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

(This issue’s “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” Blog features 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 here he blog-connects its work the past year to a recent article on UC enrollment expansion).

The California UC Board of Regents has declared its intent to expand enrollment by adding 20,000 new seats in the next few years as outlined in a UCLA Daily Bruin article published May 12 that also presents the relevant challenges associated with this goal.

This illuminating journalistic endeavor by higher education reporters Megan Tagami and Lisa Huiqin is timely for students in the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium’s nine-county region as member institutions UC Merced, Merced College and Bakersfield College have used the last two years to lay groundwork for a CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project that is designed to bring the college transfer experience into intersegmental alignment.

With this dedicated leadership and collaboration by consortium members and professionals, the Transfer Project is now being undertaken by other members of CVHEC’s 30 institutions of higher education for valley-wide implementation in 2023. And it comes complete with a free and public-facing software strategy students can use to master the curricular pathway to a four-year degree.

Setting the Stage

The Daily Bruin article illustrates that following an extensive decades-long push in California high schools to promote college-readiness and increase the number of UC-eligible students graduating each year, we are experiencing an increased demand for access to our UC campuses throughout the state.

Even more impressive, is the number of students eligible for transfer to UC from our California Community Colleges. Not only are more transfer-eligible students coming from community colleges, but these transfers also succeed in completing their UC degrees at higher rates than all other UC students.

In particular, Tagami and Huiqin cite the targeted efforts of UC Merced to increase the number of community college students from the Central Valley that successfully transfer to UC Merced.  This effort emerged in 2018 as UC Merced committed anew to recruiting/retaining local community college transfers. UC Merced officials met with a focus group of Central Valley community college chancellors/presidents in the CVHEC region to clarify and address the challenges.

Forthright TAG/ADT conversations

During this meeting, the group discussed the Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) project agreed to by some UC campuses as a transfer pathway for community college students to be accepted to the UC. This discussion quickly evolved into a compare and contrast of the UC-based TAG agreements and the California State University systemwide transfer pathways project called the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT).

Completion of ADT’s as an effective pathway for transfer to the CSU far outpaced the number of successful transfers to UC through the TAG agreements. This is credited in large part to the consistency of the CSU’s commitment/acceptance of the community college ADT’s, that when completed, fulfill the lower-division requirements for guaranteed transfer to CSU.

Simply put, if a student successfully completes the ADT pathway in a particular discipline/major, they have fulfilled the lower-division requirements and are accepted as a transfer (third-year) student in good-standing to the CSU.

Walking the  talk

Fast forward to today … with its Transfer Project, the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium and UC Merced have been engaged in a collaborative, intersegmental process to review and assess the community college ADT’s with the intent to accept the completion of selected ADT’s in various disciplines as fulfilling the lower-division requirements for successful transfer to UC Merced.

This process brings together community college and UC Merced faculty in common discipline/majors to review/approve existing or slightly modified ADT’s for successful transfer to UC Merced. To date, seven of the CVHEC community college members are now engaged in the approval process with five more in line to begin the approval process in fall 2022 for implementation in 2023.

The culminating feature in the project’s process is the implementation of a public-facing, internet-based software application called Program Pathways Mapper with two key outcomes for transfer student success:

  • This software merges an updated/accurate list of community college courses in approved ADT/curricular pathway with the corresponding upper-division coursework at UC Merced to show a complete four-year pathway to degree completion.
  • The Program Pathways Mapper software makes all of this information available through public internet access to all students, parents and community college and high school faculty and counselors without a need for a institutional login

As a higher education professional for more than 25 years, I am extremely satisfied with the continuing collaboration that my colleagues from CVHEC have provided to this groundbreaking initiative: Tom Burke, Transfer Project coordinator for the consortium, and Stan Carrizosa — both are former chief executives at Central Valley community colleges who now serve as regional coordinators for CVHEC under the leadership of its executive director, Dr. Benjamin Duran (also a community college president-emeritus).

UC Merced/CVHEC Transfer Initiative + Program Pathways Mapper = student friendly/student empowerment/student success

As the UC system explores ways to accomplish its newly minted goal to increase enrollment, it would be well-served to study the CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project.

This is a process-based project that requires little to no additional funding other than the time for faculty and staff to collaborate. And its Program Mapper is an inexpensive software solution.

