental in planting seeds for our “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog, the aforementioned Virginia Madrid-Salazar, Esq., former CVHEC strategies lead turned private law practice dependency attorney. Virginia shared some observations on dual enrollment from her unique dual perspective stemming from when she worked with CVHEC setting up the CVDEEP and its convening and as a mom of a dual enrollment student.

“As the strategies lead for the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, it was an honor to work alongside area educators to affect transformational changes that have occurred in the region’s higher education sphere during that period,” said Virginia who wrote CVHEC’s white paper in 2020: CVDEEP White Paper: “Dual Enrollment in the Central Valley, Working Toward a Unified Approach for Equity and Prosperity.” 

Dual Enrollment Convening: Face-To-Face Space for K-12 and Higher Ed and new DE Video

More than 135 secondary and postsecondary educators assembled for the “Establishing Dual Enrollment Pathways in the Central Valley” Convening March 17 in Fresno to address challenges and barriers to dual enrollment success. Presented by CVHEC’s Central Valley Dual Enrollment for Equity and Prosperity (CVDEEP) Task Force, the five-hour convening was opened by Dr. Mayra A. Lara, associate director of Educator Engagement for The Education Trust-West, discussing her organization’s report, “Jumpstart California: A Roadmap for Equitable Dual Enrollment Policy & Practice.”

The event also featured the premiere of CVHEC’s latest education video, “Blurring the Lines Between High School and College: Dual Enrollment in the Central Valley.” The video depicts three student success stories as well as three area educators advocating for dual enrollment including CVHEC board members Dr. Kristin Clark, chancellor of the West Hills Community College District, and Dr. Chris Vitelli, president of Merced College. Convening participants also heard four valley students – including three from the video — share their success stories. Two completed associate degrees before their high school graduation.   See press release.

CVHEC Founder Welty To Return for Summit and 20th Anniversary

This year for our 20th anniversary, the Consortium reunited with President-Emeritus John D. Welty, CVHEC’s founding president at our Higher Education Policy And Legislative Summit May 6, where the founding president witnessed a 30th member added to the board (see May).

SUMMIT NEWS: Attendees Hear the Voice of Student Experiences

A special feature of the 2022 CHEVC Summit was the student experiences panel including students who were featured in two Central Valley Higher Education Consortium videos in the past year.

CVHEC’s Higher Education Policy and Legislative Summit (Photo Gallery)

Nearly 300 intersegmental educators, legislators and partner representatives from throughout the Central Valley and the state joined us for our Higher Education Policy and Legislative Summit May 5-6 to examine such issues as equity, dual enrollment, transfer pathways and broadband disparity and access under the theme, “Post Pandemic World: Recovering with Equity and Inclusion in the Central Valley.” The event marked CVHEC’s 20th anniversary featuring the return of founding board of directors president Dr. John D. Welty, president-emeritus of Fresno State, who joined fellow founding board members Dr. Frank Gornick, West Hills Community College District chancellor-emeritus, and Dr. Benjamin Duran, Merced College president-emeritus and current CVHEC executive director, on a summit panel recalling the early days of the consortium. A special feature of the 2022 CHEVC Summit was the student experiences panel including students who were featured in two Central Valley Higher Education Consortium videos in the past year.  The night before (May 5), CVHEC presented its Cinco de Mayo Reception providing the occasion to reconnect in-person with colleagues, new and old, after a two-year pandemic-forced hiatus from in-person convenings. The reception featured Las Hermanas Medinas from Hanford, two college grads and a current student (two of the three attended CVHEC member institution Fresno State and the third is a UC Santa Cruz alumna). See summit agenda.

BOARD NEWS: UCSF-Fresno Becomes CVHEC’s 30th Institution of Higher Education Member

At its quarterly meeting May 5, the CVHEC Board of Directors formally accepted the membership application from the University of California San Francisco – Fresno Campus and welcomed the 30th institution of higher education to join the Consortium. Michael W. Peterson, MD/MACP, associate dean for Undergraduate Medical Education and Research at the UCSF-Fresno Campus, was seated on the Consortium board joining the presidents and chancellors of 29 colleges and universities in the nine-county region from San Joaquin to Kern counties.

