MATH BRIDGE UPDATE- April 2024
The road to Orosi, California typifies the rich rural areas of Central California where CVHEC and College Bridge are reaching
out to provide Math Bridge services that help prepare high school students for college. (Tom Uribes photo)
Math Bridge campaign identifies nearly
1,000 students for college-level math courses
BY DR. NICOLE KORGIE
Vice President of Operations – College Bridge
The Central Valley Math Bridge project is off and running as 13 committed high school partners with College Bridge and the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium are completing a student recruitment campaign that has identified nearly 1,000 students ready to take on college math and nearly half of those indicating their interest to participate.
The impact Math Bridge is having on education in the region is seen in one general characteristic of these students: they were likely NOT to have taken an advanced math course, or even math at all, in their senior year.
Now, as more high school students graduate with solid/advanced math skills though Math Bridge, more students will find success in college and career, filling vital local workforce needs.
The participating high schools stretching across the Valley’s nine-county region from Taft to Stockton are partnering with six community college members of CVHEC to offer the math dual enrollment courses at their respective campuses beginning next fall (student breakdown in parenthesis. The community colleges and their participating feeder schools are::
DELTA COLLEGE: Stagg High School, Weber Academy;
MERCED COLLEGE: Atwater High, Buhach Colony High School, Golden Valley High School, Livingston High School, Mariposa High School;
REEDLEY COLLEGE: Dinuba High School, Orosi High School, Sanger High School, Sanger West High School;
TAFT COLLEGE: Taft High School;
WEST HILLS COLLEGE LEMOORE: Riverdale High School.
The campaign: no longer running from math!
The nearly 1,000 Central Valley students from these high schools identified as great prospects to participate in Math Bridge have solid academic GPA’s — between 2.3 – 3.4 — but have struggled in high school math.
Beginning at Taft High School in January, the prospective students were presented with information about Math Bridge and the benefits of participating such as allowing these students to complete a college level math course before they graduate from high school.
While you may think that many if not all students who fear or dislike math would run screaming if presented with the opportunity to take a college level math course, you may now re-think that: of the nearly 1,000 students identified, NEARLY HALF completed a form AFFIRMING their interest in participating in Math Bridge. They expressed a desire to take on the challenge of college level math that the Math Bridge project provides the high school including extensive support to help students pass the course.
For the upcoming academic year, all Math Bridge partner sites will offer a statistics course though their local community college. Math Bridge will be working with the college faculty and high school math teacher at each site to ensure that appropriate support services are provided to the students in the course.
We are currently following up with the 500 students who completed the interest form in the recruitment sessions to ensure that they meet with their school counselor to confirm that Math Bridge is the correct option for them for senior year and their post-secondary goals.
To date, 230 students have signed up. And we’re not done yet as Dinuba and Stagg have yet to begin their student recruitment process so even more students will be given this opportunity by the time we provide a final enrollment number in a future update.
Prepping participant high schools for Math Bridge
As this student recruitment campaign wraps up this spring, we now move into the support phase for the educators from the high school participants with a special event May 3 in Fresno to help prepare teachers for the Math Bridge project’s launch in the fall semester.
On that day, College Bridge will host our Math Bridge Instructional Planning Meeting where college and high school math instructors and their support teams (math coaches, chairs, supporting faculty) will collaborate with our project team around the who, how, when, where and what for the Math Bridge courses to be taught in Academic Year 2024-2025.
Activities for the day will include reviewing curriculum, assessments and commonalities between college courses and any necessary local differences. We will also review the requirements for instructors to earn the project stipend as well as calendaring all future planning and collaboration times per college service area.
It is understandable that some feel the slight mention of math is enough to squash any conversation but the groundbreaking role these Central Valley high schools and their community college partners are taking on with College Bridge and CVHEC is a new level of excitement for educators seeking to arm their students for a successful higher education experience.
BACKGROUND: College Bridge’s mission is to identify and eliminate barriers that prevent underrepresented students from progressing to and through college specifically focusing on Black, Latino, low-income and rural students. One of its two objectives is to expand strategic dual enrollment partnerships to serve low-income, rural and Latino students in California’s Central Valley. In December 2022, College Bridge was awarded a five-year $4 million US Department of Education grant for the Dual Enrollment Math Bridge Project so six CVHEC community colleges could provide college-level math classes that will improve and support college readiness for underprepared students in the colleges’ respective service areas. In April 2023, the project received a $1,075,340 award from the California Regional K-16 Education Collaboratives Grant Program through two Central Valley K-16 programs – the Fresno-Madera K-16 Collaborative and the Tulare-Kings College & Career Collaborative. Then in December 2023, a $2,196,928 federal grant was awarded for expansion of the College Transition Bridge project that, among other features, will advance collaboration with CVHEC’s Central Valley Transfer Project and its college course-planning software, Program Pathway Mapper, as well as with consortium member colleges.
WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING BLOG (January 2024): CVHEC 2023 — surging forward for Central Valley students
To kick off our 2024 “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blogs, CVHEC Regional Coordinator Stan Carrizosa, Sr. follows up the year-in-review published in our December newsletter issue by offering a perspective of the consortium’s progress in 2023 that sets the stage for a productive new year. Carrizosa, who is president-emeritus of CVHEC member College of the Sequoias and an integral part of the CVHEC team, serves as the lead for the consortium’s Central Valley Transfer Project. The CVHEC blog features perspectives about the higher education community and issues. Submissions are welcome for consideration: Tom Uribes, cvheccommunications@mail.fresnostate.edu.
Propelling successfully, purposefully like a guided rocket
BY STAN A. CARRIZOSA, SR.
CVHEC Regional Coordinator
(President-emeritus, College of the Sequoias)
As a child, I remember watching a weekly science show called “The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau” that explored the ocean and marine biology.
One fascinating episode depicted how an octopus at any moment could be moving wildly with all eight legs and not advance at all. But once the octopus contracted its core by simultaneously snapping all eight legs in the same direction, a burst of air coming from the fish propelled it successfully and purposefully through the water like a guided rocket.
Stan Carrizosa, Sr. (left) and CVHEC Central Valley Transfer Project team partner Tom Burke presented at the Community Colleges League of California in November along with UC Merced grad student Araceli Tilley who discussed her success with the project’s Program Pathway Mapper software and Jennifer Johnson of the Foundation for California Community Colleges (right).
Over the course of the past 12 months, CVHEC has flexed its octopus legs and undertaken otherwise separate projects like Math Bridge and Master’s Upskilling (dual enrollment) and the Central Valley Transfer Project. By aligning them and their sub-parts, CVHEC has achieved the snapping of its octopus legs successfully surging us forward in the form of real achievement results for higher education in the Central Valley and for our region’s students specifically.
As we move into 2024, the work of CVHEC continues to be more aligned in ways that leverage each element and make the wholistic effort more cohesive and successful. This reminds me how effective it was to do this same thing as a college president. It was important to have clear goals and objectives and planned actions designed to address specific aspects of an issue to ensure greater success.
This past year, CVHEC acted like an organization with big-picture goals for improving student achievement region-wide and a measured plan of actions all designed to work together as a system to achieve success.
The two key drivers of this system for CVHEC success are strong intersegmental partnership commitments to:
- a robust dual enrollment;
- increasing successful community college transfers to higher education institutions.
Biggest DE challenge: qualified instructors
Armed with direct feedback from our first Dual Enrollment Summit held three years ago, we heard that one of the biggest challenges to implementing dual enrollment courses was the ability to find qualified instructors to teach college courses on high school campuses.
CVHEC responded by creating an upskilling project where high school teachers in math and English could earn a master’s degree in their content areas and be qualified to apply for and teach dual enrollment college courses on their high school campuses.
Early results from dual enrollment courses showed that students were more successful when the teacher for their college courses was a member of their regular high school faculty. Under the leadership of Dr. John Spevak, CVHEC regional coordinator and vice-president emeritus of Merced College, who facilitated an impressive package offering high school teachers the opportunity to earn a MA degree in their content areas through our partner universities, this opportunity had many residual benefits such as:
- improving the quality of teaching for their high school classes,
- earning higher salaries at their high school,
- creating a professional learning community between high school and community college teachers,
- and most importantly, changing teacher attitudes about the ability for high school students to succeed in college-level work.
The benefits for high school students are enormous.
Those enrolled in college dual enrollment courses experience pass rates of 80-plus percent while mainstream college students pass rates are in the 50 percent range. Finally, dual enrollment has proven to be a game-changer for first-generation college students in closing the equity gap among them and their college prep peers.
If students are able to take their college math and English courses before graduating high school, they start their college career on a level playing field by having completed their first required courses in transfer-level math and English. This enables them to get on the right pathway and stay straight toward their degree completion.
