Planning, Review and
Budget Council
Regular Meeting
October 30, 2013
Building 400, Room 405
3:00 – 5:00 PM
MINUTES
Attendees: Steve Stevenson, Luis Flores, Catherine Powell, Bob Buell, Eric Schultz, Tom Clark, Matt
Kritscher, Kathy Kelley, Sara Parker, Andrew Pierson, Becky Plaza, Kristin Land, Christine Warda, Chad
McCane, Vanessa Sadsad, Jennifer Lange, Deonne Kunkel, Maria Corcoran, M. Giovanola, Nigel Quadri,
Nancy Soto, Carolyn Arnold, Ken Grace, Jim Mathews
Meeting began at 3:05 p.m.
Minutes for October 23rd meeting were not available at this time. Approval of minutes will take place at
the next meeting.
Ken proposed that we table the discussion from the last meeting until the day that the sub group working
on the House Model presents to PRBC. This allows us to dedicate the meeting to a presentation from
Career Ladders Project arranged by Nancy Soto and Matt Kritscher.
Nancy Soto introduced the Department of Labor Grant the TAACCCT (Trade Adjustment Assistance Act
Community College Career Training Grant) and welcomed our presenters for today: Luis Chavez & Peter
Simon who will talk about Career Ladders “High Impact Pathways”.
Luis Chavez - High Impact Pathways, the work in career ladders is intended to support the work of
educators. Not about a trend, rather about reaching a student population that has not been able to utilize
the community college. Pathway mapping is a tool but the discussion that this tool foments is what is
most important and is intended to break down some barriers such as cross district certificates.
(informational sheets distributed. Also available on the Career Ladders website: careerladders.ogr)
Peter Simmons -CLP works with a variety of statewide groups – and with individual colleges for the
DBS grant. Most federal and state funding is going toward this type of work. CA SB1070 Regional
Funding funds. The AB 86 Adult Education & Career Pathways Trust hopes to link high school and
community college projects. This is one of the first times that the education department and labor
departments have come together to fund this type of innovative community college work.
Work creates college specific mapping of pathways, links regional programs for certificates and
curricula to address workforce needs of industries connected to the region. One benefit is
streamlining employer/industry involvement with colleges in a region. “When Done Well,
Pathways” allow
-students to earn credit and certification at once
- design offers people to plug in at a range of levels whether underserved populations who
haven’t had a shot at job training, recent high school grads, high school grads with some CTE
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experiences re-entry for students coming out of jail or others coming back to upgrade skills.
-A well done pathway includes
a. ramps or bridge programs with contextualized basic skills,
b. entire range of programs (entry, intensive, certificate, transfer, academic degrees)
important to break down CTE and Academic division of past,
c. stackable in design with certificates nested and,
d. contextualized foundational skills to the knowledge and skills needed in a specific
occupation.
-more explicit bundling of resources than what has been done traditionally to engage
employers.
-Pathways are designed for careers in demand and are intended to have some sort of workbased learning component.
President Sperling “What kind of data do we have that an emergency medical tech would come back to a
community college for further education? Do we have data in support of that as a trend?”
Peter & Luis There is some data on the “skill builder” group that indicates a robust group is coming back
for more training. We can no longer assume that students will come here for 2-3-6 years to transfer. Now,
we see that people need the opportunity to come in and out and know the bridge to where they might go
next in contrast to the terminal vocational programs of the past. Now, we want to look at the transferrable
skills that someone with vocational training could use as a leg up to jump onto a new career or
educational goal upon return several years later (or for people who are coming in at the higher levels).
Kathy Kelly – We have a hard time tracking students who move around (this is not a comment about our
wonderful IR Office) but what ways has Career Ladders tried to track?
Matt K. – Cal Pass tries to track students in California
Carolyn – Cal Pass is not working for us yet because of feeder schools. But to Kathy’s larger point,
students could go anywhere on the core competencies pathway and this is hard to track and that’s why it
hasn’t been done. But this new framework shifts our focus so we might envision ways to track students.
Kathy – How can our institution help people navigate toward those higher levels on the pathway?
Peter – True, people leave and generally don’t stay in touch to let us know how a course they took
impacted their employment or future educational trajectory. We really see this in some fields like Early
Childhood Education. Skill builder analysis allows us to get more credit as a college for helping people
meet their educational goals such as completing one or two courses. There are many wonderful
opportunities that the college can give.
