Regional Strong Workforce funds were allocated to Palomar College to offer a Student Success and Retention Institute that supported 21 faculty from across several CTE and non-CTE disciplines. The Institute began in February 2020 with an all-day conference at the Sheraton by the airport hosting over 250 faculty from throughout the San Diego region. At the conference, faculty were given the opportunity to hear from experts regarding success and retention impacts on our marginalized populations and were challenged to start thinking about their own teaching practices and how our biases can contribute to the retention of our students. After the conference, the faculty starting meeting monthly with the Dean of CTE and their research team to start looking at their classroom data in a new way. Through these interactions, faculty were to develop their research project and start working on developing strategies to “test” out new practices inside and outside of the classroom. Faculty worked in small groups to start digging deeply into their syllabi and identifying areas they could improve. Faculty also discussed possible teaching strategies that could address impacts they were discovering in their data.
In June the faculty participated in an all-day summer retreat and had the opportunity to listen to and work with DeEtta Jones, a renowned strategist on equity, diversity, inclusion, and workplace transformation. Faculty were very motivated by her message and started applying what she had shared to their research project. One of the outcomes of the summer retreat was the idea to share their experience with other faculty in the hopes that Palomar would continue to move this project forward to include other faculty. The production of a short video sharing some of the faculty’s experiences resulted in the following video: https://youtu.be/k3IQ6KjBEDo
The faculty will attend another all day retreat on September 25th where the 10 regional community colleges will share their experiences and their learning from the Institute.