CVHEC Teacher Upskilling for Master’s Degrees Supports Dual Enrollment in South Valley Via Kern K-16 Collaborative

CVHEC’s Dual Enrollment Teacher Upskilling Program for English and Mathematics pilot program first launched in Fresno by CVHEC in 2021 was funded in June for the South Valley. In partnership with the Kern Regional K-16 Education Collaborative, the program will provide 100 South Valley high school teachers with the opportunity to earn a master’s degree that achieves state qualifications for teaching community college dual enrollment English and math courses on local high school campuses.

Dr. Krista Herrera was named executive director of the newly formed Kern Regional K-16 Education Collaborative, a partnership between Kern County Superintendent Of Schools, institutes of higher education including the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium and Kern business partners to significantly expand Kern County’s workforce development efforts (reported in our July issue).

CVHEC BLOG: UC Enrollment Push Supported by CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project and new Mapper Software

The June “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” Blog featured guest contributor Dr. James Zimmerman, senior associate vice provost and dean for Undergraduate Education at the University of California-Merced where he is also director of the Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning and a physics professor. He serves on the CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project committee and for this blog he connects the committee’s work the past year to a recent article on UC enrollment expansion.

Pathway for Community College Students to the Medical Field: California Medicine Scholars Program-SJV: a collab of UCSF Fresno and CVHEC members  

A valley wide collaborative by CVHEC partners and Sen. Melissa Hurtado (D-Sanger) led to a major accomplishment for the Central Valley with the launch this summer of the California Medicine Scholars Program and the designation of the University of California, San Francisco – Fresno as one of four Regional Hubs of Healthcare Opportunity (RHHOs) in the state. Sen. Hurtado cited a healthcare provider shortage in the Central Valley and credited CVHEC for rallying leaders of the Consortium from Stockton to Bakersfield to support UCSF-Fresno as one of the state’s four hubs authorized by the legislation.

Zero-Textbook-Cost/OER Movement picks up steam with $115m state grant West Hills College Lemoore among leaders; CVHEC plans regional task force

The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC) is creating a regional task force to support its member institutions interested in reducing the overall cost of education for students and decreasing the time to complete degree and certificate programs by using alternative instructional materials and methodologies, including open educational resources (OER).

CV-HEC BLOG: The ZTC/OER Movement

The September blog is the first by a CVHEC Board of Directors member: West Hills College-Lemoore President James Preston who writes about the Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Program and the California Community College Chancellor’s Office supporting the system with $115 million to do the work in the “OERevolution” (Open Educational Resources).

CVHEC NEWS: Elaine Cash Is Grants & Program Coordinator as Consortium Grows

Educator Elaine C. Cash, retired superintendent of Riverdale Joint Unified School District and a K-12 liaison for the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium since 2017, was named to a full-time position as CVHEC’s Grants & Programs coordinator. In her new capacity effective Oct. 1, Elaine is responsible for grant writing, management and reporting of grants and sponsored programs, announced CVHEC Executive Director Dr. Benjamín Durán. “This new position for CVHEC will help support the growth and sustainability of the consortium and our work,” Durán said.

MINI GRANT SUCCESS STORY: AOA Journal Features CHSU ‘Pre-Med Bootcamp’ for Promoting Cultural Competency, Osteopathic Medicine Awareness

The Pre-Med Bootcamp Program of the California Health Sciences University College of Osteopathic Medicine was recognized nationally for its success in promoting cultural competency and osteopathic medicine awareness and assisting students in applying for the medical school. The bootcamp, held in 2019 and the first of five held since then, was supported by a Central Valley Higher Education Consortium Mini-Grant.

