March 19, 2020
WELCOME!
A word from the Regional Coordinator,

Hello all! I hope that you and your loved ones are healthy and well. With the spreading of COVID-19 and rapid switch to remote teaching, there is much anxiety among the members of our community. As people come together to help each other, you may already be overloaded with information and resources, but just in case I tried to compile some that I hope will help you navigate these unprecedented and uncertain times.I would also like to share with you some pieces of advice that resonated with me:

  • Take care of yourself and your loved ones. The first step to being a supportive and caring teacher is to taking care of yourself. I have included some articles on mental health and well-being to hopefully help with the sense of isolation that may arise from social distancing.

  • Be patient. Technology will inevitably go awry. That's okay! Don't panic, this is not going to be perfect. Try to let your students know that this is normal and that they should be patient too.

  • Be transparent. This is going to be a big change not only for you but also for your students. Explain that things will be difficult at first and that you are struggling with them and won't have all the answers.

  • Be empathetic and compassionate. Many of your students may be struggling with other challenges outside of class. Many may not have access to technology or internet. Leniency and understanding may be warranted more than in normal class situations. Being aware of the resources available to your students may also help.

  • Look to your campus community for support. This type of work can be isolating but don't forget, we are all in this together! No one has all the answers, but we all have our areas of expertise. Reach out to your colleagues and friends to help support you and look to the many resources that are available to help you work through whatever challenges you may be encountering.

  • Think positive. Treat this as a learning experience. Now the best time to activate your growth mindset.

I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy, and know that you will persevere in these trying times. If you are looking for particular resources, please contact me at aspire.calrc@gmail.com and I can try to help connect you with someone who can help.

Warmly,
Katie Dixie, Program Coordinator for the California Regional Collaborative
ANNOUNCEMENTS
3CSN Wayfinding Online Zoom Series
Join the California Community College Success Network (3CSN)
for their workshop series on topics including:
  • Zoom 101
  • Canvas 101
  • Virtual Community Hours
  • Discussion Forums
  • Screencast-O-Matic
  • Online Counseling/Student Support
  • Using TED-Ed and Other Multimedia
  • Online Learning Assistance
  • Workflow Management
  • Reading Apprenticeship Online
  • Habits of Mind/Growth Mindset Online
For more information visit their website . Register now!
Free Webinar Offered by The Chronicle of Higher Education:
Faculty Resilience and the Coronavirus

As the outbreak of the coronavirus upends colleges across the nation, how can faculty continue to teach, conduct research, and work together? How do they take care of their students while also taking care of themselves? What are the tips to quickly shift an entire class online? This virtual forum hosted by Ian Wilhelm, a Chronicle editor, and Bryan Alexander, a leading higher ed thinker and futurist, will provide the latest updates on how colleges are responding to the emergency and how faculty members – including nontenured professors and adjunct instructors -- are being affected. The forum will include an expert panel and also provide an open discussion for attendees to ask questions, share advice, and provide support to one another during a tumultuous time.

Friday March 20, 11:00 am
FEATURED RESOURCES AND WORKSHOPS
3CSN Community Resources for Online Engagement and Support : 3CSN has compiled a compendium of different resources, articles, and announcements for educators, staff, and students to help support learning across the state.
LACCD Faculty Training Information : The Los Angeles Community College District has scheduled several workshops for the educators and staff across the district. The main focus of these extensive workshops is on the many uses of Canvas.
Going online? Applying Evidenced-Based and Inclusive Practices : While the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) is meant for future faculty, they hosted a great webinar on applying pedagogy in an online environment. The materials include a strong emphasis on equity and inclusivity.
Resources for Students: Adjusting Your Study Habits : The University of Michigan has created a short guide with pointed tips to help answer student questions and give quick tips for success. The tone of the guide is both encouraging and empathetic.
Resources for Students: Strategies for Remote Learning : The University of California at Santa Cruz has created an interactive website to help provide tips and information about becoming effective remote learners.
Moving Online Now: a Free Collection of Articles and Advice : The Chronicle of Higher Education has created a compilation of their most recent articles on online teaching and how to address COVID-19 in your classroom. It is now available to download for FREE.
Looking After Your Mental Health : Through all of this, we want to remind you to take care of yourself and your health. This is one of the resources you can use to help you take care of your mental health. We have also included another article below that you may find useful.
BUILDING COLLEGE PARTNERSHIPS

