Title of Program: "Bridge to Biotech and Related Health and Biology
Fields".
College: San Francisco City College
Contact:
Edith Leonhardt, Ph.D., 415.239.3627 or
eleonhar@ccsf.edu
Target Population:
African American and Hispanic community members. Many are
individuals who may not have graduated high school or who may have
achieved a GED, and previously did not believe that they could learn
and apply college level math, science, and language arts. Some are
recruited from ESL programs and other outreach activities sponsored
by the college.
Goals:
to recruit and train low income, non-biotech, layed off, community
members who previously did not have aspirations or believe they
could handle course work required to enter or find jobs in
biotech/health care/biology related fields.
Description:
through active outreach within the low income areas of San
Francisco, and specifically the African American and Hispanic
communities, individuals are recruited into a sequence of coursework
that is heavily activity driven in the application of academics to
hands-on learning activities. The program feels that this Learning
Community Style of paring basic math, science, and language skills
to lab activities allows the students to gain academic skills, by
seeing it’s application to the hands-on activities that they are
performing in the lab. This program has been funded through several
grants, and as a partnership between the college and SFWorks, a
nonprofit organization that greatly assists in outreach and other
activities. The college has moved significantly toward
institutionalization through conversion of coursework to credit
classes, but still requires grant funding to move the program to
full institutionalization. The college has developed curricula that
is completing an Alpha Test program at Austin Community College, and
is currently being replicated at Santa Ana Community College.
Staffing:
the program requires significant outreach activities to convince
potential low income/ low educational status students that they
could succeed in such a program and career, and thus, in addition to
instructional activities, a significant amount of staff time is
devoted to outreach activities. One full time faculty and two part
time faculty are involved in the areas of Math, English language,
and Bioscience. What initially were non-credit classes have emerged
into FTES producing credit classes.
Facilities, equipment, materials:
the program is housed at several locations of the college, close to
the geographic location of the target population. The program has
provided microscopes and other biology related equipment, and has
found that pairing students extends the useful life to the
equipment, and allows for teamwork building with the students.
Costs, funding source:
the program initially spent approximately $20,000 on microscopes and
other science related equipment, but feels that most college
campuses have necessary equipment within their science departments.
The program is funded through a Chancellor’s Office Economic and
Workforce Development grant, a NSF grant, and local donations from
business and industry. The program has, and currently is dependent
upon such grant funding, but has significantly moved toward
institutionalization by conversion of what started out as non-credit
classes into FTES producing credit classes.
Outreach and marketing:
Due to the low-income status, low self aspirations toward higher
education/previous educational experiences, a significant amount of
outreach and marketing is required to recruit potential students.
All individuals involved in the program, are very active in speaking
regarding the program at all possible community events, churches,
adult and secondary schools. A majority of outreach within the
community is done by a CCSF Staff person who is active in outreach
to One-Stop and at community events. Program partners such as
SFWorks also assist in outreach activities at regional One-Stop,
community gatherings, and all possible avenues of reaching potential
students. A reduced amount of effort is made to recruit on-campus
within existing science/health/bio classes, as these individuals are
already involved in college level coursework.
Evidence of effectiveness:
The first iteration of this program had a completion rate of 10%.
The last several iterations of the program has achieved the
completion rate of 75%, which is excellent given the low
expectations that most of these students bring to class from prior
life experiences and low self esteem. At this point, over 160
students have successfully completed the program and have moved on
better jobs and/or higher educational goals.
Suggestions for replication:
This multi-grant funded program has developed methodologies and
curriculum that are now tested and available for replication. Until
the project developed a sequence to move classes to credit courses,
grant money was a necessity to establish the program. At this point,
with processes and training sequences developed through experience,
it would be very possible for colleges across the state to replicate
this model, as most colleges have all the personnel, facilities, and
equipment in place in various programs and at various locations
around the campus. The project is very emphatic that a cornerstone
for success in this program is a learning community style of
teaching/learning. The acquisition of math, science, and language
arts skills must be interwoven into activity based lab sequences.
With this style of hands-on, activity based learning, utilizing
microscope based math, science, and language arts to put down on
paper what the student has learned through utilization of the
microscope, the student sees the real world application of
academics, and is not required to learn the academics in a vacuum,
as is the case many times where activity based learning is not an
option.