Rita Van Dyke-kao: All right. Well, thank you so much, Melinda. And thank you, everybody, for joining us today for our CAEP Summit presentation on engaging students with integrated education and training. We're so excited you're here today. So we're going to introduce ourselves. My name is Rita Van Dyke-Kao. I'm the ESL department chair and faculty coordinator at Santiago Canyon College, Division of Continuing Education.

Raymond Hernandez: And my name is Raymond Hernandez. I'm the teacher on Special Assignment, ESL slash coordinator for the connection there, Garden Grove Adult Education.

Veronica Castaneda: Hello, everyone. My name is Veronica Castaneda. And I am the part time faculty coordinator for career education at Santa Ana College School of Continuing Education.

Rosalba Hernandez: Welcome, everyone. And my name is Rosalba Hernandez. And I am a counselor with Continuing Education Division at Santiago Canyon College.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: All right, great. If you haven't already, please enter your name, title, your agency in the chat so we know who our participants are today. And we can get to know you that way. So let's get started. Our abstract, you've already read. So I'm going to zip through that one.

So we are all part of the Rancho Santiago Adult Education Consortium or RSAEC. So building skills, advancing careers, that's our tagline at our consortium. And as you've heard already, a number of agencies are part of this consortium, including Garden Grove Adult Education and the Rancho Santiago Community College District, of which there are two colleges, Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College.

So in our consortium, the three-year plan that we were working on, we had several different workgroups, like many consortiums do. We had a distance education workgroup. We had a marketing workgroup. And we also had an IET workgroup, Integrated Education and Training.

So we were all members of this workgroup. And we were working on how to increase opportunities for our students in IET. So that's kind of the background here.

So here is from our three-year plan. Our second goal was all about IET. So Goal 2 is increase integrated education opportunities for students in basic skills and career education, so in particular our ESL students and our career education students. And there's a number of objectives listed in the three-year plan.

The first and second objectives, I believe, were for Goal number 1. So that's why it starts at number 3. And you can see here objective number 3, plan to create seamless transitions into post-secondary education or the workforce. And so that really goes well with IET. How can we have students on those pathways to careers seamlessly?

And then we have objective 4, which is plan to address the gaps and services. We're going to be talking a little bit about counseling later on. And Rosalba will be addressing that.

Objective 5-- plan to employ approaches proven to accelerate a student's progress toward their academic and career goals. Objective 6-- plan to address consortium-wide professional development. And then the last objective, number 7-- plan to leverage funding, resources, and facilities. So those were the objectives.

And so some of the assumptions that we had to also address in the work group are these four here. So first of all, will the target population be aware of the integrated education and training programs and understand their ultimate goal? If you ask your typical ESL student what is IET, they probably will not know what you're talking about even if you spell it out and say integrated education and training. So how can we communicate this clearly to our students? What are these IET programs that we have available for students? And what's the goal of the program?

And the number 2, is the target population willing to enroll in co-enrollment courses? Are they willing to take an ESL class at the same time? It's a career education class.

And then number 3, the big question about funding. Will the funding resources be adequate and available? We know in adult education that we are chronically underfunded. We always need more funding.

So when you're implementing an IET program, we talk about things like co-teaching or alternate teaching. And this can be a bit of a barrier. How can we pay two teachers at once teaching the same class? What if there aren't enough students enrolled? So this is definitely something that had to be addressed.

And then number 4, will the long term outcome also be the goal of the target population? Is their goal also our goal? As we're working in this work group, we have to ask ourselves this.

So, eventually, as we talked about the goals and the assumptions of our objectives, it became pretty apparent that we needed to assess our students' needs. And so our work group really honed in on creating a survey, a career pathway survey, for our student populations. So that's what I'll be talking about in a little bit more detail and then also my fellow presenters kind of on the implementation of that and also how we created our IET programs.

So I'm going to go to our survey. And, actually, I want to share the link with you guys so that you have that raw link. So let me just go back. I'm going to put it in the chat so you're able to access it as if you're a student, not as a collaborator but as a student.

So here is the survey. I hope everyone can see Career Pathways Interest Survey. And I did duplicate it so that this is just for the CAEP Summit. So we know you're not a student if you do end up submitting a response. No problem if you do.

