The January 2012 3CSN newsletter is out now.  If you would like to receive the newsletter in your email, please subscribe.

3CSN – Newsletter – Jan 2012

Community college counselors, faculty, student support services personnel, college deans and other campus leaders are encouraged to attend this FREE event made possible through the BSI Professional Development Grant.

Colleges are welcome to attend in teams (maximum of five individuals per school, please, so that we can accommodate as many schools as possible).

Outcomes for the Day:

1. Understand our student-focused/student-empowerment philosophy and its ideological foundations
2. Employ backward design to create a process/procedure/structure driven by group-generated empowerment philosophy outcomes
3. Employ backward design to revise a course syllabus (preferably, your own) that embeds a student-empowerment philosophy
4. Create a process or action plan for following through with the work begun at this event.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Last month 3CSN delivered two informative BSI Coordinators’ Workshops in collaboration with the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. The workshops, held at Sacramento City College and the North Orange County Community College District Office, brought together nearly 150 participants from across the state. These workshops for BSI coordinators and committee members provided support for collaboration within and across campuses in:

• Aligning long-term goals to large-scale, measurable, and sustainable student success;

• Aligning BSI-funded activities to long-term goals;

• Creating an evaluation plan of activities tied to the outcomes of long-term goals; and

• Working with campus/BSI committees to ensure the development of measurable goals and activities to achieve them.

Mark Wade Lieu, the BSI Coordinator at the CCCCO, was on hand to assist in the preparation of the 2011 BSI Action Plan reports that are due October 10th. He explained the most recent changes to these documents, particularly the additional elements of measureable outcomes and criteria. Mark also provided an update on expectations for the 2012 BSI Action Plan reports and encouraged participants to begin developing large-scale and sustainable BSI plans and appropriate data collection processes now. Participants especially appreciated the Q & A format of the program.

BSI Coordinators Workshop Fall 2011

Watch the webinar, Why Accelerating Developmental English and Math is the Essential First Step.

Click here to view the embedded video.

To learn more about Vision 2020, please explore this website and download the full report.

The Community College League of California convened a commission of 33 college leaders to identify policy and practice changes that, if implemented, could increase meaningful completions in community colleges by 2020. The Commission was asked to constrain its recommendations within reasonably available state resources, a particularly difficult task given the magnitude of the current recession and associated decline in state revenues.

This report specifically addresses the need to increase associate degree and certificate completions in California’s community colleges. The Commission recognizes and affirms the role of community colleges in many other areas of service to California’s residents and economy—including citizenship, health and safety, English as a second language and economic development.

The Commission held three sessions during the first six months of 2010. Rather than conduct original research, the Commission used a comprehensive policy matrix prepared by the California Leadership Alliance for Student Success (CLASS) initiative, which was funded by The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and The James Irvine Foundation, and led by Byron and Kay McClenney of the University of Texas, Austin. The policy matrix provides a “compilation of recommendations from 24 key reports related to fiscal and academic policy and practice, and state and local accountability for student success.”

The Commission understood early that there were an indeterminate number of strategies that could improve student success, including financial and regulatory barriers, student support strategies, and pedagogical changes. It felt, however, that to try to catalog all of the outstanding work occurring throughout the system would be less productive than an effort to identify the common themes found in promising efforts throughout the state. Therefore, readers of this report are less likely to find specific program plans to implement than common themes that are found in successful strategies both inside and outside of California.

Indeed, throughout California, activities to improve student success are already occurring. Whether funded through institutional priority or with grant support, most policies recommended in this report can be found in a California community college. The greatest challenge is identifying which elements of the successful practices can be replicated across the system at a time when leaders are overwhelmed with the challenge of keeping the doors open.

By the end of the presentation, you will be able to:

1. Connect the California Community Colleges Success Network (3CSN) with the BSI Professional Development Grant
2. Understand the 3CSN/BSI professional development grant objectives and focus on equity-minded completion
3. Understand the role that 3CSN can play in building communities of practitioners and supporting these communities with information, tools, and technical assistance
4. Identify ways to frame campus initiatives/activities around student success

Networking for Student Success: Inquiring into Student Completion Issues

Supplemental Instruction

Mt. San Jacinto College Program details

Butte Community College, Program details

Rio Hondo Community College, Program details

I-Falcon- Habits of Mind

Cerritos College Program details

Crafton Hills  Program details, Crafton Hills College

Palomar College, Program details

Learning Communities

Skyline college FYE  Program details

Success Center

Chaffey College Program details (doc 1 and doc 2)

On-line Instruction

Golden West College Program details

MiraCosta College Program details

This second in a series of Learning in Networks for Knowledge Sharing (LINKS) event will take a deeper look into student success in terms of completion, breaking completion down into more manageable chunks known as milestones and momentum points.

• LINKS 2 – San Diego
• LINKS 2 – Los Angeles
• LINKS 2 – Northern & Central California

Presentations

• Learning In Networks for Knowledge Sharing – 2: Introduction
• The Transfer Velocity Project: What’s your transfer velocity?
• Attrition in Developmental Sequences: Staunching the Flow through Curricular Redesign
• Using Data to Design Effective Action Plans-Alicia C. Dowd
• FIN presentation The Elements of Inquiry: Using Inquiry to Explore Momentum Points Handout: Discussion Sheet to Sketch Ideas

• Teaching to Students – Lisa Brewster
• Wrapping Up