North Valley, East Sierra CVHEC Members Partner for K-16 Collaboratives State Planning Grants Could Lead to Expansion of CVHEC’s Dual Enrollment Initiatives

Two more Central Valley regions – North San Joaquin and Eastern Sierra – were each awarded one-year $250,000 state planning grants for the establishment of Regional K-16 Education Collaboratives Grant Programs as part of the statewide drive to strengthen the K-16 education-to-career pipeline. Both collaborative efforts are headed by Central Valley Higher Education Consortium member institutions.

In the Northern San Joaquin Region, the University of California, Merced is the lead agency for the newly formed North Valley Tri-County Workforce and Education (WE Will!) Regional Collaborative that includes four other fellow CVHEC-members: Merced College, Modesto Junior College, San Joaquin Delta College and California State University, Stanislaus. For the Eastern Sierra Region, CVHEC-member Columbia College is heading up the K-16 collaborative planning along with several school districts, colleges and employer groups. These allocations amount to a total of four such collaboratives involving CVHEC members that will help bolster dual enrollment initiatives like the consortium’s successful Master’s Upskilling Program that has already been implemented in the mid valley region through the Fresno-Madera K-16 Collaborative and will be getting underway in 2023 in the south valley area through the Kern K-16 Collaborative.

CVHEC Board Winter Meets  (Photo Gallery)

The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium Board of Directors held its final quarterly meeting of the year Dec. 8 highlighted by a discussion of Assembly Bill 928 regarding transfer reform and a farewell to a beloved colleague: Dr. Lori Bennett, outgoing president of Clovis Community College who delivered her final State-of-the-College at the CCC President’s Breakfast Oct. 25. See the board photo gallery.

CV-HEC BLOG: Year in Review-2022

The December “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog takes a look back at some of the newsletter stories published in 2022.

WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING BLOG (November 2022): The Master’s Upskilling Program

Master’s Upskilling Experience

Was a Game-Changer

This month’s guest blog is presented by Chet Frantzich, an English teacher at Buchanan High School in Clovis who earned a master’s degree in June through CVHEC’s Master’s Upskilling Program. Chet earned his bachelor’s degree at Fresno State in 2010 (credential 2012) and has taught at BHS since 2018. He shares the value of the upskilling program and how it will benefit not just his personal and professional advancement but also his students through dual enrollment courses he plans to teach in the near future.

By Chet Frantzich

Buchanan High School

The Master’s Upskilling experience afforded me courtesy of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, National University and the Clovis Unified School District was a career altering one.

Not only did achieving my master’s in rhetoric open up pathways for me to teach dual enrollment courses and even courses at my local junior college, but it also impacted the way I teach. Graduating from the program has instilled in me a better sense of what my students need when it comes to functioning in college, yes, but also in life.  The program was a revelation regarding what truly matters in education and regarding how to teach the whole student.

I knew going into the program that it would be demanding — not just the workload each class would require that would make it so, but also balancing teaching and extracurricular responsibilities. However, each class was so organized and each instructor so available and professional that it took hardly any time at all to fall into a kind of groove regarding the work. Before I knew it, the class was over, and hence, the program itself successfully completed.

Each class had a curriculum that was engaging and impactful, relevant to my cohort’s subject area, even to the point where I would read about a strategy or an idea on a Wednesday and apply that idea or enforce that strategy the very next week. It dawned on me early in the program that I was not just earning a postbaccalaureate degree; I was improving as a teacher day-by-day, week-by-week.

Here is an example of what made the program so navigable: from the outset of each class, we (each cohort member) knew exactly what the end goal was we were striving for. From week one on, we would engage with texts and perform activities and interact with one another and building ideas – one upon the other, never in isolation of each other – so that, come the final week of the class, a lot of the work we would have to do for our month’s final project has been completed.

Not only did this help me manage my time and make me feel like my work was consequential, but it also illuminated an idea: why don’t I do this with my students?

And so I did, almost right away. Not long after joining the cohort and being confronted with this realization, my students read a novel where I could show them the result we would be striving for before actually starting the book. This was not something foreign to me. What was new though, was the importance of revealing to people what they are doing, what the end result is, that way how they go about getting to that end destination is of the best quality possible.