Tom Clark– Back to Susan’s original question, the Center for Occupational Research reported on a
national study that there were actually more students who reverse transfer than who transfer.
Peter: Here are some more representations of the kind of work we do when we under TAA grant. We use
a basic tool – Entry level, mid-level, advanced level – educational ladder linked with career ladder. (Tools
available at CareerLadders.org – initiative and programs, high impact pathways)
-These early conversations do surface problems that need to be resolved to implement the pathways. At
Skyline, faculty wanted to open up the Automotive program to allow people to come in and out
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differently. They cut up their pie in a different manner. Entry level now has several options. For example,
rather than a three year program, they broke it up so that you could get an entry level job after even one
semester. Employers are happy with the remodel because they have a diverse workforce now. The top
level now has packed classes who want specific skills for working on a hybrid car. This top level tends to
be in demand with shop owners.
-graphic plans indexes certifications, jobs, training, pay scale
Yvonne - With Automotive there are discreet skills that build and stack. What does this look like with
other industries or subjects where there are not clear cut industry certifications?
Peter – A good question. That’s why this work should be done in concert with the employers so the
employers can help us identify transferrable skills and in demand skills. The collaboration should not just
as a one way street of course.
Matt –Transferrable skills are a major part of resume writing. Around here, we don’t usually think about
an English certificate program but what if an employer said they wanted someone who could read
critically and write well to build websites? What employer wouldn’t want a student who is a strong writer
and critical reader? Based on employer input, we might design a pathway so that students could be
earning some new certificate that combines transferrable skills and other industry needs.
What if you could learn to make things while you are training to be a mechanical engineer? For example,
my step brother started out as a bike mechanic in Grass Valley – didn’t want a “real” job. Eventually, he
went to DVC and earned a machine tools certificate which allowed him to move forward and earn money
while he transferred to Cal Poly to earn his engineering degree. How many engineers know how to create
the tools they want to design? But, he did.
Peter Pasadena City College is one of the linked learning sites where students start in the high school and
they have contextualized math, English and speech. When the design and engineering departments came
together and integrated the bridge with contextualized learning in basic skills to create a team that would
allow students to go through the same course work that is now packaged differently. They are designing
projects and presenting those designs to integrate their learning. They learn to market what they build.
Peter-San Mateo has an Allied Health Career – they have a semester long gateway to the health field with
contextualized basic skills. Students work as a cohort and have a counseling class contextualized with
field of interest. What is not clear in this graphic, is that across district, they didn’t have all the courses
aligned and so that was part of the work that had to be done to streamline the programs.
Yvonne – As I look at the different graphics, I see that some are very tight packages and that in this one
student support services is integrated. So, is integrating the counseling/student services side something
you have seen?
Luis – In the past, counseling has been added as an after thought and not fully integrated into the design
of many projects or grants which makes it difficult to have a full time counseling member participate and
without that component success can be tricky. So, we have asked that student support services be
embedded at the very beginning, right away. Counseling needs to be up front and connected. All
colleges that are part of the career advancement program embed counseling. We see that most students
leave college because of affective issues that start to interfere with academics.
Yvonne But counseling is not mandatory? Not everyone uses the same model? (Answer was yes,
counseling is not mandatory).
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Kristin – How do colleges stake out time for the collaboration among counselors and faculty members
that would enhance cohort learning?
Peter – Grant funds pay for meetings because you can’t depend on excitement alone. Scheduling is an
issue for administrators. They must align schedules for faculty members and find meeting times. So,
institution has to commit to make time do this. Some places even give release time. The big question is
how to sustain this collaboration once grant funding is gone.
Kathy – You said that grants are generally what fund this work. Are you the purveyors of grants?
Luis – In some cases, we have been asked to be partners to a grant writing team.
Carolyn – We have a grant right now that wrote in counseling and Career Ladders at Chabot already.
Matt – There are significant grants that are available for this kind of work.
Luis – yes. You have a grant at Chabot now and we are a partner. The idea is to make these pathways
work and learn from them and from the process of building them.
Peter – Most new, major grants want to see this type of work being done.
Yvonne – We are currently working on an HSI grant and we have been talking about how to scale up
learning communities so this is also an opportunity.
