This is Bakersfield College

Guiding References

• Bailey, T., Smith Jaggers, S., & Jenkins, D. (2015). Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
• Center for Urban Education. (2017). Pathways, Partnerships, and Progress: Transforming a Community College. Los Angeles: Center for Urban Education, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California.
• Christian, Sonya & Strobel, Nick. 2016. “What is the “Guided Pathways Model?” Kern Community College District. Bakersfield, CA.
• Guided Pathways: Planning, Implementation, Evaluation. (2017, September). American Association of Community Colleges.
• Jenkins, Davis. 2014. “Redesigning Community Colleges for Student Success Overview of the Guided Pathways Approach.” New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
• Time Is the Enemy: The Surprising Truth about Why Today's College Students Aren't Graduating... and What Needs to Change. (2011). Complete College America.

BC staff and faculty are honored to welcome the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to Bakersfield College. #WeareBC!

"My first impression of the program mapper was ‘thank you’ because I know there are students who struggle with figuring out how to schedule their classes… it’s going to help students who are transitioning from high school to BC."
~Samantha Pulido, Computer Science

Pillar 1: Clarify The Path

The student success infrastructure, complete with roads and a highway system, was built first with destinations in mind so the learner can see the path and make informed decisions on the path to their destination. The student success infrastructure has been designed so that students can confidently change direction to another destination and the GPS will guide them along the most optimal path to their new destination, saving the student time and money.

"A BC counselor visited my high school and helped me schedule my whole first semester"
~Mya Thanda, Business/Communication

Pillar 2: Enter The Path

BC guides students to the entry point of their pathways and facilitates simple major changes to onramp students into new pathways in multiple ways.

• High School to College: 11,200 high school students at over 50 feeder high schools enroll in dual enrollment courses as early as the 9th grade. BC helps nearly 4,000 high school students to register in 15 units, math, English, and Summer Bridge before they graduate from high school.
  • Ninth graders explore careers and identify their programs of study using the Program Pathways Mapper in their BC dual enrollment Student Development course. Once they select a major, they build their Student Educational Plan (SEP) in Starfish.
  • Use of high school GPA and high school coursework to determine point of entry
  • Orientation to programs of student through the Summer Bridge to BC program
• Re-entry Students: Use the summer or winter Bridge to BC program, One-Day Express Enrollment, high school GPA (if relevant), and/or other measures of prior learning to identify point of entry.
• Adult Learners: Those with lower academic skills enter BC through non-credit pathways to develop career technical skills with badges that measure learning and provide onramps into traditional programs of study at BC.

"My mentors [at BC] taught me how to be a better student and encouraged me to never give up"
~Jordan Thomas, Sociology

Pillar 3: Stay On The Path

Cross-functional teams of faculty and staff serve on Completion Coaching Communities to ensure students complete our momentum points toward completion of certificates and degrees, organized by the college’s meta-major and affinity group structure.

"The professors here taught me that critical thinking is about more than just memorizing answers. It’s about making the right decision for yourself."
~Aliyah Khan, Animal Science

Pillar 4: Ensure Learning

Ensuring high quality in student learning transcends the bureaucratic practice of assessing student learning outcomes. To give our student learning outcomes relevance to our vulnerable populations, BC’s coherent learning pathways facilitate learning, prioritizing relevance through on-campus jobs, internships, field trips, and project-based learning.

"Counselors showed me why I needed to take English and Math in the first year to be successful"
~Julio Vargas, Psychology

Data-Informed

An equity-minded, student-centered college demands that data inform redesign. BC knows that altering structures alters behaviors; in other words, a college will the outcomes it seeks only when it systematically designs the structure to produce its intended outcomes.

References

• Jenkins, Davis & Bailey, Thomas. 2017. “Early Momentum Metrics: Why They Matter for College Improvement.” Volume 65. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
• The Campaign for College Opportunity. (2018). State of Higher Education for Latinx in California.
• The Campaign for College opportunity. (2019). State of Education for Black Californians.
• The Campaign for College Opportunity. (2019). Embedding Racial Equity into a Statewide Attainment Goal.

BC's One Year Increase in AA, AS, and ADT Awards

"I can tell that everyone is working together to keep [students] on the right track"
~Cynthia Pulido, Business/Education

Collaborative

A whole-college responsibility for coaching students to completion demands that BC remain in continuous learning mode to create a strong foundation for change. The institutionalization of transformational change happens through the integration of all college units into a networked learning organization in which leadership invests in the development of its people, a distributed leadership model that empowers those closest to the students to make decisions and act in the interest of student equity and success, and a culture of transparency and trust in communication. #BCLearns

References

• Aligned Resources and Programs to Put Students First.
• Building Guided Pathways: Practical Lessons from Completion by Design Colleges. (2016, August 18). Achieving the Dream, Inc.
• Dadgar, M., Smith Arrillaga, E., Buck, D., Sinclair, B., Fischerhall, F., & Brown, K. (2017). Bringing Student Voices to Guided Pathways Inequity and Design: Findings from Student Focus Groups at Two California Community Colleges. Oakland, CA: Career Ladders Project
• Guided Pathways Stories from the field: “Aligning Redesign across Campus.” Oakland, CA: Career Ladders Project.
• Johnstone, Rob. 2015. “Guided Pathways Demystified: Exploring Ten Commonly Asked Questions about Implementing Pathways.” National Center for Inquiry & Improvement.

