CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (October 2022)
Kern High School Teachers: Join Us!
Hello CVHEC Friends and Colleagues,
Welcome to our October e-newsletter with news in higher education around the Central Valley.
In this edition, we announce the launch of the cohort recruitment campaign for our new Kern Master’s Degree Upskilling Project funded by the Kern Regional K-16 Education Collaborative. The project mirrors the Upskilling Project that CVHEC undertook in Fresno and Madera counties two years ago as a pilot project with funding from the Fresno K-16 Collaborative
National University and Fresno Pacific University will deliver Master’s degrees, subsidized by the Kern Regional K-16 Education Collaborative, in English and mathematics to high school teachers in Kern County holding BA degrees in the two subject areas and interested in teaching college level dual enrollment classes on their high school campuses. They are now accepting applications to reach our goal of 100 high school teachers earning Master’s degrees in Kern County by 2025. Please pass the word if you know of high school teachers who might be interested.
Also, we “introduce” Elaine Cash, who as of Oct. 1, has taken on the role as CVHEC’s Grants & Programs coordinator. Many of you know Elaine not just as a longtime, dedicated and accomplished educator in our region, but also in her service the past few years as a CVHEC K-12 Liaison who brought her years of experience and expertise in K-12 education to work with our higher education leaders.
The strategies of the Consortium benefit greatly by bringing in our K-12 partners to improve the student success pathways for our region’s students so we are delighted that Elaine will expand her role on our team in this new capacity to support the growth and sustainability of the consortium and our work.
This issue’s “What the CV-HEC Blog” provides commentary on Assembly Bill 1705, a piece of legislation aimed at ensuring the final elimination of developmental education in community colleges and developing corequisite support courses to replace them.
You will also read about one example of a successful CVHEC mini-grant and how a member-institution, the California Health Science University, earned recognition for a program in which the mini-grant helped students gain the opportunity to begin pursuing careers in health and medicine.
Enjoy the newsletter and please share it with friends and colleagues.
CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (September 2022)
New semester, renewed dialogues
Hello CVHEC Friends and Colleagues,
Welcome to the September 2022 newsletter! By now, our member institutions are well into the fall semester.
In this edition we are happy to begin a dialogue in the Central Valley that will launch a regional Zero Textbook Cost (ZTC) movement in our region to assist our students navigate the increasing costs of higher education. CVHEC, with the assistance of some of our community college leaders, will launch a Central Valley ZTC Task Force.
To learn more about ZTC, see our task force story and our What in the CV-HEC is Happening blog by West Hills College Lemoore President James Preston, a CVHEC board member whose college is a state leader in the OERevolution.
We also update you on a couple of initiatives that have made our CVHEC member institutions leaders in the state:
- Our Program Pathways Mapper team working to create a model transfer approach that can be replicated in the rest of the state, has been invited to present at the statewide California Community College League of California conference in November.
- We are also happy to announce that a group of Central Valley dual enrollment students have been invited by Complete College America (CCA) to participate in a national focus group on the benefits of well-delivered dual enrollment opportunities. We are very proud that our students’ voice will be heard nationally.
We hope these topics and others in our newsletter will be resourceful for you and your colleagues.
We wish our member institutions — and the students they serve — a successful and safe fall semester. Let’s hope that we have put the pandemic behind us as we continue to be cautious and stay healthy and safe.
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:
- PDF version
- Pressbooks version
- LibreTexts version
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)
CVHEC Director’s Message (August 2022): Here’s to an Engaging Fall Semester 2022
Greetings to you all and welcome to the fall semester as students, faculty and staff return to in-person learning at our CVHEC campuses throughout the Central Valley.
As we all approach the 2022-23 academic year with renewed energy and enthusiasm, we are dedicating a portion of this edition of the CVHEC e-newsletter to the good work of the medical healthcare partners in the Consortium.
We are delighted to announce the establishment of the California Medicine Scholars Program (SJV-CMSP) hub in Fresno, one of four hubs in California authorized by the Senate Bill 40, authored by our very own Senator, Melissa Hurtado, (D-Sanger Hurtado). The budget bill, signed in June by Governor Gavin Newsom, includes $9,975,000 to establish a regional pipeline system for community college students who want to go to medical school.
Dr. Kenny Bahn of the UC San Francisco Medical School – Fresno headed a team to develop the application for funding and collaborated with CVHEC partners, California Health Sciences University and regional community colleges that will feed the medical pathways in the valley. Valley wide collaborative efforts will hopefully lead to more physicians and allied health professionals settling in the region.
In keeping with the medical theme, please see the video in our “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” Guest Blog featuring Dr. Mike Farr, an alumnus of CVHEC member California Health Science University, in an interview on GVWire’s “Unfiltered” virtual talk show. Dr. Farr was conferred the Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree in CHSU’s first Graduation Ceremony in 2018 and touts the value of having a medical school in the Central Valley.
