Retirement Reflections of a Community College Teacher

 

While lifelong learning is everyone's aspiration, time and age make lifelong teaching impossible. That being the case, I will retire as a Math Faculty member from San Jose City College at the end of the spring semester. After 15 years, I leave with an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the opportunity to nurture eager knowledge seekers and see them bloom. Few things in life can equal the satisfaction of seeing students find their academic footing and face life with confidence and creativity.

I came to teaching late in life after spending three restless decades at various hi-tech companies in Silicon Valley. “An aim in life,” wrote Robert Louis Stevenson, “is the only fortune worth finding.” It is possible to go through an entire lifetime without finding one’s “fortune.” I am grateful I found mine after years of wandering in the technological wilderness.

Here are some personal observations on teaching and learning related to community colleges and the challenges they confront moving forward.

First, community college students, many first-generation from low-income families, hunger for affirmation of their worth. They are like dormant seeds waiting for rain and expect us to be that rain. While they understand that teachers require rigor and excellence from them, they also expect such expectations to be tempered by compassion and some occasional humor.

Here’s an example. Maria looked lost on the first day of my statistics class. I saw fear in her eyes, even tears. She emailed me after two weeks that she was behind and couldn’t even understand Measures of Center. “Should I drop your class?” she asked.

After a little thinking, I replied, “Don’t drop. Let’s meet during office hours and see what we can do.”

We met twice weekly over the next several weeks, going over problems step by step. “It’s not easy,” I told her. “I had the same difficulty you are facing when I was learning this.”

Slowly, Maria began making progress. She took charge of her learning. One day she stunned me by disclosing, “I had a brain aneurysm three years ago and am still recovering from it. But it’s finally clicking in my brain.”

Maria received a well-deserved “A” in my class and is currently majoring in psychology at a local university. Miracles occur at the intersection of “highly demanding” and “highly supportive” for both students and teachers.

Second, students engage if they see the relevance of what they learn in the classroom to what they experience in their lives outside the classroom. Should they buy that laptop warranty (probability and statistics)? How do doctors put the brakes on a pandemic (exponential growth of viruses versus exponential decay via vaccines)? How does math relate to English, physics and other disciplines (real-life problems span disciplines) that reveal their synergy? Relevance and connections deepen intuition and imagination and help students appreciate the power and beauty of their subjects.

Third, we owe it to our students to bring fresh insights and perspectives into our teaching even if we have taught the same material a thousand times. This requires keeping up with the latest developments in our changing fields. How do we capture patterns with mathematical formulas, whether the patterns are in sunflower spirals or the emergence of underground cicadas? How can we differentiate True Positives from False Positives in clinical tests while taking into account the Base Rate? How does math relate to democracy, elections, birthrates and healthcare? We must reflect in our teaching the dynamic nature of knowledge.

Fourth, student affirmations inspire teachers too! We also need to know from time to time that we are igniting the curiosity of students and instilling in them the joy of learning. Every semester, I get an email or two from students that make my spirit soar. One recent missive reads: "I've been working on my psychology course and found myself repeatedly returning to concepts you taught us. Even though we focused on statistics, the way you explained numbers and analyses as tools to understand the world around us has had a lasting impact on me."
A single vote of student confidence per semester can be enough vindication for a teacher.

Now to challenges, specifically two. First is the one posed by the Genie in the Bottle, also known as Artificial Intelligence (AI), and its even more powerful version, Artificial General intelligence (AGI), capable of doing all cognitive tasks, and perhaps even more, than a human can do. Ask any question and tools such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Microsoft’s CoPilot and Google Gemini give sophisticated answers, albeit with errors that, with newer versions, become fewer. Having difficulty with a particularly pesky algebra or calculus problem? No problem, ask AI. “What effect does climate change have on human and animal migration? Illustrate with specific examples.” Rejoice, AI will create the whole enchilada for you!