The result, so far, is that high school and community college students can now open the Program Mapper on their smart phone and easily find their major of interest at their community college and an accurate/up-to-date list of all the courses necessary both lower division and upper division, to successfully transfer and graduate from UC Merced in those majors.

Bottom line translation: student-friendly outcomes and increased UC enrollment!

 

 

See previous CVHEC newsletter articles:

https://bit.ly/TransferProject-CVHEC0921

https://bit.ly/MapperTransferLaunch-CVHEC1021

https://bit.ly/BlogCVHEC1221-TransferBurke

 

 

 

 

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]

Charting Better Maps to Degrees

Historic UC Merced transfer initiative with Bakersfield, Merced Colleges launches Nov. 4

A hybrid convening at the University of California, Merced Nov. 4, “Charting Better Maps to Degrees,” will launch the historic UC Merced Transfer Pathways initiative between three Central Valley Higher Education Consortium member campuses and demonstrate how the new Program Pathways Mapper can revolutionize positive outcomes across enrollment, completions and equity for students.

UC Merced Chancellor Juan Sánchez Muñoz will be joined by Bakersfield President Sonya Christian, Merced College President Chris Vitelli and CVHEC Executive Director Benjamin T. Duran. Also speaking will be Dr. Craig Hayward, dean of Institutional Effectiveness at Bakersfield College and  Wayne Skipper, president of Concentric Sky.

The pilot transfer project and the hybrid in-person/virtual event are 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.

During the event, which will be from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the UC Merced Conference Center, the grant team will unveil the UC prototype of the Program Pathways Mapper that will make online, interactive transfer maps freely available for current and prospective students.

The convening also will be digitally mediated allowing both virtual and in-person attendees to interact and participate together while providing a higher education bridge across the valley floor.

“UC Merced was created in the Valley to help serve the Valley and we are dedicated to fulfilling that mission,” said Chancellor Muñoz, who will welcome the participants at 9 a.m. followed by the community college presidents and Duran. “This project to simplify transfer pathways means that more young people from our region will recognize a UC education as an achievable goal, and will help students, educators and families chart a course to that goal.”

Duran will discuss CVHEC’s support for the regional roll-out of the Program Pathways Mapper for colleges and universities in the Central Valley. CVHEC consists of 29 colleges in the nine-county region from Stockton to Bakersfield with the presidents/chancellors of each member institution serving as the board of directors.

He said this groundbreaking project, which supports CVHEC’s core mission to improve college completion rates while also supporting the valley’s only UC campus in collaboration with member community colleges, is unique in the state.

“Nothing like this is taking place anywhere else in California that I’m aware of,” said Duran a former Merced College president. “This kind of collaboration, especially intersegmentally, just isn’t happening. This is a big win for the Central Valley.”

Work is well underway to implement the same type of partnership transfer agreements between CVHEC’s CSU member campuses at Bakersfield, Fresno and Stanislaus, he said, with the intent to make this new model available for community college transfers in other regions of the valley.

Members and prospective members of the Program Pathways Mapper community are invited to attend the free event that will include breakfast and lunch. Space is limited but registration is available at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/program-pathways-mapper-convening-tickets-168987649609.

For additional information and updates, including details on speakers and breakout sessions, see www.foundationccc.org/ChartingBetterMapstoDegrees.

Additional event questions may be directed to Lori Ortiz,  executive secretary for the Office of Institutional Effectiveness at Bakersfield College at lori.ortiz@bakersfieldcollege.edu.

Pilot CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project improves process for students  

Rollout of Program Mapper software app for transfers set for Nov. 4

A pilot program developed between the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium and three member institutions — UC Merced, Merced College and Bakersfield College — is showing promise for outstanding results that can enhance a community college student’s transfer experience including a new web-based software application, Program Mapper.

This new initiative, the CVHEC/UC Merced Transfer Project, was presented to the CVHEC Board of Directors, made up the presidents and chancellors of CVHEC’s 29-member institutions, at its quarterly meeting Sept. 3.

Tom Burke, chancellor-emeritus of the Kern Community College District, has been recruited to serve as the Transfer Project coordinator, Dr. Ben Duran, CVHEC executive director, also announced to the board.   

The specific aim of the initial pilot project is to increase the number of successful and timely transfers from the Central Valley member community colleges in CVHEC’s nine-county region to UCM, reports Stan Carrizosa, southern regional coordinator for the consortium.