Engage Further With The Aspire Alliance at Both the Regional and National Levels
The Aspire initiative has both regional and national goals and projects underway. Check out the following opportunities to learn how you can engage with us further in our work to promote student success in STEM!


Become a Leader in Institutional Change by Joining the Next Aspire IChange Cohort
The Institutional Change Initiative (IChange) seeks to cultivate institutions where STEM faculty from underrepresented groups (URGs) are widely recruited, hired, and retained, and all STEM faculty employ inclusive teaching, advising, and research mentoring practices.  For more information visit the website .

Funding Opportunities
Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM)

The S-STEM program addresses the need for the increased success of low-income students who are pursuing associate, baccalaureate, or graduate degrees in STEM.

The program particularly encourages proposals from 2-year institutions , Minority Serving Institutions, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, tribal colleges, and more.

For more information click here !
Proposals due March 25th, 2020
IN THE NEWS
Coronavirus, Community Colleges and the Equity Gap
 During the best of times, the differences between community college students and students at America’s private and public flagship universities are sizable and challenging. During crises, like the current coronavirus pandemic, they can be staggeringly difficult to reconcile. As colleges here in Massachusetts like Harvard, MIT, Amherst, Tufts, Emerson, Boston College and the University of Massachusetts announced plans this week to send students home and complete their courses online, community college presidents keep getting asked the same questions:

What are you waiting for? When are you going to close, too? It’s not that simple. Here’s why.

Going Online in a Hurry: What to Do and Where to Start
The coronavirus has colleges and universities swinging into action to move courses online. In the coming weeks, we’ll find out just how prepared (or not) academe is to do this on a large scale. Those of us in online teaching and educational technology have moved quickly to help, too, and it’s astonishing how many helpful resources have already been pulled together. Even just a few weeks into the crisis, and really only a few days since class cancellations started to become a reality, there are top-quality guides free for the taking, created by people who really know their stuff.

U.S. Providers Offer Free Wifi for 60 Days
 U.S. internet and wireless providers have announced temporary measures to make getting online less expensive and onerous as enforced social distancing due to the new coronavirus forces more human interaction online.

Most notable is Comcast’s free public Wi-Fi for all for 60 days, effective Saturday. Major metropolitan areas are thick with Comcast's Xfinity-branded hotspots.

Suggestions from a Wellness Counselor on Coronavirus and Managing Mental Health
 In the midst of managing a situation like the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak, it is easy to feel overwhelmed & worried. Focusing on how to slow the spread of the virus is important for our physical health; however, identifying ways to manage our mental health is also crucial. 

We may experience increased feelings of anxiety or powerlessness; impatience, irritability, or frustration. We might also experience a sense of scarcity, or be concerned about increased stigmatization or xenophobia. We may feel uncertainty about the future or worry about isolation amidst rapidly changing schedules & social plans.

When Caronavirus Closes Colleges Some Students Lose Hot Meals, Health Care, and a Place to Sleep
When Berea College sent out a campuswide email at midday on Tuesday, announcing that it would end in-person instruction and send students home for the rest of the semester because of concerns about the coronavirus, the dining hall erupted in cheers. But quickly the students turned solemn, worried, even a little panicky, said Brady Willis, a sophomore from Northern California. Willis’s roommate tried to figure out if he had enough gas money to drive from the Kentucky college back home to Georgia. A group of students began to pool money to rent a storage locker, $20 here, $25 there. Another wondered where he’d find a job to help his family pay for the extra two months of groceries they’d have to buy when he returned home.