Preventing students from using AI is as futile as King Canute commanding incoming tides to halt. The question is how to use AI to complement critical thinking and genuine learning among students without short-circuiting the process. Recently, the California State University (CSU) system (23 campuses, 460,000 students and 63,000 faculty and staff) and the University of California (UC) system, (9 campuses, 295,000 students and 265,000 faculty and staff), launched initiatives with leading Silicon Valley AI companies to train students and faculty in the best use of AI tools. California’s Community College (CCC) system, the largest in the nation with 116 colleges, over 2 million students and 91,328 faculty and staff, is pursuing similar goals. CCC’s Academic Senate has urged Chancellor Dr. Sonya Christian to establish a centralized CCC AI Commons to provide access to generative AI tools and resources for students, faculty and staff, to be modeled after CSU’s centralized AI Commons (https://genai.calstate.edu)

These initiatives are likely to go through several iterations before a coherent, consistent and ethical use of AI in education emerges. But the process has begun and that’s progress.

The second challenge is more daunting: The Trump Administration’s war on education. Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI) programs, a hallmark of community colleges, are being dismantled. There is pressure on colleges and universities to revise curricula to reflect a more conservative agenda. The threat of mass deportations has unsettled CCC’s estimated 100,000 undocumented students, including those protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). To counter the threat, colleges are stepping up efforts to provide legal protection to students and their families. My college, for instance, like most CCC’s, is offering free legal and mental health services to allay the uncertainty, anxiety and fear of students.

On the eve of retirement, two opposing thoughts occupy me. The first is sadness at the enormous damage the Trump administration is inflicting on education in general and our colleges and universities in particular. The second is my faith in the resilience and power of our institutions to protect the vulnerable and the marginalized while inspiring excellence among students, and to sustain the freedoms that define our democracy. There may be a few defeats and setbacks initially, but I am confident our institutions will come through with their values and principles not only restored but also enhanced.

California must reverse community college enrollment decline

 You can also read the article in the San Jose Mercury News

Enrollment at California’s 116 community colleges has fallen from the pre-pandemic peak of 2.1 million to 1.8 million, a decline of over 14%. It is critical that enrollment increases in the nation’s largest higher education system. Community colleges provide zero to low-cost quality education that gives students from struggling to middle-income families the skills needed to make a decent and meaningful living. If enrollment continues to decline, more Californians will miss out on the American promise than ever before.

How to increase enrollment at community colleges? As a math professor at San Jose City College (SJCC), I have three ideas based on my experience with students.

First, widen the scope of Community College’s High School Dual or Concurrent Enrollment.

In the summer of 2022, I had the privilege of teaching math at SJCC’s Milpitas extension, a collaboration between the Milpitas Unified School District and SJCC. To see students from 9th, 10th, 11th and 12th grades earning college credits while attending high school to get a head start in their college careers was inspiring. We had animated discussions about applying quadratic equations to describe the arc of a baseball, exponential functions to describe the growth of viruses and probability to quantify uncertainty.

As expected, some dual-enrollment students attend SJCC after graduating from high school each year. While many community colleges have similar collaborations with their local high schools, Kern County Community College District spanning the San Joaquin Valley, eastern Sierra and Mojave Desert being one of the largest, there remains room for growth. SJCC, for instance, can collaborate with more local schools through an effective outreach program to ensure a steady stream of new students.

Second, improve the quality of college websites.

This seems obvious but is often overlooked. Online users, particularly prospective or current students, spend on average three minutes and visit 2-3 pages per session during which they either find what they are looking for or they leave. Many community college websites are clunky and confusing. Finding information often turns into a wild-goose chase. Students complain, and I verified it myself, that it is easier to retrieve information from the SJCC website through Google than through the website itself. Even the basic task of enrolling for a class can be a challenge.

Effective websites have no clutter and have elements that spark digital joy, such as easy navigation, mobile friendliness, fewer clicks for information and accessibility for all. Build coherent websites, and they will come.

Third, California’s community colleges must become equal partners to the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. With a population of just over 39 million and an estimated GDP of about $4 trillion, California is poised to overtake Germany as the fourth-largest economy in the world, behind only the United States, China and Japan.

