Anacany Torres: All right, thank you, Penny. Hello, everyone, for joining us-- thank you for joining us today. My name is Anacany Torres, and I am a counselor for transition for North Orange Continuing Education. And I'll have my co-presenter introduce herself.

Deborah Perkins: Hi, everyone. I'm Deb Perkins. I am the director of student equity and success, which is over our counseling and student services department. And just for our own housekeeping, I'm going to keep an eye on the chat.

And so as questions come up, I'll gauge whether or not we want to stop during the presentation and respond to a question. Otherwise, we will have time for questions at the end. And so we can go ahead and get started.

So just to give you an overview of what we will be talking about today, we're going to be going over NOCE and our pathways. We're going to talk about our Adult Career & College Transition Program, review some best practices, as well as our transition courses that we offer at NOCE. We're going to spend some time talking about our Grads to Be Program and counseling and support services, and then finally wrap up with our Cyprus and Fullerton College pathways and review some data points from transition support.

So we wanted to start with just giving you a little bit of an overview of NOCE, North Orange Continuing Education, and where we fall within the North Orange County Community College District. We are a unique institution in that we are a standalone non-credit institution. And within our district, we also have two credit colleges, so we have Fullerton College and Cypress College.

Within NOCE, we have three primary locations. The Wilshire Center is located on the same campus as Fullerton. The Cypress center is located on the Cypress College Campus. And then our Anaheim Campus is a standalone building that also houses our district services.

Normally, pre-pandemic, we had over 100 offsite community-based locations. And we are fully accredited by WASC. At NOCE, we say we serve the whole community, and so we have our non-credit program, which includes our apportionment, state-supported classes. These are all non-credit, or not-for-college credit.

And then we also have our community services, which are our fee-based classes. And then as opportunities come up we do contract training as well. So our non-credit programs include ESL, High School Diploma and GED-HiSET Prep, Career Technical Education, DSS-- sorry, I won't use acronyms. Disability Support Services, Older Adult Program, and our Parenting Program. And I'll go into a little bit more detail about a few of those programs.

So our English as a Second Language and Citizenship Program includes six levels of English as well as the citizenship exam preparation. We have a variety of specialty classes, including our academic success class, which we'll talk about a little bit later in the presentation. And we offer classes in over 30 community locations.

We also have our High School Diploma and GED HiSET Preparation Program, which is offered, high school in person, and GED HiSET has online options right now. You can see I won't list all of our-- I won't go through all of our Career Technical Education Programs, but you can see all of those listed, as well as our Parenting Program. We have courses that can be taken with children.

And we're also really expanding our classes that are focused on parenting strategies, and so including child wellness, connected parenting, and love and logic. And we'll go ahead and turn it over to Anacany to talk about support for transition.

Anacany Torres: Thanks, Deb. So now that you've got an idea of our structure and what we offer at NOCE, now we're going to talk about the support for transition that we provide for NOCE students.

First, we offer the Adult Career & College Transition Program, otherwise known as the ACCT Program. So this program is designed to help students prepare for their college transition, specifically to Cyprus College and Fullerton College, given that those are our sister colleges within our district, but not limited to those, given also the generalization also of college transition information. So within this program, we provide tailored workshops for students at NOCE regarding different topics related to transition, like financial aid, career development, college applications, et cetera.

We also offer an annual conference related to different college transition topics and also information to empower NOCE students to move forward and to also meet college staff so that they can feel connected to the next step. Well, at the moment, only virtual campus tours are available, but pre-COVID, we were offering in-person campus tours to our sister colleges, Cypress College and Fullerton College. We also provide our students, as mentioned, assistance with financial aid and understanding what that is as they move on to the next step, whether they qualify for the FAFSA or the DREAM Act application, depending on their citizenship status.

And explaining students the onboarding support. As many of you may know, the onboarding onto college credit can be tedious and there's several applications and links involved, so making sure students get information on that process and also get connected to the right folks to complete those steps. And I myself am the transition counselor, so I provide students openly with my information so that they may contact me.