“It’s been a roller coaster of emotions,” said Willis, the student-body vice president, late Tuesday night.

REGIONAL EVENTS
Call for Proposals:
2020 Strengthening Student Success Conference

 
The Strengthening Student Success Conference provides a unique opportunity for a wide cross-section of California Community College professionals — including faculty, deans, program directors, student services staff, professional development and SLO leadership, researchers and planners — to engage each other about strategies for building institutional effectiveness, supporting student learning, and increasing equitable outcomes.

Save the Date:
The Strengthening Student Success Conference will be held in Garden Grove, CA
October 7-9th, 2020
Save the Date:
Summer Institute on Scientific Teaching
UC San Diego, June 17-21st, 2020

Visit the website to learn more!
ADDITIONAL TEACHING RESOURCES
Online Peer-to-Peer Assessment Applications    
Last month's Scientific Teaching in Practice webinar speaker, Jennifer Knight, discussed practical assessment strategies and tools for use in active classrooms. Here are some recommended resources for online peer-to-peer assessment and review applications:

  • CATME- a system of secure, web-based tools that enable instructors to implement best practices in managing student teams. 

  • TEAMMATES: designed by a team of teachers and students, for teachers and students. It aims to provide a powerful peer feedback and peer evaluations mechanism with flexibility.

  • iPeer: an open source web application that allows instructors to develop and deliver rubric-based ​peer evaluations, to review and release student comments, to build progress report forms online, and to analyze evaluation results.
REGIONAL JOB OPPORTUNITIES
Executive Director of Center for Education Innovation and Learning (CEILS) and LSOE
UC Los Angeles
Full-Tim Instructor, Computer Science
LA Valley College
Academic Coordinator Biological Sciences
UC San Diego
Assistant Director of Assessment
Santa Clara University
Transitions Director of Undergraduate Education
University of California, Santa Barbara
Senior Consultant for the Center of Teaching and Learning
UC Berkeley 
Adjunct and Part-Time Positions (many disciplines)
LACCD
Full-Tim Instructor, Microbiology and Biology
LA Valley College
Associate Director of Assessment & Evaluation
Stanford University
To have your openings posted in our newsletter, please send job announcements to aspire.calrc@gmail.com
Looking for more jobs at local Community Colleges?

Visit the CCC Registry !!!

This web site provides a number of services for individuals seeking employment as a faculty, support staff or manager at a California Community College.

The California Community Colleges is the largest higher education system in the nation. It is comprised of 72 districts, 112 colleges and enrolls more than 2.6 million students. Community colleges provide basic skills education, workforce training and courses that prepare students for transfer to four-year universities. The colleges also offer opportunities for personal enrichment and lifelong learning.
CONNECT WITH THE CALIFORNIA REGIONAL COLLABORATIVE
If your organization is a regional partner please send all inquires and announcements to aspire.calrc@gmail.com.

If you wish to be added to the California Regional Collaborative mailing list for future newsletters and special announcements, please send your request to  aspire.calrc@gmail.com .  
LEARN MORE ABOUT WHAT WE DO
The California Regional Collaborative is a regional network of 2- and 4- year institutions, working together towards improving overall outcomes in STEM higher education, and in particular for students and faculty from underrepresented groups.

We work with graduate students and other potential “future faculty” from groups that are underrepresented in academia to address the need to increase diversity in our regional colleges to better reflect the diversity of our students. These trainees will support teaching efforts, education research initiatives, and curriculum development needs in collaboration with their 2- year internship site. In addition, regional programming such as webinars, symposiums, conferences, panels, and other events supports both current faculty along with future faculty. This will be coupled with an assessment plan to understand regional needs and assess the impact of our work.
The California Regional Collaborative is part of a network of collaboratives, national organizations, and initiatives participating in the NSF INCLUDES Aspire Alliance

Visit the ASPIRE Alliance website to learn more

Subscribe to the Aspire Alliance newsletter here: Subscribe
aspire.calrc@gmail.com | californiaregionalcollaborative.org