1. Sacramento/Central Valley Network Inaugural Regional Meeting
May 18, 2009
What Would You Like to See in the Network?
Answers from Participants of SCVN Inaugural Regional Meeting
• Podcasting
• Show everyone on campus how everyone benefits from getting involved with BSI/helping students
succeed
• Campus-based workshops
• Mutually developed SLO’s by counselors and instructors
• Workshops at a variety of times (e.g., evenings and weekends)
• Invite students and tutors to participate in workshops
• How can what we do in the classroom change?
• Faculty retreat (pay adjuncts to attend)
• Awareness of the Network
• Way to facilitate communication between faculty, staff, and administrators campus-wide, include
student services and beyond
• Ways to encourage use among everyone; for digital immigrants, provide practical applications; how
to train digital natives on how to use resources effectively
• Create cohorts within broader Network (e.g., TRIO, Puente, learning communities, etc.)
• Support/assistance for our own campus workshops/trainings
• Follow-up regional meeting to get down to nuts and bolts; move beyond theory to specifics
• Training on learning how to ask the right questions—get to the heart of the issue
Answers from Pilot Colleges on First Site Visit
• Alignment with K-12
• Use Facebook for a blog instead of Edulounge—many are already on Facebook
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2. • Taps into other issues related to basic skills, such as the learning communities consortium
• Clearinghouse for best practices and experiments
• How to educate the campus—ways to encourage buy-in
• What different schools are doing coordinating across the disciplines—basic skills students taking
history and other courses; make connections with all other networks—be a team and not work
against one another
• All join CalPass—all colleges in the Network
• Identify programs that have been able to use technology to scale up in basic skills; all the good
software and lab design that is out there; also more online components
• Student Services—professional development—examples of how they are involved in student
success; what other colleges are doing with student services—special orientations for diversity
students
• Professional development for associate faculty
• Make sure the Network puts students at the center; need for “student stories” in all we do
• Integrate life-management class across the curriculum—modules and issues that hit all students
• More connection to community resources/libraries and others
• Fold service learning into basic skills
• Ideas for multiple ways of delivering assessment and orientation; bilingual publications for
orientations; help with counseling and orientation about not discouraging them with long lists of
math classes they have to take when in basic skills
• Creating a cohort through EOPS
• More about jobs and careers and helping basic skills students; helping students have direction
• Not funneling every student into transfer or the same things
• Collectively define what we mean by “student success”; change the measurements and the
definitions of success in the state. We’ve allowed the state to define what student success is—let’s
look at it ourselves and redefine it.
• Helping us to be scholars in particular areas, such as writing, reading, math, etc.
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3. • What is data—what are the parameters—what are the categories—how we can apply it and how
we shouldn’t apply it—examples from other campuses—have an inquiry role rather than an
adversarial role; have data coaches help us with this; clear definitions of what is one level below
transfer, two levels below transfer, etc.; maybe put major research projects on web; reporting data
out—quarterly updates
• Help from the network for “thorny” questions
• Major talks should appear on the website and be shared through the Network—streamed on the
network; names of people and contact numbers so that we can get hold of people easily
• Colleges that have Trio grants that are focusing on basic skills but aren’t using BSI money—Schools
that have both Trio and basic skills—how are they interfacing?
• What have other colleges done in terms of reporting—what have they done for their presidents or
VPI’s—how to do assessment and evaluation; what have others done with getting report backs from
those in charge of various projects
• How transparent are others with their funds; how conscientious are they—how they are setting up
their funds
• How to integrate more reading, writing, math into CTE programs—do it as an inquiry group—
• What other colleges have done with BSI funds that contextualize English and math
• Have a series of roundtable discussions with leaders from each table—leaders by discipline or basic
skills coordinators, etc.
• Best practices in practice—actual examples of them and how they are working at other schools
• People showing their “warts”—tell us the problems you are having—having clear processes and the
problems they had along the way
• What people’s thoughts are for sustaining BSI—how do you try to live in an unpredictable world;
how do we keep people excited and interested in what we’re doing with BSI; if we have limited
resources, how do we bring in new ideas
• Linking resources—examples such as healthcare, rent, etc.; linking resources to non-credit programs
and adult schools
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