So you'll see that we're using Microsoft Forms. Just quickly, is there anyone you're familiar with Microsoft Forms? Maybe if you could in the chat say yes or no. Are you familiar with Microsoft Forms? We have some people saying no. A lot of people saying no. OK. No, that's great to realize.

Oh, yeah, Google. So some of you are familiar with Google Forms. It's very similar to Google Forms. It's just the Microsoft version. And the reason we use Microsoft and not Google is that, at least at our community college district, we're a Microsoft district. So we have an institutional license for Microsoft.

We do not for Google. So if we use Google, the concern would be privacy violations, as you're collecting student information. Google now owns that. We wanted to avoid that. So that's why it's Microsoft Forms. Again, it's very similar to Google Forms.

So we had in the past, several years ago, given a survey to students that was paper based, in a hard copy form. We really wanted to do an online version, especially the pivot to more online learning during the pandemic, where students are more familiar with this technology. And we were able to get the results more effectively through the online survey format.

So here it is, Microsoft Forms. Another nice thing about Microsoft Forms is that it's also mobile friendly. So if you click on the Mobile button on there on the top, it will show what it looks like on a phone. And, of course, many of our students are using smartphones. But today we'll look at the computer version since we definitely have a lot more real estate in the computer version. Another thing, is there is an immersive reader option? So if a student would like to listen to the form maybe, they have a visual impairment, they can do so.

So we developed the survey in our work group. And it did take several meetings, which lasted over several months. And we had a diverse group of people at the table stakeholders contributing and collaborating to the survey to make sure that it was as effective as possible and really reflected the programs that we offer.

So we start with this introduction. We want to know what kind of job you'd like to do. Please read the list or career pathways below. And mark the careers you're interested in.

And then do you want to receive more information about education and training opportunities in your chosen career pathway? If yes, then please enter your personal contact information at the end of the survey. And Rosalba later will be talking about this from the counseling perspective, contacting students. So we had their information to contact them.

Melinda Holt: This is Melinda. I hate to interrupt. But if you wanted people to actually go to this form, it's not currently accepting responses. So everyone's getting a message that they can't access the form.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Oh, OK. I will correct that. Thank you for letting me know. So for now let's just look at it together on the screen. And then I'll share the link again after I allow the responses. Thank you for letting me know.

So here we go. We're going to start with our first career pathway, which is office technology. And you'll notice there's a picture. There's a heading. And there's a short description of what the career pathway is.

Office technology includes learning to use Microsoft Office, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, keyboarding, and business applications and then some examples of the specific job pathways that we have. And most of these examples-- also, we have a CDCP certificate. So it's a Career Development and College Preparation certificate that's approved by the state of California that students earn after they complete all the coursework.

So if the students are interested in the career pathway, they can say yes. They can say no. Maybe they're not sure. But the thing that we were able to utilize is the branching technology in MS Forms.

So if they say no, they can just go to the next career pathway because they're not really interested in any of those jobs. But if they say yes, you'll notice that the form changes. And these additions pop up.

And these are the specific jobs-- general office clerk, administrative assistant, first line supervisor. They now pop up. And the student will answer yes, no, maybe if they're interested in those particular careers.

So for general office clerk, you're going to see a description here. And then are you interested in this career-- yes, no, maybe? I'm going to say no.

Secretary administrative assistant-- same thing. There's that description. And then are you interested in this career? Yes. And then first line supervisor-- what's that? You can read about it. And then answer if you're interested. Maybe.

So once they've done that, they can go to the next page. And then this is another career pathway, a different one, so health occupations. And there's going to be some pictures so even lower level students are able to understand what this pathway is all about. So we have examples of some jobs.

Again, these are CDCP certificate programs that we offer at our colleges-- caregiver, personal care aide, CNA, medical billing and coding, behavior technician. Are you interested in this career pathway? If they say no, they just go to the next career pathway. If they say yes, all those specific careers will pop up. And then they can choose again. Are you interested? Yes. Caregiver, yes. Certified nursing assistant, yes. Very popular program at both Santiago Canyon College and Santa Ana College.

