Published on June 25, 2012  in San Francisco Chronicle. Original article can be found here.

March 21, 2012.

By Vicki Legion
Health Education Dept. of City College
Co-principal investigator of the Metro Academies Initiative

Full article available here.

The City College Metro Academy program was presented as a national role model for student success at a congressional education briefing on Capitol Hill on March 1. The briefing included testimony from CCSF Metro student Camille Jackson, who spoke about the program from the student’s point of view.

On March 1, City College of San Francisco, along with CSU-SF, received national recognition in Congress for its leadership on the issue of college completion with equity. Its Metro Academies were the subject of a 90-minute Capitol Hill briefing for Congressional staffers and education officials.

Over 70 legislative staff and education officials attended the briefing, including California Senator Barbara Boxer’s office and the director of FIPSE, the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education, US Department of Education.

Closing the Completion Gap
The Metro program is becoming a national model for closing the college completion gap between low-income, first-generation, and under-represented students, compared to more affluent students. The briefing highlighted City College Metro student Camille Jackson and SF State student Alexander Leyva-Estrada, both describing the program from the student point of view. Mary Beth Love and Savita Malik of SF State and City College presented the program design and results.

During a panel discussion at the briefing, Dr. Eduardo M. Ochoa, Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education, stated that Metro Academies is exactly the type of program that the US Department of Education wants to see scaled up nationally. In fact, he featured Metro Academies both on the Department of Education home page and on his blog Homeroom, leading with the story of City College student Camille Jackson.

The Metro Model

The Metro Academy is an innovative program that is increasing college retention rates, particularly for students who are low-income, first generation and/or from underrepresented communities.  Metro reconfigures of the first two years of college, and aims at increasing the number of students who stay in college and graduate with associates and bachelor’s degrees. The distinguishing feature of the program is a long-duration learning community, in which students work together as a cohort that takes two classes together each semester over four semesters.

An ‘educational’ home
Student services are embedded in the classroom itself and students construct individual education plans with an academic counselor. This design gives students a personalized educational “home,” with instructors, counselors, and peers who support the students over time (and if a student must stop out for a semester, they can step back in). Metro also provides tutoring, and is now putting in place electronic portfolios to exhibit students’ new skills. With a highly structured pathway and close academic counseling, Metro sharply reduces the large-scale problem of ‘excess units’– students taking the wrong courses—which often are not accepted for transfer, or the frustration of having to take ‘killer courses’ over and over again.

Transfer students say that this inefficiency slows their academic progress for up to three semesters of full-time study, with students acquiring an average of 42 units that do not to count toward graduation. These excess units are estimated by the State Chancellor’s Office to cost California up to 160 million dollars a year. An essential feature of the program is that all Metro core courses satisfy graduation requirements for the associate’s degree, for transfer, and for graduation for all 241 majors in the Cal State University system. In other words, Metro is a universal general education transfer pathway.

Metro was developed by a long-standing partnership between City College of San Francisco and San Francisco State University, and fosters collaborations among many departments and programs across the two institutions.

College Staff Contributing to Program
There are currently five Metro Academies programs at SF State and City College of San Francisco. At City College, Beth Freedman and Rama Kased coordinate the Metro Academy of Health, working with Health Education co-chair Tim Berthold, Dean Terry Hall, and several faculties. Gabriel Martinez-Beildeck coordinates the Metro Academy of Child Development, working with chair Kathleen White and several faculty. Chair Nadine Rosenthal of the Learning Assistance Center provides tutors. And plans are on the drawing board for a Metro Academy of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. The James Irvine Foundation, FIPSE (US Department of Education), and the Mimi and Peter Haas Fund supported Metro’s start-up and evaluation. Now leaders across City College are stepping forward to make sure the program is institutionalized and expanded: Chancellor Don Griffin, Vice Chancellors JoAnn Low and Lindy McKnight, Dean Laurie Scolari, Psych Chair Ray Gamba, Math Chair Dennis Pientowski, English Chair Jessica Brown, IDST Chair Lauren Mueller and Liberal Arts Dean Bob Davis, along with Science Dean David Yee. Cynthia Dewar is developing the electronic portfolios for student assessment, working with her counterparts at SF State. Stats Support Success Story

In the postsecondary research literature, a five percent improvement in outcomes is considered a robust result. At the most mature program–Metro Academy of Health at SF State—Metro students are 21 percent more likely than a matched comparison group to continue into their fifth semester of college. Metro students also post higher grade point averages and make more rapid progress toward graduation. At City College’s more recently established Metro Academy of Health, CCSF Institutional Researcher Steve Spurling has demonstrated that Metro students now have a nine percent greater predicted likelihood of completing 60 units.