And work is well underway to implement the same type of partnership transfer agreements between Bakersfield College and CSU Bakersfield with the intent to make this new model available for community college transfers to the region’s other California State University campuses at Fresno and Stanislaus as well, Carrizosa reported. Project resource teams are currently being solicited from each community college with the goal to eventually begin replicating the faculty convenings and admissions/articulation alignments developed through the pilot.

“All of CVHEC’s 17 community college members have accepted our invitation to participate in the process developed by the colleges in the pilot project with the tentative timeline for completion projected for the end of the spring semester and summer,” added Carrizosa, a former superintendent/president with College of the Sequoias. “This tentative timeline would position all final transfer admission pathways to be approved by UC Merced for full implementation beginning in the fall semester, 2023.”

Duran said this groundbreaking project, which supports CVHEC’s core mission to improve college completion rates while also supporting the valley’s only UC campus in collaboration with member community colleges, is unique in the state.

“Nothing like this is taking place anywhere else in California that I’m aware of,” Duran reported to the board. “This kind of collaboration, especially intersegmentally, just isn’t happening. This is a big win for the Central Valley.”

This new initiative builds on the 10-year effort by the state’s community colleges to expedite a successful transfer by implementing the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) agreement, specific lower-division course sequences for approval by the California Community College Chancellor’s Office and CSU campuses, to fulfill the 60-unit transfer requirements for various majors offered throughout the colleges in the CSU system.

Specifically for this pilot, UCM faculty were invited to review the CSU-approved ADT’s developed previously, and which are becoming more widely known by Central Valley community college students. They were asked to consider approval of selected ADTs to fulfill the lower division transfer requirements for these same discipline majors at UCM.

“To date, the work of the pilot project colleges is progressing nicely,” Carrizosa reported. “These intersegmental teams have reviewed and approved up to 15 different ADT discipline majors. They adjusted and aligned course syllabi where needed — to be approved by UCM faculty — to fulfill the lower division requirements for successful transfer admissions to UCM.”

In addition to the review and approval of the various ADT discipline majors, Carrizosa said the teams are also identifying the specific upper division courses required for students once admitted to UCM and aligning these with the ADT to show a four-year sequence to be called the “UCM transfer admission pathways for students.”

Once completed and approved, the courses are being uploaded into the new web-based software application Program Mapper.

“This application enables students to select the community college they are attending and identify the ADT they may be interested in being enrolled in,” Carrizosa said. “From there, Program Mapper will automatically display the required community college courses for their ADT and the required upper division courses for that major at UC Merced in the format of a four-year Transfer Admission Plan (TAP).”

Plans are underway to unveil the Transfer Project and Program Mapper application at a special event Nov. 4 at UC Merced. (Event details of the Program Mapper and launch will be forthcoming in the October CVHEC e-newsletter).

Funding for the Transfer Project is provided in part by the Fresno K-16 Collaborative with support from California Governor Newsome’s office and by the College Futures Foundation.

UC Merced’s new leader is son of Mexican immigrants

‘For me, it became very important to make a contribution to working-class people and working-class families to continue their education, to improve not just their
economic vitality but the impact they can make on their community…’
-Dr. Juan Sánchez Muñoz, new UC Merced chancellor

 

The son of immigrants from México has been given the job as the fourth chancellor of UC Merced, the youngest and fastest-growing of the UC’s 10 campuses.

Dr. Juan Sánchez Muñoz, 53, whose appointment was approved by the University of California Board of Regents on Wednesday (May 20), returns to the UC family where he and his wife each earned bachelor’s and doctorate degrees.

He served as president of the University of Houston-Downtown since 2017, where he launched the university’s largest capital campaign and oversaw increases in enrollment, retention and graduation rates. The campus has an enrollment of about 15,000.

He previously worked at Texas Tech University in Lubbock as a vice provost and senior vice president.

The chance to be “four hours from my mother” and closer to family was a draw,” said Muñoz.

His mother, who grew up in La Estancia, Zacatecas, México, never stepped inside a classroom. His father, who picked grapes in the Valley after arriving from León, Guanajuato, México, later settled in Los Angeles as a factory worker.

Muñoz remains the only one of six children to have earned a college degree. He is the youngest of three boys.