Incentivizing the efforts to increase transfers
The second key driver for CVHEC in 2023 and moving into the new year is the Central Valley Transfer Project!
The breakthrough moment in this project came when UC Merced agreed to review the CSU ADTs and approve these lower-division sequences as meeting the requirements for successful transfer to UCM. Central Valley CSU’s including Bakersfield and Stanislaus have bought in to the Transfer Project as well. Over the past three years CVHEC has worked to complete implementation in eight of our CV community colleges with three more joining the project this year.
Again the student benefit stands clear: early results show that students in the Transfer Project increase their percentages of on-path course completion each semester by 20 points to 80-plus percent. The same students also reduce their number of units to degree from a high of 85 down to 62.
Meanwhile the new statewide Student Funding Formula starts to provide enhanced per/FTES revenue for successful transfers to four-year institutions, further incentivizing the efforts to increase transfers.
We know that of all the successful graduates earning degrees from CSU’s, 50 percent started their education at a community college. Most recently, California Community Colleges Chancellor Dr. Sonya Christian unveiled her VISION 2030 which includes the Central Valley Transfer Project as a Demonstration Project for the entire state. As a result, CVHEC is now being recruited in both southern and northern California to share the success of the CV Transfer Project with those regions through presentations at various convenings.
Thoughtful and effective continuum creating unprecedented leverage for success
In summary, in addition to tracking and assessing our efforts as individual projects, it is equally if not more important to step back and see the bigger picture in the CVHEC body of work for 2023 that sets the stage for promising 2024. We can see there is a thoughtful and effective continuum that links these efforts together creating unprecedented leverage for success:
- CVHEC started by looking at the data and listening to the practitioners in the field to develop an agenda of work to support our colleges.
- Dual enrollment shows great promise but needs more qualified instructors.
- High school students in dual enrollment courses can close the equity gap between them and their peers thus advancing their personal confidence and capacity to succeed in college.
- Most higher ed students start in our community colleges and now through the Transfer Project they have a clear pathway of courses to take for a successful transfer to four-year universities.
- Once our community college students successfully complete their transfer, statistics show that they represent 50 percent of all university graduates.
So, looking back over the past 12 months, CVHEC – like the octopus snapping our legs to successfully surge forward – has successfully linked together major initiatives to build upon and strengthen each other allowing students to experience a continuum of effectiveness and success in achieving their higher education goals and objectives. To close out 2023 and look ahead, our executive director Dr. Benjamín Durán sums up the CVHEC spirit best in his newsletter director’s message published in our December issue:
“This year we are happy to salute and greet our K-12 partner districts who have joined us in creating meaningful pathways from middle school and high school to college. As we prepare to welcome 2024, stay tuned as we continue to nurture many roads leading to one destination – getting students to and through college in a timely manner!”
HIGHER ED NEWS: College Bridge to expand Math Bridge; CVHEC Transfer Project
College Bridge President Dr. Lynn Cevallos speaks at the Math Bridge kick off in Fresno May 18, 2023.
College Bridge funded $2.1 million to expand Math Bridge
the ‘Central Valley way’; collaborate with CVHEC Transfer Project
The College Bridge Program, a partner of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, has received a $2,196,928 federal grant for expansion of its College Transition Bridge project that, among other features, will advance collaboration with CVHEC’s Central Valley Transfer Project and its college course-planning software, Program Pathway Mapper, as well as with consortium member colleges.
The College Transition Bridge project is a college counseling initiative created in 2017 that includes a curriculum to meet student needs in preparation for a successful transition from high school to college.
With this new three-year grant from U.S. Department of Education Rural Postsecondary Education and Economic Development (RPED) program funds, the College Transition Bridge Project will identify over 2,750 low-income, minority and rural students in the Central Valley to participate in a year-long program that provides students and educators access to college knowledge.
Additionally, the grant will expand the CT Bridge curriculum to include regional workforce needs and streamlined degree pathways to enter the workforce, said Dr. Lynn Cevallos, founder and president of College Bridge, a non-profit organization dedicated to forging a path towards both college access and success for underrepresented students.
“The pathways lead students from high school to community college to the university to career,” she said. “Expanded services are provided to students as well as intersegmental teams of instructors, counselors and administrators.”
She emphasized that “this grant is 100 percent Valley-focused benefiting the identified student population in the California Central San Joaquin Valley.
