Sherri Watkins: Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for joining us. Pang, can you go ahead and put up the PowerPoint again, please? We're going to tell you a little bit today about how we worked on a great project that's kind of taken a few turns and twists along the years to get to where we could actually work together. But this is transitions from adult education to community college, a collaborative approach.

So we have today joining us is actually Donna Cooper, dean of students success and learning from Fresno City College. Her substitute is Lisa Vincent, who is the outreach specialist for Fresno City. I wanted to make sure I gave Donna credit because she is our definite champion in adult education for our area. She cannot be with us today because she is on vacation in Boston. But I just wanted to make sure I pointed her out.

We have Karri Hammerstorm, who's the executive director of Fresno K-16 collaborative, myself, and we have Pang Vangyi who's our regional transition specialist at State Center Adult Education Consortium, and Dr. Tim Woods, dean of instruction for business education at Fresno City College. Next slide.

So today you're going to hear about how we partnered in this project, where you're going to gain a better understanding of SB554 and its role in transitioning Adult Ed students to college and affirm the importance and practice of relationships and collaboration. And hopefully, learn some strategies that you can implement on your own campus. And we are all, again, trial and error at this project, but we are here to support you and answer any questions and be of service if we can help you get something going like this on your campuses. Next slide.

Lisa Vincent: Thanks, Sherri. Hi, everyone. I'm Lisa. And just to reiterate and to stress that the importance of collaboration in terms of the transition from the adult schools and the adult learners to community college.

I've been around for a while now. And I remember back in the day when we were all kind of on our own doing our own thing and doing our best to serve the students. But the reason why we're here today and what's important is over the years, we've learned how to best serve students. And that's in a collaborative way with partnerships that you're going to hear about today in our particular region and the importance of working together with that.

In terms of the community college, you're going to hear from the collaborative today and, of course, our state center adult education consortium and how over the years we've really worked to develop a system where there's a warm handoff, where there are many options for students in terms of funding to help pay for our programs, options in terms of non-credit, which you're going to hear about some short term CTE, a CTE program that we-- and certificate that we just finished up doing, among other things that we're doing together.

So, yeah. Thanks for being here. And we're going to continue with more specifics about that. And, oh, I'm continuing with this.

And so this is a real nice, visual way of showing you all the partners in our area, in our particular consortium in terms of our adult schools, which you're going to be hearing more from Pang and Sherri about the state center in the regional adult schools, the community college in this area, which Fresno City College is one of those, the K through 16 collaborative, which you'll be hearing about, in particular, for this presentation our business division and how we developed the non-credit certification program, and how we work together with a team of counselors and outreach specialists and transition specialists and our community partners.

So it's kind of like a puzzle, and it's been in the works since way back in the day when AB-86 first came out about seven years ago. And we have through trial and error, I think, we're really honing in and fine tuning how we work together. And these are some of our partnerships here.

Tim Woods: Yeah. And so part of our efforts, as you're familiar with the state chancellor's office vision for success for community colleges, and in looking at our strategic objectives, we really focused in getting people connected to academic pathways and careers to help them break the glass ceiling and to break the minimum wage cycle.

And especially, collaboration such as this really focused on-- like, objective 1.3, which was really looking at the years working with Sherri and Pang and Lisa and Karri, we've always been looking at different funding sources and different projects on how we can enhance career readiness and especially, get more short term programs in pathways set up. And so this is our guiding framework. Go ahead, next slide

And tell you a little bit about first the City College in Fresno County. Fresno County is just over a million residents. And in that, about just slightly over 30% of the population lives under poverty. It's an agricultural economy and does with some industrial base. Unemployment rates are significantly higher than other places in the state and in the nation.

To give you an idea about our student demographic. For instance, City College, so back in 2019, we had 29,000 students. As a result of COVID in fall 2020, we had about 22,000 students enrolled. And so significant drop. And the reason we're sharing this data is that when you drop in student enrollment, as we all know, those are people who are no longer pursuing their academic goals, no longer pursuing their career goals, maybe. So it's a significant number.