Medical billing-- this, we had a bit of a debate if I recall correctly because some of our colleagues said this should go in business, or this should go in a different area. But I guess we ended up putting it in health care. Maybe Veronica can talk about that later. But, again, they can say if they're interested. And then behavior technician is the last health care career. Then they go to the next one.

Next career pathway that we have is digital media or information communication technology. So it's a lot of vocabulary there. But, really, specifically, what are the jobs? They're listed right below.

If they're interested in the career pathway, those will pop up. So we've got digital marketing specialist, using social media to market things, popular web associate, basics of website creation, and then multimedia artists and animators-- computer games, movies, music videos. Really interesting stuff. We're going to say yes, I am interested in that career.

The next career pathway is hospitality and tourism. And then we've listed what are the five segments of hospitality-- lodging, food and beverage, restaurants, tourism, travel, recreation. We did have a little bit of difference here at Santiago Canyon college. I think customer service rep is our main career pathway. But at Santa Ana College, they had food and beverage. So we were able to distinguish and duplicate the survey and then also customize it according to our own campuses.

So when I say yes, the customer service representative career pops up. There's a picture and a description and then that question again. Are you interested in this career?

Next one is advanced manufacturing. We have a 3D printing program. So they can learn how to use a 3D printer. Are you interested in this career? Yes.

And the last pathway that we have was the business career pathway. And the examples of jobs are home-based business owner and financial advisor. So they can see, what exactly are some examples of home based businesses that our students could develop and have in their own homes, this entrepreneurial spirit a lot of our students have? So some examples are house cleaning, freelance writing, dog walking, upcycling, et cetera. From what I understand, this is a very popular program. And financial advisor-- so for this one, we'll say maybe.

So those were all the career pathways that we had. And then we put careers in them. And the students are answering yes, no, or maybe if they're interested.

And then just a few more questions on the survey just to learn a little bit more about our students. Maybe there's a career or a job that's not listed. If yes, they can write it down here. I think we had students interested in nursing or being a pilot or just something that we didn't have. They could write that down.

Maybe they need help deciding on a career or a job. So they could also indicate that. And then question 23 was about employability skills. Are you interested in learning employability skills, such as writing a resume, job interview skills, job search techniques, or just general workplace skills?

And then at the very end of the survey, there is a section where they can, if they want, provide personal information. Up till now it's been anonymous. And they can continue to be anonymous if they wish.

But if they want to speak to a counselor, have a counselor or support staff contact them, we're going to have to get their personal information. So that's why we also included this part at the end of the survey. So they can say no. They don't have to. But if they say yes, we need their name and their student ID number, their phone number, and then their email address. And then that way one of our counselors could contact them to talk more about their career and educational plans. And then they submit at the end.

So I'm just going to pause there for a moment if there are any other questions about the survey. And while I'm pausing, I'm just going to quickly correct that issue with the share. My apologies on that.

Melinda Holt: Rita, there was one question that came into the chat from Lori. What ESL level is this survey written for?

Rita Van Dyke-kao: It is actually written for all levels. But we did decide to include pictures to help with our lower levels and then also a description for our higher levels. So it really is meant for all students. And we did send it to all of our ESL students.

So I've opened up the end date. So it should be good now. I put the link in the chat. Can somebody check it for me? Are you able to open the survey now.

Melinda Holt: Yes.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Oh, wonderful, thank you.

Melinda Holt: And another question came in the chat. Would you like to read it? Or would you like me to read it for you?

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Oh, if you could read it, that would be great. Thank you.

Melinda Holt: What kind of response did you get? Was it sent once? Or is this ongoing?

Rita Van Dyke-kao: So we will talk about that individually because we're at different campuses. But at Santiago Canyon College, we sent it in the spring, so last spring. And we received hundreds of responses. I think it was over 500. And we left it open for about three weeks. So, yeah, we did receive a lot of responses. I'm going to go back and share my screen here.

So please feel free-- if you are thinking of creating a survey for your institution or your agency, feel free to use what we have as a template of those ideas. That's why I wanted to share the survey link with you.

And I just want to emphasize that this was definitely a collaborative work. We had administrators on our work group. We had faculty from ESL, career education. They were essential, our counselors. We had a workforce specialist from the Santa Ana work center.

