Cerritos College to Receive Carnegie, Hewlett Grant

Funded Program will Strengthen Pre-Collegiate Education

Cerritos College will join ten other California community colleges in working together during the next three years to design more effective models for teaching mathematics and literacy at the pre-collegiate level. The new initiative is part of an ongoing collaboration between The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. The grant, renewable each year for three years, will provide Cerritos College with approximately $100,000 each year.

“We are extremely honored to be included in the community colleges receiving the Carnegie and Hewlett grant to encourage more effective teaching models,” said Cerritos College Vice President/Dean of Academic Services John Grindel. “Our faculty has long strived to set our teaching methods apart as an example, and with this grant we’ll have the chance to share our ideas and best practices with other institutions.”

Selected because they have already made promising strides toward more effective classroom approaches, and because they have made pre-collegiate education an institutional priority, the campuses are Cerritos College, Chabot College, City College of San Francisco, College of the Desert, College of the Sequoias, Glendale Community College, Laney College, Los Medanos College, Merced College, Pasadena City College and West Hills College Coalinga.

As part of the Hewlett/Carnegie initiative, these campuses will build on and strengthen promising current innovations, documenting their work so that other campuses can use the information.

“We want to develop classroom models and approaches that yield more lasting and less fragile learning than those that have already failed many students,” said Carnegie President Lee S. Shulman. “Community colleges have a rich history of providing access to higher education and are often the gateway to a four-year college degree. Yet, many students don’t advance beyond pre-collegiate work because they are inadequately prepared to succeed. This is an immense waste of precious potential, and Carnegie would like to help teachers develop ways to ensure that students are able to take advantage of opportunities that community colleges provide.”

“This initiative reflects the Hewlett Foundation’s ongoing commitment to California education reform, and especially acknowledges the role that our community colleges can play in providing a quality education for our state’s students,” said Marshall (Mike) Smith, director of the Hewlett Foundation’s Education Program.

Carnegie and participating campuses will design tools that promote powerful learning, develop a gallery of multimedia examples of effective teaching, and foster the development of campus cultures and networks that support improved students learning and success. These strategies have been developed in Carnegie’s ongoing work with campuses across the country and with faculty in a diverse set of fields.

The funding from Hewlett will allow the Foundation to extend its work into the community college sector, where so many of the challenges facing higher education are present in high relief.

The mission of The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, as expressed in its 1905 charter, is “to do and perform all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.” Foundation programs, headed by a small group of scholars, aim to reinvigorate education by renewing the connection between teaching and research. These programs seek to foster forms of reflection and inquiry that will raise the level of attention to education issues throughout American academic life.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation has been making grants since 1966 to help solve social and environmental problems at home and around the world. The Foundation concentrates its resources on activities in education, environment, global development, performing arts, philanthropy, and population, and makes grants to support disadvantaged communities in the San Francisco Bay Area.

For nearly 50 years, Cerritos College has served as a comprehensive community college for southeastern Los Angeles County communities including Artesia, Bellflower, Cerritos, Downey, Hawaiian Gardens, Lakewood, La Mirada and Norwalk. The college offers degrees and certificates in more than 180 areas of study in nine divisions. Annually, more than 1,200 students successfully complete their course of studies, and enrollment currently surpasses 24,000 students. Visit Cerritos College online at www.cerritos.edu.

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KH

The Campus Connection Online, March 7, 2005