The program elevated my teaching abilities in numerous ways, but understanding what my students needed to excel in their next stage of life was the chief way I improved. It is not that I did not know what they needed, but more so that I came to better understand how to get what they needed to them.

My mentor, Jeff Burdick, was a key piece in helping me understand how to help my students. His wisdom and experience in the college classroom revealed some things and affirmed others: that students need to be given a space to be creative, that they need to be shown tough love, that understanding how basic language works is essential to being a great communicator, that writing is the best way to teach people how to think.

Without the program, I think my grasp on those ideas would be decent, vague; graduating from the program, my grasp on those ideas is iron-like.

I cannot wait for the opportunity to teach dual enrollment classes. I have not been granted the chance to teach them yet, but when I do, I know I will be ready, and the Master’s program is a big reason why.

I do not think there is a topic or issue in the English classroom I cannot tackle, so expansive was the breadth of my experience earning my master’s. Going through the program is an experience I will never forget, and it is one I will forever be grateful for. There is no question that the program has made me a better, more well-rounded teacher, and it has inspired me to keep learning about my craft, that way my students get the best version of me year-to-year, month-to-month, week-to-week, day-to-day.

More specifically, I am confident they will find inspiration in the taking dual enrollment courses I hope to soon teach that will lay a foundation for a successful and meaningful higher education experience.

See Mr. Frantzich communicating with his student’s parents for Back to School Night 2021.

WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING BLOG (September 2022): The ZTC/OER Movement

Let’s Join the OERevolution with
ZTC programs, Central Valley!

 

By JAMES PRESTON, President
West Hills College Lemoore
CVHEC Board of Directors

The California Community College Chancellor’s Office recently announced it is launching the Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) Program and supporting the system with $115 million to do the work in what we term the “OERevolution” (Open Educational Resources).

While the details are still rolling out in series of webinars, the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium CVHEC is forming a ZTC Taskforce to review/advise how its community college district members can access these funds to implement the program.

Each college in the system will receive a $20,000 planning grant designed to help colleges develop a team and devise a plan. The remaining funds will be available for colleges to fund ZTC degrees at their college. Applications are now available.

For the past six years, you have been hearing the OER and ZTC acronyms as our state community college system has been discussing the possibilities of a world without expensive textbooks. The time is now Central Valley to lean into the OERevolution! But before I explain its ingredients, let’s start with some basic definitions:

 

  • Open Educational Resources (OER) are free, openly licensed and accessible materials that faculty can retain, revise, remix, reuse, revise and redistribute. OER materials come in many forms such as open textbooks, videos, articles and ancillary support materials.

 

  • When creatively combined into a Canvas course shell, OER create what we now know as a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) course. Teamwork between discipline faculty, an area administrator, library or instructional design support and student services personnel, along with the financial support for people to collaborate, can quickly move things from a ZTC course to a ZTC degree.

 

  • Add in a dose of creativity, strategy, policy, equity and guided pathways thinking and you are on your way to a full OERevolution!

 

Three Wins When You Join the OERevolution!

In 2016 , West Hills College Lemoore received a $100,000 grant from the Achieving the Dream (ATD) network to create a Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) degree for an Associate in Arts for
Transfer (AA-T) in Elementary Education and it started the college on our campus’ OERevolution journey!

Initially, West Hills College Lemoore jumped into the OERevolution as a way to eliminate textbook cost barriers for students; however, what started as a revolution against textbook publishers and outrageous prices quickly turned into an evolution of teaching and learning as faculty utilized OER materials in creative and powerful ways.

Thousands of hours of teamwork, a few additional grants and six years later West Hills College Lemoore has saved students over $8 million dollars, evolutionized teaching and learning and currently offers 62 percent of our courses in the ZTC format with a dozen degrees and certificates that students can complete without any textbook costs!

The ZTC program, like any new initiative or work, finds our Central Valley colleges in various stages while continuously fighting with competing priorities, but let me frame for you three guaranteed wins if you join the OERevolution!