Of our student population, 78% of our student population received need-based financial aid. So we're constantly looking for creative ways to connect people to programs. Go ahead, next slide. And back to you, Sherri.

Sherri Watkins: OK. So a little bit about state center, thanks, Tim, for that information about Fresno City. State center is basically right in the middle state, right, so that makes it really easy. So we consist of 22 voting members, which is kind of crazy. So we have 15 adult schools. We serve Madera and Fresno counties. And then we have one of our adult schools that actually happens to be in Tulare County.

We have four community colleges, a college center, a regional occupational, two regional occupational programs, and one young adult and corrections program. And, of course, our partners are also workforce development boards in both Fresno and Madera counties. And we work closely with the libraries and in all of our community based organizations.

If you have a chance, grab those. Our websites below. There's some really good information. The one that says scaeclearns-- SCAEC is our acronym for our consortium-- there's a link on there that we send our students to because there's lots of great resources. And during the pandemic, this was created because our transitions team was out there just emailing student's information. Well, now, it's a location where they can go and get all the resources that they need and also make an appointment with the transition specialist while they're there. Next slide.

Because we're such a large consortium, we broke into sub-regions based on community college districts that are in those sub-regions. So as you can see, we have a central sub-region, which is basically the metro area of Fresno and all of those adult schools there. Clovis Community College and Clovis Adult School worked very closely together.

And the North region is anything in Madera County, and South region, as you can see, anything that feeds into Reedley college and that includes Dinuba, which I mentioned is in Tulare County. And in each of those areas, we have a transition specialist that is placed and also works in the workforce development boards at each of those sub-regions. Next slide.

Karri Hammerstorm: Hi, I'm Kerry, and I'm with the Fresno K-16 collaborative. And I just-- we had an opportunity. We are a signature initiative of a governor's office with the goal to increase degree and educational attainment, increase employability and social economic mobility, and to close the equity gaps.

And we really working with adult in high school, transfer students and adult learners. And we're really trying to bring equity at its core. And we've been working with these folks that are on this presentation for a while now, trying to find what's an area that we could work together. Next slide.

So our partners in the inaugural. We have 15 partners. It is four of the largest school districts in our region. And the community colleges within our region states and our community colleges-- Fresno State, UC Merced, Fresno Pacific, UMass Global, and Brandman University, National University.

So we were doing a project with one of the schools that we're trying to introduce dual enrollment and career pathways that lead to good paying jobs within our region because a lot of our graduates stay within our area. So we're trying to provide them with opportunities for economic growth.

And was working with Fresno City, and they were doing dual enrollment in the accounting area. And I said, can we do that? Let's see what we can do for our adult learners. And Tim was great. He said, yes. We pulled in Sherri and Pang. And we're like, let's develop a short term project, the short term certificate to help upskill our adult learners so that we can provide them with some-- expand their opportunities. And if they qualified for dual enrollment under SB554, that's fantastic. If they didn't, we were still going to help support them. So that's the birth of this project. Next. So--

Tim Woods: So as Karri shared, she came to us and we were looking at, well, with our advisory committees and looking at employment factors, where were the jobs? What were industry leaders looking for? And in talking with Fresno County, which is one of the largest employers in the area, they were saying Excel spreadsheet skills are really difficult to find.

And so we looked at our existing curriculum, we looked at our non-credit curriculum, we looked at our credit-based curriculum. And then what we found is we said, well, we have a bookkeeping fundamental certificate that is an Excel course with the fundamentals of bookkeeping. So two courses that could be easily done in an accelerated fashion. So we did nine week course formats, and it was basically a birth of the certificate.

And then in looking at the grant opportunities aligning, we created two tracks. We created a dual enrollment track that was designed for K through 12, so targeting high school seniors, but then bringing us to adult education. And as we said, one of the things you're seeing from our presentation, is it's the relationship amongst us. We've been working with each other for years and trying to find different projects that we could collaborate.