We had our welfare coordinator there. And so we really wanted to get all those voices in the room at the table so that we could create the best, most robust, most inclusive survey as possible for our students. Because when you send a survey out to students, you want it to be a good survey, right? You want to get those results that are helpful, that you can work with.

And also, I wanted to mention that challenge of Microsoft Forms, because we had an institutional license, we couldn't collaborate across districts, if that makes sense. So we have a district Microsoft license for the Rancho Santiago Community College District. But Ray at Garden Grove is not part of our district even though he's part of our consortium. So that was a little bit of a challenge because Ray is not able to edit the form. But we can still work together.

If his students submit their version of the Microsoft form, I can send him an Excel sheet because the great thing about Microsoft Forms is once you start getting results, you can download an Excel sheet. And I believe the same thing is true of with Google. Google Forms does the same thing. You can download an Excel sheet of all of their results once your students start submitting the form.

So I can still send that to Ray. But because he's part of a different district, he couldn't edit the form himself. I would have to do it for him. So I just wanted to make a note about that because this is CAEP. We're working with consortiums or consortia, I should say. And I think that's all I wanted to say about the form unless there are additional questions.

Melinda Holt: We have one more question. Did you include all of your certificate programs from Santa Ana College and Santiago Canyon College?

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Great question. So the original Microsoft form, Yes. But then when we decided to send out the survey last spring in consultation with our career ed faculty and counseling faculty, we decided just to narrow it to our programs at Santiago Canyon College because we were only sending this to our students at Santiago Canyon College. So we did duplicate the form and then make some modifications.

Melinda Holt: And why again did you use Microsoft over Google?

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Because we have an institutional license for Microsoft at our district. Google, we do not. So when you're using a Google product, they own the information. And so that was an issue for privacy and possible for violation. OK. Well, I think I'm going to turn it over now to Ray from Garden Grove. And he's going to continue talking.

Raymond Hernandez: Great. Thank you, Rita. Thank you, Rita, for that. Just to test my mic, can everyone hear me clearly? Perfect, perfect. Great.

My name is Raymond Hernandez. And I am the teacher on special assignment, also known as coordinator for our programs that we have here. We work very closely with Rancho Santiago in creating the survey. And we are very fortunate enough to be able to collaborate beyond the survey to provide classes on our campus.

We leverage resources by providing the classrooms. And Santa Ana provides the instructors and the salaries. And so we got very creative in having some of those courses on our campus.

Prior to COVID, our IET courses were pretty, pretty good. We had great attendance. We offered the general office clerk pathway. And, of course, you can see on our slide, that was a collaboration with Santa Anna College School of Continuing Education. And that was based on a previous survey, not the one that was created but a previous survey from our own information from our students that this would be a great opportunity for them to be able to have on our campus.

We also offered-- it's not on our slide. But we also offered how to start a small business. And that was pretty successful as well. So we gave students that opportunity. Classes were going well. And then we had COVID come by. And pretty much that stopped everything along the way.

It was very challenging for us to continue. Students began to not come to classes. And, therefore, when we came back post COVID, we had a lot of challenges on keeping attendance and enrollment. And so with that, Santa Ana College had to cancel our courses on our campus. But we look forward to trying to implement these courses once again.

So, basically, our enrollment, we've opened up in August. And two months in, and our enrollment started already at 1,600. And we have waiting list for a lot of our ESL classes. Our computer basics classes are filled. And so one of the things that we plan on doing is to use the survey that we intended to use prior to COVID in the spring to be able to strategize and see how we can provide the more relevant opportunities for those students.

We currently offer a business office certification course. And this is on our own. It is an IET-approved model. But we have the instructor who is a CTE certified as well as ESL. So she teaches both parts of that program.

And this course that we're offering in the evening, the business office certification course, it's pretty interesting. It verifies individuals that have acquired the technical skills and necessary to be competitive in today's workplace. Definitely, if they reach certification at the end of the course, they're able to prove that they have the ability to work with office technology skills, database applications, word processing, digital presentation applications.

It's quite a lot. But it is segmented. And it's a great opportunity for students to demonstrate those skills and then be able to use that certification in their resume to present for future jobs.