 

Win #1: Affordability and Access

We have been fighting the affordability fight as a system for the past decade and are starting to see great movement in food insecurity, housing insecurity, financial aid reform and efforts to close the digital divide. These are all critical movements, but let’s talk about student success and how hard it is for students to succeed in their courses if they can’t afford the learning materials.

For years we at West Hills College Lemoore tried creative solutions like putting a textbook on reserve in the library or creating textbook checkout programs. Our college ran a very “successful” textbook checkout program for one of our categorical programs that checked out 250 textbooks a semester for 10 years which saved students about $500,000 over ten years (approximating $100 a textbook). But in the first year that we launched our OERevolution, we were able to save students $632,800 in textbook costs. Simple math: in one year with OER, West Hills College Lemoore saved students what took 10 years with other creative approaches.

Similarly, the California Community College Chancellor’s Office invested $5 million into the pilot program for ZTC degrees in 2016. West Hills College Lemoore served as the Co-Technical Assistance Provider (TAP) for this program and the savings for students were staggering: the 37 ZTC degrees and certificates that were created across the state saved students over $40 million dollars.

This chart shows the progress of West Hills College Lemoore the past six years and highlights the powerful combination of savings and Day One access for our students to their OER learning materials.

 

 

Win #2: Teaching and Learning

One major flaw in our community college system is that our new full-time and part-time faculty come into our system with minimal teacher preparation.

For decades, the onboarding of an individual who meets minimum qualifications with a M.A. degree or vocational experience in their discipline — but no teacher training — amounted to receiving a course outline, a sample syllabus and the course textbook with publisher materials. If your institution utilizes this formula, you most likely end up with a teacher who will lean heavily on the textbook and publisher materials out of pure survival the first few years in the classroom until they have had the chance to gain experience, receive mentoring and engage in professional development.

The move to Open Educational Resources at West Hills College Lemoore has led to an evolution in teaching and learning as the faculty focus has been freed from textbook dependency and shifted from teaching “chapters” to teaching concepts. Faculty have diversified their curriculum and identified relevant and engaging OER materials to create their ZTC course shells in Canvas.

One of our most recent examples is our math faculty who recently shifted from Pearson’s MyMathLab ($120 access code) to MyOpenMath (MOM).

MOM is an open and free product created by a group of community college math instructors in concert with some programmers and has resulted in high-quality open Math courses in the Canvas Commons with ancillary materials comparable to publisher materials.

Our math faculty have taken the base model of the MOM courses and added their own personalized videos, lecture notes and even programmed in some quizzes, tests and other support materials. Innovation and collaboration have become the norm as faculty use a “base model” course shell and then add in their own materials to personalize it for their students.

Across our college, you no longer hear faculty stating they are “covering chapter three this week.” Instead they are talking about concepts and themes.

Win #3: Diversity, Equity, Inclusion  and Access!

For years we have heard stories, completed surveys and conducted focus groups at our colleges that informed us that students either don’t purchase the textbooks because of cost, buy textbooks later in the semester when they are able to gather up funds, or just get creative and try to find workarounds to purchasing a textbook which takes time and compromises the quality of materials.

The most compelling win for OER is equitable access to course materials for all students on Day One of the class. Thanks to the ZTC course model, the majority of our faculty are able to open up their courses with introductory content and access to learning materials a week before the class starts so students are ready to succeed from Day One.  

The beginnings of an OERevolution are grounded in faculty working together with their OER librarian or instructional designer and fellow faculty to identify diverse, engaging and quality materials aligned to their outcomes.

The next level of the OERevolution can also include open pedagogy where students are also gathering and identifying materials for a course and faculty content creation where faculty help fill the gaps and create content to support learning either in the form of videos, articles or textbooks.

Our most recent college example of faculty innovation is a new textbook that was co-written by a team of faculty for an Introduction to Ethnic Studies course. This free and open textbook serves as a guide and the course shell includes additional learning and engagement materials.