To learn more about Metro Academies, visit metroacademies.org or e-mail a request for a more detailed brochure to vlegion@sfsu.edu. Read more about the Washington briefing in the Community College Times, the news outlet of the American Association of Community Colleges.

Mar. 7, 2012 — SF State officials were in Washington D.C. on March 1 for a Capitol Hill briefing on Metro Academies, an innovative program that is increasing college retention rates for students from underrepresented groups and low-income and first-generation students.

SF State Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Sue Rosser, from left, Metro Academies Program Director Mary Beth Love and Metro Academies Curriculum and Faculty Affairs Director Savita Malik participate in a Capitol Hill briefing on Metro Academies in Washington, D.C. on March 1.

Metro Academies, a partnership between SF State and City College of San Francisco, is a two-year program aimed at increasing the number of students who stay in college. The program could serve as a national model for closing the college completion gap between low-income and more affluent students.

Program Director Mary Beth Love, Curriculum and Faculty Affairs Director Savita Malik, SF State junior Alexander Leyva-Estrada, City College of San Francisco sophomore Camille Jackson and National Association of System Heads Executive Director Jane Wellman participated in a panel discussion about the program. SF State Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Sue Rosser, Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, Spiros Protopsaltis, senior education policy advisor to Sen. Tom Harkin, and U.S. Assistant Secretary for Postsecondary Education Eduardo Ochoa also spoke at the event.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey, D-Petaluma, speaks during a Capitol Hill briefing on Metro Academies in Washington, D.C. on March 1.

“The Metro Academies Initiative responds to President Obama’s call for five million new college graduates by 2020, restoring the U.S. to being the country with the number one rate of college degree completion,” Rosser said. “We are radically altering the way students experience their first two years of college, whether at a community college or at a four year university.”

Metro Academies uses numerous high-impact practices to benefit student achievement, including learning communities, tutoring, extra academic counseling and electronic portfolios to exhibit students’ new skills. Students receive one-on-one support from faculty and construct individual education plans with an academic counselor. Early results show Metro Academies students are 18 percent more likely than their peers to stay in college until their fifth semester, and post higher grade point averages than a matched comparison group.

There are currently five Metro Academies groups in progress at SF State and City College of San Francisco, and an initiative is under way to develop a national center to support other colleges with technical assistance, customizable materials and curricula.

To learn more about Metro Academies, visit http://www.metroacademies.org.

– Jonathan Morales

Original article published in www.communitycollegetimes.com and can be accessed here.

A partnership between a San Francisco community college and university that has improved at-risk students’ persistence and completion rates is gaining national interest.

The Metro Academies Initiative, a partnership of the two-year City College of San Francisco (CCSF) and San Francisco State University (SFSU), provides extra help during the first two years of college to about 700 low-income students, first-generation students and those from underrepresented minority groups.

CCSF and SFSU each have two Metro Academies, one focusing on health careers and another on early childhood education. Additional academies on science, technology, engineering and math are planned for both institutions. Each academy serves up to 140 students in a “school with a school.”

Focused on the first two years

The Metro Academy concept is basically a “redesign of the first two years of higher education,” Mary Beth Love, co-principal investigator of the Metro Academies initiative at SFSU, said at a recent briefing in Washington, D.C.

The first two years of college are a “very leaky pipeline” for many students, Love said, especially for those from the most at-risk population, who tend to be the least prepared and have challenging work and family obligations. For many students, college tends to be “a solo journey through a series of disconnected courses,” she said.

As a result, many such students drop out, and many community college students waste time earning more credits than they need in order to transfer.

“If we can just get them to their junior year, they are almost home free,” Love said.

In it together

Students in a Metro Academy stay with the same cohort for four semesters in a series of classes that are aimed at accelerating the mastery of foundation skills, such as critical thinking, oral communications, writing and quantitative reasoning. Savita Malik, curriculum and faculty affairs director for the initiative, called the academy “a long-duration student learning community.”