And I share this information with our instructors at NOCE across the programs and my colleagues. In case they have referrals, then they get direct referral emails. So just to further talk about one of the best practices or activities for the ACCT Program is the annual conference. As mentioned. Sessions for this conference can vary year by year, but some examples here, we provide sessions on career development, on academic pathways available to students at the college credit level, topics on financial aid, support for undocumented students, and also support services within community colleges. There are many programs like EOPS, CARE, CalWORKs, programs for foster youth, et cetera.

And we also, within the conference, hosted an alumni student panel so students can envision themselves being in college through the sharing of experiences of former NOCE students. Other best practices, as mentioned also previously, some of our workshops that we hold at NOCE. As mentioned, this is also for exposure of our students to college credit folks or representatives who can directly assist and answer questions to our NOCE students. And then also just with the practice of partnerships with our sister colleges and consistent communication with them so that it's easier over time to refer students over to their staff.

So further on the partnerships with our sister colleges. So it's very important for us in the ACCT Program to have a line of communication and have an understanding that there are a lot of our NOCE students who will graduate, say from our High School Diploma Program or from some of our certificate programs, and will be looking towards the next step, which might be college credit. But for our high school students, the majority of them, the next step will be college credits.

So forming a line of communication is important for us with our sister colleges so that there is onboarding support for our students, so we provide the introductory information. But connecting them and having a protocol of referral and a streamlined process so that the students can have a warm handoff so that they can receive onboarding support for the following things, such as college application, financial aid application and forms, any placement tools if needed, orientation, getting connected with a credit level counselor for their first educational plan, and with registration which finalizes the onboarding.

Once they're registered, then they're good to go. And then they just have to maybe repeat some of these steps every semester or every year. So just a little visual there. Upon getting an ACCT student referred to me, then I direct them either to some of our own upcoming workshops or our upcoming conference or directly to the college credit staff so that they can then get assistance.

Deborah Perkins: There is a question in the chat about how you specifically promote the ACCT Program. So I don't know if you want to talk about that a little bit--

Anacany Torres: Oh, sure, yeah. Sure. So the ACCT Program is primarily promoted within our NOCE community. So I tap into the LISTSERVs of students within all of our programs, so whomever is in charge of the LISTSERVs through our social media accounts. NOCE has Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and I also have direct instructor contacts who like to share with their students.

I'll share a little bit more about some of the courses that are designed for transition. Some of our ESL courses are designed for that. So emailing those instructors and they share the information with the students and across the campus to our colleagues and staff so that they can share these workshop opportunities and the conference opportunities to students. I hope that answers your question, Christina.

So just to talk further about the transition courses that I just mentioned, we're going to be offering a Transition to College course, IHSS 300. So this is designed to help high school diploma students or ESL Academic Success students or other NOCE students to successfully transition to college. So topics will include, for students, identifying academic goals, designing an educational plan, utilizing the onboarding process and the resources to reach their academic goal at the college credit level.

And as mentioned previously, our ESL students, as they excel in their levels, specifically the intermediate and advanced levels, and they have access to our ESL for Academic Success courses, which are designed to prepare them with reading and writing skills for college and also speaking and listening skills for college. So these are the courses also that we tap into to encourage students to transition on to college after they complete this coursework and to promote the ACCT Program.

And these courses, Rebecca, are taught-- the ESL for Academic Success, those are taught by ESL instructors. And then the Transition to College 300 is taught by me. And I'll have Deb talk about Grads to Be.

Deborah Perkins: Thank you. So in addition to the ACCT Program and the courses, we also have specific support for undocumented students. And so we know that these students come in with a variety of educational and career experiences, and so really taking into consideration their unique needs as well as working to build a supportive environment for them within NOCE and our district.

And so about three years ago, a little over three years ago, our district had the opportunity to apply for a grant through Immigrants Rising. And we received the Catalyst grant, and we received it as a district. And so that also really helped us to establish a partnership between NOCE, Fullerton, and Cypress to create common programming across our district.

