Tag Archive for: access

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (Summer 2023): Affirmative Action challenge!

Supreme Court ruling is not the death of Affirmative Action but

rather a challenge to renew and reinforce its spirit and outcomes

 

NOTE: See the June 24, 2023  Fresno Bee Op-Ed version of this message: https://bit.ly/CVHECoped-RenewAffirmativeActionSpirit.

 

Greetings Colleagues and Friends of CVHEC,

As I was preparing to write the introduction for this special summer edition of our e-newsletter, the much anticipated, but still devastating, decision by the United States Supreme Court to strike down Affirmative Action burst into the national scene June 29 sending my phone into non-stop notifications from family and higher ed colleagues beset with disappointment and anger.

And, as the country was reeling from that monumental decision, SCOTUS took further action to declare unconstitutional President Biden’s efforts to bring some relief to those holding student loans.

In one week — after decades of progress — equity, diversity and access in higher education were simultaneously under attack.

However, I offer that this Supreme Court ruling is not the death of Affirmative Action but rather a challenge to renew and reinforce its spirit and outcomes.

Upon hearing the news and fielding those phone calls, I thought back to 1996 when California voters passed Proposition 209, effectively ending Affirmative Action in California; and even back to the University of California vs Bakke case in 1976.  Having spent decades in higher education first as a student and mostly as a professional educator, I reflected on and contemplated how California dealt with those landmark decisions.

I recalled that, despite the initial impacts from those decisions that have cost countless students of color the chance to earn a higher education, advocates and colleagues here in California have nonetheless long embraced the quest for equity in pursuit of student populations that reflect the rich diversity of our state despite legislation and court action to the contrary.

Following that elimination of Affirmative Action in our state 27 years ago, educators in our four segments of higher education — the University of California, the California State University System, the California Community College System and the Independent Colleges and Universities — initiated new strategies and initiatives to attract and enroll students from underrepresented groups that had been targeted by Proposition 209 and the Bakke case.

Yes we made some gains in the face of anti-Affirmative Action adversity here in California but there is still more work to do, especially as evidenced by these new Supreme Court rulings.

If we truly believe that all means all and everybody means everybody, it is appropriate that the impact of race, economic status and a person’s life experiences are all factors that should be considered as students pursue the dream and promise of a higher education.

Today, now more than ever, the equity efforts long in play here in California are essential nationwide. We must not let up in our quest to strive and reach goals that have not yet been met but are being pursued relentlessly by countless higher education professionals, policy makers, legislators, students and community supporters throughout our state and in other states similarly affected.

Locally, the work of Central Valley Higher Education Consortium members – made up of 28 colleges in the nine-county region from San Joaquin to Kern – under our equity umbrella aligns very well with reinforcing and renewing efforts to address the spirit and outcomes of Affirmative Action as it was intended when first conceptualized, not as it has been characterized lately.

I am confident that our Central Valley colleges and universities will continue to make their institutions open to all because it is the right thing to do, not because it is legislated.

So I invite and encourage my esteemed colleagues serving students throughout the Central Valley and beyond to once again rise to this new challenge, as we have always done, with a renewed vigor in continuing the good work you have done for our students.

Let us use the anger and disappointment we felt initially and get on with the work ahead of us. We must assure that the spirit of Affirmative Action, as it was originally intended, thrives for the good of our entire community.

Now, please do enjoy the rest of this historic summer!

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (May 2023): Extraordinary times!

Winding down an extraordinary

academic year in the Central Valley 

Greetings colleagues,

As we welcome you to the May issue of our newsletter, we take this opportunity to thank, congratulate and salute all the CVHEC educators who have dedicated themselves to sending off another group of Central Valley students into the next phase of their academic and or professional lives.  This annual commencement season is truly a magical time of the year and reminds us all why we chose careers in higher education.

In this issue we present more about Math Bridge, the math pathways initiative launched May 18 by bringing together representatives of six regional community colleges and their partner feeder high schools. At this kickoff held in downtown Fresno, these dedicated and determined professionals began the process to jointly create college level dual enrollment math courses targeted at underrepresented student populations that will allow them to complete a college math course before graduating from high school.  This innovative project is unique because of the intersegmental collaboration between high school and community college math faculty members working together to ensure their students’ success.