And so when Karri brought this grand opportunity to the table, we immediately thought of adult head, thought of Fresno City College, and the partners here before you today. Go ahead, next slide.

Karri Hammerstorm: I was just going to add to that too is that we expanded the opportunity for those that successfully completed the bookkeeping option. There was an opportunity for them to do a one person office certificate. So they had the stackable certificates then that were able to increase their employability.

Tim Woods: Excellent. And as we kind of mentioned earlier, one of the major benefits is we're looking to eradicate equity barriers, access to education, getting people-- helping people understand that, yes, this is a program that you can do, removing the financial barriers. Non-credit enhanced on credit is a great way to provide a non-tuition based education. Looking for creative ways to cover the materials so that, basically, what we need is an interested adult.

It also gave us the benefit of testing our internal policies. As you know, you have ED code, you have federal code, you have funding restrictions, but then there's this concept of institutionally set obstacles and barriers. So what was very interesting-- and Pang, I'm sure we'll talk about this later is named LISA-- the challenges in melding our systems and really testing our policies to the limits and doing some adaptation.

We use online instruction format, obviously, for COVID. But it also extended our reach and our range so that we could get more participants into the system. We developed a technology loan program that students could actually check out technology because of the digital divide. And essentially, like Karri alluded, creating a program that not only got basic employability skills, but could lead to further educational either CTE certificates or full on degrees.

Lisa Vincent: So here is an example-- and Pang will probably chime in and maybe Tim-- is this was a flyer and the forms that we created for this particular bookkeeping fundamental certification, that Tim alluded to, that we marketed to the adult schools and to adult learners. So I mean, we did so in various ways-- through social media and online, web pages, but also through our transitions team, specialists, with our outreach specialists at the community college. So there was various ways that we got the word out for this.

And so this is one of our programs. And this is one particularly that we-- as you heard that we partnered with the K through 16 collaborative. So our team assisted in terms of getting the students through the matriculation steps to enroll in the course, which is the application and orientation and such. Pang, did you want to allude to that a little bit or add to that?

Pang Vangyi: Sure. Thank you, Lisa. Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Pang Vangyi. I'm the regional transitions counselor with the State Center Adult Education Consortium. So I have a team of three other transition specialists as Sherri mentioned, and we are co-located at the adult school campus.

And so when this great opportunity came up with the K-16 where the tuition was going to be funded, the textbook were going to be funded, we were really excited to partner up and get the information out to all the adult schools to encourage the students to take advantage of this opportunity. And so as a team, it was really-- the communication went out to all the administration, the staff, we visited the classrooms and got referrals from the teachers, worked with students individually.

On our end, we started the process, help the students with CCCApply, assist them to complete the online orientation. Then from there, we had a shared list with the college counselors. So that way they knew that the student already completed the beginning process. And from there, that team, we wanted to make sure that it was a seamless warm handoff, and the students didn't have to make all those contact themselves versus now the Fresno City College team came on-- and I can have Lisa talk more about the process that the college took to ensure that the students got enrolled.

Lisa Vincent: Yeah. I think you're getting the idea of how-- overall, how we're working together with this. The transitions team, the transition specialist, and then also our folks at Fresno City. One thing I want you to just take into account is that we have a designated outreach specialist, that's me, and three other counselors that are specified for adult Ed. We specialize in this population. And as you know, there are many challenges in this population.

So working with Pang, as you heard in terms of the front end of the enrollment steps, it then carried on to our counselors, where they assisted with advising and actual enrollment in the course. So between me and Pang and her transition specialists, we worked on the front end to get them through the steps in terms of the application, orientation. And then our counselors came in for advising and actually registering for the course. So again, you're seeing how we work together.

And this warm handoff is so important and especially, for a program like this. So, yeah. So that's a little bit in terms of how we work together to get them in the course per say or the certification.