We all have Grads to Be Programs, and so that's also really nice because if students start at NOCE, they can transition into the Grads to Be Program at Fullerton and Cypress. And they have that built-in support. They already know what kinds of services to expect. And also helps to facilitate some of the training.

And so some of the services that we do offer are legal aid. We have mental health and legal services, academic and career development services, specifically from our academic counselor. We have faculty and staff development. We have recently developed UndocuAlly training and student development, workshops for students, understanding what options are available for them. Especially for career, there's been a lot of focus on entrepreneurship options as well as just what is that process for qualifying for AB 540.

Specific COVID 19 resources, understanding some of the health and legal concerns students might have. And then recently, within this last year, we have students who took the initiative to develop a student club. And so student clubs is something that we've struggled with at NOCE.

We've wanted to create opportunities for students because we know it builds community and sense of belonging. But keeping them, sustaining them has been a challenge, but we are encouraged that some students took the initiative and worked to develop the NOCE United Club. And this is specifically designed to create community, so for undocumented students or students who want to be allies to come together and talk about, again, things that would be beneficial for them.

One of the other things that was developed in response to the work that was being done in our district with the Grads to Be Program, we previously had a Grads to Be and transition coordinator. And unfortunately, she left us this summer for another job, but one of the resources that she developed for us was this intake form. And Anacany is going to switch over so we can see that.

OK, so I'm just going to go through it pretty briefly. But one of the things that was recognized in the work with our undocumented students in particular was that they stay a long time at NOCE. They feel very comfortable there, which we like.

But we want to make sure that they're moving on to their next educational plan, if they do want to transition over to credit. And so this form was developed as a way to lay out the points in the journey for the student. And so this was specifically designed to start the conversation with their Grads to Be liaison, which is a role that we are hoping to fill. We currently have a vacancy in that position.

But basically, it would start with a conversation with the student about what are their academic goals. And then really talking about what academic history they have, and so what type of education they might have in California, outside of California, outside of the United States, and starting to gather those materials. Another key piece of this, if we go down a little bit further, is meeting with a counselor.

And so making sure to refer students to a counselor so they develop their educational plan and, again, lay out what are their academic goals. There's links to worksheets about the AB 540 and SB 68 attendance requirements, and so students are able to keep track of that. And I'm seeing a couple of questions come in about tracking hours for students.

We-- our Admissions and Records has an hours verification form, or attendance verification form, that they will work with students to develop. And so when students are ready to transition, then they would put in a request through STAR Help, that's our Admissions and Records team, and then they would be able to get a verification of their hours.

And then-- and I'm seeing some questions for sharing this. Definitely we can share the intake form with you. And it was developed in coordination, also, with Immigrants Rising. And so there are pieces that are very specific to how we're set up at NOCE, but Hilda-- I want to give her credit. If any of you know Hilda Rivera, who used to be at NOCE. She put this together and really tried to make it broad enough that it could be adapted.

And then finally, just as we scroll down a little bit more, another key piece is just highlighting the contacts at Fullerton and Cypress. And so one of the things that we know is really crucial in that transition process is having a person to connect a student with. And so laying that information out for the Grads to Be program as well as the Admissions and Records individuals at Fullerton and Cypress that would help in that process. And so those are highlighted there as well.

All right, we can stop sharing this for now. And I'm not sure if this is added to our shared presentation materials. And so if it's not, we can make sure to work to get that added.

And then, in addition, we also have our NOCE counseling services and so we have seven full-time counselors that provide support for students with educational and career planning, transition to college support. So all of our counselors are familiar with transition and we're really working on that referral within our department, referral from the majority of our counselors to have them work-- to have students work with Anacany as our transition counselor. Councilors also provide information about financial assistance and scholarships as well as any NOCE program.

And then we also have a foreign transcript evaluation process. And this is something that is really beneficial for our students that are in our High School Diploma Program. And if they have foreign transcripts from another country and they have completed 10 credits in our program, we have funding through our Student Equity and Achievement Program, which provides evaluation of the transcripts. And then those credits can be applied to their NOCE High School Diploma Program. And so when we get to outcomes, I'll share a little bit about the success that we've had with that.