“And we will be connecting with CVHEC’s proven Central Valley way of doing things as we tie student success to the workforce needs of the region,” she added, explaining that CVHEC leads the partnership efforts connecting workforce needs through aligned college transfer programs between California Community Colleges and the California State University and University of California systems in the region.
The College Bridge team at the Math Bridge kick off last year: Owynn Lancaster, Dr. Nicole Korgie, Dr. Lynn Cevallos.
College Bridge, based in Southern California but working closely with CVHEC community college members and their feeder high schools in the Central Valley through its Math Bridge Project, is the only California recipient of the RPED program funds awarded Dec. 22 when the Biden-Harris Administration announced $44.5 million in grants to 22 institutions of higher education nationwide.
Funding from the RPED grant program, which promotes the development of high-quality career pathways aligned to high-skill, high-wage and in-demand industry sectors and occupations in the region, is designed to improve rates of postsecondary education enrollment, persistence and completion among students in rural communities.
Cevallos noted that two San Joaquin Valley demographic characteristics drive the need for the federally-funded project: the average per capita incomes are 32 percent lower than the state average; and college graduation rates are 50 percent below the state average.
“Students in the San Joaquin Valley lag far behind in academic performance compared to the rest of the state,” she said. “The region trails the state in bachelor’s degree attainment, with only 12 percent of the adult population holding a bachelor’s degree, compared to 21 percent in the state.”
She said that for associate degree attainment, the region and the state are similar at roughly 8 percent, so this grant opportunity also allows for the revision and expansion of the CT Bridge curriculum regarding:
- Community College Transfer Pathways with an overview of all transfer pathway options but particular focus on the state’s two-to-four-year Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) Program;
- and the CVHEC Transfer Project’s Program Pathway Mapper (PPM), the software tool that guides students in choosing courses to complete a specific ADT Program.
“In leading the partnership efforts connecting workforce needs through aligned college transfer programs between California Community Colleges and the CSU and UC systems in the region, CVHEC convenes regional partners to review and approve transfer curricula that serve as the basis for the ADT Program,” Cevallos said.
“Faculty from each partner college and university meet to review and approve ADT course requirements. Approved ADTs are loaded into Program Mapper software, which is embedded in College Transition Bridge.”
Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director, said this new endeavor between Central Valley Higher Education Consortium and the College Transition Bridge will streamline and clarify effective college and career pathways for high school students.
“The Central Valley Transfer Project is anchored by the Program Pathways Mapper, a simple, user-friendly but highly effective software platform,” Durán said. “CVHEC will now help integrate the use of the PPM into the college readiness activities provided by CT Bridge as the key planning tool for high school students to identify and chart their pathway to successful completion.”
Cevallos said the math and CT Bridge experience enables students to build their confidence and capacity in math and successfully complete college transfer-level math courses before high school graduation.
“College-level math and English are gateway courses that serve as prerequisites to many other courses important to successful completion and attainment of their desired degree/certification,” she said.
The funding provides the CT Bridge students, while still in high school, a series of college readiness activities such as completing financial aid and admissions applications, reviewing career opportunities in their desired workforce, selecting a major aligned with their desired career interests and planning the necessary sequence of courses, training and timeline for successful completion.
Stan Carrizosa, CVHEC regional coordinator who is the lead for the consortium’s Transfer Project, said
students who benefit from participation in the CT Bridge experience will be introduced to PPM and guided through the readiness details needed for them to plan their college futures from high school to community college and their four-year institution.
“Because so many of the CT Bridge students are first generation college prospects and come from backgrounds underrepresented in college attendance, they often transition to their local community college as their initial pathway into higher education,” Carrizosa said.
He cited the success of a PPM user who was a student panelist at the CVHEC Summit in October.
“Students like Araceli Tilley took full advantage of Program Pathways Mapper by utilizing the course planning software after her transfer from Merced College to continue planning her academic journey at UC Merced where she graduates with a master’s this spring,” Carrizosa noted.
For more information about the College Bridge RDEP grant, contact Dr. Nicole Korgie at nicole.korgie@college-bridge.org.
See:
BACKGROUND: College Bridge’s mission is to identify and eliminate barriers that prevent underrepresented students from progressing to and through college specifically focusing on Black, Latino, low-income and rural students. One of its two objectives is to expand strategic dual enrollment partnerships to serve low-income, rural and Latino students in California’s Central Valley.