“What I learned from my parents is integrity, ethics to work hard and to understand your obligación to your family,” said Muñoz during a telephone interview from Houston on Thursday.

UC President Janet Napolitano praised Muñoz’s accomplishments as a “testament to the power and opportunities created by public higher education.

“I am certain he will build on his valuable experience to lead Merced, UC’s newest campus,” said Napolitano in a statement, “so that it continues to grow and thrive.”

News of Muñoz’s appointment was welcomed by Valley education leaders, including Fresno State President Joseph I. Castro, who spent time in a leadership position at UC Merced.

“His unique skill set and life experiences prepare him well for this vitally important leadership position,” said Castro. “Dr. Sánchez Muñoz and I have already begun discussing strategies to strengthen the partnership between UC Merced and Fresno State in service to the Central Valley and California.”

Benjamín Durán is executive director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, a 27-member organization of accredited public and private colleges, universities, and community college district members in the San Joaquín Valley.

“I have received phone calls from colleagues who are very interested in welcoming him and supporting him and doing everything that we possibly can,” said Durán. “I think it is it is a wonderful, wonderful tribute that we now have two Latinos leading two of our leading institutions here in the Central Valley.

“I just think that it is a sign of the times. And they are both very, very, very well qualified and very, very good for their selections, obviously.”

John A. Pérez, the former state Assembly Speaker and now chair of the UC Board of Regents, said Muñoz’s experience and qualifications made him “an outstanding choice to lead UC Merced.”

“Add to that his passion for ensuring the success of all students, especially public school students from underrepresented and underserved communities, and it is clear that he is the perfect match for UC Merced as the campus moves forward on its impressive journey,” said Pérez in a press release.

Muñoz, a former Marine Corps sergeant, said it is up to UC Merced and other partners to improve educational attainment levels in the Valley that are stubbornly lower than most of the state.

A 2018 study showed that between 20 percent and 30 percent of adults over the age of 25 in the Valley did not have a high school diploma. That also results in overall lower average wages and income.

“If we fail to educate students in K-12, very few of them can matriculate to higher education,” he said.

Education, he said, is the only ticket out of poverty. Attorneys, doctors, anesthesiologists, many elected officials, bankers, investment officers, superintendents, and principals all have a higher education in common, he said.

“For me, it became very important to make a contribution to working-class people and working-class families to continue their education, to improve not just their economic vitality but the impact they can make on their community, ” said Muñoz, who will assume his new position in July.

Muñoz, an all-league football defensive end at Salesian High School in L.A., will step into a job where higher education funding cuts are a certainty because of the coronavirus pandemic.

“I haven’t been read into the discussions that have taken place on campus, or relative to the budget,” said Muñoz. “So, speaking about those particular points at this time would be a bit premature.”

UC Merced, which opened in 2005, had an enrollment of 8,151 this school year with 55.5 per cent of them Latino. The university was designated an Hispanic Serving Institute in 2010, the second UC campus to get that status by having at least a 25 percent Latino enrollment.

The campus is expected to accommodate 10,000 more students after the completion of Merced 2020, a public-private partnership that will double capacity.

Muñoz earned his bachelor’s degree in psychology at California State, Fullerton; a bachelor’s in psychology from UC Santa Bárbara; a master’s in Mexican-American Studies at Cal State Los Angeles; and, a doctorate of philosophy from UCLA.

He has worked as a secondary school teacher, community college adviser, and, instructor.

Muñoz succeeds Dorothy Leland, whose mother was Latina, as chancellor. He becomes only the third Latino to serve as chancellor at a UC campus.

Muñoz’s wife is Dr. Zenaida Aguirre-Muñoz, another first-generation college graduate. She is an associate professor of psychology, health, and learning sciences of the University of Houston.

The couple has three sons.

The regents approved his salary at $425,000.

 

Original story can be found at:https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/local/education/uc-merced/article242908566.html

2020 Project: UC Merced celebrates opening of two new campus research buildings

2020 Project: UC Merced celebrates opening of two new campus research buildings

 

UC Merced celebrated the completion of the second phase of the university’s $1.33 billion 2020 project on Wednesday night.

The second phase included two laboratories, a loading dock and a recreation field.

The project also included a research modular server near the Central Plant that will enable electronic storage of research, according to UC Merced’s website.