And I think-- as far as translation, they do, if I I'm-- meant to double check on that. I believe they do some level of translation, but I can double check on that and put it into the chat.

And then-- I'm sorry, I keep seeing the questions coming in. So before I move on from foreign transcripts-- the foreign transcripts-- actually, right now we only have the program that is applicable for our High School Diploma Program within our CAEP Transition work group. We were looking at doing a foreign transcript evaluation for higher level degrees, so bachelor or master's degree, and allowing those to be used for if a student transitions to credit or needs it for a career or employment.

That pilot program is currently stalled and we're kind of reevaluating to make sure that the evaluation would actually meet the needs that students have. And so we want to work a little more closely in talking to students to see what they need and continue to finalize an MOU you with an evaluation agency. So we don't have it yet, but we've been in discussion about that.

And then, just going back to our NOCE support services. In order for students to transition, we know that they need to be well supported. So they need to get through their current programs and have the support that they need to complete their time at NOCE. And so we have a variety of support services available, including academic tutoring, our Career Resource Center, which also helps students with resume building and LinkedIn and job interview skills, things like that. We know that a lot of our students need to work at the same time that they're attending school.

We have a Disability Support Services that also includes counseling, a Student Leadership Program, a Laptop Loan Program, which really was developed in response to the pandemic. But I hope that we're able to continue that beyond. Scholarship and Emergency Aid program-- again, the scholarship is kind of focused on the students who are looking to transition or have excelled. And our emergency aid is more focused on just meeting students' basic needs, especially with food insecurity. And then I already spent some time on our Grads To Be program.

Anacany Torres: All right, so now that we also shared a little bit about our services and specifically how we assist with our students' transition at NOCE, we just want to just provide a big visual of the process. So within NOCE, when we get a student who is interested in transitioning-- and some of this is also probably very repetitive-- they get referred to the ACCT program, specifically myself, or to counseling. And then within counseling, if one of my colleagues receives a student, then they refer them to me.

From there, I assess what the student's needs are in terms of the transition goals to then direct them to the right place. It could be that they're ready for a CTE certificate within NOCE after high school and not necessarily college transition. Or, depending on our timeline, I could refer them to our annual conference or transition workshops if we have any coming up. And which both of those provide them access to folks from the colleges.

Contact with college credit staff-- we find this very valuable and important, because it helps with that warm handoff later. And it helps with the student become comfortable with the folks that they will be in contact with and build with the rapport building. And sort of relieving some of that anxiety that there may be in transitioning to another college, which can seem like a big intimidating place, even though it might be virtual right now. But the contact certainly helps with that.

And if we have a transition course coming up, referring them to that. And if they're an ESL student, also referring to the Academic Success ESL course as well, depending on their ESL level. And then also direct referrals, again, to our college credit partners, sister colleges, through our partnerships and our warm handoff practices.

So further, in referring our students to our college credit partners. Within that, then there's several other staff that I practice referrals to. So for onboarding, general onboarding, I'll refer the student to what we call the North Orange Promise Staff. So Cypress College and Fullerton College each have a Promise Program office, which is essentially the partnership that assists high school students with having access to the College Promise, which is the free two years. Although, not all students will commit to the Promise Program, which means they have to enroll full time to the college in order to receive the free two years. They still assist our students with onboarding, the applications, and all the forms listed in the previous slide.

So refer them to the Promise Program staff and they assist students with onboarding. Depending on whether the student already has taken college classes before or not and maybe need a transcript evaluation. Or refer them to the Adult Reentry Program staff. By "transcript evaluation," meaning they want to see if maybe some of their credits that they've taken, maybe at another country, might count towards an associate's degree if they plan to transfer. So I'll refer them to an Adult Reentry Program.

Also, with questions related to financial aid, refer them to Financial Aid Office staff, since there might be maybe some specific questions related to access, qualifying for the DREAM Act, et cetera, or forms, financial aid forms. Additionally, because some of our college credit partners also have ESL programs, we'll refer them to ESL program stuff as well if they are ESL students looking to transition on but still continuing their ESL development.