The CVHEC Way to Math Success — Implementing AB1705
Registration for “The CVHEC Way to Math Success — Implementing AB1705” set for Jan. 26, 2024 in Fresno is available here.
All math hands on deck!
Central Valley math, admin, IR pros invited to help plan for
AB1705 implementation at ‘The CVHEC Way to Math Success’ convening Jan. 26
A historic convening of the Central Valley’s mathematics professionals will be held in Fresno Jan. 26, 2024 to merge ideas stemming from a series of fall meetings of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium Math Task Force designed to address implementation of AB 1705 in 2024.
Registration is now open for “The Central Valley Way To AB1705 Success” that will be held from 9 a.m. – 3 p.m. at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Fresno Convention Center for math educators, administrators and institutional researchers. The event, facilitated by the Charles A. Dana Center at the University of Texas at Austin, is free with advance registration and will include lunch.
The convening continues a first-of-its kind year-long discussion of ideas and options within the Central Valley community college mathematics community – CVHEC bringing together Math Task Force members and other math educators — in an ongoing quest for equitable mathematics under AB705 and AB1705.
“With the passage of AB 705 and now 1705 – all designed to strengthen support for student success – CVHEC has been moving full steam ahead in assuring that our member colleges and their feeder high school have a good understanding of the seemingly turbulent waters of the legislation,” said Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director.
“We are using the expertise of our own Central Valley math professors to help find the best ways to respond to AB 1705 with the greatest possibilities for student success.”
CVHEC’s Math Task Force — made up of representatives from CVHEC community colleges — held three virtual sessions and one in-person session this fall, bringing together the valley’s math educator community to look at how to best implement the legislation first passed in 2017 as AB 705 that was followed in 2022 with AB 1705.
Two sessions (Oct.6 via Zoom and Oct. 13 in person in Fresno) were followed with two virtual sessions on Nov. 17 (morning and afternoon), all drawing well over 30 math professors, reports Dr. John Spevak, CVHEC regional coordinator who oversees the consortium’s Math and English Task Forces.
Those inaugural sessions were facilitated by two Dana Center representatives: Joan Zoellner, M.A., who is the lead for the Dana Center’s Launch Years Initiative; and Dr. Tammi Perez-Rice, Postsecondary Course Program specialist.
At the Oct. 6 virtual informational session, Dr. Erik Cooper, assistant vice chancellor of the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, Zoomed in to discuss the recent history of math education reform in California. He fielded questions about the requirements and expectations for community colleges under AB1705 highlighting the CCCCO’s AB 1705 Implementation Guide and FAQ webpage.
(Links to recordings of the two sessions are available below).
“They were lively and productive discussions as we continue to move forward with a Central Valley Model in response to AB 1705 that works toward math success specifically for students in the Central Valley,” Spevak said.
“Now for the January session, administrators and researchers are being summoned to help meet the challenge head on and in unity for the best interests of students.”
The topics at the Jan. 26 meeting will center around five strands relating to AB 1705 that came out of the fall sessions involving CVHEC community colleges, creating a collaborative “Central Valley Approach” to each, Spevak said.
The strands — and Math Task Force professors serving as leads — are:
Validating prerequisites–quantitative and qualitative: creating a Central Valley collaborative approach which would help make a strong case with the state. Point person: NATHAN CAHOON, Taft College math professor.
Designing Precalculus for 2025: An effective single-course prerequisite for Calculus 1 (especially valuable if the state allows in 2025-26 only one prerequisite course for Calculus 1). Point person: JEREMY BRANDL, Fresno City College.
Math support outside and inside the classroom: What’s working best in the Central Valley, including math lab centers, tutoring, embedded tutoring, supplemental instruction, etc. Point person: SHELLEY GETTY, Taft College.
Building an AB 1705 campus team: Who needs to be on the team? Math and English professors, IR/IT staff, counselors, administrators, etc. How does it best function? Point person: MARIE BRULEY, Merced College.
Guided self-placement: Helping ensure with the best possible questionnaire that students are taking the right math class when they start college. Point person: JAY THOMAS, West Hills College Lemoore.
For questions: centralvalleyhec@gmail.com.
