At the January 22nd, 2024 meeting of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, the San Diego Mesa College Ethnic Studies Faculty Council was awarded the prestigious Exemplary Program Award.
Second-year student Zora Williams is using her voice to bring more mental health and nutrition programming to San Diego Mesa College. Williams was elected president of the college’s Associated Students (AS) for the 2024-2025 academic year and serves as the college’s student representative on the San Diego Community College District Board of Trustees.
Sometimes, you hear a story that makes you want to know more. Kevin Gonzalez has such a story. The last time this story was updated, San Diego Mesa College student Kevin Gonzalez was a 15 year-old heading off to Massachusetts to complete his high school education. In the ensuing years, he has travelled to the other side of the world, built houses, but remained in close contact with his Mesa College professors and connections he made while on campus.
The San Diego Community College District has appointed four new student trustees for the upcoming academic year. Dalia Ramirez (San Diego City College), Zora Williams (San Diego Mesa College), Hailey Hua (San Diego Miramar College), and Haydee Zuniga (San Diego College of Continuing Education), will be sworn in during the June 20 SDCCD Board of Trustees meeting.
May 10, 2017
A progress report on Equity and Excellence efforts over the last two years, Part III
This article is a continuation of the Equity and Excellence story from May 5, 2017.
Part of the Title V Grant has been used to build the LOFT for faculty and staff professional development on campus. Learning Opportunities for Transformation is housed on the fourth floor of the Learning Resource Center. To help faculty on campus to create syllabi and classes that have more equitable outcomes, the Course Redesign Institute and New Faculty Institute were created for faculty to participate in on campus.
“Through the Course Redesign Institute, I’ve seen an impact on syllabi when I’m doing evaluations,” MacNeil said. “I’ve seen how faculty have changed their syllabi to be more geared through an equity lens and not have the type of language that sends students away or that tells them ‘no’ or things like that.”
Participating in the NFI helps new professors at Mesa College to build connections with other faculty, said Mathematics Professor Mohammed Ebrahimi-Fardooee.
“[With the NFI] it’s almost like you have friends all over the campus that you can rely on and you feel connected,” he said. “If there is something happening on campus and you want to do a project in a multidisciplinary area, you know who to contact.”
Equity, Excellence Efforts toward Student Success
Larry Maxey, dean of Student Success and Equity, said he feels that equity is important in relation to student success – both in terms of graduation and transfer rates for minorities.
“Equity for me means that in the outcomes of our students we would see, proportionally, students of color achieving at the same level as the majority,” Maxey said. “The goal of equity is to shrink the gaps between the groups of students that are proportionally achieving success and those students that are disproportionally not achieving success.”
Viewing equity as something that begins with the campus culture, Maxey said that instead of dismissing a student as not being “college ready,” the faculty and staff at Mesa College strive to “meet a student where they are.” By this, he said that the administration and faculty are working to adjust college courses to help to engage misrepresented groups.
“Equity is a establishing a culture, which this campus is doing an excellent job of, of supporting all of our students, no matter where they are,” Maxey said. “We look at things from a college deficit perspective, meaning what can we do, as a college, to support every student, no matter where they are.”
Stay tuned for weekly articles highlighting students, faculty and staff who are working toward the goal of making Mesa the Leading College of Equity and Excellence. For more information about Student Success and Equity at Mesa College, contact Dean Larry Maxey at (619) 388-5940, or via email at lmaxey@sdccd.edu.
Tags: Equity and Excellence
Jennifer Nichols Kearns
Director of Communications
jnkearns@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-2759
Larry Maxey
Dean of Student Success and Equity
lmaxey@sdccd.edu
(619) 388-5940
At the January 22nd, 2024 meeting of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, the San Diego Mesa College Ethnic Studies Faculty Council was awarded the prestigious Exemplary Program Award.
Looking to address equity issues on campus, San Diego Mesa College sought out advice and expertise from the Center for Urban Education (CUE) at the University of Southern California. “We needed to have someone hold up the mirror to us because it can be difficult to change from within if you don’t know what you need to change,” said Dr. Pamela Luster, President of Mesa.
San Diego, CA — Today, San Diego Mesa College will host the Advancing Racial Justice and Equitable Outcomes in Community College Institute, scheduled for Sept. 12 at San Diego Mesa College, is the third such meeting organized by the University of Illinois Office of Community College Research and Leadership. Issues of race on community college campuses will be the focus of the conference.