You will also have an opportunity to visit the CVHEC board meeting held May 11 in Fresno.  Board members heard a joint presentation by Dr. James Zimmerman, senior associate vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Education at UC Merced, and Dr.  Lynn Cevallos, president and founder of College Bridge.  They addressed the evolution and overlap of two CVHEC endeavors, the Central Valley Transfer Project and the Math Bridge initiative, that helps clear pathways for students getting into and through community college and onto the university of their choice.

We also bid farewell to two dear colleagues although one will remain well in sight, Dr. Sonya Christian who served on our board as chancellor of the Kern Community College District but now moves up to chancellor of the California Community College system. And joining us one last time at the meeting was the esteemed Dr. Ellen Junn, Stanislaus State president whose retirement is effective next month. We know you join the board in thanking them for their service to higher education in general and the consortium in particular. And you may read about our newest board additions in the story and photo gallery about the board meeting.

Please enjoy this issue as well as the conclusion of this extraordinary semester.

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (April 2023): Blurring the lines!

‘Committed to the deeper work — blurring the line between high school and college

Greetings colleagues,

This April edition of our CVHEC e-newsletter ushers in the final month of a busy spring semester for many of our CVHEC member colleges and universities not to mention our own relentless team.

In spite of wrestling with all the challenges in just the second year of a post-pandemic world, faculty, staff and CVHEC partners have been working diligently on regional strategies that will shed light on the good work our Central Valley colleges and universities are doing collectively for the well-being of our students.

First, we alert you that the 2023 CVHEC Annual Summit originally set for May is being rescheduled to October.

This will give us the opportunity to deliver a more impactful and compressive summit that, in addition to bringing higher education leaders and policy-makers together, showcases the great work being done in the region.  Please be on the lookout for updates.

One of the things we continue to express is that passing the college math gateway courses can make the difference for a student between college completion or not.  In this month’s newsletter, please read about some of efforts going on throughout the region that aim to eliminate this barrier.

Specifically, we are pleased to announce our new state-funded Dual Enrollment Math Bridge Program in collaboration with the Central San Joaquin Valley K-16 Partnership.  This comes on the heels of our first venture with College Bridge announced in January that is in full swing with the recruitment of high schools and that was featured in valley news media (see related story in this issue).  CVHEC and its partners are committed to undertake this deeper work that can effectively blur the lines between high schools and its colleges in the Central Valley

In this issue’s What the CV-HEC is Happening Blog, Dr. Manjula Joseph from Fresno Pacific University speaks about some of the experiences these high school teachers are having while earning a Master’s degree that will not only qualify them to teach dual enrollment math courses at their high schools, but also make them even better teachers by humanizing mathematics.

Thanks again for taking some of your valuable time to peruse our e-newsletter.

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (March 2023): Spring forward!

Spring forward to our CVHEC summit, Math Bridge Kick-off and Kern Mentors!

 

Welcome to this month’s CVHEC e-Newsletter.  As we move into the spring of 2023 with a little more daylight on our hands, we are happy to share some timely items following our last issue.

First, as we in the Central Valley continue to bask in the pride and excitement of our own Dr. Sonya Christian, chancellor of the Kern Community College District, being chosen by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors to lead the California Community College System, we are delighted to feature her in this issue’s “What the CV-HEC Is Happening Blog.”

The Chancellor-select reflects on her time working in the valley with her fellow presidents and chancellors on the CVHEC Board of Directors and the strides we have made as a united voice for higher education in our nine-county region [or Kern Co if that is what the blog focuses on]. Please enjoy her guest blog in this month’s issue and, once again, congratulations Sonya!

Registration for the CVHEC Annual Summit is now open!

Please plan on joining us May 12 for this great event as well as our special CVHEC Welcome Reception the day before at Arte Americas. The summit – always historic in that it brings together the higher education leadership in our nine-county region – provides the opportunity to showcase the great work that is taking place in our Central Valley colleges and universities to provide meaningful pathways for our students seeking a higher education.