For media inquiries: Tom Uribes 559.348.3278 (text msg) or cvheccommunications@mail.fresnostate.edu
REGISTER – “The CVHEC Way to Math Success — Implementing AB1705” (Jan. 26, 2024)
BACKGROUND
Passed in 2022 for implementation July 1, 2024, AB 1705 expands the provisions established in AB 705 (2017) by explicitly requiring community colleges not only to place students directly into transfer-level English and math courses but also to ensure that students actually enroll in those courses. The recent legislation also establishes that for students who need or desire extra academic support, community colleges shall provide access to such support. The new law clarifies that a community college can require students to enroll in additional concurrent support if it is determined that the support will increase the student’s likelihood of passing transfer-level English or math.
SEE:
• Previous sessions recordings:
CVHEC “AB1705 in the Central Valley” Webinar with Dr. Erik Cooper Oct. 6, 2023
MTF meeting Nov. 17 (10 a.m. session)
MTF meeting Nov. 17 (1 p.m. session)
• Coverage of the fall sessions:
Math Task Force begins discussion of AB1705 implementation – Nov. 17 next (with Oct. 13 photo gallery).
CVHEC Math Task Force meets in-person Oct. 13 for AB 1705 follow-up
NEWS RELEASE – CVHEC Math Task Force: Impactful legislation (AB 1705) Convenings Oct. 6 & 13
• The CCCCO’s AB 1705 Implementation Guide and FAQ webpage.
• The CVHEC Math Task Force
WHAT THE CV-HEC IS HAPPENING BLOG (December 2023): The gift of math
For our year-ending “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog, here’s a holiday story of sorts by Dr. John Spevak that was published in his column for the Los Baños area (Merced County) newspaper, The Westside Express, Dec. 19. Dr Spevak, who is a vice president-emeritus of Merced College and currently a regional coordinator for CVHEC, coordinates the English and Math Task Forces for the consortium — all champions for student support through such measures as dual enrollment. He provides a personalized window into the founder of College Bridge which is partnering with CVHEC for the Central Valley Math Bridge Program, a math intervention that is utilizing dual enrollment in bringing together consortium community college members with their respective high schools across the central valley.
The gift of math … for students who don’t think they’re mathematical
BY DR. JOHN SPEVAK
CVHEC Regional Coordinator
Vice President-Emeritus – Merced College
Here’s a good question for the Christmas season: What’s the most unusual gift you’ve ever heard of?
I think I have a gift that can top your answer — the gift of math. And I know how that gift can be given—through an innovative program called “Math Bridge,” which before long will be coming to Pacheco High School in Los Banos and later to Dos Palos High School and perhaps Firebaugh High School, too.
Now before all of you who hated math or felt you weren’t good at math skip the rest of the column or sigh in skepticism, let me explain.
Imagine that before you graduated from high school someone had told you that you could be good at math. And imagine further that they enabled you not only to be good at math but to enjoy it and even become passionate about it.
That could have well happened to you if you were a high school student in the Central Valley Math Bridge Program. And your success in math could have opened all kinds of doors for you, in careers related to science, engineering, accounting and computer science, to name a few–careers that are in high demand and pay well.
If you’re still with me, dear reader, your curiosity may have been stirred to the point where you’re now asking, “How in the world can Math Bridge do that?”
Before I answer that question I need to tell you a story. Once upon a time there was a girl in high school, named Lynn, who liked math but didn’t like school, at least the part about being confined to a desk hour after hour each day. She had had some tough times as a teenager, including a period when she was homeless and dropped out of high school at age 15.
One day Lynn, who had decided she should at least get a high school diploma equivalent, started studying math to pass the math section of the GED test and that rekindled her love for math, so much so that after earning her GED, she went on to college and majored in math.
She earned good grades in her college math classes. Along the way she remembered what some middle school and high school teachers had told many students when they said, “You’ll never be good at math.” Sometimes this was said to girls like her, when some male math teachers didn’t think girls could succeed at math.
Not only did Lynn earn her bachelor’s degree in mathematics and secondary education from Boston College, she also went on to earn a master’s degree and then a doctoral degree (an E.D. from UCLA). She soon discovered her purpose in life as she sees it: to show high school students who don’t think they are good at math that they could indeed succeed in math.
She was determined to give them the gift of math.
Dr. Lynn Ceballos, president of College Bridge, presenting on the Math Bridge Program at the CVHEC Summit in October.
Dr. Lynn Cevallos eventually started a nonprofit organization called College Bridge about 10 years ago and created a partnership with the Los Angeles Unified School District and California State University Los Angeles, calling it SLAM, the South Los Angeles Math Project, and initiated a nine-year longitudinal study. More than 160 students from six cohorts in three urban LAUSD high schools participated in the project.