Pang Vangyi: I'm just going to add on to that too, Lisa. I mean, the team here at Fresno City College, we have great support. I mean, Lisa has office hours at our adult school campuses. And any question, we're always in communication. We have meetings among the two teams to collaborate and share data.

For this special project, after all the information and matriculation, there was another specific orientation for this cohort for just the bookkeeping fundamentals students to let them know about the platform, introduce the instructors, the tutoring, the support, how they were going to get their textbook and materials. And so going above and beyond to ensure that they were front loaded with information.

And so we had a shared sheet to track the referrals, and then to record the outcomes. And if students were identified as currently enrolled in the high school and GED program at SB554, or if there is any residency issue-- and this was the communication that which was shared among both teams to follow up and follow through with the students.

Sherri Watkins: I would like to add that. It made it really easy because the flyers that we put out had the link. When the student clicked on the link, it took them to that Google form, and they completed the Google form, which also created this and generated this Google Sheet, which was a great way for everybody to work on the same ways at the same time. And everyone can keep track of it and share the data back and forth.

OK. So we have a poll. If you-- I think, if you're not using the V platform, you should be able to access this poll. If you were not, please, go ahead and answer the questions in the chat. The question is, how familiar are you with how SB554 relates with dual enrollment for adult learners? The answer should be very familiar, somewhat, or not at all.

We have 54 of us on the call. Yep, Melinda is right. If you are using vFairs, answer in the chat. I think we're almost there.

Pang Vangyi: Mhm.

Sherri Watkins: OK. So we've got 20% with very familiar, 60% somewhat familiar. Probably like all of us. We're still learning how this is going to work. And then 20%, not at all. So glad that you are here to learn about this. And again, we're all in this together. So any information that we can share that you can share, we're all learning from each other.

Lisa Vincent: So, yeah we don't know everything, we still are working on it. This is brand new, and this is very exciting. So SB Senate Bill 554 just recently passed. And basically, what it is any student pursuing a high school diploma or high school equivalency can enroll as a special part time student at a community college. In a sense, they're dually enrolled similar to high school dual enrollment.

So if any of you are familiar with high school dual enrollment and your community college or you work in the high school system, it is similar to that, where students can be enrolled at the adult school and the community college at the same time and receive credits, or if they're doing a non-credit program, they can do that too. But the point is they can receive credits towards their community college education.

Now, we hesitate to maybe call it dual enrollment because it does get confusing with the high school enrollment program. But basically, a student can take up to 11 units each semester, they need to be enrolled in some sort of high school equivalency program at the adult school, they need to go through the steps in terms of any community college student, where they have to apply to be admitted on CCCApply and complete a dual enrollment form, which will show you an example of a minute.

And basically, in our area, they go through our transition specialists, or they're identified by the community college counselors in terms of who is eligible for this program. If we can see the form really quick. And before we go through that, also the benefits of this-- most of you are familiar with it-- but there's no cost, this is the big deal, there's no cost to the student. We charge $46 a unit. So if they're taking 1 class and it's 3 units, that's $138. If they're taking 11 units, then you times that by 46. So the real benefit is no cost.

It's also an excellent way to acclimate the student to a community college horse, right, which can be beneficial for them because it may alleviate some blocks that they may have based on previous experience or maybe self-esteem issues or in terms of being confident in being able to take a community college district course. So it's a great way to begin the process and get them a step ahead in their pathway or their career goals or their major at the community college.

So they do have to complete a form. And if you're at the community college, just like high school enrollment, there needs to be a form that goes along with the CCCApply. So through due diligence and kind of recreating the form based on our high school dual enrollment program, this is an example of-- or is the form that we've created.

I believe that this PowerPoint is going to be available to those of you-- you can contact us if you would like to have us send you this form. But no need to recreate the wheel. If you are in a community college and you do have dual enrollment in high school, you can utilize that form with some tweaks in terms of the adult program.

