Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs)
One of the nation’s largest two-year colleges, El Paso Community College (EPCC) has implemented many innovations that have helped many economically disadvantaged and first generation students successfully move through developmental education to core courses to college completion. Two of these stand out. The first, the College Readiness Initiative, redesigns the traditional pathway to college for high school students who need to be prepared for placement into college-level courses. This initiative combines a “high-tech” pathway with “high-touch” networks of support for students. The second initiative, the Early College High School (ECHS) initiative, is anchored in partnerships between EPCC and surrounding school districts. ECHSs provide eighth graders the chance to join a high school with a strong college-going culture and access to dual-credit classes in their high school and college classes at a co-located EPCC campus. ECHS staff and teachers guide students in getting ready for college, and the ECHS experience—including a curriculum that is completely aligned with the curriculum at EPCC and regional four-year colleges—leads may students to finish their first two and sometimes three years of college by the time they graduate from high school.
La Sierra University (LSU) has developed the First-Year Experience (FYE) that has been highly successful in helping a highly diverse student population become integrated into LSU, develop expectations for college, enhance their problem-solving skills, and complete both pre-foundational and foundational courses. While the FYE has many components— such as a Writing Center and required workshops on topics such as time management and test-taking strategies— two features of the program are critical to the success of the program. First is personal and academic coaching by a full-time staff member with a bachelor’s degree who works directly with first-year students in a carefully designed developmental approach in which students gradually assume greater responsibility for their own success. Second is First-Year Seminars which are co-taught by a faculty member and an academic coach who guide them toward thinking about their purpose in college and beyond.
During the last decades, San Diego City College (SCCC) has introduced a range of innovations aimed at serving traditionally underserved populations. One of these innovations, the First-Year Experience Program, has been especially successful. In broad strokes, the program designs college-entry for students using information about students’ needs to structure their first-year experience and connect them to a network of staff and students. In effect, it is the learning and teaching in the program that especially stands out: faculty who teach courses share teaching strategies that are once relevant to students’ needs and collaborative; in so doing, faculty initially “take students by the hand” and subsequently challenge them to pursue their goals—all while “creating spaces” for talk about “college-going” and learning and nurturing a collaborative network of faculty, staff, and students.