In this project Lynn wanted only students who weren’t considered good at math to participate. She needed and received extensive and significant help from high school math teachers and university math professors who worked collaboratively to help students succeed.
They created a program called Math Bridge in which high school students enrolled in a dual enrollment transferable math class while they were in high school.
The results were astounding. The six cohorts of high school students had an average pass rate of 75 percent in a transferable math course compared with an average of 71 percent for the same course taught at CSULA. And the program increased the students’ confidence, with 92 percent considering themselves after completing the program ready for college.
Now Lynn has brought her project to the Central Valley. She has helped create a partnership that involves College Bridge, the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC), Fresno Pacific University and the Rand Corporation to develop the Central Valley Math Bridge Program with eight Central Valley community colleges and many of their feeder high schools.
The colleges who have so far signed on to the project are Cerro Coso, Columbia, Madera, Reedley, San Joaquin Delta in Stockton, Taft, West Hills-Coalinga and Merced.
A number of high schools in Merced County have signed on to the project, including Pacheco High School in Los Banos. Dos Palos High School plans to sign on next year. More might be joining later.
Since West Hills College Coalinga is part of Math Bridge, it’s a good bet that at some point Firebaugh High School will also participate.
The Math Bridge project requires a lot of work not only by Lynn and others who are now part of the College Bridge staff, but also by many high school math teachers and many college math professors.
For this project to work, high school educators need to identify students struggling in mathematics, then design interventions using a blend of college and high school math courses, and then create college and high school instructional teams working collaboratively to analyze student work for continuous improvement.
I’m excited about the project. Over the years as an educator, I’ve heard so many people, young and old, say they’re not good at math and never will be. I believe Math Bridge will change the perceptions of the high school students who will be a part of the project. They will realize they can be good at math.
That will be good for them and their families. And for the state and the country.
We need more young people to go on to college and then into math-based careers, especially in computers, science, and engineering, if we want our country to be the world’s innovative leader in these fields. This will be good for our country’s strength–and its security.
CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (November 2023)
Chancellor Christian reflects her
commitment to California students
Greetings Colleagues and Friends of CVHEC,
Greetings and welcome to this beautiful fall weather as we prepare for the upcoming holiday season and the end of the fall semester.
We are delighted to report that we are coming off a very successful Central Valley Higher Education Consortium Summit 2023 held at the Fresno convention Center Oct. 20 when we were joined by over 150 of our friends and colleagues to showcase the work of consortium member colleges and universities over the last year.
The highlight of the summit was welcoming our new California Community Colleges Chancellor, Dr. Sonya Christian, home to the Central Valley to serve as our keynote speaker.
As expected, her presentation was inspiring and reflected her commitment to students in the state. Dr. Christian took this opportunity at the summit to announce and launch the CCCCO Central Valley Transfer Pathways Demonstration Project that will build upon the progress of our own Transfer Project partnership between the community colleges, the CSUs and UC Merced here in the valley. The CCCCO project is unique in California in that it includes the three segments of public colleges and universities and will eventually include the independent universities as well.
In this issue’s “What the CV-HEC is happening” blog, you will read an update about CVHEC’s innovative approach to delivering college dual enrollment math courses for high school students throughout the region via our Math Bridge project in partnership with CVHEC partner, College Bridge. The project, designed to get high school students through their first gateway college math course, will serve as a springboard for completing their degrees.
Also please plan on attending the virtual zoom San Joaquin Valley Affordable Internet Adoption Summit on Thursday, Nov. 9, from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. The deadline to register is Nov. 7 at: https://bit.ly/SJVSummitRSVP. Bringing affordable broadband internet services to the most vulnerable populations in the Central Valley is an important part of the work CVHEC does in the valley.
Finally, enjoy our summit photo galleries where we share images and comments about the recent CVHEC summit as well as the board meeting and reception they day before. I am sure you will see many familiar faces.
Have a great November and a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving Holiday with family and friends!
