A great deal of fear surrounds the implementation of recent legislation and how it might impact the very interconnected California higher education system, courses, and most importantly students. As basic skills courses have become scarce, concerns have arisen about how to maintain course eligibility for transfer when the required basic skills prerequisites may no longer be offered by the college.
Faculty in the California Community Colleges (CCC) system should be recognized and commended for their dedication and efforts to meet the needs of 100% of the students.
In January of 2023, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges lost a strong ally and a dear friend with the passing of Rich Hansen. Rich was a long-time faculty member at De Anza College and served as the president of the Foothill-De Anza Faculty Association, as statewide president of the California Community College Independent unions, as a member of the board of the Faculty Association of California Community Colleges (FACCC), and in various other leadership roles.
In the 2021 legislative cycle, multiple bills were passed that were directed at the California Community Colleges system. Of those bills, Assembly Bills 927, 928, and 1111 may have the most widespread and lasting impacts on the colleges in the system. Each bill has a timeline for implementation and the potential for both immediate and long-term effects.
Faculty frequently have the opportunity to guide a student interested in pursuing a career in teaching. Indeed, many faculty members in the profession today owe their success to a helpful mentor at a community college. These informal efforts are critical components of student success and contribute to the gratification of being a community college educator.
The following are two typical stories:
Equivalency processes and policies throughout the California community colleges vary widely, as they are locally determined. However, because a variety of methods of equivalency evaluation practices exist, potential candidates for faculty positions sometimes encounter barriers in navigating the system.
As colleges engage in antiracist, equity-minded, inclusive practices, they must be thoughtful and intentional about using language to avoid labeling, discrimination, and archaic terms that marginalize and disenfranchise communities. Colleges should be honoring the voices of their diverse student and employee populations by shifting to anti-discriminatory language in the same way they seek to be antiracist.
North Carolina State University’s Center for Universal Design—a global movement of inclusive design practice through a working group of architects, product designers, engineers, and environmental design researchers—collaborated to identify seven components of the Principles of Universal Design (Connell et al.,1997):