The instruction aims to strengthen classroom engagement by having students work with real-world data “that addresses their own realities,” Malik said. For example, students in her class are studying food policy at the national and local level, and their assignments include writing letters to the editor.

Because students in these populations don’t generally spend much time on campus, student services are embedded in the academies, and academic counselors and financial aid advisors meet with students in their classrooms, Malik said.

Metro faculty also take part in learning communities aimed at creating a culture focused on student success, she said.

Knowing that support is easily available can be critical. When Camille Jackson learned at her first Metro Academy class at CCSF that four or five faculty members would stay with her academy cohort throughout their community college experience, the 19-year-old said it “really made me feel confident.”

A counselor helped Jackson map all the courses she needs to transfer to a four-year college, provided support with personal issues, and helped set up study groups for her.

“When you miss a class or an assignment, Metro teachers call you. I wouldn’t have been able to get as far as I have without Metro in my life,” said Jackson, who plans to transfer to SFSU in 2013 and pursue a career in criminal justice.

A nudge toward success

At the community college level, the academies provide the core of general education courses leading to guaranteed admission to the California State University system.

An evaluation of the program found that students in the Metro Academy of Health at CCSF have better outcomes on persistence, passing and credit accumulation than their non-Metro peers. Metro students progress more rapidly and are 9 percent more likely to achieve 60 units.

Among SFSU students, 82 percent of those in Metro Academies persisted into the fifth semester, compared to 64 percent of all first-time freshmen and 61 percent of students from the same population as Metro students.

SFSU Provost Sue Rosser said four other community colleges in California—Diablo Valley, East Los Angeles, El Camino and Long Beach City—will serve as demonstration sites and are working to establish the Metro Academy model in collaboration with nearby four-year colleges.

The next step is finding the money to start those programs, Vicki Legion, co-principal investigator for the Metro Academies Initiative at CCSF, told Community College Times.

“This is scalable and sustainable,” said SFSU’s Love.

The initiative has received federal and foundation funding, including a $700,000 Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education grant from the U.S. Department of Education to help spread the concept across the country. It has developed a toolkit to help other college adapt the model.

Although the concept works best in a partnership involving a community college and a four-year institution, two-year colleges could do it on their own as long as they can work out an articulation agreement, Legion said.

San Francisco State University President Robert Corrigan, who is retiring this year, and Provost Sue Rosser noted today in Washington that California is spending nearly as much money on prisons ($8.7 billion, or 9.45 percent of its budget), as it does on all of higher education ($9.3 billion, or 10.1 percent of its budget).

Corrigan said the numbers are actually more stark. Total operational budgets for all 23 campuses of the state universities and for all nine UC campuses is $4 billion, less than half what the state spends on prisons.

This was by way of trying to fend off further cuts to Pell Grants, federal need-based aid used heavily by state college students to pay their $6519 annual tuition. It costs $50,000 a year to house one prisoner in California.

California used to be known as the state that provided a fine education to all comers at state expense, an investment that helped create Silicon Valley and the state’s golden past. Now California boasts the nation’s largest prison population, at last count 141,743 persons.

Over the years, the state began a self-fulfilling cycle of investing more in incarceration and less in education.

It is a situation that has joined the likes of anti-tax activist Grover Norquist and NAACP president Benjamin Jealous, who came together to argue that prison spending bleeds taxpayers, damages the economy and does little to improve public safety.

Corrigan said in the first Jerry Brown administration, California had 44,000 people in prison. Today it has 44,000 prison guards. “It costs seven times as much to put someone in prison as to educate them to keep them out of prison,” Corrigan said. Among African Americans age 18 to 30, Corrigan said more are in prison, on parole or in some part of the criminal justice system than are in college. Tallying the proportion of third graders who learn to read can give a pretty good forecast of future prison populations, he said.

Provost Rosser said SFSU has come up with a model for getting more minority students into the so-called STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields. Silicon Valley has been filling many of those positions with immigrants on H1b visas, claiming it can’t find native workers.

San Francisco State and City College of San Francisco now have five “Metro Academies” that provide a sort of core curriculum for students in career fields such as health care and now STEM. Rosser said the model has reduced drop out rates. She also acknowledged that the state universities have to take some responsibility for the shortage of minority STEM students because they train teachers, many of whom lack a solid science background.

Original article can be found here.

