Implementing the Six Factors of Student Success Via Faculty: Student Success Advocates at East Los Angeles College

In 2016, East Los Angeles College, a Hispanic Serving Institution, developed the Student Success Advocates (SSA) program. The role of a Student Success Advocate is to help students navigate the college campus and resources, as well as their educational goals. SSA faculty utilize the framework of the Student Support (Re)defined six success factors to execute programming such as career/major panels to emphasize the value of degree completion and transfer, collaborating with student services departments to increase student help seeking behavior, training colleagues to use the six factors, and...

Making First-Year Success Everyone’s Business

A college is, above all things, a community of learners. To create success inside the classroom, both faculty and students must be part of a thriving academic culture outside the classroom. In 2016, College of San Mateo launched Year One, a comprehensive program structure that seeks to redesign the first-year experience by providing students direct connections with staff, faculty, resources, and coursework tailored to fit their needs. Campus administration, faculty, and staff will jointly lead this discussion of strategies used to design, integrate, and institutionalize a first-year...

Up to the Challenge: Improving Equity and Outcomes without Traditional Remediation

Traditional remediation makes students less likely to complete college and exacerbates racial inequity. What happens when colleges change their placement policies and curricula to enable more than 70% of incoming students to begin directly in college-level English and math? Find out in this presentation from the 2017 RP Group Strengthening Student Success conference, featuring colleges from the California Acceleration Project.

STEMovation: A Path to Transforming STEM Education

STEMovation is a collaborative effort by a growing number of Diablo Valley College (DVC) STEM faculty working on team projects, utilizing data to narrow the achievement gaps in the DVC STEM pathways. The MESA program (Mathematics, Engineering and Science Achievement) serves as the hub for innovation. STEMovation engages the faculty community to integrate best equity practices into their student services and classrooms. The core of our work currently focuses on STEM outreach and pathways, intra- and interdepartmental STEM backwards design, conversations with counseling, and STEM professional...

Math Jam Your Students to Success

Many community colleges have identified a real need to increase support services to students who are struggling to pass the college-level math they need to complete a degree or transfer to a four-year institution. To make matters more difficult, many returning students and high school graduates are placed into lower math courses than they have demonstrated proficiency. Research into success rates across California Community Colleges indicates students are twice as likely to successfully complete a transfer-level math course within three years if they begin at a course one level higher. In...

Restructuring the Math Pipeline for Success

Cuyamaca College no longer offers math at two or more levels below transfer. Instead, developmental students enroll in: (1) Intermediate Algebra with concurrent enrollment support, (2) an accelerated pre-statistics course, or (3) a college-level math course with concurrent enrollment support. The outcome? Pipeline success rates are significantly greater across all disproportionally impacted groups. This presentation from the 2017 RP Group Strengthening Student Success conference discusses the structure of the revised math program at Cuyamaca, provides evidence that we are closing the...

Extending the Classroom: Intensive Academic Support for Accelerated Basic Skills Pathways

At Bakersfield College (BC), 84% of first-time students enter underprepared, and only 34% of students who started at any level of remedial math completed a certificate, degree, or transfer-related status during a six-year period. BC redesigned traditional math pathways to offer more coherent accelerated options in remedial math. By extending the classroom to support college readiness, BC provides intrusive academic and counseling support to improve student learning in the math classroom and beyond. In this presentation from the 2017 RP Group Strengthening Student Success conference...

Doubling Student Completion through Placement, Pathways, and Pedagogy in Mathematics

The College of the Canyons Mathematics Department has committed to accurate placement, accelerated pathways, and more effective pedagogy in high-challenge, high-support classrooms. Effective fall 2016, an overhaul of the mathematics placement process for 4,363 incoming students using self-reported high school information dramatically increased transfer-level placement, reducing disproportionate impact and saving students time and money. Adopting a statistics pathway substantially increased student completion of transfer-level mathematics. Professional development in activity-based learning...

Santa Monica College’s Chem Boot Camps Dramatically Improve Student Success in College-Level Chemistry

eLearning Module Resource Description Description of Content Santa MonicaCollege’s Scienceand Research Initiative (SRI) collaborated with the Black Collegians and Adelante programs to target intensive support for introductory chemistrystudents. The resulting Chem Boot Camps have had a significant impact on the success rates of underrepresented students. The Challenge Chem boot camps at Santa Monica College were designed as part of a campus-wide effort to address persistent equity gaps in success rates, which were particularly pronounced in this course. The performance gap in introductory...