California’s economy has a strong positive correlation with the quality of education it offers its residents. While the eight-campus UC and 23-campus CSU systems have a combined student population of about 750,000 from relatively well-to-do families, our 116 community colleges educate more than double that many students.

California’s 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education that vastly privileges UCs and CSUs over community colleges is obsolete. Technology has transformed teaching and learning and the dynamics between research and career. To paraphrase Dorothy, “Toto, I have a feeling we are not in the ‘60s anymore.”

California’s community colleges do the heavy lifting of educating most of its students beyond high schools, especially those from disadvantaged families. By offering baccalaureate degrees without any constraints from UCs and CSUs, for example, community colleges can attract more students, one of the ways to ensure that the Golden State will continue to flourish for decades to come.

Summer Bridge Program Leads to Student Success at San Jose City College

Summer is the time to cool off, to read that page-turner or watch that thriller, take a walk in the woods or a stroll at the shore. With the likely easing of the pandemic’s stranglehold on our lives this summer, we hope to celebrate normalcy with backyard barbecues and family get-togethers. For students, after zoom fatigue and myriad online stresses, summer offers the chance to chill.

For some motivated students, however, summer offers the chance to forge ahead. These are mostly high-school students who want to take transferable college-level courses in Math, English and Ethnic Studies at their local community colleges to acclimate to college life and get a head start in their academic and professional goals.

For several years now, for six weeks (from the second week of June to the third week of July), San Jose City College has been offering a rigorous Summer Bridge program to help full-time (mostly high school) students complete an associate’s degree in two years. The degree translates to the first two-years of a bachelor’s degree in the California State University or the University of California systems (freshman and sophomore years).

The Bridge Program is the first step in the “San Jose Promise” launched by Mayor Sam Liccardo in March 2017 for the San Jose-Evergreen Community College District to ensure that community college was affordable and accessible to local high school students. Students continue their experience with a team of counselors, instructors, and peers to guide them beyond the first year of college to transfer and graduation.

With funding from “San Jose Promise,” students in the Bridge Program enjoy tuition and fee waivers, free textbooks, calculators and online access to coursework. They also receive personalized academic and personal counseling through a cohort of teachers, counselors, supplemental instructors, and administrative staff. The statistics tell the story. The overall passing rate for summer bridge program in math and English is about 88%, almost 38% higher than the usual passing rate.

I can attest to the success of the Bridge Program with an example. I was teaching a course on statistics in summer 2018. At the beginning of the third week, a student was absent. When he did not show the following day, I informed a counselor who immediately contacted the student. Because of a disruption in the family, he was depressed and had resigned himself to dropping out. The counselor visited him at home and spent time persuading him to continue. He did, and instead of becoming a dropout statistic, graduated from City College and successfully transferred to UC Santa Cruz. Early alert, combined with just-in-time empathic nudges via texts or visits, can do wonders for community college students about to fall off the grid.

The real issue is one of scale. Instead of offering personalized services to only a few hundred students because of limited grant money, how can such services be extended to all students numbering in the thousands at any given community college?

This is where President Biden’s $1.8 trillion “American Families Plan” comes in. A part of the President’s plan, to the tune of $109 billion, is to make community college free for all Americans. Currently there are over 5 million students, many from low-income families, in the nation’s 1,000 community colleges. California has the largest community college system with 116 colleges serving over 2 million students.

If the “American Families Plan” comes to pass, it may be possible to scale and replicate effective personalized services to help most, if not all, community college students stay on track, graduate on time and infuse their careers with purpose.

Meanwhile, I am looking forward to teaching an Online Precalculus Algebra class as part of the 2021 Summer Bridge Program at San Jose City College. Founded in 1921, San Jose City College is the oldest community college in Santa Clara County, celebrating its centennial anniversary this year. I am eager to interact with curious and creative students and share with them how to use exponential functions to model the growth and decay of the coronavirus and how to explain “whispering galleries” by using the properties of a conic section.