Daily Lumina News 062821

Community colleges and their partners can do much more to train students for today's evolving workforce, experts concluded during a recent discussion on the role of community colleges in preparing adult workers for a post-pandemic economy.
Eloy Oakley, the systemwide chancellor overseeing California’s community colleges, says schools must become more flexible, more focused on upskilling and stacking credentials, and give students more opportunities to personalize their needs.

When she isn’t renovating farmhouses from the 1860s, Patricia Parker is wrangling more than 1,500 higher education professionals from Virginia’s two-year and four-year institutions, the K-12 sector, and leaders from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia and Virginia’s Community College System. Her goal: to improve the transfer pathways for students.
It takes a force of nature to manage, coach, and convene that many stakeholders on transfer—and Parker, the program director for Transfer Virginia, is a powerhouse. In just over two years, Transfer Virginia leaders have taken key steps to reform and improve the transfer experience in the state to bring about measurable progress on student success and equity.

Hunger and housing issues among Oregon college students are on the rise. Now, more help may be on the way. Last week, the Oregon Senate passed a bill requiring the state’s public colleges to hire “benefits navigators”—a measure advocates say will be key in fighting food and housing insecurity on college campuses.
Benefits navigators will help students at Oregon’s 26 public colleges and universities determine their eligibility for and apply for assistance from programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. The bill would allocate nearly $5 million for the new positions, and while it doesn’t specify when the navigators will be hired, the funding is intended to last the next two years. The measure now goes to Oregon’s governor.

When Ariana Rodriguez applied to Colorado colleges, what stood out to her was how little she could find about people like herself—a Latina and first-generation college student. “I didn’t feel welcome,” she says. “So why would I want to go?”
In May, Colorado lawmakers passed a law banning legacy admissions at public universities, a change that advocates say will help low-income and first-generation students better perceive schools as open to them. They also see the ban as leading to more conversations about how to get students to and through college.