Chancellor's Community Advisory Group
Our District has come a long way and we have done this by focusing on a central theme--Student Success. We also firmly believe that the only way to attain this goal is if we agree that student success if everyone's responsibility. The goal of the Community Advisory Group is to elicit your support and advice for student success.
One of the trademarks of the California is Community Colleges is the process of Participatory Governance where key constituent groups play a formal and active part in the decision making process of the colleges and the District as a whole. This then is the District's leadership team and along with all of the students, faculty and staff we are united in the belief that student success is everyone's responsibility. And a major component of this team for student success is our community, each and every one of you.
Our Governing Board is among a handful in the state of California that has opted to adopt a formal policy on Student Success. We have not only defined student success for ourselves. We have also established metrics to ensure that we are moving the needle ever forward.
As our board engaged in the development and adoption of a policy on student success, they studied national state and regional trends. At the national level, leadership has been spearheaded by President Obama who has placed community colleges front and center in the strategy for economic development.
Our National Association, AACC, following up on the national call recently published a report, "Reclaiming the American Dream." The report clearly identifies 3Rs as cornerstones for the work ahead.
Let's reflect on our most precious resource –our people and our workforce—what do we know? California will reach 40 million by 2020 and 50 million by 2040. Most of this growth by the way will come from immigration and not necessarily new births.
If we are to undertake the 3R's, program design has to be centered on the profile of the students we serve, their educational, cultural and linguistic needs. So what do we all know about current demographics?
- Top Eight Skills Gap:
- Leadership and executive skills
- Basic workplace competencies such as literacy and numeracy that are the building blocks of successful performance in any job
- Professional or industry-specific skills
- Managerial and supervisory skills
- Communication and interpersonal skills
- Technical, IT, and systems skills
- Sales skills
- Process, program, and project management skills.
The ASTD (American Society for Training and Development) Skills Gap poll also identified categories of skills most lacking among the responding organizations. In first place were leadership and executive-level skills, reported as lacking by 50 percent of respondents. Following closely were basic skills at 46 percent, professional or industry-specific skills at 41 percent, and managerial and supervisory skills at 31 percent.
- The Work Ahead: A Proposed Blueprint For Our Partnership
- Redesign Students' Educational Experiences
- Reinvent Institutional Role
- Reset the System
- Stop Studying/Piloting and Researching: We know what we need to do
- Firmly Establish, Develop and Grow Certificates
- Align Certificates with Real/ Regional Job Growth Trends
- Recognize the undeniable need to focus on educational skills gap
- The greatest asset is the current and future workforce
- Our greatest failure is our unwillingness to recognize the disproportionate impact of poverty, education and training along demographic lines