And so this is something that we definitely want to champion, we want to encourage students. And we are working as we speak with our feeder adult schools in terms of identifying what courses at those adult schools will be beneficial for students to be enrolled in and dual enrollment programs. So it might be different at many at different adult schools what the needs are. So I mean, we're working as we speak to identify those courses. Anything you want to add to that Pang or Tim or Sherri?

Pang Vangyi: Yeah, Lisa, I just want to concur what you said. And you're right. At some of other smaller adult schools, it's more about the students having the opportunity to also take the classes at the college campus to get that college experience. And so for some of our other adult learners and one of the sites that I'm working with, it's possibly taking the classes off the college campus and if there is the articulation agreement, then the student will get their high school credits done as well with that college course so that will be the benefit to the students.

But we're really excited about this opportunity and working with all our members and collaborating with our colleges to develop what might be best for the individual adult school campuses if bringing classes onto the site or having the students also taking classes at our college campus.

Karri Hammerstorm: I will just add, too, [inaudible] apply helping with the students to fill out that CCCApply. But CCCApply is also listen to feedback from many of you probably on this session too about helping to adjust CCCApply so that our adult learners and our high school students that are taking dual enrollment have those options to select. That they are correctly in a adult school or they're in a high school. So changes feedback is good.

Tim Woods: And as far as the academics, what really helps too is bringing faculty involved very early on. And reaching out to the faculty and saying-- and showing how existing adult Ed programs are complementary and natural features into programs. And so we really worked with explaining that programs were not conflicting, that they weren't competitive, that they weren't-- if anything, they were enhancing programs.

And as we know, when we get adult learners that take college units, even through three units or two units, the probability of continuance, that they're going to go on is significantly improved. And so the courses that we picked are also part of other certificates, which was alluded to earlier. And so getting the faculty involved in getting that pathway of mentality going really helps support this project.

Lisa Vincent: One more thing on that, and I touched on it, but really work-- those of you at the adult schools what we're doing and what-- I mean, I'm doing as we speak-- is meeting with the adult schools to ask, what are the needs of your students? What are the pathways that we can provide these certificate programs or these dual enrollment courses?

So for example, if there's a CNA program at an adult school, and perhaps, we can provide a medical terminology course for dual enrollment. Maybe if there is a business office skills or some sort of business program at the adult schools, how can we continue them on the pathway in terms of any additional courses at the community college that they can be enrolled in the dual enrollment program?

English 1A, if a student wants to begin their general Ed, any hands on automotive, that sort of thing. So we really-- instead of saying, here is what we're going to give you, we go to the adult sponsor schools and say, what do your students need? What are the interests, and what can we assist you with this dual enrollment program?

Karri Hammerstorm: All right. So we would really like the opportunity for you to hop on over to the Jamboard. I've put the link in the chat. And if you want to click on that to just take a few moments to share how you've collaborated or how you would like to collaborate, maybe there are some opportunities to some synergies here where we can share what we've done or what gets or get some answers. We could ask you some questions as well. Sherri, how long?

Sherri Watkins: Just a few minutes. Kind of see how it's going when we get there. If you're not able to access the Jamboard, go ahead and put it into the chat. And the question is-- did you read the question, already? Might be doing three things at once. And did I hear the question or not? The question is, have you collaborated with or would like to collaborate with your adult Ed partners to meet the needs of adult learners?

And I did hear if you were having issues accessing the Jamboard, for you to close out some of your Google windows. It helps to access that.

Karri Hammerstorm: We've got a lot of people on. Don't see any ideas yet.

Tim Woods: So are there any programs out there that have a similar pathway approach, and what disciplines are you doing at that?

Karri Hammerstorm: Reason why accounting was chosen in this particular instance is because the collaborative has three career pathways that we're working on. One's engineering, one's teaching, and one's accounting business services.

Tim Woods: Yeah. Matter of fact, as we were working on this presentation, Karri's working on yet another initiative in the manufacturing sector. You want to share just some of our ad hoc collaboration yesterday.