References

Guiding Research

• Bailey, T., Smith Jaggers, S., & Jenkins, D. (2015). Redesigning America's Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
• Center for Urban Education. (2017). Pathways, Partnerships, and Progress: Transforming a Community College. Los Angeles: Center for Urban Education, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California.
• Christian, Sonya & Strobel, Nick. 2016. “What is the “Guided Pathways Model?” Kern Community College District. Bakersfield, CA.
• Guided Pathways: Planning, Implementation, Evaluation. (2017, September). American Association of Community Colleges.
• Jenkins, Davis. 2014. “Redesigning Community Colleges for Student Success Overview of the Guided Pathways Approach.” New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
• Time Is the Enemy: The Surprising Truth about Why Today's College Students Aren't Graduating... and What Needs to Change. (2011). Complete College America.

Clarify the Path

• Gao, Niu & Johnson, Hans. 2017. Improving College Pathways in California. Public Policy Institute of California.
• Scott-Clayton, Judith. 2011. “The Shapeless River: Does a Lack of Structure Inhibit Students’ Progress at Community Colleges?” CCRC Working Paper No. 25. Assessment of Evidence Series. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center
• Jenkins, D. & Wyner, J. (2016, February 2). Narrower Pathways to a Bachelor’s Degree. Inside Higher Ed.
• Kurlaender, M. (2019, April 2). Lack of effective state education data system holds students back. EdSource.
• Nodine, T. (2019, March). California’s Education Systems: A Sum of the Moving Parts. Education Insights Center. California State University, Sacramento.

Enter the Path

• Achieving Equity in College in High School Programs: “Practitioner-Informed Policy Design Commitments and Principles.” (2019). Oakland, CA: JFF Policy Leadership Trust.
• Christian, S. (2019, October 29). Opinion: More Latinx students gain diplomas on time thanks to ‘early college’. The Hechinger Report
• Cooper, D., Fong, K., Karandjeff, K., Kretz, A., Nguyen, A., Purnell-Mack, R., & Schiorring, E. (2017). Through the Gate: Mapping the Transfer Landscape for California Community College Students. Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges (RP Group), 1-96.
• Daugherty, L., Gomez, C., Gehlhaus Carew, D., Mendoza-Graf, A., & Miller, T. Designing and Implementing Corequisite Models of Developmental Education: Findings from Texas Community Colleges. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018.
• Dual Enrollment, Guided Pathways Converge for Equity. (2019). Oakland, CA: Career Ladders Project.
• Jaggars, S. S., Hodara, M., Cho, S.-W., & Xu, D. (2015). Three Accelerated Developmental Education Programs: Features, Student Outcomes, and Implications. Community College Review, 43(1), 3–26.
• Exploring Alternative High School and Community College Partnerships. (2018). Oakland, CA: Career Ladders Project.
• Hu, S., Park, T., Woods, C., Tandberg, D., Richard, K., & Hankerson, D. (2016). Investigating development and college-level course enrollment and passing before and after Florida’s developmental education reform (Full Report).
• Promoting the Transition of High School Students to College. (2010). The Research & Planning Group for California Community Colleges.

Stay on the Path

• Renick, Timothy M., & Thompson-Sellers, Ingrid. 2016. “Deploying Guided Pathways At Scale At Georgia State University.” Association of American Colleges & Universities Pathways Project.
• The Campaign for College Opportunity. (2018). Left Out: How Exclusion in California’s Colleges and Universities Hurts Our Values, Our Students, and Our Economy.

Ensure Learning

• Jankowski, N. & Marshall, D. (2017). Degrees That Matter: Moving Higher Education to a Learning Systems Paradigm. Stylus Publishing.
• Wheatle, K., Taylor, J., Bragg, D., & Ajinkya, J. (2017). The potential of degree reclamation: A path to reclaiming the nation's unrecognized students and degrees. Washington, DC: Institute for Higher Education Policy and Credit When It's Due.

Data-Informed

• Jenkins, Davis & Bailey, Thomas. 2017. “Early Momentum Metrics: Why They Matter for College Improvement.” Volume 65. New York: Columbia University, Teachers College, Community College Research Center.
• The Campaign for College Opportunity. (2018). State of Higher Education for Latinx in California.
• The Campaign for College opportunity. (2019). State of Education for Black Californians.
• The Campaign for College Opportunity. (2019). Embedding Racial Equity into a Statewide Attainment Goal.

Collaborative

• Aligned Resources and Programs to Put Students First.
• Building Guided Pathways: Practical Lessons from Completion by Design Colleges. (2016, August 18). Achieving the Dream, Inc.
• Dadgar, M., Smith Arrillaga, E., Buck, D., Sinclair, B., Fischerhall, F., & Brown, K. (2017). Bringing Student Voices to Guided Pathways Inequity and Design: Findings from Student Focus Groups at Two California Community Colleges. Oakland, CA: Career Ladders Project
• Guided Pathways Stories from the field: “Aligning Redesign across Campus.” Oakland, CA: Career Ladders Project.
• Johnstone, Rob. 2015. “Guided Pathways Demystified: Exploring Ten Commonly Asked Questions about Implementing Pathways.” National Center for Inquiry & Improvement.

Bakersfield College Site Visit Team

Organizational Chart

For a full break-down of BC's administrative structure, check out the organizational chart at the button below.

Administrative Organizational Chart

Executive Leadership Team

Faculty Coach Leadership

Advising Coach Leadership

Management Coach Leadership

Technology Leadership

Students