CVHEC Director’s Message: Turning the Corner

 Greetings colleagues,

I am happy to present our February CVHEC e-Newsletter amidst recent encouraging news showing our country may be turning the corner on this historic pandemic that has transformed the way we deliver instruction and services to our students in the region.

With that in mind, we are pleased to announce that this spring CVHEC will return to in-person convenings with two major events for the Valley’s education community, pandemic conditions permitting.

The first event March 17 will bring the Central Valley Dual Enrollment for Equity and Prosperity (CVDEEP) Task Force together with regional and statewide partners.  See details in this issue.

For our second event, CVHEC leaders are excited about the return of our annual Legislative and Policy Summit in the late spring – details to follow in next month’s issue.  The Summit has been on “pandemic hiatus” since 2019 and many are anxious to come together in person to follow up on much progress that our Valley higher education community has been pursuing.

Additionally, CVHEC will hold other professional development and regional meetings in-person when campus COVID regulations allow.

Also in this issue, we announce a new round of mini-grants launching this spring throughout the Central Valley. For the last three years, CVHEC has been able to offer this funding to member colleges and universities in the Central Valley providing opportunities for faculty and staff to target areas on their campuses that have been identified by the Consortium as regional strategies and priorities. We invite our member institutions to utilize this opportunity for services that can help your students.

Finally, we are especially pleased to publish the fourth installment of our “What the CV-HEC is Happening Blog”  that features an entry by former CVHEC team member Virginia Madrid-Salazar, Esq. regarding dual enrollment from the personalized perspective of a parent of a high school student benefiting from taking college courses at his local high school. Dual enrollment is one of the equity strategies CVHEC is pursuing throughout the region and Virginia’s blog is a great warm-up for the CVDEEP Convening next month. I am proud to note that Virginia was instrumental in developing our CVDEEP Task Force while she was with us. We appreciate her taking some time from her busy law practice that she began last summer.

We hope you enjoy our newsletter for the month and we welcome your feedback

A NEW YEAR: Recharged for a Dynamic 2022

Hello friends and colleagues of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC)!

With 2022 well underway, we are pleased to share with you our first e-newsletter of the year.  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.

Though 2021 was a challenging and unprecedented year for us all, CVHEC members and partners were fully engaged in working to deliver productive educational programs for our students and valuable professional development opportunities for our faculty and staff in the region.  This  month’s newsletter provides a brief summary and reminder of the good work that was done in the Central Valley this past year.

Among these are our  Dual Enrollment Upskilling Teachers Master’s Program; announcement of our  CVHEC Equity, Race and Social Justice Taskforce; success stories about our dual enrollment efforts featuring some of our Central Valley students as well as innovative initiatives undertaken with our popular CVHEC Mini-Grant Program; our communications initiatives resulting in ongoing development of this e-newsletter including  a new blog feature, development of our public information officers/communications committee and a video on broadband disparity, one of three videos we are producing; our historic  CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project and the appointment of several new chief executives for member campuses.

This newsletter will also provide a preview of higher education efforts to come in the valley this year.

Be on the lookout for a continuation of the work around equity and inclusion in member institutions through our Equity Task Force, the pursuit of dual enrollment as an equity strategy in rural parts of the Valley and the Consortium providing assistance in creating K16 collaboratives in the north and south counties of the region.

CVHEC is also partnering with state and regional advocates to work to bring broadband to rural parts of the Central Valley to ensure that internet connectivity and bandwidth are no longer a barrier for our students and residents.

Also, the CVHEC Board of Directors is considering conditions that will allow for delivering our annual Legislative and Policy Summit in an in-person setting later in the spring, for the first time since 2019.

Needless to say, 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. To that end, we look forward to continued partnerships with you all in the coming year.

Dual Enrollment Master Upskilling program: first cohort conferred degrees

The first cohort of 17 National University graduate students participating in the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium Dual Enrollment Upskilling Teachers Master’s Program in English will complete degree requirements for an M.A. this month, marking a milestone for this innovative project that benefits thousands of the region’s dual enrollment students.