People were able to tour the new Arts and Computational Sciences, which includes a lecture hall that can seat 290 students and contains a 15-by-50 feet projection screen. The new building also houses a new dance studio.

Tours were also available of the new Sustainability Research and Engineering Building, which contains 31 dry labs, 25 wet labs, an academic machine shop, a maker space, and chemical stockroom.

The new structures will be available when classes start on Aug. 28.

“We’re well on our way to constructing in four years what it took other campuses a generation to build,” said outgoing UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland. “It’s always been in UC Merced’s DNA, but once again we’ve shown that UC Merced is a model of innovation.”

The first phase of the 2020 project, which included a dining hall and two student housing buildings was completed last year.

Among the speakers on hand to celebrate UC Merced’s latest additions were Merced Mayor Mike Murphy and Rep. Jim Costa, D-Merced.

“The 2020 project accelerated the growth and opportunity for higher education and research in Merced, the Central Valley and the state of California,” Murphy said. “Merced is a city on the rise, Merced County is a county on the rise, and the Central Valley is a region on the rise in large part because of the strength, presence and the growth of UC Merced.

“This is Chancellor Leland’s vision to bring a modern educational experience to life for a new era of students.”

Costa also thanked Leland’s leadership for the past eight years.

“We are so, so proud of this institution of learning,” Costa said. “One can only imagine the lasting impacts it will have, not just to our Valley, to our state, but to the nation and the world. For this is where leaders come to be educated that will later on go and make their mark.”

Leland said all the construction has been completed on time and on budget.

The third phase of construction has already started. It’s expected to include more laboratories, housing, an expansion of the Early Childhood Education Center, a conference center, a competitive swimming pool, a wellness center, recreational fields and a space for enrollment and academic leadership.

The third phase is expected to be completed by Fall 2020.

“The focus will necessarily shift from the buildings we have now constructed to the research and learning that will happen in these buildings,” Leland said. “Thereby further enhancing our academic and research stature, increasing our graduation rates, and providing even more access and opportunity to California’s emerging citizenry, many of whom are low income, underrepresented and first-generation students.”

“UC Merced keeps growing and keeps getting better,” Murphy added. “This is a milestone for the university and the city of Merced. We can thank the leadership of Dorothy Leland for that.”

 

Original post can be found at https://www.mercedsunstar.com/news/article234024432.html

UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland grows her young campus

UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland presides over the University of California’s newest, smallest and most diverse campus. More than half of her 8,000 students are low-income and underrepresented minorities; nearly three-fourths are the first in their families to attend college. This year, in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of public universities, those students helped the campus climb 18 spots, to No. 2, for surpassing expected graduation rates.

Leland recently spoke with The Times about her changing campus.

Your rankings climbed so much. How did you do it?

I was thrilled. We’re only 13 years old. We’re building this plane as we’re flying it. People always say, `Well, their graduation rates are lower than the rest of the UCs,’ but most of our students are poor, they’re first generation, minority. If you look at how those students are predicted to do, we’re 16 points higher than predicted.

We’re just beginning to put into place practices that have been shown nationally to be successful for student retention and student graduation. In the last couple of years, we’ve had writing labs, we’ve had math tutoring labs. This year we’re creating STEM residential learning communities so students can come in as freshmen and really get a lot of extra support at living-learning communities. There are national studies that show that feelings of attachment to a campus are a retention boost. Many of our students just feel it’s a vibrant community. They feel comfortable. They feel as if their cultures are represented. I think that helps.

How did you score so well for teaching quality among public universities?

Research universities can have the reputation for not caring about undergraduate students — and in fact, historically for a long time they were a second thought. But we got to start over right from the beginning. We try to hire for people that really want to work with our students because of who they are. There’s no research university in the nation that, over time, has more capability to prove that you can be a high-powered research university and have strong commitments to diversity. So that’s pretty special.

UC has started studying the possibility of dropping the SAT and ACT requirements. Would you welcome this?

I would. The tests are biased against the kinds of students Merced is known for accepting. The trick will be [seeing] if there are other measures that faculty can use that are even more reliable in predicting success. And I think they’ll find them because there are other national models out there. Some very, very fine institutions have dropped mandatory SATs.

Your campus is expanding like crazy. What’s the latest?

If you were standing on campus now, you would see 13 buildings and assorted other things all going up at once. It’s like building a small city and it’s being done in four years. …We will have double-sized the campus frankly in a way that’s never been done before in public higher education.

