February

Moving Forward: Next Steps in the Implementation of Assembly Bills 927 (Medina, 2021), 928 (Berman, 2021), and 1111 (Berman, 2021)

In the 2021 legislative cycle, multiple bills were passed that were directed at the California Community Colleges system. Of those bills, Assembly Bills 927, 928, and 1111 may have the most widespread and lasting impacts on the colleges in the system. Each bill has a timeline for implementation and the potential for both immediate and long-term effects.

Cultivating Faculty Diversity: Support for Peer Mentors and Tutors

Faculty frequently have the opportunity to guide a student interested in pursuing a career in teaching. Indeed, many faculty members in the profession today owe their success to a helpful mentor at a community college. These informal efforts are critical components of student success and contribute to the gratification of being a community college educator.

The following are two typical stories:

To Promote or to Prevent Opportunity? Using an Equity-Minded Lens to Dispel Myths in the Equivalency Process

Equivalency processes and policies throughout the California community colleges vary widely, as they are locally determined. However, because a variety of methods of equivalency evaluation practices exist, potential candidates for faculty positions sometimes encounter barriers in navigating the system.

The Strength of Inclusivity: Changing Our Language and Campus Culture

As colleges engage in antiracist, equity-minded, inclusive practices, they must be thoughtful and intentional about using language to avoid labeling, discrimination, and archaic terms that marginalize and disenfranchise communities. Colleges should be honoring the voices of their diverse student and employee populations by shifting to anti-discriminatory language in the same way they seek to be antiracist.

Increasing Student Enrollment and Reducing Student Unit Accumulation: A Community College Paradox

In January 2022, faculty at one California community college received the following communication:

You may be aware of our lagging enrollments. Like community colleges across the state and country, our enrollments are down significantly.  Compared to last spring, we’re down approximately 10%, and last spring we had fallen 10% from Spring of 2020—a loss of approximately 2,200 students from Spring 2021 to Spring 2022.

Implications and Considerations for Cross Listing Courses

The history of cross-listing spans several decades in post-secondary institutions. Educators and curriculum practitioners have historically used cross-listing to streamline courses with multiple subject appeal to help satisfy students' course completion and degree attainment or to allow faculty in multiple disciplines to teach the same course. In this context, faculty have used cross-listing to develop shared ownership of a particular course and to optimize students’ paths to completion.

“¿En que les podemos ayudar?”: Addressing the Non-Credit Needs of a Growing Spanish-speaking Student Body at California’s Community Colleges

California’s community colleges have seen a marked and steady increase in students who identify as Latinx as well as students who are bilingual or for whom Spanish is their first language. While this change is certainly evident on college campuses, data from the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office clearly shows the steady increase that started in 2006. The change is a reflection of a similar increase in Spanish-speakers and Latinx in the California workforce and in the number of Latinx entrepreneurs establishing their own businesses.

Subscribe to February