Dates: 2020 - 2025

Award Amount: $3 million ($600,000/yr)

The Pathways to Completion II grant intentionally centers Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x students and their intersectional experiences in the design and delivery of student Success Centers and a Career-First curriculum.

The grant will:

  • center around a Network of Care including counselors, coaches, tutoring, faculty, support centers and more. 
  • create Career Communities that are hubs of exploration and empowerment for Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x students and their peers
  • encourage students to stay on path to completion through focused support

“Caminante, no hay camino, se hace camino al andar.”

— Antonio Machado

“We are strong. We are resilient. We’re not going anywhere. We will prevail.”

— Cristina Salazar-Romo

“Ipal nonixpatlaoa”

— Aztec saying. This was said when someone’s child or someone’s pupil was well-taught, well-brought up.

Pathways to Completion

Project Goals

  1. Academic Programs: Develop a multi-faceted approach to career exploration that introduces early and reinforces often, offers robust internship opportunities contextualized for each career community, and career content that is embedded into curriculum.  
  2. Institutional Management: Build and foster a multi-modal Network of Care, a student support model rooted in the fundamental belief that student support and advising is a shared responsibility and that support needs to be provided at both the micro and macro levels in order to truly impact the student experience.
  3. Fiscal Stability: Increase student outcomes and close equity gaps to ensure alignment with state-mandated performance-based funding focused on student equity, student success, and workforce outcomes. 

Project Objectives

By Sept. 30, 2025, PCC will achieve the following project objectives:

  1. Persistence:  Increase the fall-to-spring persistence rate by 10% (based on 2017-18 baseline: 71% all; 70% Hispanic)  
  2. Excess Units: Decrease the average number of excess units at degree completion by 8 units (based on the 2017-18 baseline: average 91 units among all degree earners, as well as among Hispanic degree earners)  
  3. Completion: Increase State-defined Scorecard completion rate by 5% and close equity gap (based on 2016-17 baseline: 56% all; 46% Hispanic)
  4. Field of Study: Increase the number of PCC students who are employed in their field of study by 5% (based on the 2018-19 baseline of 72.5%: 70% for Hispanic students)  
  5. Living Wage: Increase the percentage of PCC students who earn a livable wage within 1 year of completion by 6% (based on the 2017-18 baseline of 41%: 35% for Hispanic students)1 

Personnel

  1. Project Director -- Dr. Isela Ocegueda
  2. Activity Director -- Tito Altamirano
  3. Administrative Assistant -- to be filled  
  4. Career First Curriculum Faculty Lead -- Dr. Silvia Toscano
  5. Network of Care Faculty Lead -- to be filled
  6. Communications and PR Specialist -- Sera DiBlasio