How is UC Merced helping the Central Valley?

The Central Valley still has employment rates that are significantly lower than the state average. It still has a very small percentage of people who go on to postsecondary education and … inadequate access to healthcare. We’re trying to work on all fronts. Our students love going into schools and working with kids from similar backgrounds. We’re boosting the economy through [the expansion project] — it’s about a $1-billion impact over a four-year period. We opened two venture labs in Merced and Modesto that’s all about providing an environment of support to help students and faculty take innovative ideas to the next step of small business or the marketplace. We’re trying to stimulate new kinds of business through the research we’re doing. We’re doing a lot of research on Central Valley issues — water, climate issues, valley fever and a large public health program that’s growing exponentially.

What’s next for Merced?

We just need to keep on, keep on. We’re getting our buildings up. We need to hire faculty to continue our improvement in student success and student graduation. And then in a few years we need to take a deep breath and worry about how we’re going to grow for our next phase. Our students come because they see themselves as pioneers and as creators. They know they’re not going to the most famous UC, but they’re going to a new UC and they’re helping to build it.

 

Original Story By LA Times – https://www.latimes.com/local/education/la-me-edu-qa-uc-merced-chancellor-20181229-story.html 

What Is Central Valley Promise? 1,600 Students Find Out

When Matthew Rodrigues grows up, he wants to attend college to become a nurse or a doctor.

“I think going to college is very important in life,” said Rodrigues, a sixth-grade student at Jefferson Elementary School in Dinuba.

Friday morning, Rodrigues and 1,600 other sixth-graders got a taste of what it will take to achieve their career goals at Reedley College’s second annual Central Valley Promise event.

Tour of Reedley College Campus

To promote the mindset of going to college among students, teachers from Kings Canyon, Cutler-Orosi, and Dinuba Unified school districts took them on a tour of Reedley College.

Rodrigues said the tour was very helpful.

“Now I know what to expect when I go to college,” he said. “I know what I will have to do.”

Getting college on the brain is the main goal of the event, said Donna Berry, the president of Reedley College.

“We are really trying to create a college-going culture,” Berry said. “It really begins when you are in the sixth grade to start thinking about college.”

Getting students excited about college is critical as the state is projected to fall about 1.1 million college graduates short of economic demand if current trends persist, according to a report by the Public Policy Institute of California.

Vincent Vargas said he is definitely thinking about college. In fact, he already knows his major — zoology.

“I want to be a zoologist so I want to study something about animals,” Vargas said.

Lena Gutierrez said she wants to become a teacher.

“I decided to participate in the tour because I want to see how college is and what it looks like inside the classrooms,” Gutierrez said.

Getting Students Interested In College

Gutierrez’s teacher, Brad Johnson, said he hopes touring the Reedley campus will get his students interested in going to college.

“It is a great opportunity for our students to get exposure to higher education,” Johnson said. “I think the earlier they get exposure, the more attainable it is.”

Lisa Waide hopes the tour will give her students a better idea of the available educational opportunities.

“Some of our kids don’t have the means to go to college so I hope they come away with a hope that they can do something,” Waide said.

Central Valley Promise

The other goal of the event is to get students familiar with Central Valley Promise, a community effort to guarantee a path to college for students in the region.

The Central Valley is joining 150 cities across the country offering College Promise programs, which aim to increase college readiness, affordability, and success.

The CVP ensures students free tuition for their first semester of community college and priority registration, said Kurt Piland, the director of college relations and outreach at Reedley College.

Piland said CVP restricts its funding to colleges within the State Center Community College District.

To qualify, students must graduate from high school with at least a 2.7 GPA.

To stay in the program while in college, students must enroll in 15 units per semester and maintain a 2.5 GPA or above.

Piland said he has 100 students in the first cohort, and expects more in the years to come.

“The numbers are definitely growing,” Piland said. “As students know more about what Reedley College offers and the opportunities that they have, I am hoping that we will get a lot more enrollments.”

Valley educational achievement rates lag behind state. What’s being done?

People who have a higher level of education typically have greater potential for earning higher incomes. But a new report details the lack of opportunities for college degrees for some students in California’s schools.