And within some of these programs, there's also Counseling Support. So having that all in one place is helpful for our students to successfully transition. And then on my end, looping back to ensure that the students are being assisted and that they are getting the onboarding support they need. So I'll encourage the student to let me know if they get held up at a certain point or an extra push, maybe from staff, so that they do get that complete support.

All right. So in terms of data points on transition, Deb is going to take this one.

Deborah Perkins: OK, well. And then I saw there was a question in the chat about the number of students who attended the conference. And we'll get into that on the next.

Anacany Torres: Oh, yes. We'll talk about that.

Deborah Perkins: So just a couple of data points we wanted to highlight. Kind of focus mainly on our basic skills and ESL students. And so for the students who have taken the Academic Success, the ESL Academic Success courses, those have a 67% success rate. And we see high rates of transition for those students. And so 9% transition to the credit ESL courses at Fullerton and Cypress.

And one of the limitations is, we can only track students within our district right now. And so, you know, others may have transitioned to other colleges, but we don't have those numbers. So only within our district.

We also saw 20% of students transition to NOCE CTE, which helps us in our progress outcomes, as far as CAEP outcomes. And then 7% transition to the High School Diploma program.

Overall, about 11% of all Basic Skills and ESL students transitioned to credit programs. And so that's a lot higher than our overall NOCE population. I think our overall transition number is about 4% or 5%. And so that is something that we're looking at-- how we can also bring that number up across our other programs. But also kind of recognizing that these students in Basic Skills and ESL programs are really kind of the prime students we might want to focus on as we're doing outreach and advertising our transition activities.

And then for the foreign transcript evaluation, that program I mentioned earlier, that's funded through our Student Equity and Achievement Program. And it does include a translation of some languages. And so the agency that we work with, it's AERC, I think. They do evaluation for some languages but not all.

And the last time this was evaluated as part of our Student Equity Plan, 36 students put in the request to have their transcripts evaluated and received an average of 90 credits, which saved them an estimated 36 to 54 months of time. And so we really see that as a success because we know the sooner students can finish up at NOCE-- if they have a goal of transitioning to credit, kind of get them through their program. And then moved on to what's next for them.

And I saw a couple of questions-- I'll double check on the name of the agency so I get it right and don't say the wrong one. And then we don't charge a fee because that is covered under our Student Equity and Achievement Program. And so as of now, we allocate about $10,000 a year to cover the cost. And depending on the year, we may use all of that or not.

But I think they charge, I want to say, $250 for the evaluation. And so we cover that cost for them, as well as we process the-- we help them with the application process. And so they bring in their original transcripts, we mail it to the agency. And then once those transcripts are evaluated, we give them to our records office to apply them to their High School Diploma Program at NOCE.

And so I'll put the agency information in the chat as an Anacany's talking about the additional data points.

Anacany Torres: Thanks, Deb. Further on the data points. So NOCE invested on a Full-Time Transition Counselor position. So this position has led to an increase in participation in transition opportunities, workshops, events, increased participation in the annual Dream Your Future event, significant increase from last year's event. So I want to answer your question-- we had about 60, 65 students attend our virtual conference, which I think is a success since it's been a little difficult to engage students in online virtual workshops since COVID.

And a large, large part of that was also our marketing team and our conference committee. So I formed a committee and it was all hands on deck as well, in terms of promoting the event.

And increase in NOCE referrals to credit programs, specifically to Fullerton and Cypress College, due to the reformed sort of referral protocol as I mentioned earlier, from our course instructors, from my counseling colleagues, to have me as a point of contact. And then I engage in the evaluating what their needs are and referring them directly on to the campus for onboarding and registration.

So Deb is going to take these. But this essentially concludes our presentation for what we wanted to share.

Deborah Perkins: We have our contact information. And then on the next slide, all our social media information. As Anacany mentioned, we have-- our Office of Campus Communications manages all of our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, but they do a really good job of promoting all of our NOCE programs and services.