In furtherance of our mission to increase access to college for students, we are pleased to announce the Central Valley Math Bridge Kick-off May 18 in downtown Fresno with our partners College Bridge and the Rand Corporation. With this the formal launch, we are excited to shine a light on the great work that can come out of small colleges in the Central Valley that we will share with the rest of the state and eventually nationally as this project creates a model for meaningful dual enrollment math pathways and expansion that can be replicated in other regions of California.

This same spirit carries forth in the South Valley where our Kern Master’s Upskilling Project is now recruiting community college professors to serve as mentors for high school teachers enrolled in the project to earn master’s degrees in math or English. In collaboration with the Kern Regional K-16 Education Collaborative,  we are working to improve student progress from high school to postsecondary education and ultimately into the workforce by providing 100 South Valley high school teachers the opportunity to earn a master’s degree that achieves state qualifications for teaching community college dual enrollment English or math courses at local high schools.

We encourage Kern area community college math and English professors to join us in this innovative project.

And finally, as we close out March next week, let us acknowledge Women’s History Month by expressing our appreciation to the incredible women leaders who serve on the CVHEC Board of Directors as the presidents or chancellors of the colleges and universities in our region, led by board chairwoman Dr. Kristin Clark, chancellor the West Hills Community College District.

As you read through this issue, we hope you find inspiration in the many great higher education advancements taking place in the Central Valley. Thanks for being a partner and a friend of CVHEC.

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (February 2023): CVHEC Summit 2023

Spotlight on Unique Approaches To

Transfer and Dual Enrollment in Central California

Greetings …

February ushered in what promises to be a very productive and exciting spring and that is well illustrated here in the final week of the month with the historic appointment of our esteemed colleague and CVHEC board member, Dr. Sonya Christian, as the 11th chancellor of the California Community College System.

From all of us at CVHEC: congratulations Chancellor-Select Christian! See our story in this issue.
 
Also, in this month’s e-newsletter, we are happy to announce a SAVE THE DATE for the annual CVHEC Education Policy and Legislative Summit May 12 in Fresno with our quarterly CVHEC Board of Directors meeting the day before.  

The annual summit provides an opportunity to showcase the impactful work being accomplished by our member colleges and universities in the Central Valley to our partners, friends and legislators who serve our region.  Please plan on joining us later this spring to learn more about this work, including the unique approaches to transfer and dual enrollment in the valley — just to mention a couple of topics that will be covered.  Registration info will be forthcoming in March.

In the South Valley, we are pleased to present the addition to the CVHEC family of two respected Kern County higher education professionals who will serve as faculty mentor coordinators for our Kern Master’s Upskilling Project: Drs. Vikash Likhan and Liz Rozell.

The Kern project, which assists high school teachers earn an MA in math or English qualifying them to teach dual enrollment, includes a mentoring component that joins high school teachers with community college professors. Drs. Likhan and Rozell will work with our project lead, Tom Burke (KCCD chancellor-emeritus), to identify and recruit South Valley community college professors to serve as mentors.

If you are interested in serving our students in this way, or know potential candidates, I invite and encourage you to connect with our team.

There is much more in this month’s edition.  Please read on and enjoy.

 

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (January 2023): Kicking Off the New Year with Successful Initiatives

We are happy to welcome you to the 2023 spring semester and our first e-newsletter of the year.  As you will see in this issue, the new year promises to pick up right where we left off when we went into the winter break.

You will read about the successes of our Central Valley Transfer Project which has developed a unique approach with its Program Pathways Mapper to improve the number of Central Valley community college students transferring to the University of California, Merced, and the valley’s California State Universities.

This entry is timely in light of a recent article announcing the UC system’s effort to expand outreach to 65 California community colleges and the release of the report by a joint task force between UC and the community college system recommending that UC increase the percentage of community college transfers who apply, are admitted to and enroll at UC. The UC also has a systemwide goal to enroll one California community college transfer student for every two California resident freshmen.

The Transfer Project provides a historic collaboration between our three segments of higher education to improve this process for students with first round surveys (studies ?) showing a direct correlation between students using the Program Mapper and important student success metrics.

We are also happy to congratulate our CVHEC partner, College Bridge.  Six rural community colleges in California’s Central Valley will partner with 21 high schools to promote equity in mathematics via dual enrollment courses for Black or Latino students thanks to a $4 million US Department of Education grant awarded to College Bridge. This united effort will highlight the good work a group of small rural colleges can do when partnering with their dedicated high school partners.

