Skip to content
News and Updates

Category: Education equity

IDEAL Fellowship Program

With excitement, CCRI is looking forward to providing the Washington State Board for Community and Technical College’s evaluation of cohort 4 of the Initiative in Diversity, Equity, Antiracism & Leadership (IDEAL) fellowship program. The IDEAL fellowship program is designed to empower community college students with knowledge, critical discussions, and experience doing research to advance equity projects on their own campuses.

IDEAL provides fellows a place to learn about racial justice and share their own stories while being paid a $1000 stipend. Participants learn how to use tools to research equity issues on their campus and provide their community colleges with suggestions about how the institutions can increase educational access and supports to move them toward a more equitable education environment.

This pioneering student empowerment program was created by the IDEAL facilitators and educators Dr. Jeremiah and Rachel Sims. CCRI has had the privilege of talking to students from the first 3 cohorts and learning about the unique experience of being in a space anchored in openness, acceptance, and transparency, where they felt safe to share their personal narratives, listen actively to others, create friendships, learn, and gain confidence in how to be advocates for social justice. In interviews, participants shared how the Sims’ provide knowledge and understanding of systemic structures that perpetuate racial, social, and economic inequity while also creating a safe space for tough conversations. These conversations helped create community, increased participants’ equity focus within their academic journeys and careers, and helped to create change agents.

The structure of each cohort has changed to continue to support students and their projects to create institutional change. Cohorts 2 and 3 accepted students at 4-5 participating colleges and added Senior Fellows, alumni of the program, who helped students work on their institutional projects and final presentations. Cohort 3 also added institutional representatives, to provide fellows with an insider perspective of organizational change efforts, where to find data, and to help move the proposed work forward. In our most recent evaluation effort, we describe what we learned from cohort 3 students and the potential for institutional change.

Cohort 4 will begin in February 2023 and will consist of students from Yakima Valley College, Lake Washington Institute of Technology, Bellevue College, South Puget Sound Community College, and Grays Harbor College. We look forward to learning about the experiences of the newest IDEAL fellows and how participating in IDEAL affects their education journeys and their institutions.

STEM Transfer Partnership: Advancing our Community

As we embark on the second year of the STEM Transfer Partnership (STP) initiative, we finally got our first chance to come together in person at our October convening in Ellensburg, Washington. Because our first convening had to be held remotely due to continuing pandemic precautions, we were thrilled to be able to finally meet everyone in person and make our community stronger through the informal exchanges that are difficult to facilitate in virtual settings.

The October event built upon all the previous work of the STP teams. It included celebrating progress since the April convening and moving forward within each partnership to advance interventions to engage and support low-income students and create innovative, durable transfer pathways. The teams presented a variety of different interventions they were working on. Many institutional pairs discussed new curricular structures while others described the steps they had taken in establishing undergraduate research experiences, creating transfer maps, mentorship networks, and inter-institutional student engagement programs. 

Highlights of the day included roundtable discussions across topics such as curriculum, data sharing, low-income student support, and gathering student input. We also learned about STEM communities of transformation from our guest speaker, Dr. Sean Gehrke, Director of the Office of Educational Assessment at the University of Washington. Working in their teams, partnerships had opportunities to identify and dissect current barriers to their work and develop strategies to garner external support for their programs. Each team produced a poster that summarized and motivated their partnership initiatives, articulating an “elevator pitch” designed to engage stakeholders outside their partnership. We concluded the day with a lively ‘gallery walk,’ where teams shared their posters and their elevator pitch among all the convening participants. 

One of the key goals of this convening was to foster a cross-partnership exchange of ideas and community building. To that end, the convening agenda balanced sessions dedicated to work within teams and in ones that involved interaction with other teams. Teams had opportunities to brainstorm creative solutions with other teams and learn about the many different strategies for low-income student support and enhanced transfer processes. For many participants, this dynamic was the key benefit of the convening. One post-event survey respondent commented, “It was really nice just to meet people who are interested in similar things across the state and feel like we have allies.” Another respondent identified their key benefit from the convening, “Having a community to consult with and bounce ideas off of – we are able to streamline a bit more, not everyone re-inventing the wheel. Having engaging discussions about why this is important and creating that community culture.” We were excited to see and later hear about these productive exchanges and will continue to strengthen and expand our community of practice.

We are so gratified to be a part of this process, working with dedicated professionals who took time out of their overcrowded schedules to come together in community with us. Together we are advancing equity by expanding STEM education opportunities for low-income students across the state.