This month’s “What The CV-HEC Is Happening” guest blog is another update of the Central Valley Math Bridge Program presented by Owynn Lancaster, vice president for Academic Strategy with College Bridge, which is a partner of the Central Valley Higher Education Consortium along with the Rand Corp., in the innovative program designed to improve math outcomes for struggling 11th and 12th graders and streamline Math pathways into college. Funded by a five-year $4 million grant through the US Department of Education’s Education Innovation and Research (EIR) Program, the ambitious endeavor was kicked off in May 2023 with a convening of more than 150 valley K-16 educators in Fresno to begin the onboarding process for this historic intersegmental collaboration between CVHEC member community colleges and high schools in their respective service areas. This past fall, the College Bridge and CVHEC Math Bridge teams began visiting campuses to continue the onboard process and are now recruiting students for the program’s launches this fall.
Dr. Nicole Korgie (center left) has been leading College Bridge’s student recruitment campaign for the Central Valley Math Bridge Program in partnership with CVHEC, Rand and 5 community colleges. At Orosi High School last month, she was joined by Reedley College math professor Julie Kehoe (center right) and hosted by Principal Marlena Celaya, a former math teacher at Dinuba High School.
Getting the Math Out There!
Math Bridge update: high schools providing higher math to
those who haven’t wanted it or haven’t accessed it
BY OWYNN LANCASTER
College Bridge
In his recent holiday column in the Westside Express, our Central Valley Higher Education Consortium colleague and dear friend, Dr. John Spevak, posed to denizens of the Los Baños area, “What’s the most unusual [Christmas] gift you’ve heard of?” Well, his response was: the gift of math!
As much as John was going for a fun way to highlight our Central Valley Math Bridge Program Central Valley Math Bridge project introduced into the region last year, in reality, his piece aims at the crux of the most important part of what we are trying to do: bringing higher math to those who haven’t wanted it or haven’t accessed it.
Building off our successful expansion in the Central Valley over the past 12 months, the College Bridge team has successfully wrapped up our objective to strategize with our amazing partners – CVHEC and its community college members — around how to best bring the gift of math to those students.
And now, we’re doing it!
The CV Math Bridge’s first cohort of high schools will be starting in the coming academic year, 2024-2025, with work well underway for the following year as well in partnership with five CVHEC community college members.
For those who’ve been following, our partners have been working up a storm with us to recruit students into the project at partner high schools in the area under the energetic leadership of Dr. Nicole Korgie, our vice president of operations.
John’s column, which also served as the December “What the CV-HEC is Happening Blog,” spotlighted College Bridge founder Lynn Cevallos. For this month’s blog, CVHEC asked us to shine that spotlight on, Nicole, another College Bridge warrior who is our awesome College Knowledge expert.
Life for Nicole the past four weeks has been somewhat mercurial. Traversing up and down Highway 99 from Taft in the South Valley to Merced in the North Valley – and on many roadways to rural areas east and west – Nicole and her recruitment team have set foot on high school campuses presenting massive Student Information Sessions.
They have connected with students in partner high schools at Taft, Riverdale, Livingston, Weber Academy and Orosi. Over the next two months, they have dates with partners in Atwater, Buhauch Colony, Maricopa, Sanger, Sanger West and Stagg.
Facing students bewildered with why they are sitting in this special session, Nicole leads the team in pointing out how math, believe it or not, is do-able and can be a cool skill to own; how they will receive support along the way so they won’t be alone; and how they will get a huge head start on a college journey thanks to these dual enrollment courses offered through Math Bridge (not to mention the cost in college tuition savings since DE courses are free in high school).
The students meet and hear from a real college math professor from our partner community college for that high school who assures them their faculty team will be awaiting them and will be there to help ensure the pathway is a successful one, and actually can even be fun with the preparation that Math Bridge provides while in high school.
At the most recent visit at Orosi High School, Nicole was joined by Reedley College Professor Julie Kehoe where the pair shared the advantages of our program to 80 students and what they could expect. They were hosted by Principal Marlena Celaya, a former math teacher at Dinuba High School where she participated in one of our pioneering programs that laid the ground work for Math Bridge, the Math Pipeline Readiness Project (M-PReP).
“One of the big reasons we want the Math faculty to present, is so that they can sell up the math as something students can do — that it is something that will be fun and different,” said Nicole. The CVHEC member community colleges are Delta, Merced, Reedley, Taft and Lemoore College (formerly West Hills College).
Another fun example of this happened at Riverdale High School, partnering with Lemoore College. There, Lemoore math professor Jameson Birrell asked the 11th graders in attendance what music they followed on Spotify and who was trending. After getting responses and some fun chatter from students, he then swiftly connected how to use that musical information in Statistics, the dual enrollment course that will be offered next year through Math Bridge. Not surprisingly, seeing the connection to something students know and love, excitement about the opportunity to take math and how it can be used in their own everyday life hummed up.
The students in these sessions all meet a few different sets of mandated criteria around GPA, previous math courses completed, etc. But what they all have in common is that they have been the kids who either felt or were made to feel, that math wasn’t their jam. Bringing out such crucial excitement and connection to their futures and lives is one of the greatest factors for change the Math Bridge Program brings.
There are still openings in the second cohort for the 2025-2026 academic year. We encourage and welcome high school administrators to come onboard and bring this stimulating initiative to your students. Nicole and her community college math faculty partners are ready to help you give your students the gift that truly does keep on giving.
For details, simply reach out to me at Owynn.Lancaster@college-bridge.org.
Also see: https://bit.ly/CVHECblog1223-GiftOfMath
