Regional Events

3CSN’s Mission

Develop leaders in California community colleges who have the capacity to facilitate networks of faculty, staff, and students for curricular and institutional redesigns in support of increased student access, success, equity, and completion.

Values and shared assumptions

• Everybody (students, faculty, staff) has the right to ongoing, sustained, and rigorous learning experiences to further their personal, educational, and professional growth.
• Learning is a network forming process: connections and relationships are crucial to the learning process.
• Deep learning and leadership are facilitated by maintaining:
  • An appreciative inquiry mindset, i.e., curiosity about what’s possible o A growth mindset, i.e., a belief that change is possible.

Learning Outcomes (used across all our networks/activities & leadership institute) 

Participants will:

1. Develop and implement initiatives that address the persistence, acceleration, and completion of underprepared and underrepresented students.
2. Engage their campus in focused and sustained communities of practice to support these initiatives.
3. Recognize and address gaps, needs, opportunities, and strengths related to teaching and learning in a range of educational settings.
4. Design, implement, and evaluate effective learning environments for diverse groups based on relevant research.
5. Be effective leaders in a wide variety of situations related to the improvement of student outcomes.

To learn more, visit:  http://3csn.org

Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning (AIBL)

The Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning (AIBL) is an association of professors, instructors, teachers and non-teaching supporters (such as retired professors/teachers having IBL experience, administrators, foundation personnel) who are committed to developing and disseminating inquiry-based learning (IBL) techniques.

The central goals of AIBL are promotion and development of IBL approaches to the teaching of mathematics. The underlying belief is that guided inquiry learning experiences should be available to all students. Students should construct their own understanding of Mathematics, learn higher-level thinking skills, and develop healthy habits of mind.

AIBL will foster development and dissemination of IBL techniques through

(1) Support and encouragement of faculty and teachers via mentoring, small grants, workshops, and networking
(2) Dissemination of IBL teaching and learning materials
(3) Leveraging Web 2.0 technologies to foster a supportive community of IBL users
(4) Development of a central, searchable database providing

(a) IBL syllabi
(b) Contact information about AIBL members who have taught IBL courses, sorted by topic (analysis, algebra, number theory, etc.), type of institution (large public university, small liberal arts college), geographical area.

(5) Coordination with other organizations advocating inquiry-based methods

If you would like to learn more about AIBL or have questions, please email Stan Yoshinobu . Questions regarding the database should be directed to the AIBL Co-Director Mark Stankus 

Professor Stan Yoshinobu, Department of Mathematics, is the director of the Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning. 
Professor Mark Stankus, Department of Mathematics, is the co-director of the Academy of Inquiry-Based Learning.

Higher Education Research Institute Community College Faculty Institute

Community colleges are wonderfully complex institutions where terms take on a different meaning than they do in the four-year context. Diversity, for example, goes beyond the traditional perspective of race, class and gender, taking on a more complex and complete view of the lives students at community colleges experience (Deil-Amen, 2011).

The Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA invites community college faculty from all places/regions in California to join to talk about our pedagogical practices, and to learn how to become more effective instructors.

Learn more here.

The Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching

The Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching empower and inspire college and university instructors to transform STEM education through evidence-based teaching practices. The Summer Institutes are dedicated to STEM education reform, improving science literacy, attracting more diverse students to research and increasing the number of students who become scientists at colleges and universities across the United States.

The Summer Institutes model the scientific teaching principles they promote and support participants in directly applying these principles to the development of teaching materials. The curriculum of the Summer Institutes incorporates active learning strategies, effective assessment development, and inclusive teaching practices. Summer Institutes alumni are actively transforming STEM education on their home campuses, contributing to national STEM education initiatives and disseminating their evidence-based teaching efforts and research through publications.

Learn more and find out about regional Summer Institutes here:

https://www.summerinstitutes.org/

The Center for Urban Education:

Achieving racial equity by partnering with educational systems to change policies and practices 

its founding in 1999, the USC Rossier Center for Urban Education (CUE) has worked to bring equity-mindedness to institutions of higher education through socially conscious research, tools and learning institutes. CUE empowers practitioners to act as agents of change, enabling them to be critically race conscious as they respond to changing demographics in our educational systems.

CUE helps faculty, administrators and other college and university staff better under-stand the harmful effects of invisible forms of racism on their campuses. CUE’s primary projects include:

EQUITY-MINDEDNESS INSTITUTES

• Throughout the year, CUE convenes institutes for practitioners on equity in faculty hiring, student success, pedagogical practices, leadership and policy development. CUE has convened institutes for researchers on critical action research, critical quantitative research methods and critical policy analysis, as well as change labs focused on racial equity in STEM. Attracting participants from across the country, the institutes are helping countless education professionals become more equity-minded, creating ongoing ripples of positive effects on campuses nationwide.

EQUITY SCORECARD

• CUE pioneered the Equity Scorecard, a five-phase institutional transformation intervention to achieve racial equity in access, retention and degree attainment. Both a process and a data tool, the Equity Scorecard combines a theoretical framework with practical strategies meant to initiate institutional change that will lead to equitable outcomes for minoritized students. The process engages leaders, faculty and staff to examine campus data, practices and policies through the lens of the Scorecard to better understand and correct entrenched racial equity issues.

POLICY CHANGE

• CUE partners with state education systems to embed equity in policy design and implementation, fostering better outcomes for racially minoritized students.

IMPACT

The Center for Urban Education developed the framework for equity-minded practice and policy that has been adopted by foundations, associations and institutions of higher education nationally. CUE has helped hundreds of practitioners and institutions become equity-minded by teaching them to effectively question their own assumptions, recognize racial stereotypes that harm student success and continually reassess their practices to create change.

CUE created the Percentage Point Gap formula to calculate racial equity goals — a formula that has been adopted by California’s Community College Chancellor. CUE’s Equity Scorecard, meanwhile, has been used by over 100 educational institutions, including 43 in California, as well as the Wisconsin and Pennsylvania state university systems, the US Coast Guard Academy, and many others. To date, over 60 California institutions of higher education have participated in CUE’s ongoing equity-mindedness institutes.

Visit cue.usc.edu to learn more.