City College of San Francisco - California Competes

THEME III
At the Mission Campus, input from CBOs typically relates to workplace and employment needs in the
community. One example illustrates how the Mission Campus Dean, collaborating with the Business
Department coordinator, responded to a request from the Mission Hiring Hall. Staff from the Hiring Hall
had asked the Mission Campus leadership for help solving employment needs in the community. After
a series of meetings and discussions, a partnership, solidly built on trust and dialog, sparked the new
Construction Administrative Assistant Program.
The other neighborhood campuses also have relationships with community-based organizations. For
example, the Chinatown/North Beach Advisory Committee, composed of community leaders, CCSF
program coordinators, and the Campus Dean, meets quarterly to discuss issues and provides input on
the needs of the community and students. Their input has resulted in new course offerings and changes
in scheduling. Another example is the Alemany Campus, located in the Tenderloin neighborhood. The
Campus Dean there was approached by the executive director of the Bay Area Women’s and Children’s
Center, who requested that the campus become involved in the development of adult classrooms in the
school to allow parents to pursue ESL and computer classes after dropping their children at school. After
a series of several meetings and discussion, the Alemany Campus faculty provided advice on the classroom
design and construction, student computers and software, and classroom furniture. The results of this
partnership are still being evaluated, as scheduling the classrooms at a convenient time for parents and
security concerns need to be addressed.
IV. Conclusion & Future Directions
The College community and its external audiences can be proud of the broad-based involvement, intentional
use of data and information, and generally cooperative and reflective dialogs that have shaped
important improvements in College programs and services. Innovation typically requires collaborations
fueled by dialogs that cross department/program areas. The types of dialogs at CCSF about teaching
and learning have primarily been initiated by faculty in certain departments or on certain campuses,
responding to student needs, community input, and external demands, such as compliance with Title 5
or accreditation requirements. This essay’s examples of SCANS, Reflective Teachers Project, the Design
Collaborative, Service Learning projects, and collaborative projects between campus leadership and CBOs
all illustrate the dynamic pockets of dialog coming from faculty or faculty-administration reactions to
student needs, as well as from students. The examples of the Enhanced Self-Study, strategic planning, the
improvements made in hiring issues related to diversity, and the Student Development Division provide
evidence of institutional dialogs carried out primarily via Shared Governance committees. Indeed, the
experiences and results of this current Self Study have been overwhelmingly dependent on the quality
of the dialogs in the various Self-Study committees, work groups, and listening sessions—all based on
a great deal of evidence about how the College is addressing the WASC standards and themes.
A culture of institutional dialog about student learning outcomes and assessment is still emerging. How
does such a complex and large institution become a reflective learning community that actually makes the
time to discuss and digest the research reports and data related to improving student success and learning
What organizational mechanisms might promote effective information sharing and discussions about the
variety of student success services and programs across the District, allowing more involvement of staff at
all instructional sites, as well as inter- and cross-disciplinary dialogs about teaching and learning While
this essay has illustrated many examples of effective dialogs to advance institutional priorities and respond
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