Co-author Dr. Vera Kennedy proclaims, “We are excited to share our new OER book with original content titled Our Lives: An Ethnic Studies Primer with students and faculty. The text was developed as a stand-alone resource for Introduction to Ethnic Studies courses. However, students and faculty wanting discipline-specific voices or perspectives may choose the book as a supplemental resource.”

The textbook is available in three online format that are listed below and you can see how with just a click of a link our students have Day One access to their material:

Scaling Up the OERevolution!

West Hills College Lemoore, through the TAP role with the pilot ZTC program, offered OER bootcamps and professional development for faculty and delivered strategic sessions for college teams to address institutional elements around OER such as building infrastructure and integration of ZTC and OER through shared governance, policy and campus plans.

Our campus looks forward to working with CVHEC to provide training, support and resources to help our Central Valley colleges continue their OERevolution.  I invite you to check out our story and a plethora of resources at our OER website: https://www.westhillscollege.com/lemoore/oer/.

 

OER Embraced – California community colleges implement zero–textbook–cost (Inside Higher Ed 09/19/19) 

CV-HEC BLOG: High School Students On Westside Can Start Taking College Courses

This issue’s “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” Blog features John Spevak, former Merced College vice president who is now a regional coordinator for the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium. He also is a correspondent for the Westside Express newspaper where this column on dual enrollment first appeared.

By John Spevak 

CVHEC Regional Coordinator

For a high school student living on the Westside of the Central Valley, college can be as near as the next classroom — right in their high school — in a course taught by a college professor.

Or it can be on their computer at home in an online course offered to them by their local community college. Or it can be a short drive from their home to their local community college campus.

These opportunities are available now to students in high schools in Los Banos, Dos Palos and Firebaugh in a  program called dual enrollment, offered by both Merced and West Hills Colleges.

In many cases these college courses also fulfill high school requirements providing dual credit. And dual enrollment is available to ALL high school students, not just a select few, and not just seniors. And no placement test is involved.

The challenge is that most high school students, and their parents, don’t know about this opportunity. But they could. All they have to do is talk with their high school counselor. And once they take a college course they can begin talking with a local college counselor.

“Dual enrollment should not be a ‘best kept secret,’’’ said Ben Duran, executive director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, which consists of 30 colleges and universities from Stockton to Bakersfield.

Duran, who spent many hours of his youth working in the fields near Planada, believes every high school student in the Central Valley should have a college opportunity, and he says in most cases that opportunity can start right in high school.

“When I was the superintendent of the LeGrand Union High School district in the 1980’s,” Duran said, “I saw many students who were bright and talented but who didn’t believe that college was for them. Their parents hadn’t attended college, so college wasn’t a part of their background.

“Back then,” he continued, “they didn’t have the opportunity for dual enrollment. Now every high school student on the Westside has that opportunity,” Duran said. “Both West Hills and Merced Colleges have been leaders in the state in providing dual enrollment.

“I would like all students (and their parents) in high schools in Los Banos, Dos Palos, Firebaugh and Santa Nella to know about this terrific opportunity,” Duran added. “I’m hoping that everyone who reads this article in the Westside Express tells their family members and friends about dual enrollment.”

The best place to find out about dual enrollment is by talking with high school counselors, all of whom are familiar with the dual enrollment concept. Each high school, along with its partner community college, has its own processes and procedures for dual enrollment.

Duran believes there are two things he’d like to see every high school student consider when thinking about dual enrollment: identifying a tentative career goal or path and then fulfilling their college English and math requirements before leaving high school.

“It would be great if high school students, beginning in their freshman year, would start thinking about what career they’d like,” Duran said. “A friend of mine suggests they think about their ‘dream job.’

“Then they should explore what education is needed to have a well-paying job in this career,” he said. “In almost all cases today a job that earns enough to support a person and her or his family requires some sort of college education leading to a certificate or a degree. It may not require four years of college, or even two.

“Then, along with their parents and high school counselor,” he added, “high school students need to map out what college courses are needed for that career and start looking at what college courses on this path are available to them in high school.