Karri Hammerstorm: Yes. Sort of just kind of spitballing but trying to find out what are some additional ways that we could support some pre-engineering through manufacturing, and then also some more ambitious management in office management to provide the integrated services that are needed for small businesses. So we're looking to see what we can do to design that. Pretty excited about that. Pretty excited about doing that too.

And then we also-- as part of the collaborative, we've been working on a tutoring in the math arena for our high school students. And we did get our community colleges to agree to provide outlets for our students to get tutoring outside of the normal traditional hours that they would get tutoring during school or right after, including one of the community colleges providing such support on Sundays.

So it was brought to us, well, what about the adult school [inaudible]? So we went back to collaborate. We went back to our community college partners and they said, yes, we can add our adult Ed to provide some support for math services. So that's kind of exciting. That's how-- as we've developed these relationships, and we don't have all the answers. And so we start developing something and someone says, hey, what about this? Why not ask? So I'm not-- can't be afraid to ask.

Sherri Watkins: Karri, are you able to look at the Jamboard and read some of those post-its?

Karri Hammerstorm: Sort of. There's one post-it that's covering the whole--

Sherri Watkins: I know. I'm trying to figure that out too. Sorry, everyone.

Karri Hammerstorm: You can get that--

Sherri Watkins: I'm going to stop. I'll just stop. Maybe you can figure it out. Karri, are you able to share the Jamboard on the screen? Can you stop sharing your screen and share the Jamboard, so everyone can see the post-its?

Karri Hammerstorm: I can share.

Sherri Watkins: OK, thanks.

Karri Hammerstorm: But I can't get the big one off, so you can't see.

Sherri Watkins: I just deleted it. Sorry, whoever wrote the green note. OK.

Karri Hammerstorm: So what we have some of ours is that we're-- let's see-- asking what the students need in courses in industry. So we're already assigned. Good, good. Looks like many of you are doing implementing SB554, which is fantastic. Really see that as a way to create opportunities so that our adult learners see themselves as college students. And this is a great opportunity for them to get the entree into classes and provide support for them so that they can be successful.

Tim Woods: Yeah, Dana put in the chat room that they had worked with their ESL faculty and their Adult Ed faculty at their college to identify transition forms, which is perfect. Looking at which courses would be good gateway courses into the community college program.

Lisa Vincent: There's a question in the chat actually, also it says thank you to us. You're welcome. Was it difficult to get the district 554 enrollment form to get launched? And is this form in addition to or part of your existing enrollment form?

I'll be quite honest. We've been working on this for a while. And in order to get this form launched, it had to go through many different avenues and versions and approval and all that. It wasn't difficult, it just was time consuming. And so it does take a while or at least it did in our district. This is a new program and so that's honestly-- that's the truth. We're so happy we have it now.

Sherri Watkins: It did take a--

Lisa Vincent: Is this form in addition to or part of your existing enrollment form? It is an existing enrollment form. I'm not quite sure that is the enrollment form for the dual enrollment, so that's it, but then the student also has to fill out the CCCApply application in terms of just going through the process to enroll in a course in general. So I hope that answered your question.

Tim Woods: And for those that-- I love the one comment-- I love the feeder approach to our adult students, "Adult sense must be seen as way they won't spin their wheels in college," is really getting Chancellor Stuart Van Horn out of West Hills. I loved his expression. Building coalitions of the willing. And so a lot of progress can be. You find that that one pilot course, you find that one motivated department, and you turn it as a pilot.

Sherri Watkins: So true, Tim. And the forum has taken a long time. With the four colleges, and the district has to have the approval and getting everyone on the same page was a challenge, but like Lisa said, uh-uh, we have it. We were very excited to get things rolling at that. All right, Tim. Next slide.

So our challenges-- kind of all of us are sort of going to chime in on this one. I would say-- I'm going to talk about the positive things. And I think the reason why all of this worked was because of the relationships that we have built over the years trying to figure out ways to work with each other.

