Values Statement

The San José/Evergreen Community College District (SJECCD) prides itself in creating an environment focused on equity and excellence in student success, respecting the strength of the heritages and life experiences of our students and communities to build more responsive colleges.  Our District is nationally renowned for its advocacy to develop policies and educational approaches that incorporate the knowledge we have gained from critically analyzing global, national and immigrant experiences.  We have approached our work with the intention of reframing the standard definitions of student and institutional success.   Our District’s core values are opportunity, equity and social justice.  Each one of these values is incorporated into our strategic planning and is a part of the foundational commitments we make to our communities as we use the tool of higher education to bring them to life.   

SJECCD hires qualified and committed faculty and staff who dedicate themselves to our vision and to empowering student success.  SJECCD values the leadership of faculty and staff who possess knowledge and experiences that reflect the community and share in the District’s commitment to social justice, equity and opportunity for all students in the greater San José area.  The District provides a working environment to make valuable use of the rich heritages and shared commitments of its employees.  As a result, our dedicated and talented employees are passionate about providing our student population with the best educational experience possible. 

Opportunity
As a District, we are constantly looking for opportunities to help us enhance our commitment to students.  We have established ongoing relationships with K-12 educational leaders, the San José business community, as well as our local legislators.  The College Connection Academy at Evergreen Valley College (EVC) is one partnership with Franklin McKinley School District and the East Side Union High School District that allows students to participate in a “skills to work” curriculum for middle school students.  This program is only one of two such programs in the country designed for students in grades 7-high school.   It is modeled after the Skills to Work program in Scotland through the Scottish Qualifications Authority. 

In addition to seeking out opportunities to enhance our students through programs and different types of global and community initiatives, we also wish to create an environment in which our students are given opportunities to voice how they experience our schooling system and for the SJECCD to compare these student experiences to other student experiences around the world.  For this reason, several of our initiatives have included community dialogues, focus group training, faculty and student-lead focus groups, and global-activism projects.  With more than one third of our students claiming Latina/o ancestry, one such project brought to our college the Nobel Laureate, Rigoberta Menchú Tum.  In addition to travel to México and El Salvador, our District hopes to visit schools in Guatemala in the future, as well as other countries in the Americas—creating linkages from our past to our present helping students to dream for themselves and to create new alliances and global opportunities that may not have presented themselves in the past.

Equity
SJECCD recognizes that cultural diversity in the academic environment promotes academic excellence; fosters cultural, racial and human understanding; provides positive role models for all students; and creates a race and gendered conscious educational framework where equity in student success is the definition of institutional excellence.

At SJECCD, leadership from the Board, to the CEO, to the College campuses is being challenged to create a responsive way of serving all students that uses equity-mindedness as a framework.  The Equity-Scorecard and Achieving the Dream initiatives are progressive approaches to institutional transformation.  Our District is the only one in the state of California that has been selected to participate in both of these national initiatives. The process currently underway examines the student data at Evergreen Valley College and San José City College in multi-disciplinary teams called, Evidence Teams.  These teams learn to make meaning of data that is disaggregated by ethnicity and gender.  Part of each team’s learning process teaches them to question traditional models of data analysis that tend to blame students for limited preparedness to succeed in college.  By broadening and deepening an awareness of the institutional barriers that impede students’ preparation for college success, the colleges are better prepared to develop culturally aware interventions intended to close equity gaps in student achievement.  The college’s chosen interventions are then monitored over time and adjustments are made so that their effectiveness can be optimized.

By questioning traditional methods of data analysis and discouraging ‘quick-fix’ solutions that are not grounded in evidence and cultural awareness, the District supports its commitment to equitable outcomes for all students and provides a substantive example for other community colleges that are vested in changing institutional practices and closing the student achievement gap.  The San José/Evergreen Community College District keeps equity at the center of its institutional responsibility for serving all students by adopting this progressive approach.

Social Justice
Social Justice is the pursuit of equity for populations who are, currently and historically, marginalized, exploited, disempowered, or violated based on their social group membership.  These manifestations of oppression are pervasive existences of social inequality reified throughout our social institutions, as well as embedded within individual consciousness.  Our District courageously acknowledges these factors do impede student success and calls all employees and students into action on behalf of addressing the value of social justice, both at a local and global level through studying and teaching about critical race theory, socially constructed behaviors and practices, global impacts of oppression, and tools for social activism. 

As part of its commitment to social justice, our district, from board members to students, has traveled abroad to various countries, such as Vietnam, Mexico, China, Scotland and El Salvador, to learn from the experiences of others specifically about integration of career tech and university subjects in new models of teaching and learning, to infuse the concepts of international service learning into our curricula, to broaden awareness about culturally different ways of constructing schooling, teaching and learning and to develop a more broadly defined social justice agenda into our programs and services.  It is SJECCD’s belief that participating in real-life experiences will allow our faculty and staff to gain a better understanding of the life stories of the students and communities we serve.  Our commitment to socially justice causes enables us to offer both international service learning opportunities, as well as a deeper understanding of the social impacts of diaspora, wars, deportations, and US economic policies on the families in our local communities as we strive to gain a global and cultural understanding of the challenges some immigrants face and to gain an appreciation for our diverse and unique populations.