District: Contra Costa Community College District College: Diablo Valley College
The overall directive of the Student Equity Plan (SEP) is to advance inclusive excellence at DVC.
Inclusive excellence commits DVC to maintaining its high standards while actively supporting all students to learn and succeed with the understanding that the diversity of their experiences enriches the institution and its standards of excellence. This directive, and the goals, objectives and activities associated with it are aligned with DVC’s Strategic Plan, which has as its directive that DVC will increase student success. DVC’s commitment to student success means that DVC has an institutional responsibility to recognize barriers to student success and to intentionally develop programs and practices to provide all underserved students with an equal opportunity to succeed. In so doing, DVC retains its commitment to excellence in all of its programs and services. Excellence and equity are mutually supportable goals. As educators and service providers, it is recognized that diversity and differences in students are valuable resources, not an obstacle to learning. Understanding excellence requires that diverse student populations are embraced and contributions be made as full participants in the construction of knowledge and critical thought. For these reasons, this SEP primarily focuses attention on institutional change to improve success for underserved students.
Target Groups
The Student Equity Planning Committee recommends primarily focusing on the following student populations: African American, Hispanic/Latino, and Low Income students. The committee agrees that we should focus on these populations that have experienced historical marginalization, a disproportionate impact in terminal success and completion outcomes and/or have a significant sample size. The committee also decided to take a closer look at
Veterans and Foster Youth who are disproportionately impacted by 3 of the 5 indicators.
Additional analysis, not found in the general equity data, reveals that students below college level make up approximately 70% of the DVC student population. DVC has a rapidly growing
Latino student population, with the percentage of total students doubling since 2002. The overall success rate for students who are not college prepared (1-2 levels below) is approximately 50% compared to 79% for students who are college prepared. Finally, there is a
“road block” at approximately 30 overall units, where many students who begin one to two levels below college-level drop out of DVC. This trend negatively affects the completion and transfer rate of students from this group. This barrier particularly impacts Latino/Hispanic students, DVC’s fastest growing student population.
Goals
The short-term, modest goal is to increase the percentage of students in target populations in all 5 indicators of access, course completion, basic skills, degree completion and transfer by 1%-
2% by fall 2017.
In the long term, DVC will: (1) integrate best equity practices into all programs and services; (2) align equity practices with DVC’s governance, planning, budgeting, and operational processes to insure institutional effectiveness; (3) direct and augment resources to increase inclusive
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District: Contra Costa Community College District College: Diablo Valley College excellence; and (4) develop and implement an equity plan for human resources to maximize employee expertise required to support DVC’s commitment to inclusive excellence.
Activities
DVC has successfully implemented important programs such as EOPS, CARE, CalWORKs, FYE that must redirect and refocus attention on improving the success of the target groups based on the indicators. In order to achieve the goals set out above, DVC has recently implemented a Research, Planning, and Evaluation Group to carry out college-based research and provide recommendations to improve student learning for the DI populations. We will continue to support and create learning communities, cohort groups and tutoring programs such as
Umoja, Puente, MESA, Boots to Books program for veterans, and START. DVC will incorporate a social justice methodology to cultivate relevant learning communities, foster civic engagement, orient staff and faculty and encourage student leadership.
The SEP advances a process for continual data-driven evaluation of activities. Proposed activities will be evaluated on the basis of (a) their anticipated impact on targeted groups and institutional processes to support targeted groups; (b) the potential for scalability of that intervention, and their impact on DVC’s commitment to inclusive excellence. This process envisions the need for continual reflection and changes in activities during the three years of this Plan’s evaluation process. Responsibility for oversight of the evaluation process will rest with the SEC.
Funding
DVC was awarded an allocation of $1,473,850 for the academic year to specifically support programs and develop interventions targeted at increasing equitable outcomes. Given the parameters of the student equity funding, resources will be earmarked specifically towards activities that address the priorities identified in the Goals and Activities.
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It is our recommendation that student equity be a key component of regular college budgeting since the SEP should inform other key college planning and budgeting processes.  As student equity is integrated into program review, the tie to budgeting will become more critical yet more obvious.
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Evaluation
The SEP advances a process for continual data-driven evaluation of activities. Proposed activities will be evaluated on the basis of (a) their anticipated impact on targeted groups and institutional processes to support targeted groups; (b) the potential for scalability of that intervention, and their impact on DVC’s commitment to inclusive excellence. This process envisions the need for continual reflection and changes in activities during the three years of this Plan’s evaluation process. Responsibility for oversight of the evaluation
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District: Contra Costa Community College District College: Diablo Valley College process will rest with the SEC.
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When effective strategies to achieve equity are employed, and when equity plans are integrated into regular college and district processes, all components of college life benefit.
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