Please join us in welcoming to the CVHEC Board of Directors Dr. Brock McMurry, newly appointed interim superintendent/president of the West Kern Community College District (Taft College). He will be seated at our next quarterly meeting this fall along with two new members also recently appointed to their posts: Dr. Robert Pimentel, president of the historic Fresno City College (the oldest Community College in California) and Dr. Andre Stephens, president of Fresno Pacific College (see our May issue).
This fall, CVHEC will push forward with several exciting developments that will be featured in future issues including the resumption of in-person convenings to address issues of higher education relevant to our mission. Be on the lookout for our continuing work in Dual Enrollment and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA). In collaboration with the three K16 Collaboratives in the Central Valley, CVHEC will also be pushing for improved transfer pathways and a valley wide dialogue on creating meaningful STEP and math pathways for our students.
Also this fall we unveil our renovated website which we hope will be easier to navigate and showcase the work of the Consortium throughout the valley.
The 2022-23 academic year stands to be another exciting and productive year. We hope you will stay engaged with us and join us for the in-person convenings we will hold as the pandemic wanes.
CVHEC Director’s Message (July 2022): Summer ‘recharge’ and a renewed appreciation
Greetings and welcome to our July CVHEC e-newsletter,
This month we share a brief issue and greeting as we find ourselves in the first summer since 2020 where the pandemic is not ruling our lives.
I hope you all enjoyed fabulous live commencement exercises on your campuses. We know students, family, professors, and staff have been looking forward coming together again to celebrate the accomplishments of our students in the Central Valley.
I’m sure many of you agree that one take-away from the pandemic experience – with life seemingly coming to halt the past two years amid shutdowns and event cancellations – is the renewed appreciation we find in everyday routines like pulling into the campus parking lot, crossing the beautiful landscapes of our 30 campuses across the valley, walking into classrooms and seeing those eager faces, reconvening with colleagues in the office and most significantly, sitting in an arena, stadium or any venue to bask in the joy of our students walking across the stage to receive their diploma, a celebration with their friends and families of the hard work and success by all in academia.
This summer we will continue to work on our regional initiatives like dual enrollment, creating a Central Valley transfer model and working on developing math pathways between our K12 partners and our CVHEC member institutions.
Until we usher in the fall 2022 semester together, I hope you will find some time to rest, recharge, enjoy time with your loved ones and maybe even a do little travel once again. We look forward to regrouping in August and kicking-off another impactful year.
Have a great summer!!!
CVHEC Director’s Message: Re-imagining the social and economic landscape of our region
Greetings and welcome to our June CVHEC e-newsletter,
Welcome to the end of the semester and to the first summer in two years when we are not shut down. As we emerge from the pandemic, faculty and staff at our Central Valley Higher Education Consortium member colleges and universities have been engaged in providing a great education to our students.
In this issue, please look at this month’s blog that , in light of a recent article regarding University of Californian, speaks to the Central Valley Program Pathways Mapper project that improves transfer of valley students to UC Merced as well as our three California State University campuses, Bakersfield, Fresno and Stanislaus.
We are also delighted to congratulate the Central San Joaquin Valley K16 Partnership (Fresno-Madera Collaborative & Tulare-Kings Collaborative) and the Kern Regional K16 Education Collaborative (Kern County Superintendent of Schools) on receiving $18.1 million in funding each from the state for a four-year effort to improve the educational and economic well-being of the Central Valley. Merced, Stanislaus, and San Joaquin County are pursuing a similar grant opportunity and should hear in early fall. These K16 Collaboratives that will include our CVHEC member institutions can change the very social and economic landscape of our region.
Last year, the Fresno-based K16 Collaborative served as a model for the funding that would eventually be allotted to create similar collaboratives throughout the state.
One of the initiatives funded by Fresno K16 Collaborative was the CVHEC MA Upskilling project which provided funding to support high school English and math teachers in earning their master’s degrees to allow them to teach dual enrollment college courses on their high school campuses to high school students. Dual enrollment is one of the strategies CVHEC is supporting to help move students into and through higher education. By the end of December 2022, there will be 118 new high school teachers in Fresno County holding MA degrees to facilitate the delivery of dual enrollment in our region.
I hope you enjoy the rest of the issue. We wish you a restful and safe summer.
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:
- “Pursuing the Last Mile: Broadband in the Central Valley”
- “Blurring the Lines Between High School and College: Dual Enrollment in the Central Valley”
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)
CVHEC Director’s Message: Consortium Summit ’22 Wrap – Recapturing the Magic
CVHEC board members and May 6 summit participants enjoyed the music of Las Hermanas Medina at the Cinco de Mayo reception the day before more than 130 higher education leaders and advocates convened for the Higher Education Policy and Legislative Summit in downtown Fresno.