“I particularly recommend,” Duran said, “that whatever path high school students choose, they fulfill their English and math requirement before graduating from high school. Once students have these two requirements out of the way, all kinds of doors are open to them, immediately and down the road.”

Both Merced and West Hills Colleges, along with their partner high schools, plan to provide more information to students and parents on the Westside of the Central Valley about dual enrollment opportunities soon.

See the original Westside Express post.

CV-HEC Photo Blog: Higher Education Policy and Legislative Summit May 5-6, 2022

For this issue, our What The CV-HEC Is Happening feature is a “photo-blog” capturing scenes from the  CVHEC Higher Education Policy and Legislative Summit held May 5-6 presented under the theme “Post Pandemic World: Recovering with Equity and Inclusion in the Central Valley” in Fresno.

Dr. John D. Welty, Fresno State President-emeritus who left the CVHEC board nine years ago when he retired, returned to join founding board members Dr. Frank Gornick, West Hills Community College District chancellor-emeritus, and Dr. Benjamin Duran, Merced College president-emeritus and current CVHEC executive director, in recalling the early days of the consortium.

At the rare gathering of the presidents and chancellors of 30 Central Valley higher education institutions and other leaders, summit participants engaged in four panel presentations exploring challenges faced by colleges and universities during the pandemic with these topics:

  • Looking at Recovery Through a Lens of Equity and Inclusion
  • Dual Enrollment as an Equity Strategy for Valley High School Students
  • Creating the Central Valley Transfer Model – A Pathway for Valley Students
  • Broadband for All – Taking Broadband to the Next Mile in the Central Valley

A student panel once again provided the voices of those served by higher education professionals including several who “starred” in two CVHEC videos made in the past year:

During the CVHEC Board of Director’s quarterly meeting held the day before the summit, the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine Fresno regional campus was seated as the 30th member institution of the consortium.

Following that board meeting, CVHEC presented a Cinco de Mayo Reception featuring Las Hermanas Medina (Sofia, Bela and Paulina) of Hanford and theme decorations by the Kings Cultural Center in Armona. (Special thanks to Dr. Juan Medina, KCC Director, and wife Chely)

 

 

CV-HEC Guest Blog: ‘What the CV-HEC is Happening’ Feb. 2022

Virginia Madrid-Salazar, Esq., was CVHEC’s strategies lead from 2015 through July 2021. In August, the San Joaquin College of Law alumna’s service to her community shifted to private law practice as a dependency attorney serving parents and minors involved in Dependency Court of the Fresno County Superior Court. She is also a board member of the Fresno County Office of Education Foundation. Not only did she utilize her skills while at CVHEC to help develop dual enrollment strategies with CVHEC member institutions and educational partners, Virginia also supported her own son’s productive dual enrollment journey – so we asked her to share some observations on dual enrollment from this unique perspective for our fourth “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog.

 

Dual Enrollment: An Equity Change Maker

By Virginia Madrid-Salazar, Esq.

As the strategies lead for the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, it was an honor to work alongside area educators to affect transformational changes that have occurred in the region’s higher education sphere during that period.

This blog entry gives me a welcome opportunity to share my perspective, first, reflecting on the dual enrollment work that CVHEC champions; experiencing dual enrollment in my own son’s educational career; and lastly, expressing my hope for where the Central Valley will go with dual enrollment. As a dependency attorney, I welcome the push of dual enrollment for foster youth.

Energizing for Dual Enrollment Despite Pandemic Limitations

Right before the pandemic hit, on March 5, 2020 CVHEC hosted a groundbreaking event for Central Valley higher education and K-12 educators. Nearly 200 interested educators gathered to create an action plan to create a dual enrollment model that improved the delivery of dual enrollment for the Central Valley’s rural and urban communities.

It was an energizing event. A CVHEC-convened taskforce primed the agenda to allow colleagues an opportunity to identify shared barriers to dual enrollment and devise action plans to dismantle those barriers. This collaboration proactively allowed for a valley-wide approach.

