Initiatives Related to our Strategic Plan Goal
Proposed Initiatives:
College UP
This is a course, an initiative, that shifts the paradigm around how we imagine bringing students
into the consciousness of “Being in College.” Design a “welcome to Chabot” 0.5 or 1 unit course, with
trained faculty (including specific training from counselors) as the teachers. Build the courses
around themes that are relevant and interesting to students. (We have seen such courses being
offered around the nation.) Integrate Student Voice and Making Visible deeply into the fabric of the
course so that incoming students can begin to develop a vocabulary for speaking to and
comprehending their own situations.
Why?Helps students get off to a strong start in college, and build a mentoring relationship between
faculty and students. Builds relationships between instructional and counseling faculty. Helps
increase faculty happiness. Builds community amongst students. This course integrates the “foot
deep” strategy; this is an intentional process that both trains and elicits from faculty strategies for
service, learning support and navigation that help students situate themselves as learners and as
students at Chabot College. The controlling thesis for this course: High Touch coupled with an
understanding that students need to be honored and supported as they come into consciousness as
learners and find their way at the college will yield best results for individual students and for the
college’s retention and success goals.
Activities:
Spring 2013: assemble interested stake holders who will work together in a FIG to: Design course,
conduct out reach to potential teachers, shape logistics of course including roll-out, trainings,
piloting, scheduling, create course materials that draw from and integrate Student Voice, Making
Visible, Peer Mentor work in Counseling, Harbin’s GS20, other similar college courses, classroom
and counseling activities that build consciousness, and more. Work with Student Services and
college to institutionalize the course.
Fall 2013: pilot the course with 10 instructors, create and implement data gathering, and use FIG
approach to learn from the piloting experience. Host Fall Festival featuring capstone project from
each class, such as community mapping, core principles made alive, Student Voice/Making Visible
projects, etc. Work with Student Services and college to institutionalize the course.
Spring 2014: 20 teachers, 2 sections each, totaling 1000 students. Work with Student Services and
college to institutionalize the course. Employ FIG approach to learn from the piloting experience.
Host Fall Festival featuring capstone project from each class, such as community mapping, core
principles made alive, Student Voice/Making Visible projects, etc.
Embedded Counseling in Basic Skills classes.
This initative addresses a real stumbling block to student success, which is that budget cuts have
severely undermined the ability of counselors to serve--in the ways that have been done in the past-all the students who need their support and guidance.
Why? Brings counseling TO the students in an intensive manner. Builds relationships between
instructional and counseling faculty. Puts into play “High Touch”, a counseling philosophy that
argues students are better served in settings that couple frequent contact with low stakes for each
contact, as opposed to one (Low Touch) High Stakes contact that puts pressure on both student
and counselor. Also puts into play Relationship and Community as the cornerstones of encouraging
student success.
Activities:
Spring 2013: assemble interested stake holders who will work together in a FIG to: conduct
outreach to potential instructor and counselor-hosts, shape logistics of this initiative including rollout, trainings, piloting, scheduling. Work with Student Services, including the Matriculation
Committee, and college to institutionalize the arrangement.
Fall 2013: pilot the course with 10 teachers and counselors, create and implement data gathering,
and use FIG approach to learn from the piloting experience. Work with Student Services and college
to institutionalize the arrangement.
Spring 2014: 20 teachers and counselors; Work with Student Services, including the Matriculation
Committee, and college to institutionalize the arrangement.
Kicking Assessment
Investigate new approaches and/or policies for assessment and placement, such as required
refresher or Summer Jam type courses, or developing a process that would enable students to more
quickly retake the assessment test, or look again at self-placement, or add other measures to inform
the placement process.
Why? Way too much rides on the Accuplacer results. This one test, more than any other factor, sets
the stage for our students likelihood of making it at our college. This project will diffuse the power
of the current test by: 1) invoking other means of assessing; and/or 2) better preparing our
students for assessment; and/or 3) using multiple measures including perhaps CSU Placement tests
taken in high school or high school grades in Junior and Senior years or holistically graded exams;
and/or 4) revisiting informed self-placement. This could lead to increasing access to our incredibly
clogged math and English classes, as students place more favorably or as students make an
informed decision to take a “challenging” class.
Activities:
Spring 2013: Assemble interested stake holders who will work together in a FIG to: review
relevant research both local and national about assessment; research other college’s programs
designed to address problems around assesment; shape logistics of this initiative including roll-out,
trainings, piloting. Work with Student Services including Assessment to institutionalize the
arrangement. Draft new assessment process for the college.
Fall 2013: Pilot the new assessment process and use FIG approach to learn from the piloting
experience.Work with Student Services and college to institutionalize the arrangement.
Spring 2014: Work with Student Services to institutionalize the new assessment process.
Sharing the Page: Collaborating with our high school partners
It is time for a deep collaboration between HS and CC teachers in Math and English with goal of
mutual professional development that advances and aligns curriculum while at the same time
revises placement criteria. This initiative would be long term. The idea is to sit down with our
secondary school colleagues and learn from each other in a way that opens up lines of
communication and understanding. In this work together we would discuss pedagogy, practice,
assumptions about learning, deeper goals we have for our students, pressures we experience in our
system. The whole goal would be to “share the page” so we can do better with the students we
share.