Some of the goals we have for our 2023 is definitely providing that survey in the second semester. We, Garden Grove Adult Education, have not given this particular survey that we actually worked on. But now we're going to do so.

And we're going to think about it in two different ways. The first one is as an interest. What do we get the most interest? And then after that, we're able to identify what courses can we try to bring back on our campus.

And if we cannot do that, then our goal would be to work with our partners to be able to have referrals and have our students attend courses on other campuses. And that's where we would have our counselor and the support staff in order to help students springboard and provide the support they need to be able to be successful with a course that we may not have on our campus.

We're definitely going to review those results. And as Rita stated before, she will receive the results. And she will send that information back to us. And then we will be able to analyze that and create the program offerings that will meet the students' needs on our campus. Any questions about Garden Grove's ability?

Melinda Holt: Yes. Alfred Ramirez asks, the classes were open in person? Was that a reason for increased enrollment?

Raymond Hernandez: Yes, all of our courses are open in person. And prior to-- we never had an issue with enrollment before COVID. And then once COVID came around, post COVID challenges, we were doing a high flex model. And so we were providing opportunities for students to attend via internet, via Zoom, as well as in-person. And, slowly, that has changed.

One example-- not to get too much off topic, but one example was in my class in the evening, I used to have maybe 20 students online and maybe three attending. And now we still provide the high flex opportunity. But I have zero students online. And I have 31 attending.

And so most of our courses were seeing the change where people are realizing they'd like to get back to class in person. And teachers are happy as well because they do have to monitor both sessions. But, yeah, we're pretty happy about that as well.

Melinda Holt: OK. One more question from Margie Moriarty. What certificate can the student earn in the business office class?

Raymond Hernandez: Well, the certificate that they're receiving is actually a certificate that's already part of a program that was part of the iCEV. They are sponsoring our event as well. And they have a station in the summit where you can visit some of their courses.

But we did purchase it from them. It is a certification through them. And there's actually a local office here in Garden Grove that we have yet to visit but we're going to visit very soon in order to collaborate with that office. But they do receive a certificate after an examination to prove some of those or all of those preparations and demonstrating those skills.

Thank you, Kathleen. Yes, it is an industry recognized certification and business technology. And that is the only course we're offering right now on our Garden Grove campus. Any other questions? OK, great. Thank you all for taking time to let me share what we're doing here at Garden Grove Adult Education.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Thank you so much, Ray. All right, next we have Veronica.

Veronica Castaneda: Hello, everyone again. Welcome. My name is Veronica Castaneda. And I'm here to discuss what we are doing at Santa Ana College School of Continuing Ed. I'm the part time faculty coordinator and adjunct faculty. So I do oversee the Career Education Department along with my colleagues.

So today we're going to start talking about the student interest forms. So what we do, we-- of course, like every college, we market. Outreach goes out and does their wonderful job with marketing and the radio and all that. But I am personally in charge of all the student inquiries when they access our website and they search through the different courses and the different programs that we are offering.

Every single student inquiry comes directly to me. And the students have the opportunity to now email back and forth with the real person, not just a general message. And what I will do is I will respond to their inquiry with the summary of the course, of the certificate.

I will explain to them what courses they need to fulfill or what the prerequisites are for that specific CDCP certificate that they're interested in. And I will attach any resources that come along with that. And we have an exchange opportunity for an exchange. So then that way the students have a direct contact.

After that, majority of the time, if it's a course that's required for me to connect them with the counselor, then I will do that. I will connect the student with the counselor. If there's no need to connect, then I will teach them how to register using our platform, which is called Self-Service.

I can do a meeting with the students and register them for the next semester. Or if the class is open entry, open exit, then we get them situated in the class of their choice. Again, all of these interests from career education do come to me. So I usually respond to them within four business days.

Then after the student inquiries, what we have is building bridges with articulated courses. So at Santa Ana College School of Continuing Ed, we have articulation agreements with the credit site. And what we do is we offer students-- we offer all or non-credit students an opportunity to take the introductory courses associated with the certificate free of cost to them.

So when a credit student is paying-- I don't know how much the unit is right now, but $40 let's just say to take this introductory course to biotech, pharmacy, automotive, or any of the courses that they're interested in, we at non-credit offer that same course with the same instructor and with credit students free of cost to our students. There's different reasons for doing this, of course. If you're familiar with the articulation agreements, we want to provide our students an opportunity to be exposed to the college life without having to pay.