What the CV-HEC Is Happening Blog: Math Bridge Update
This month’s “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” guest blog is an update of the Math Bridge program presented by Owynn Lancaster, vice president for Academic Strategy with 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. College Bridge is a partner with the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium in the innovative program designed to improve math outcomes for struggling 11th and 12th graders and streamline Math pathways into college. Funded by a five-year $4 million grant through the US Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program in January, this ambitious endeavor was kicked off in May with a convening of more than 150 valley K-16 educators in Fresno to begin the onboarding process for this historic intersegmental collaboration between CVHEC member community colleges and high schools in their respective service areas. That initiative was followed in April with a $1.1 million state grant to CVHEC/College Bridge partnership through the Central San Joaquin Valley K-16 Partnership creating the Dual Enrollment (DE) Math Bridge that will provide equitable access to transfer-level math courses with embedded support for high school students who are disproportionately impacted, and/or are not traditionally college-bound. This fall, the College Bridge and CVHEC Math Bridge teams have been visiting campuses to continue the onboard process in preparation for the program’s launch next fall.
Expanding the Reach of the
Central Valley Math Bridge
BY OWYNN LANCASTER
College Bridge
After our successful College Orientation meetings in September, the College Bridge team has been darting up and down the San Joaquin Valley, meeting with interested feeder highs schools to onboard and launch them for the coming academic year’s CV Math Bridge Project.
Inspiring our efforts, two amazing CVHEC member colleges have “jumped to lead the pack” as Dr. Lynn Cevallos, our College Bridge president, often says. The first of those with an impressing showing come from Merced College where their team has helped us garner interest from seven possible high schools! Showing the region’s commitment to opening options for their students in math and the impressive connecting power of the college’s administration.
In equally exciting efforts, San Joaquin Delta College helped to secure two committed high school partners from Stockton Unified, with interest from others in their region. Those two Stockton schools, Amos Alonzo Stagg High School and Captain Charles M. Weber of Applied Science and Technology have been two of the smoothest schools to onboard so far! More importantly addition of these schools and the partnership with Delta College now helps us open the CV Math Bridge Project across the breadth of the Valley.
With schools as far north as Stagg High School and as far south as Taft Union High School the reach of this project is now slightly smaller than the state of South Carolina! This means several more flights and drives are still ahead for our College Bridge team to continue to onboard and launch these high school partners, but in the end, we are excited by this transformative work.
The CV Math Bridge’s first cohort of schools will be starting in the coming academic year, 2024-2025, and there’s still room for more in the second cohort starting in academic year, 2025-2026. We invite high schools interested in participating to reach out and contact me at Owynn.Lancaster@college-bridge.org.
Also see: https://bit.ly/CVHECblog1223-GiftOfMath
MEMBER NEWS: Reedley and Merced Colleges host Math Bridge orientation for feeder high schools
Reedley College President Jerry Buckley addresses math officials from feeder high schools Sept. 21. Earlier in the day, his counterpart at Merced College, President Chris Vitelli, addressed his north valley districts. Both are CVHEC board members.
Central Valley Higher Education Consortium members Merced and Reedley community colleges hosted high school math educators and administrators from their respective service area schools Sept. 21 for an orientation and onboarding about the Central Valley Math Bridge Program that is now in full swing.
In a morning, session, Merced College hosted about 30 math officials from its service area feeder school districts who were welcomed by President Chris Vitelli. At the afternoon session in Reedley 30 were welcomed by President Jerry Buckley.
They met with the CVHEC and College Bridge teams led by Dr. Benjamín Durán, CVHEC executive director, and Dr. Lynn Cevallos, president and cofounder, of College Bridge to discuss how the program could benefit their students and follow up steps.
“We wanted to bring all the feeder high school leaders for Merced College and Reedley together to create a Math Bridge cohort of high schools involved in the project and create a regional community of practice for networking and collaboration,” Cevallos said.
She said interactions with participating high schools has been positive and supportive, “focusing on opening up options for their students and helping them to strengthen their connection between their college and feeder middle schools.”
Among several program features, the educators learned that this funding opportunity earmarked for the Central Valley specifically, will bring $160,000 in services per high school at no cost to districts.
Funded by a five-year $4 million grant through the US Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program, the ambitious endeavor was kicked off in May with a convening of more than 150 valley K-16 educators in Fresno to begin the onboarding process for this historic intersegmental collaboration designed to improve math outcomes for struggling 11th and 12th graders and streamline Math pathways into college for their students.
See:
- the Math Pipeline Readiness Project (MPreP) which has morphed into the Central Valley Math Bridge Project
- “What the CV-HEC is Happening” guest blog by Dinuba High School counselor, Augustina Sanchez (CVHEC e-newsletter February 2023).
UPDATES
- What the CV-HEC Is Happening Blog: Math Bridge Update
- “What the CV-HEC is Happening” Blog – The Gift of Math
Merced College
Reedley College