In this month’s guest blog, Ginny Sandu, a teacher at Sunnyside High School talks about her journey to earn a Master’s degree through our MA Upskilling Program last year, funded by the Fresno-Madera K16 Collaborative. The program increased the number of high school teachers holding Master’s degrees in English and Mathematics in the Fresno-Madera service area qualifying them to teach dual enrollment at their high school campus.  Armed with her new post-grad degree, Ginny was able to begin teaching dual enrollment courses last fall —   exactly what the project was designed to do.

Enjoy Ginny’s story and the rest of the newsletter.  Please take moment to meet our dedicated staff of higher education professionals in this issue’s CVHEC Website renovation presenting our staff page. We are all looking forward to a great 2023!

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (December 2022): Happy Holidays!

Best wishes for 2023 from the CVHEC staff: Tom Burke, Saundra McGlothlin, Ángel Ramírez, Dr. Benjamín Durán, Pricila Villanueva, Stan Carrizosa, John Spevak and Tom Uribes. (Not pictured: Elaine Cash and Marcus Johnson).

A Season to Celebrate our Triumphs

Holiday Greetings to All,

We, the team at the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium, wish you a joyous and peaceful holiday season as we come to the end of a historic fall semester at all our partner institutions and prepare to usher in a new year.

The 2021-22 academic year saw our Central Valley colleges and universities emerge from the post-pandemic blues and welcome our students and staff back to our campuses. It was a long two years. Congratulations to each and every one of you who dedicate your professional career to relentlessly serving our students regardless of the challenges we face.

This is truly a season to celebrate our triumphs!

In this final issue of 2022 – our Silver Edition – you will see highlights of the good work that took place in the region, in spite of the constraints imposed by COVID.  Enjoy reviewing this glimpse back at the last 12 months as well as a recap of the winter CVHEC Board of Directors meeting held earlier this month.

One of the highlights of our board meeting was a collective farewell to friend and colleague Dr. Lori Bennet who is retiring as Clovis Community College president Jan. 3 after a long and successful career serving community college students.  Congratulations Dr. Bennett, we wish you a long and well-deserved retirement.

To all, please enjoy the holidays and plan on joining us again in January for our first newsletter of 2023.

CVHEC DIRECTOR’S MESSAGE (November 2022)

The Valley’s Presidents and Chancellors to Convene at Dec. 8 CVHEC Board Meeting

Hello CVHEC Friends and Colleagues,

As we approach the end of the fall semester and prepare for the Thanksgiving and Christmas Holiday season, we are happy to share the November issue of the CVHEC Newsletter.

The CVHEC Board of Directors will convene for the fall Board of Directors meeting December 8, at the California Health Sciences University (CHSU) in Clovis.  The meeting will give CHSU an opportunity to show off their new medical school campus.  The meeting will also provide an opportunity to invite a number of new presidents who have assumed their positions since the last board meeting.

The board will be introduced to new CVHEC staff member, Elaine Cash, a former area superintendent who has taken on the role of Grants & Programs coordinator and introduced in our last issue. The Board will also hear a report on the work of the K-16 collaboratives in Kern County and in the central region that includes Fresno, Madera, Kings and Tulare counties.

Additionally, we will be delighted to announce two state planning grant awards.  The WE WILL! collaborative in the North Valley region and the Eastern Sierra Region K16 Collaborative were each awarded a $250,000 planning grant that will result in the establishment of two more K-16 collaboratives in the Central Valley — a total of 4 collaboratives across our membership!
In this issue you will also read the blog contribution from Chet Frantzich, English teacher at Buchanan High School in the Clovis Unified School District.  Chet, one of the teachers who participated in the Master’s degree Upskilling funded by the Fresno/Madera K16 Collaborative, shares his experiences in the program and how his earning a master’s degree has impacted his students and him personally.

I hope you enjoy this edition and feel free to share it with friends and colleagues.

Here is wishing you all a wonderful and restful Thanksgiving Holiday!!

 

 

 

 

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.

Contact Us

  • centralvalleyhec@gmail.com

  • 559.292.0576

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