Greetings and welcome to our May CVHEC e-newsletter,
As the spring semester ends, there is so much to talk about. For the first time in two years, students and their families are enjoying attendance at live commencement ceremonies at colleges and universities throughout the Central Valley – you can feel the magic in the air.
Also, in a very generous gesture, institutions are honoring those graduates in 2020 and 2021 who were deprived of their commencement events by the pandemic by providing opportunities for them to participate in this year’s ceremonies as well. We know the graduates would also want to thank the staff and faculty on their campuses for helping them achieve their educational goals. Congratulations to ALL graduates and to your respective support systems!
As we celebrate our graduates, we hope you enjoy our May issue of the CVHEC Newsletter. You will see this was an exciting month for us as well. On May 5 and 6, CVHEC held its spring Board of Directors meeting and our first CVHEC Legislative and Policy Summit since 2019 live in Fresno. Participants were appreciative of the opportunity to reconnect in-person with colleagues and make new connections.
At the board meeting, the CVHEC Board of Directors was happy to welcome the University of California, San Francisco – Fresno campus as the 30th member institution of the Consortium. CVHEC also invited six newly-appointed CEOs as members of the Board.
This summit marked the 20th Anniversary of CVHEC with over 150 participants celebrating two decades worth of success by our member institutions in increasing the college-going rate for Valley residents. Please view the Summit photo gallery blog for the visual story of this very successful Summit.
Highlights of the summit include a conversation with Dr. John Welty, President Emeritus of Fresno State and founder of CVHEC, in addition to a panel of students from the region sharing how they navigated the pandemic. The annual visit and legislative update by Congressman Jim Costa also added to the day.
These highlights, the information that was shared with attendees about the initiatives in the Central Valley to improve student success, and the ability to network in a live setting were invaluable and welcome.
Enjoy our newsletter and enjoy your summer.
See: PHOTO BLOG
Higher education leaders and legislators will convene to revisit policy and legislative action that will have a great impact on higher education at the annual CVHEC Policy and Legislative Summit
PRESS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 10/25/18
Contact:Angel Ramirez, Communications Manager
(559) 698-4665 or angelr@csufresno.edu
Higher education leaders and legislators will convene to revisit policy and legislative action that will have a great impact on higher education at the annual CVHEC Policy and Legislative Summit
(Fresno, CA – October 26, 2018) – The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC) will hold its annual Higher Education Policy and Legislative Summit on Friday, October 26, 2018 from 8:00 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the DoubleTree Hotel in downtown Fresno. The nine-county regional consortium from San Joaquin to Kern counties brings education leaders, legislators and policy advocates together to address the central valley’s higher education needs. The strength of the consortium is drawn from working collectively to encourage policy and legislation to support post-secondary goals. This year Assembly members Dr. Joaquin Arambula (District 31) and Adam Gray (District 21) will share a discussion with UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland on collective challenges faced in higher education.
“The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium is a critically important and unique group because of its unified voice that brings together all of the higher education institutions in the Central Valley,” said Ellen N. Junn, President of California State University, Stanislaus. “The members come together for the sole purpose of enhancing student success and access to high quality baccalaureate degrees and beyond for everyone across the Central Valley. Educational attainment is especially precious for the economic vitality of the Central Valley and indeed the entire state, and CVHEC joins with our region’s state elected officials to make that promise a reality.”
Joining the valley’s higher education leaders will be partners from the Public Policy Institute of California, California Futures Foundation, Community College League of California and The Campaign for College Opportunity. Participants will also hear from Valley students who will share personal experiences as a result of the transformative policies.
“Jointly, CVHEC member institutions are working to implement student success initiatives brought about through blockbuster legislation and policy that has drawn the attention of state leadership. CVHEC member institutions in the Central Valley nine county region are working collaboratively to make strides that will lead the rest of California,” said Dr. Benjamin T. Duran, CVHEC Executive Director. “This year, CVHEC member institutions have chosen to emphasize that ALL MEANS ALL in the Central Valley. The strategies showcased this year are designed to close equity achievement gaps.”
The summit will showcase the work the consortium of central valley institutions has committed efforts toward for the collective goal of increasing persistence and certificate and degree completions. Over 130 intersegmental education leaders from throughout the Central Valley are expected to attend. For more information about the summit, please visit: http://cvhec.org/cvhec2018summit/.
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About Central Valley Higher Education Consortium
Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC) is a 501(c)3 incorporated non-profit organization
comprised of 27 accredited public and private colleges, universities, and community college district
members. CVHEC was founded in 2000 by then Fresno State President John D. Welty along with 18
college and university leaders. Jointly, the consortium serves over 250,000 students in California’s Central Valley, a nine-county region. Its focus is to increase the region’s higher education attainment rate. www.cvhec.org