Some of our students don't know about financial aid. Some students don't know whether they have working rights or not that they can still attend college. And those who don't know about financial aid or any waivers perhaps don't have the money to purchase or pay for these courses. So we give them the opportunity.

And the best part about these articulated courses is that students, if they excel, they have the opportunity to transfer the non-credit grade, which would be an SP, to a letter grade. And vise versa, if they don't do so well, they can keep their SP or their NP. And it will not affect their transcript. It will not have a negative impact.

So this is a way we are building bridges with the credit site. And this information I also provide to our students when they have inquiries. I give them direct links. I connect them with the professors at credit site or a counselor if need be to register for this class or for the class that they're interested in. Any questions before I move on?

Melinda Holt: Nope.

Veronica Castaneda: OK, thank you. And how are we doing with IET? So, unfortunately, our school has not yet launched the survey that Rita just described. We are in that talks about who our team will be to actually edit this general survey that we put together and tailor it to our school programs. That's in the works.

But to engage students with integrated education and training, we do have a few contextualized courses at the moment. These include auto technology, biotechnology, line cook, and CNA. This is fairly new and as we all know very challenging to be able to work for an ESL instructor or professor to be able to work with a career ed instructor, whether it's credit, non-credit, so that we can come up with the curriculum, align the curriculum, and launch it.

So it has been a very new and challenging task. Unfortunately, our first contextualized course, which was CNA, was not very successful. And I can explain why.

It had low enrollments. And this is because it was pre-pandemic. So it got developed. We were ready. And then the pandemic happened.

When the pandemic happened, we weren't able to provide the CNA practicum courses. We weren't able to have those courses that required students to come and attend in person, the hands-on courses. We were only able to give the courses like employability skills, the workforce course that's tied into CNA.

And because students were not able to actually practice what they were going to be learning in the contextualized course, they were not interested. They wanted to take the course-- which makes a lot of sense. They wanted to take the course simultaneously with the CNA hands-on course.

So we didn't have a good outcome. But now that COVID hit and we were able to receive HEERF funding, we were able to develop more contextualized courses. And we are currently in the works of actually launching those.

We are now developing culinary. We are developing construction, manufacturing, pharmacy tech, and welding. So we have-- although we weren't very successful as desired, we have good hopes for the future and good instructors working very hard to develop these courses currently-- the curriculum currently. Any questions so far?

So moving on to our job fair, tomorrow Santa Anna College School of Continuing Ed is happy to announce we are having our first student job fair in about 15 years. The last one happened so many years ago. So we are very happy to announce that four part time faculty members, including yours truly, Veronica, organized this event.

And we have more than 50 students registered. That to us is huge. We've opened it up to the community. We've invited credit, non-credit. Everyone is welcome to attend. And the people who will be coming will be the employers who will be attending-- I'm sorry, it will be Surf and Sand Resort, Applied Medical Manufacturing, Rancho Santiago Community College District Child Development Services, Northgate Markets, assistance in home care, and the county of Orange.

Some of these employers will be interviewing and possibly even hiring our students on site tomorrow. All these jobs and all these employers that we invited are employers who are looking to hire our students. And they are not requiring anything, like a bachelor's degree, master's degree, or anything like that. They understand our population. They understand that our students are English language learners and may or may not have state-approved certificates and whatnot.

So I will share the link via the chat room. So please visit our website. And feel free to inform the community and your students.

And going back and commenting a little bit on the survey that Rita mentioned, we are currently gathering an internal team who will work together, again, to customize it to our needs. But we do have a shorter survey that will go out to our students tomorrow after the job fair. And we will collect their interest. And we will gather information that we can then connect our students with the proper representatives.

That can be a counselor. That could be a coordinator, depending on the students' responses. So this is what we are doing at Continuing Ed to reengage our students' general courses and integrated education and training. Thank you for your time. Do we have any questions?

Melinda Holt: There's nothing in the chat.

Veronica Castaneda: OK, thank you.