Luis – CTE and General Education are both academic and so we have been calling this work learning
exchanges.
Nancy – Let me explain the grant we have. It identified certificate programs to create the pathways for
initially. So, we are looking at Machine Tool Technology, Auto maintenance, Entrepreneurship and how
it can tie into other areas of interests (i.e. I want to own my own auto shop), Engineering pathways.
-We have support staff - one of the few colleges that put our funding into support staff - so we have a
dedicated adjunct counselor who has found students to participate in the Career Pathways in Education
-Will create on-going job clubs which will be available to the campus at large. We want to be able to
invite employers who can say what they want in an employee. In addition, we want to set up interviews
with employers on our campus. We want students to be able to gain the skill sets to sell themselves. So
the adjunct counselor is developing SEPs and training plans to help students select their classes a
semester at a time.
-We have 55 students so far and our target is 120.
Yvonne – Does the employment coordinator connect faculty with employers as well?
Nancy – We know that CTE already has great advisory committees so we just need to hook up with them
better.
Christine – It is refreshing to see that speech is included in the pathways because communications is
what employers want. Communication Studies classes teach transferrable, stackable skills. For some
cohorts, group presentation classes might make most sense where as for other pathway models another
entry level class might link well.
Fire-Tech – Are we part of the grant as well or are we just left out because working with manufacturing
industry?
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Nancy – We know there is a larger supply of fire-fighters than industry demand.
Bob Buell - Some of the elements of success you are discussing as part of the package for Career Ladders
seem to be elements that fire-tech students need to, like Basic Skills, Communications, etc.
Nancy – We have workshops available to the campus at large for job clubs with this new grant so we
hope to offer some services to the campus on the whole.
Luis – What Bob is raising is a huge question … Think of this grant project as an opportunity to create a
beach head to start off. Great to hear others are interested and we welcome that participation. For now, we
can implement the areas selected and learn from them. We work with campus that is wall to wall
pathways. When it is time, we can share those approaches as well once you get this beach head up and
moving. The TAA grants require that we identify a sector of the college.
Peter – Here is another example of our work at Career Ladders: a ground breaking attempt to work with
four colleges to discuss how we might work together. Cross talk across the colleges mirrors what
students are already doing. They already go to different colleges and we need to meet them where they
are at better.
-The first “Conjoint Certificate” was approved so that a student can take a mélange of classes from all the
campuses and earn a certificate. This takes an extra layer of administrative work so students can move
efficiently. Now it is approved by the State Chancellor’s Office. DVC and Solano wanted to share their
unique, expensive labs so they were able to begin building connections because the students were willing
to travel. All is ground breaking work.
Bob Buell – So a student wouldn’t need to accumulate 12 units from one college to earn a certificate
(Answer: no).
Carolyn - Matt, why did you bring this to PRBC? Can you share your thinking?
Matt – All students are CTE, the students need and have jobs and ideally with stackable credentials we
would be helping us to offer them both training and pathways for their immediate and future needs
through the CTE and learning communities work. And, I hoped this presentation would allow us to take
our conversations to the next level.
Yvonne – Mapping seems really student centered – seems like it might help me navigate beyond the
Chabot classes and would improve my awareness of links across jobs.
Matt – Yes. These maps may broaden our own awareness of what student can get out of our course
offerings.
Student Rep (??) – I like the idea of having employers come and tell us about entry level options that
training could support. I was blown away that after two semesters I might be able to earn more than $10
an hour. I think that would help a lot of people to come back to college.
Peter – Career Ladders can come back to support what is needed. We are here for the technical
assistance.
Yvonne – If faculty know that these are the fields that are looked at (holds up Career Pathways
Education) then they could start to engage the conversation now right?.
Tom – Just have to say: Chancellor’s office approved the ECD joint program in the 1980s.
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Donna – I know that a lot of people know about the houses model and it hasn’t been as well received.
But, this is really what we were going for it, and it seems encouraging to me that people are showing
interest. There are a lot of ways to integrate Community into the houses.
Kathy – It is a little surprising that we didn’t know we had a grant on this campus that is this exciting
(especially considering we spend two hours a week in these meetings).
Ken It is 4:50. Time to wrap up. Next week, the Houses group will present.