Karri and I were housed in the same office. She used to be with the strong workforce program here. And we would meet over lunch several times, how can they work together? Lisa and I met over lunch. Tim and I met-- [chuckles] that's a long story.

Tim and I had-- we've just had lots of fun together and just trying to figure out ways to work together. And I really think that has created a great relationship between all of us. There's never a hesitation for me to pick up the phone and text one of them or call one of them because we're all comfortable with each other. So that, I think, was the big starting point for us. What do you guys think? Or things to add?

Karri Hammerstorm: Yeah. And I would say too that we learned that although there was handoffs in the program because this was a new program, there was opportunities to improve on that warm handoff, and everybody was real responsive and made that happen. And I think, we want to provide that wrap around support for our adult learners so that they feel successful.

And I really want to shout out to Fresno City and the Adult Ed consortium because they've done a stellar job.

Pang Vangyi: And I would like to add that we have an executive board on our consortium that's so supportive of student access and service. And that's how we were able to ensure that from the adult school site, no matter how small that adult school or how large, that there was a staff assigned to ensure that when students were onboarding, they already knew that there was help available.

And when they were ready to transition, we have staff their place to work with these students individually or in the classroom or doing presentations and orientations to let them know about all these opportunities. And so there's buy-in from the administrator and teachers and to ensure that students-- there's equitable access and their structure in place to ensure that students are getting served. And so we're-- I'm so thankful that we have such a supportive board.

And our colleges, they have vested and put staff in place. Like, Lisa, Fresno City. Lisa and I have been working together for years, even before AB-86. And now there's a team involved with Fresno City College. And all our colleges have dedicated Adult Ed counselors working closely with the transition specialists from the adult school side to ensure that services and systems are in line and in place.

And so when we have these opportunities, like the K-16s and, hey, we have this grant we want to collaborate, Sherri and I are always the first one to jump on a what can we do? What else can we offer and bring to--

Lisa Vincent: Yeah. I can't stress enough the importance of identified staff at the adult schools, community colleges-- by staff I mean usually counselors, specialist-- that will work with your consortium in terms of onboarding these students. That has been the big difference, that we've created these teams at the community college, transition specialists at the adult schools, that we are all in communication with each other and we're all there and we specialize in the adult learner.

Like before, there was just overlapping in services, one counseling department didn't know what the other one was doing. There was no-- I shouldn't say that. I mean, students were being served.

But in order to best have these programs to have them be successful is the difference that I've seen in my years, like paying alluded to, is having that identified team that will assist the students in whatever we're collaborating with the K-16 collaborative or we're doing something with workforce connection or we're doing something with a community, organization or we're doing something within our departments, academics.

We need to have that one core group. And you need to have that one core group that will be those go-to folks that work together. That's really important. Really important.

Pang Vangyi: And maybe, Lisa, because we're-- geographically, our consortium is so large. Maybe you can briefly mention about the college showcase to update our--

Lisa Vincent: Oh, yeah. So what we've done, every year for-- this is our fourth year. Two years we did it in person, two years we did it virtually on Zoom because of COVID. But we have a yearly, we call it, adult school, college transition showcase, where we invite the staff from the 15 adult schools in our region, community partners to attend this conference workshop half a day usually, where we have presentations and collaborative breakout groups that go over the information that they need to know in order to serve our students.

So when I say staff, I'm not just talking about that designated counselor at that adult school. I'm talking about faculty, admin, support staff, anyone at the adult schools that physically touch students. They need to know what's going on. What we're doing. And then how can they communicate it to the students?

You've heard a little bit about what's happening with this particular project, but we do so many other things. And so it's so important that they know about financial aid, they know about dual enrollment, they know about the matriculation steps, they know about who the transition specialists are, who the community college partners are. And we do this in our district for all of our community college sites and all the adult schools in the region.

And like I said, community partners, that has been a great success in terms of getting information out there to all of the staff that work with the students in our adult schools. So I highly recommend that be part of your program as well.