The study by the Public Policy Institute of California reinforces what economic development and educational leaders have long described: that areas such as the central San Joaquin Valley, where educational attainment levels are lower than most of the state, are also bedeviled by overall lower average wages and income for residents.

“A college degree is the ticket to a good job and upward mobility in California,” said Hans Johnson, director of the PPIC’s Higher Education Center and co-author of the report. “While improvements in high school graduation rates and college preparation are encouraging, the state needs to take further action to realize the importance of higher education as an engine of social mobility for all our children.”

Merced County’s educational attainment and average earnings show how dramatic the differences can be. While there is a gap in median earnings between men and women at various education levels, figures from the U.S. Census Bureau reflect the correlation between higher education and higher income.

“In California, the typical full-time year-round worker with only a high school diploma earns $36,000, while the typical worker with at least a bachelor’s degree earns $80,000” a year, the report states. “In the last few decades wages have increased more for those with a college or advanced degree than for those with lower levels of education.”

The advantages of higher education, however, include more than just monetary rewards. “College-educated workers are more likely to participate in the labor force, less likely to be unemployed, and more likely to have jobs that provide additional non-wage compensation, such as paid vacation, employer-provided health insurance, and retirement plans,” the report states.

“One of the challenges for the Valley … is to find ways to encourage students who have success to find and create employment in the region, and that’s easier said than done,” Johnson said. “A lot of college graduates move from the San Joaquin Valley to other parts of the state to find work, and so part of the job is trying to capture that home-grown talent.”

More than 31 percent of adults over the age of 25 in Merced County don’t have a high school diploma. And while the proportion of adults in Valley counties who never graduated from high school is higher than most of the state, the share of residents in who have at least a bachelor’s degree is lower than many other California counties. Additionally, there is a considerable racial and ethnic disparity for who has a college degree and who doesn’t.

In Merced County, for instance, only about 14 percent of adults have at least a bachelor’s degree. But among Latinos, that share shrinks to just over 6 percent, compared to almost 14 percent of African Americans, 22 percent of whites and more than 27 percent of Asians.

“Although the last few decades have seen significant gains in college access, college-going rates remain unequal across demographic and socioeconomic groups,” the PPIC study found. However, the report also states that “too many students who enter college never earn a degree. Low-income, first-generation, Latino and African-American college students are even less likely to complete college than other students.”

Benjamin Duran, executive director of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium and former president of Merced College, acknowledged the demographics that work against Latinos and other disadvantaged students. “We’re trying to find ways for low-income and disadvantaged students to do better,” Duran said. “If you look at them, they’re coming from poorer ZIP codes, and they’re coming from an environment where they may be the first generation to go to college.”

The consortium – whose members include community colleges, California State Universitycampuses and five independent colleges in the greater San Joaquin Valley from San Joaquin County south through Kern County – is working on a regional level to remove barriers and improve pathways for students to attend college and complete a degree.

One such barrier is the limited capacity of universities in the region. “We have sixth- or seventh-year seniors who haven’t been able to get out” – some because of limited numbers of the classes they need to graduate, Duran said, and others because they choose to go to school part-time instead of full-time. “We want to encourage students to become full-time, take full loads of classes and apply for student aid to allow them to be able to do that.”

Because many of the Valley’s CSU campuses are dealing with more students than they can handle in a traditional four-year pathway, “we’re losing a lot of our kids to coastal, southern California or even out-of-state schools,” Duran said. “We’re losing talent that never comes home. … We try to talk to students about exploring alternative paths, like the private or independent colleges and universities. they may think it’s too expensive. But if you look at four years at a private college versus six years or more at a CSU, it can start to pencil out.”

Educators are also exploring ways to help lower-performing students have greater success in the basic English and math classes that are required to move forward toward their degrees.

“One thing that keeps students from achieving their degree is they can’t get through those ‘gateway’ English and math classes to compete for their bachelor’s degree,” Duran said. One possible solution is to offer “co-requisite remediation,” or classes that help get those students’ language and math skills up to speed at the same time that they’re taking the required class.

In some cases, students who have the added support of a co-remediation class “are doing as well, if not better, than the regular student population,” Duran said. “Once you get 70 or 75 percent of kids through those gateway courses, then they’re on their way. These things we’re talking about, they change the entire game, and everybody gets to play.”

 

Original post by Merced Sun Star – https://www.mercedsunstar.com/latest-news/article223119315.html

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