Good teaching and exposure to students from diverse backgrounds are some of the strongest predictors of whether freshmen return for a second year of college and improve their critical-thinking skills, say two prominent researchers.

Patrick T. Terenzini, a professor of higher education at Pennsylvania State University, and Ernest T. Pascarella, a co-director of the Center for Research on Undergraduate Education at the University of Iowa, spoke to an audience of chief academic and fund-raising officers convened by the Council of Independent Colleges here on Sunday.

The two men are co-authors of a highly influential book, How College Affects Students, and they sought on Sunday to synthesize what recent research says about student learning, while also weighing in on recent controversies in higher-education research.

Mr. Pascarella based his observations on the findings from the first year of the Wabash National Study of Liberal Arts Education, which followed thousands of students at 19 liberal-arts colleges. It recorded the background information of entering freshmen, asked them about their experiences, recorded their outcomes after their first year, and collected the same information again after their fourth year.

Good teaching was not defined by test results. Instead, its attributes were identified on a nine-item scale, which included student appraisals of how well the teacher organized material, used class time, explained directions, and reviewed the subject matter.

The likelihood that freshmen returned to college for their sophomore year increased 30 percent when students observed those teaching practices in the classroom. And it held true even after controlling for their backgrounds and grades. “These are learnable skills that faculty can pick up,” Mr. Pascarella said.

Exposure to students of diverse backgrounds was measured on a nine-point “interactional diversity scale,” which asked students whether they had made friends with a person of a different race, attended a diversity workshop, or interacted with others with different religious or political views, among other measures. The gains in critical-thinking skills over four years were strongest for students who entered college with weaker academic backgrounds, defined as those with scores of 27 or lower on the ACT college-entrance examination.

The Wabash National Study, Mr. Pascarella said, is one of the most complex and rich data sources he had ever worked with. “We wanted a home movie,” he told the crowded session. “What we have is a Hollywood spectacular.”

The data also allowed Mr. Pascarella to cast a fresh eye on two highly used, often cited, and sometimes controversial pieces of research. The first was the National Survey of Student Engagement, or “Nessie” for short.

“Nessie’s gotten a lot of heat lately,” Mr. Pascarella said. He analyzed Nessie results for the colleges in the Wabash study, checking to see if the categories captured in the survey reflected gains in critical-thinking skills. He found “decent relationships” between the measures that Nessie deems important, like positive student attitudes toward literacy, and gains in critical-thinking skills in the first year, which were observed through other tests.

“I can’t reject the possibility of a causal relationship between these experiences and these outcomes,” Mr. Pascarella said.

But he also cautioned his audience of leaders of small liberal-arts colleges against making too much of Nessie’s positive results. For those types of institutions, about half of the effects on students observed in Nessie could be attributed to the kinds of people who attend those colleges.

“Mostly, it’s due to the students you recruit,” he said. “They have nothing to do with the programs.”

He also sought to replicate the findings of Academically Adrift, the blockbuster book released this year that argues that 36 percent of college students show no significant gains in learning between freshman and senior year. The book’s authors, Richard Arum, of New York University, and Josipa Roksa, of the University of Virginia, also found that just under half of students wrote papers of 20 pages or more each semester and that they spent 13 to 14 hours per week studying.

Mr. Terenzini ran a similar analysis, but used the Collegiate Assessment of Academic Proficiency instead of the Collegiate Learning Assessment, as Mr. Arum and Ms. Roksa did. Still, he achieved similar results. Among students in the small colleges he studied, 33 percent failed to show significant gains in learning, 60 percent wrote papers of at least 20 pages, and they spent 15 hours studying each week.

Mr. Pascarella cautioned against reading too much into measures of change. No one has tracked the gains in critical thinking among young people who don’t attend college, which means there is no control group to compare college students to. The other problem, he said, is that no consensus exists about precisely how much people should change while in college.

“Until we know that, it’s like a fistfight in a dark room,” he said.

Still, the findings are alarming enough, said Mr. Pascarella, and his findings only buttress those from Academically Adrift. “These folks need to be taken seriously,” he said. “They met the test of replicability.”

Correction (12:55 p.m.): This article originally described the research and findings as jointly produced by Mr. Pascarella and Mr. Terenzini. While they presented together and do much work as a team, each man was responsible for a separate area of research. This article has been updated to reflect what part of the work each researcher conducted.