There's benefits to Zoom because we've got an adult school out. We're like an hour away from the mountain communities, where there's an adult school up in the hills up there and to have it virtually is really easy access for them, but we have met in person as well. We all come together and we learn from each other and we learn about what we're doing. So that's been another component of our program that, I think, has been a big success.

Sherri Watkins: OK. Let's open it up for questions. If you'd like to either put it in the chat or feel free to unmute yourself and ask any questions that you may have of the panelists. I see a question. Let's see. Thank you, Ed Shemozzle, who answered a question.

And you know what? It's probably-- it's very last session, right, of the conference, and I think we're probably all questioned out and absorbing all this information. I think we're overloaded. So if you have no questions, that's perfectly OK. Next slide, Pang.

Our contact information is here. If there's anything that we can help you with or-- we're always available.

Karri Hammerstorm: And I would add that keep asking, keep asking partners, keep asking questions, and keep pushing and don't give up. I mean, it can't happen. Rubik's cube, keep turning it. You don't have to take off the stickers. It can happen eventually so--

Sherri Watkins: I love that analogy. When we were planning this presentation Karri came up with the idea of the Rubik's cube. And if you think about it, I was one that probably took off the stickers or took it apart and tried to put it back together because I just couldn't get it. But I think, we finally gotten it, and we didn't have to take off the stickers. So we're very thankful.

And I really appreciate all the hard work that the panel has put into this. And I appreciate working with you guys. And I feel like we accomplished. We finally did something together. So thank you. And thank you all for joining us today, and have a wonderful afternoon. And hope you've enjoyed the conference and/or the summit. And, Melinda, I think, you're going to come back on and show the evaluation.

Melinda Holt: Yes, Because they can't go yet. They have to know how to do the evaluations, right. And maybe they already know. But I'm going to request that somebody stop sharing so that I can show just how you can do that evaluation for this session.

So I'm going to share my screen real quick. And to reiterate what everyone has just said, thank you for attending the top summit, this is the last session. Please, make sure you do the overall survey when it comes to you. I believe everyone's going to get an email, or you can do it right now.

But to get to this session, we're going to go to day three on the vFairs, right? You go to the whole, blah, but, yeah, you know all this. So you're going to go to day three, you're going to look for the transitions, it's way down at the bottom because it's one of the last sessions, and you're going to click Survey.

Now, here's where it gets a little tricky. [chuckles] You have to keep hitting the Next button until you see the time at the top match the session that we are currently in, which is 2:30 to 3:30. So I'm going to keep hitting Next. And naturally, I did this with the last session so that's why I came up with the 1:30 instead of the 2:30, and it's not going to let me come back.

So go to the 2:30, all right. So go to the 2:30. Let me see if I can-- oh, Clear Form. Here we go, Clear Form. Gosh. So if this happens to you, if you select the wrong one-- this is a learning moment or a teaching moment-- if you select the wrong one, just clear the form, right. And then hit the Next button so that you can get the right one.

Again, we're going to be able to do this. We're going to get to-- here it is, 2:30. Yes, this is the session we are evaluating. Right here, Transitions. And then when you select that, you hit Next and it will take you to the evaluation page.

Again, if you screwed up and you got to the wrong one, you can hit the Back button, but you're going to have to clear the form because it will remember where you left off. That's a great thing about forms and about computers and technology. They like to help us sometimes so much that we get a little frustrated with them.

So I am going to-- I'm checking the chat just to make sure. Did you have a data slide on the student serve to date in this process? That question came in after I started talking. Anybody want to answer that?

Sherri Watkins: We did not show a data slide on that. But, Brian, if you want to email me, and I can forward that to you.

Melinda Holt: There you go. All right, folks, on that note, we hope you have a great summit or had a great summit. Please, do the evaluations. Enjoy the rest of your day. It's 5 o'clock somewhere. All right, bye-bye.

Sherri Watkins: Thanks, Melinda.

Melinda Holt: You're welcome.

Sherri Watkins: Thanks, everyone.