Melinda Holt: I'm sorry, Alfred had a question. Did you say H-E-E-R-F is paying for curriculum design?

Veronica Castaneda: Yes, HEERF funding. Yes. So after pandemic, we had funds that were available. And we used the HEERF funding to develop courses that are actually going to benefit our students because of the pandemic situation.

Because of the pandemic, they have to work from home. Some of us had to study from home. So we took that funding and utilized it so that we can be able to deliver our services to this population in need. Thank you. Any other questions? Well, thank you for having me today.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Thank you so much, Veronica. And good luck on the job fair tomorrow.

Veronica Castaneda: Thank you, looking forward. And I'm very excited. It's been a while.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: All right, next we have Rosalba.

Rosalba Hernandez: Thank you, Rita. So my name is Rosalba Hernandez. And I'm one of the counselors in Continuing Education Division. And our counseling role in the career interest survey was to follow up with those students requesting further information on career pathways.

When we looked at the survey, 63 students requested a follow up call from a counselor. And so our counseling team began outreach efforts to contact all 63 students last spring semester. Our outreach efforts included a telephone call explaining to students that we were ready to support them with any career-related counseling. An email was also sent to students with links to our career education, certificates, along with our counseling contact information.

And although we contacted all 63 students, we weren't able to complete educational planning with all 63 students. In some cases, we had to leave voicemail messages. Some students requested another follow-up call because they couldn't speak to us at that moment. And others could no longer attend school at this time due to securing employment and other life circumstances, just to name a few.

And in the other cases, we were able to complete educational planning with ESL students. And most educational planning was conducted by phone or Zoom due to the pandemic. Students were still not comfortable coming in person during the spring semester.

And during our career education counseling sessions, we were able to, one, educate students on career education pathways and other educational opportunities. What we found that with many of our ESL students, they needed more guidance and information with ESL, actually course planning, that could help them transition to their career pathway faster. So a lot of planning was around, what ESL classes are you taking? And then we moved into addressing career options.

They also learned about new programs, such as our high school program, our HiSET in Spanish, which is a high school equivalency certificate. So a lot of it was taking the time with our ESL students and doing a lot of education on what we have to offer.

Once we address the different opportunities with our students, we help them identify a meaningful pathway to them and then, ultimately, create an educational plan that could serve as a roadmap to their educational goals. And one of the platforms that we also use, just like at Santa Ana College, is Self-Service. So that was one way that we were building our education plan with students. This really set the stage for students to begin looking at other educational opportunities beyond ESL and to plan accordingly. So that was really important for them to start looking not only at their short-term goals within ESL but also start thinking about long-term goals.

But we didn't stop there. Once we did that stage of the planning with students and creating an educational plan, we know the importance as counselors of engagement and staying connected with students to help them stay on the path and to support students through counseling. So this fall semester, we decided to do another follow up with our students.

We sent out another mass email to all 63 students. We contacted all 63 students via phone to check in with them, where they were at in terms of their educational goals. And we also scheduled counseling workshops on academic and career pathways.

More than anything, we wanted to make sure that students could connect with counseling through different means and revisit their educational goals and ensure that learning was happening with intentional outcomes. What we also found, if I may add, is that we also had to do a lot of education around what is counseling. So sometimes with some students, it was about what is it that you do. I had to really explain my role as a counselor. But students were super appreciative of the phone call and the counseling service and really welcomed the opportunity to speak with someone that could provide them guidance and helping them with their academic goals.

In the end, what are some lessons learned in this career survey? I think one overall lesson that I felt was really important and an important reminder was that how important it is to be part of the student's educational experience throughout their schooling here. Students learned more about training and educational opportunities.

For example, we just started a new basic digital literacy class this semester, specifically for ESL students. So it really gave us an opportunity to let them know about new classes that were happening. We were able to also register students for other educational programs meaningful to them. We were also able to re-enroll students who stopped attending, students who wanted to return to school but not had time to contact us. So it was a really good opportunity to touch base with them and encourage them to return to school.

We also helped address barriers impacting students from attending school. For example, some students needed a referral to community resources. Sometimes that meant connecting them to a food pantry or referral to mental health service. That was also very important. And sometimes by providing that community resource, that was so helpful for them that it allowed them to also think about their education and re-enrolling back in school.

