Giving children of farmworkers an education like that offered to children of doctors BY BENJAMIN DURAN SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 06:00 AM, UPDATED SEPTEMBER 20, 2019 06:00 AM I grew up in a family of migrant farmworkers, working in the Central Valley fields with my parents and seven brothers and sisters. But since elementary school, I only ever wanted to be a teacher. My own teachers helped make this dream a reality.…
Getting There: Are California Community Colleges Maximizing Student Completion of Transfer-Level Math and English? September 2019 A new law, Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin), is driving dramatic changes in how California Community Colleges place students into English and math courses. Beginning in fall 2019, AB 705 requires the colleges to use students’ high school grades as the primary means of placement; restricts colleges from denying students access to transferable, college-level courses; and…
2020 Project: UC Merced celebrates opening of two new campus research buildings BY SHAWN JANSEN AUGUST 15, 2019 12:16 PM, UPDATED AUGUST 15, 2019 07:56 PM UC Merced celebrated the completion of the second phase of the university’s $1.33 billion 2020 project on Wednesday night. The second phase included two laboratories, a loading dock and a recreation field. The project also included a research modular server near the Central Plant…
Porterville College president happy to be back in Central Valley where she achieved her American dream Being a college president was never a position Claudia Habib thought she would fill. Her career, much like her life, has been an evolution with no specific end position or goal in mind. She came to the United States from Colombia with no English under her belt, and to make ends meet, she cleaned homes…
California’s inland region key to statewide vitality By KARTHICK RAMAKRISHNAN | PUBLISHED: June 21, 2019 at 6:24 pm | UPDATED: June 21, 2019 at 6:24 pm When it comes to investing in California, the smart money is heading inland, home to one of the most robust employment, innovation and opportunity centers in the United States. That might surprise those who still view the Inland Empire and Central Valley as distant outposts — barely mentionable in…
JUNE 04, 2019 BY STUART VAN HORN, ED.D. Preparing the Way for a Central Valley Renaissance Recently, Governor Newsom announced his new “Regions Rise Together” initiative. Launched in partnership with California Forward and the California Economic Summit, this initiative is in recognition of the fact that the substantial economic and job growth that the state has experienced since 2010 has been concentrated in the state’s coastal areas and has largely passed…
July 5, 2017 California needs 1.1 million more workers with bachelor’s degrees by 2030 to keep up with economic demand, PPIC research has found. Three regions will play an especially critical role in addressing this challenge: Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire, and the San Joaquin Valley. Improving college enrollment and graduation rates in these regions could help close more than half of this projected statewide skills gap, according to a…
Sonya Christian and Lynnette Zelezny January 20, 2019 Bakersfield is home to two major institutions of higher education — Bakersfield College and Cal State Bakersfield. Each has a rich history and tradition of serving students and meeting the needs of the Bakersfield community. Since opening its doors to 13 students in 1913, BC has grown to serve more than 33,000 students annually. And since its founding in 1965, CSUB has grown…
UC Merced Chancellor Dorothy Leland presides over the University of California’s newest, smallest and most diverse campus. More than half of her 8,000 students are low-income and underrepresented minorities; nearly three-fourths are the first in their families to attend college. This year, in U.S. News and World Report’s rankings of public universities, those students helped the campus climb 18 spots, to No. 2, for surpassing expected graduation rates. Leland recently spoke…
A national educational movement that started in 2009 is becoming more powerful and widespread each year, extending now from coast to coast. Complete College America is an initiative encouraging college students to earn their degrees as expeditiously and conscientiously as they can. In the last decade, studies have shown students who create an aggressive educational plan and follow it are more likely to graduate than those who slowly and gradually move toward graduation.…