Among the needs that emerged included improving CCCApply for dual enrollment students (the application was not originally  designed for use by high school students taking college-credit bearing courses and it showed); and the simple fact that not enough teachers met minimum qualifications Ito teach college courses on their high school campuses.

During the pandemic, CVHEC brought those interested parties together virtually via Zoom where these challenges were further examined and solutions were crafted.

Application Frustrations Raised and Fixed

An executive committee of the task force identified frustrations experienced by Central Valley students when enrolling in dual enrollment courses. These concerns were shared with the California Community College Chancellor’s Office team working to improve the application process.

As a result, improvements have been implemented and there are more students now overcoming that barrier.

Growing Dual Enrollment Teachers on High School Campuses

CVHEC got to work on another barrier and organized grant applications to the Fresno K-16 Collaborative to fund high school English and math teachers to earn their master’s degrees (see Dual Enrollment Upskilling Teachers Master’s Program). In December 2021, the first of three cohorts completed their degrees. Not only will these teachers teach dual enrollment courses on high school campuses, but some will serve at rural high school campuses where the need is great.

These efforts are the beginnings of improving dual enrollment for Central Valley students.

Improving dual enrollment access does not necessarily mean a student must earn their associate degree by the time they finish high school either. Rather, the opportunity to take at least six units of college-credit bearing courses – especially an English or math course – before they finish their high school career can transcend a student’s outlook on their college career.

That was my son’s experience.

Students Getting a Head Start in College Career

In his senior year of high school, my son enrolled in six units of college credit-bearing course work taking Communications and English 1A. It was the first he heard of these dual enrollment classes offered on his campus and he decided he would give it a shot. Not only did he find the course work and his instructors interesting (he earned A’s in both courses) but, perhaps more importantly, he saw himself as a college student – in that moment.

“That dual enrollment is clutch!” That was his exclamation in our kitchen with his ed plan in hand. It was clear to him he was free to take a few other courses he needed to transfer to his choice school. This was all because he got a head start on his college career with dual enrollment. All I could do was smile.

Unbridled excitement for his future. It’s an indescribable feeling to see the positive impact of transformational change. That must be what our Central Valley higher education leaders pursue as they explore how to grow dual enrollment in the valley.

Opportunities to Grow Dual Enrollment – Equitable Growth

That excitement I saw in my son – a mix of relief, inspiration and a vision he saw for himself – is for everyone. Growing dual enrollment offers an equitable growth opportunity. As of late, I’ve noticed a push for foster youth in dual enrollment. (See Career Ladders Project Dual Enrollment for Foster Youth: Toward Effective Practice.) Now as a Dependency Attorney, and not someone in the daily challenge of growing dual enrollment, I see the experiences foster youth endure and the resiliency they display and I applaud this push on their behalf.

This is where I have a unique perspective. I can see the transformation that can occur for foster youth if they participate in dual enrollment – even if it’s a few college courses. Not just because of the impact higher education can have on someone’s life, but because for a senior who is living life as a foster youth, a lot rides on that last year of high school. Let me explain.

When foster youth are not reunified with their family as they near the age of majority, they may continue to receive County support through age 21 if they work or attend college through what is known as AB 12 Extended Foster Care Program and Benefits.  If foster youth can envision themselves as college material while in high school that young person will be inclined to participate in AB 12 and pursue a college education. This is a decision they make during that last year of majority or their senior year of high school. I cannot emphasize enough how a dual enrollment opportunity can transform that young person’s life.

Simply put, in all its fashions, dual enrollment cannot be denied in its ability to create long-lasting, unimaginable change.

Yes, it was such an honor to lend my skill through CVHEC to help Central Valley educators create transformational change.

I cannot wait to see what transformations take shape in the next few years and what other barriers to dual enrollment Central Valley educators will dismantle.

 

Check the CVDEEP Convening Website for updates and follow-up of the March 17, 2022 event.

See CVHEC White Paper Released: ‘Dual Enrollment in the Central Valley: Working Toward a Unified Approach for Equity and Prosperity’

 

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