And then, finally, I think the last lesson is just that by engaging students through their schooling, we re-inspire them to follow their educational dreams and provide the support that they need to achieve their goals. So it's really-- I think through this effort in reaching out to students and doing the educational planning and doing the follow up, I think we build stronger connections with students. And they know that they can turn to counseling as a means to addressing any academic goals that they may have. Any questions regarding our counseling role? Well, thank you for having me.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Thank you so much, Rosalba. And if any of the participants want to unmute themselves and ask a question, you're also very welcome to do so if you don't want to write a question in the chat. Christina says thank you for sharing, Rosalba.

Cathleen Petersen: Hi, this is Cathleen Petersen.

Melinda Holt: Hey, Cathleen.

Cathleen Petersen: Yeah, I would like to know, Rosalba, on your follow-up, you said that you were responding to students because we-- like what Ray was talking earlier when we first came up with our office-- the general office clerk pathway, we had asked students if they wanted to contact with a counselor. But the problem was when we did the first survey, we put it on the back of the paper. So some people did turn the paper over.

So anyway, I was just wondering, when you did the follow, up how far apart was it between when the 60 some students first requested a counselor to talking to the counselor and then when you did the follow up. How far apart was that?

Rosalba Hernandez: That's a really good question. I think we started doing follow-up, I think, like a month later. So a lot of-- when we were contacting students, we had to remind them about the career survey they had forgotten about that they had completed that. So, yeah. So maybe it would have been more effective to do it sooner rather than later.

Cathleen Petersen: Well, that I'm just saying is that I honor you guys for doing the follow up directly with the counselor. Because we found in through our orientation now having direct contact with the counselor from moment one with the orientation and the pre testing and then having hands-on going, back and finding out we're looking at students where they're placed in ESL to letting them know that we would like to-- if they're interested in accelerating any transitions. So I think that that hands-on, that personal touch with the counselor is-- even if it's just to give information and that they're not ready to actually co enroll or something, I think that that's very valuable. And good job.

Rosalba Hernandez: Thank you. That's so true, Cathleen. My experience with some of our ESL students, they were very centered around, let me just get through ESL. And so it was hard to convince them to sometimes enroll in a computer class because they get very comfortable where they're at.

Cathleen Petersen: Yeah, and that's what we're working on too. We're working on the co-enrollment. We're working on identifying students who they came in the door saying they want a high school diploma. But they're not ready to get in there yet.

So we're trying to say, OK, it's only for your reading scores. So you can be co-enrolled. You can find out-- and, yeah, it's the whole-- finding students that have been in like beginning low ESL. And their scores are outrageous. And so you're saying, hey, excuse me, do you know about any other programs that we have here? Are you interested in going to a career or a college? So that outreach is really, really important.

Rosalba Hernandez: Yeah. And I think different touch points. I think what we try to do was a variety of ways to reaching out to our students. We're doing workshops with students, introducing counseling service, letting them know about the different career pathways. We do that in the ESL classrooms. We're also doing it via Zoom to target those students that are only doing online work and then also sending out mass emails and then phone calling. So we're trying to reach out through different means. I think that's a huge difference.

Rita Van Dyke-kao: Thank you, Cathleen, for the great question and comment. Rosalba, if I may, is there any perhaps recommendation you could give to ESL instructors to talk about the opportunities to their ESL students during class because you mentioned ESL students are often focused on just getting their ESL work done and going through the levels and then doing workforce training or career pathways, thinking about that later? Is there any recommendation you could give to ESL instructors to also kind of spark that idea that, hey, you can do it at the same time?

Rosalba Hernandez: Right. I really think for some reason, we ended up getting a lot of students that were in the ESL literacy level. So what I'm thinking is that a lot of the literacy level teacher ended up bringing students to the computer room to complete the survey. So just the fact that the instructor brought them over to the computer lab, I think that also allays fear just with computers.

So I think doing lesson planning, that involves stepping out of the classroom. And also, inviting counselors into the classroom, I think that's really important so that we can let them know about the different educational opportunities and for us to do educational planning. I think that's really important. I think a lot of times for the students is being able to see that we're nice and that we're ready to help them with any educational planning.