The Master’s Upskilling Program for area English high school teachers, which addresses equity and access issues, began in January funded by grants from the Fresno K-16 Collaborative in partnership with National University. A second cohort of 23 Fresno-area high school English teachers began their National English M.A. program in July 2021 and will be earning their master’s degree in June 2022.

The Fresno K-16 Collaborative was established in 2020 via funding by California Gov. Gavin Newsom and is supporting four dual enrollment-related educational pathways that help Fresno-area students move from high school to college and into the workforce.

CVHEC is coordinating two grants: one that is specifically for K-16 Collaborative partners in the Fresno area and a second one that allows for an expanded regional reach. In all, 67 high school English teachers from Fresno Madera, Merced and Kings Counties will benefit from the Dual Enrollment Upskilling Teachers Master’s Program for English.

Program support includes tuition supplements and in some cases book expenses. Participating postbaccalaureate students are paired with college English professors from CVHEC community colleges in a unique mentorship project.

In addition, CVHEC and Fresno Pacific University have also been funded by the K-16 Collaborative for a similar Dual Enrollment Upskilling Teacher’s Master’s Program in Mathematics. CVHEC has also provided community college math professor mentors for 16 of these graduate students.

“This is proving to be a win-win undertaking for all involved,” said John Spevak, former Merced College vice president who now serves as a regional lead for CVHEC.

“Not only are high school teachers gaining the opportunity to obtain a master’s, but high school districts will now have teachers who meet community college minimum qualifications to providing dual enrollment courses for their students,” Spevak said. “Our participating mentors also gain experience in working with the grad students and helping ensure incoming community college students are prepared and on the path to success.”

Eddie Cunha, director of the National University-Fresno Center, said a degree conferral ceremony will be held Dec. 19 for the current cohort.

 

Background: https://bit.ly/CVHEC-MastersUpskillingNL0121

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

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]The opening panel discussion at the CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project convening Nov. 4 in Merced included Shirley Asher, Jennifer Johnson, Karissa Morehouse, Sonya Christian, Gregg Camfield and Chenoa Woods.

 

The beat – serving student success – goes on!

An inside look at the CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Pathways Initiative and Mapper

By Tom Burke
CVHEC Transfer Project Coordinator

(Photo Gallery below)

In June, when I stepped down as chancellor of the Kern Community College District, many thought I would embark on the typical “retirement” life of fishing, hunting, traveling and just resting after a 40-year career.

While I did enjoy some of that, I also soon found myself right back in the saddle in a “new” role with KCCD as Deputy Chancellor and as a coordinator with the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium. So for those of you wondering: no I’m not officially “retired!”

Rather I am happy to report that the past few months have been quite a rewarding whirlwind as I plunged headlong into a new “assignment” as coordinator of CVHEC’s Transfer Project with the intent to enhance what has been my life’s work: serving students in general and in this case specifically, helping build effective pathways to our community colleges for a smoother, efficient transfer experience.

To that end, these past 45 days alone have seen the fruition of two great milestones.

First was the public celebration of the completion of Phase I of a joint program, the CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Pathways Initiative, at a convening Nov. 4 on the UCM campus with community college partners Bakersfield and Merced Colleges.  Secondly, at that historic event, we also launched Phase II of this project that includes the participation of four more CVHEC member institutions: Porterville College, Reedley College, Clovis College and West Hills College-Lemoore.

 

Revolutionizing Positive Outcomes

The Transfer Pathways Initiative is the result of a $500,000 grant from the California Educational Learning Lab to Bakersfield College, Merced College and UC Merced for the development of 2+2 transfer maps that streamline and guide the transfer of community college students to the University of California system.

Last month’s convening, “Charting Better Maps to Degrees – Developing Transfer Pathways to UC Merced,” demonstrated how we can revolutionize positive outcomes across enrollment, completions and equity for students while emphasizing UC Merced’s commitment to significantly expanding transfer pathways for community college students within the San Joaquin Valley to UC Merced.

With about 172 participants representing all three segments of higher education, the hybrid convening itself was a hallmark of sorts being the first major gathering convened by CVHEC and its partners since the pandemic shut down the world in March 2020. The energy from seeing and hearing our colleagues in the flesh was very evident throughout the six-hour event that was also presented virtually via Zoom (130 virtual and 42 in person).