Why?We share the same students and as we know most of our incoming students come to us
needing remediation. There are other districts and regions collaborating; we can learn from them.
We can hopefully alleviate the disconnect and maybe even improve articulation between the
systems so that grades in high school can be a determinant of where students place at our college.
Activities:
Spring 2013: This spring we some point people from Math and English begin the conversation with
our high school counterparts. They engage our high school colleagues in setting a vision and
planning for an April retreat that includes the majority of the faculty from the English and Math
departments from the high schools and Chabot. Meanwhile, faculty leaders from the feeder
institutions and Chabot work with the senior administrators to set the stage for our collaboration in
April and going forward. The April retreat will result in a strategic plan for our collaboration with
our feeder schools over the next academic year.
Fall 2013: A series of meetings aimed at sharing our work while taking into consideration outside
forces, our beliefs about student capacity, and why we teach: Common Core and IGETC, Structure of
our courses and course outlines, Learning Outcomes and Academic Goals, lessons and student work,
pedagogical assumptions and the like. The approach to all these meetings though WILL NOT be to
get hung up inside of any one of these exterior over-institutionalized categories and language, but
rather to claim early on a bold space and purpose for our collaboration that started with us, our
students (student voices should inform this work at every step of the way).
Spring 2014: will work toward a shared understanding of how our students will move between our
institutions, including: articulation agreements that impact placement, ongoing process for norming
and growing our collaboration, activities and events for our students to be in each other’s space so
both the high school and the college are featured and broadcast. This will be a document.
Why? To break the institutional silence, the deer-in-the-headlights approach to equity currently
employed at Chabot.
Equity
Centered on Student Voice and experience at our institution, this initiative will raise the
consciousness of our faculty regarding student populations who are the most at-risk students on
our campus. By drilling down into disaggregated data, we will look at our students across all of our
departments. Students, staff and faculty will work together to bring into the foreground the lives,
the stories, the socio-economic conditions, the goals of our historically underresourced students.
We will ask real questions about the impact of poverty, racism, and social injustice on our students.
We will draw from the current efforts, like Daraja and Puente, with the goal of dramatically
expanding the efforts, not necessarily through new programs, but through an articulated set of
goals, practices, and understandings that translate to increased student success and retention
across the curriculum. All of the activities below, assume some meetings and workshops with
participating faculty and students.
Activities:
Spring 2013: Gather faculty into FIG to explore and plan how to raise consciousness around equity
in classrooms and across campus, particularly at the level of practices. Engage students in student
voice activities, so we can learn from their experiences. Faculty, staff and students work together to
make visible the context and deeper issues behind inequity. Identify a strong core of students who
will collaborate with instructors to help prepare “Equity Encounters”--conversations, workshops,
and other ventures that build up Chabot’s work with students who are the most historically
underresourced. Bring research relevant to equity work into the discussion at Chabot, and
articulate the core questions we need to ask.
Fall 2013: Enlist faculty from across the curriculum to partake in an “Equity-minded” semester,
where they both try out practices, engage students and share with the Equity FIG what they are
learning. Simultaneously, we will engage students from their classes in student voice work so that
we can track their experience both in the classroom and beyond during the semester--surveys,
focus groups, interviews. Our student equity team will be on the ground doing this work with their
peers. By the end of the term, we will make visible our collective learning and what it means for us
going forward, and share it with the college during college-wide gatherings.
Spring 2013: Repeat activities of fall semester with new faculty, and have fall participants
collaborate with them in the work. Meanwhile, the Equity FIG will pull all of their learning, people
and experiences together into an “Equity Fair” to be held in mid-spring. The FIG will go to the
faculty in the disciplines and share what they are learning and gather their input and permission to
host the fair as a way of engaging them in a shared dialogue that can spring forward from this FIG
experience and out of the Equity fair. These “Equity Encounters” will not be pedantic or accusatory,
the goal will be to put an Equity consciousness on the map at Chabot in a way that is serious and
helpful.
Summer Retreat
This retreat will serve all faculty and staff involved in these initiatives. By bringing us into a shared
discussion of pedagogy and practice, we will exponentially propel paradigm shifts across our
campus. The most essential aspect of all of this work is bringing into the center of it a deep dive into
questions of pedagogy and practice informed by student voices. Lots of us look at what we do and
how we do it either on our own, with our colleague buddies, in our disciplines; the goal of a retreat
would be for us to do it in a common space, across disciplines and initiatives, so our work can better
combust and bring about a pedagogic and practice vision relevant to strategic planning.
Goals:
●
Low-cost, scalable approaches designed to reach maximum amount of students, including
incoming freshmen
● Focus on Basic Skills, student support, and equity
● Facilitate paradigm shift by integrating the various initiatives outlined below
Possible Process:
● Identify potential funds for Spring (FIGs?). Identify reassigned time FTEF allocation for Fall.
● Further develop the goals/criteria.
● Share goals and initial ideas, and then ask for proposals to meet these goals.
● Publicly review proposals in PRBC. Forward recommendations to Senior Administrators.