And so I think we can-- if you want to stop sharing the presentation. And then if there's any other questions, we have time for those, as well. And I did put the foreign transcript evaluation agency-- we are using American Education Research Corporation, and they're based out of West Covina.

Anacany Torres: And we'll also share the Grads to Be intake form. I'm not sure if it can get posted under our session, but I imagine our session might still be visible in terms of the attachments over the next two days. Hopefully, that can get uploaded.

Deborah Perkins: A couple questions in-- "how many staff, teachers and support staff, does NOCE have?" I believe we have 28 full-time faculty. And support staff-- I don't know what our exact numbers are.

Anacany Torres: We can share our directory. I'll go ahead and share our directory.

Deborah Perkins: OK.

Anacany Torres: I don't know the number of the top of my head, either.

Deborah Perkins: But we serve about 25,000 students a year, just to give information about our size. And then I see a question about launched an SB-554 program yet. Not yet. That is on our-- one of the things we've started conversations on. And we're still working on that, what that process will look like. So that is the kind of dual enrollment for adult education program.

And we've had some initial conversations between our Director of Admissions and Records and Fullerton and Cypress's about what that form would look like and what the possibilities are. I know our Deans of Counseling at Fullerton and Cypress are open to even if we wanted to create a new counseling class that might be more applicable to-- or, just kind of create a cohort model for our NOCE students to take a counseling class. We've talked about that option, but nothing has been formalized yet.

And then I see a question about our orientation for new students. Primarily online, we use Comevo to do online orientations. And that was the case prior to the pandemic, as well, except for our ESL program. And so our ESL program-- when the pandemic hit, we created a online orientation, which is still available. But we've also transitioned to offering in-person orientations as well. And so ESL students have the option of doing an online or in-person orientation.

Anacany Torres: What I'm going to do-- I'm going to email the intake form to the email, but I'll also add the PDF to this chat. I hope-- I believe you guys can download it. Oh, wait. How do--

Deborah Perkins: Well, there's a question about-- "if a student has a foreign diploma, doesn't yet qualify for AB-540, and would be categorized as non-resident but wants to start college, are there options with NOCE to start college now?" So I believe that's what the SB-554 would allow for. And so there's not a formalized process yet. And so they could take college classes at Fullerton or Cypress and not qualify for the resident, or the AB-540, tuition. But there aren't credit options within NOCE. So I hope that answers.

And I see a plug for a session from Chaffey College on Thursday morning at 10:30. So definitely, I will be checking that out, I know.

Anacany Torres: I'm not able to attach a PDF to the chat so I am emailing it to summit folks.

Deborah Perkins: Great. Thank you for all the questions so far.

Anacany Torres: Any other questions?

Deborah Perkins: And I know we have a big group, but feel free to, if you want to, take yourself off mute and ask anything. We're open to that as well. All right, it looks like there's another SB-554 session tomorrow at 12:30 with East Region Adult Education. Great, thank you.

All right. Well, Anacany and I will stay on in case there are any questions that come up in the next couple of minutes. But otherwise, we thank you for attending and for being a part of our session today. We really appreciate you joining us.

Anacany Torres: I think Penny wanted to talk about--

Deborah Perkins: Oh, yeah. I'm sorry.

Anacany Torres: --the graduation.

Deborah Perkins: Yeah.

Penny: That's OK.

Deborah Perkins: We'll turn back to Penny.

Penny: Just real quickly-- everyone, I posted the link to the evaluation. Please be aware that you kind of have to go through that session by session. So if you hit that first button, you might see the CAEP opener or something. Just keep clicking Next until you get to today's session. And then you'll see a dropdown list that you can choose the title, et cetera. And then finish filling out the evaluation for today's session.

So it takes a little bit more than one or two clicks. But you should get there and they really do appreciate your feedback. And with that, I'm going to go ahead and stop the recording. And as long as Deb and Anacany want to stay here, they can answer questions. Or, we can release you a few minutes early so you can go grab that extra goodie for the afternoon.