CVHEC member community colleges were well represented at the convening where we discussed how in Phase 1, our partner teams completed 14 Transfer Pathways from Merced College and Bakersfield College to UC Merced as well as Transfer Pathway work with California State University, Bakersfield.

The convening also further introduced interested colleges to the Pathway Mapper software program, particularly its ability to enhance the student transfer experience as well as early student success results from institutions utilizing the Pathway Mapper. Participants also received information on future Program Mapper software enhancements that are scheduled.

The topics of four breakout sessions portrayed the breadth and depth of our mission:

  • The Tech Behind Program Pathways Mapper
  • Student Impact of Program Pathways Mapper – On-path Percentage, Student Engagement
  • Getting Started with Program Pathways Mapper: Cleaning and Loading Your Curriculum
  • The Technology of Collaboration – How to set up effective intersegmental discipline faculty teams and develop 2+2 transfer Documentation of process and guidelines.

 

Implementation teams of faculty, staff working hand-in-hand

The second great milestone is the launch of Phase II which actually got its start in the summer when a convening of representatives from all 15 CVHEC community colleges included an update presentation on the aforementioned Phase I completion of the 14 Transfer Pathways from Merced and Bakersfield Colleges to UC Merced.

At that June 16 convening, significant interest was expressed for participation in Phase II project implementation so in the early fall CVHEC reached out to interested member community colleges with a call to form and submit their implementation teams.

The four Phase II community colleges mentioned above — Porterville, Reedley, Clovis and West Hills-Lemoore — established teams and scheduled convenings to commence the development of curriculum transfer pathways to UC Merced. They will now be individually convening in the next four months with the first held Dec. 2-3 at Porterville College.

That recent convening was my first as a coordinator and I was impressed with the commitment and excitement by the Porterville College, faculty, staff and administrators to develop nine transfer pathways directly to UC Merced including a new pathway in Spanish.

Perhaps the pinnacle of that enthusiasm was to observe, when a potential curriculum issue arose, how UC Merced staff collaborated and interfaced with community college faculty and staff for solutions on the spot.  They collectively brainstormed and developed options for resolving the issue.

In particular, the level of commitment by host Porterville College to fulfill this mission for their students was further demonstrated by the active involvement and attendance in the two-day convening by the Vice President of Instruction Thad Russell, Vice President of Student Services Primavera Arvizu and President of the Academic Senate Robert Simpkins.  In addition, Porterville College President Dr. Claudia Habib made an appearance at the convening impressing upon faculty and staff the importance of their contributions to this project for their students’ success and thanked them for their work on the pathways.

Equally, I was impressed with the Transfer Project planning team, especially CVHEC colleague Stan Carrizosa, a former College of Sequoias superintendent/president, and James Zimmerman, senior associate vice provost and dean for Undergraduate Education at UC Merced.

We hope this level of partnership by all parties will be emulated by all our members, which I am convinced will only lead to a great reward: positive outcomes across enrollment, completions and equity for students.

And that will clearly make for happier fishing, hunting and traveling days along the way (when I can squeeze them in)!

Happy Holidays to all!

See UC Merced press release: https://news.ucmerced.edu/news/2021/uc-merced-offer-simpler-transfer-pathway-central-valley-community-college-students

See Merced Sun Star story: UC Merced announces partnership to encourage Valley community college student transfers

Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director; Dr. Sonya Christian, Kern Community College District chancellor; Lark Park, director of the California Education Learning Lab; and Dr. Juan Sánchez Muñoz, UC Merced chancellor.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_images_carousel images=”6150,6118,6120,6119,6184,6171,6164,6162,6161,6147,6148,6149,6151,6144,6142,6141,6096,6140,6107,6170,6139,6138,6136,6135,6121,6122,6126,6127,6130,6131,6132,6133,6110,6109,6108,6143,6059″ img_size=”large” autoplay=”yes” title=”Gallery: CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Pathways Initiative — UC Merced campus Nov. 4″][/vc_column][/vc_row]

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