Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC) is the Partnership’s Higher Education Priority partner. Its focus is: Partner with Complete College America to increase college completion rates and reduce remediation time. Develop policy reform regarding foster care/transitional youth and college completion. Work on Central Valley GOAL 2025 with partners in all four sectors – higher education, K-12, nonprofit, business for profit. Work on education advocacy with Partnership Board.

Compete College America

The Central Valley Higher Education Consortium (CVHEC) was selected as the Complete College America (CCA) California partner, joining a cohort of 14 states to scale to a co-requisite remediation process through CCA by 2018. CVHEC is engaged with CCA to increase college completion and reduce remediation and is participating in the national program of block schedules and co-requisite remediation for career technical students. The co-requisite model focuses on placing students directly into college-level English and math with just-in-time mandatory tutoring, labs, or additional course time support.

A review is being conducted, with career technical education (CTE) faculty, on the success of the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training (TAAACT) grant. A state institute is planned for spring 2016 with Clovis Community College, Herndon Campus, hosting CCA.

CVHEC participated in a CCA webinar regarding data collection elements required to participate in the CCA program. Nine Central Valley community colleges have agreed to participate in a pilot project during the next two years to collect the required data elements for the co-requisite remediation courses offered on these campuses. The intent is to compare data from these co-requisite remediation courses with more traditional remediation courses, to document improvements in retention, graduation rates, and years to graduation. Information will be shared with CCA to promote success of co-requisite remediation. At the end of the two-year pilot program, two- and four-year institutions will promote co-requisite remediation and join CCA in its national data collection and training programs.

Members continue to meet in work groups formed in these areas: targeting co-requisite remediation; Free Application for Federal Student Financial Aid completions (FAFSA); Degree Audits and Reverse Transfer; and K-12 alignment with higher Education. Work groups will develop strategies that can be implemented and brought to scale in the region.

Transitional Foster Youth

Commissioned by CVHEC to identify barriers and challenges for transition aged foster youth in Central Valley higher education institutions. Authors Ms. Kizzy Lopez, coordinator of the Renaissance Scholars Program, Fresno State, and Dr. Benjamin Duran, interim executive director of CVHEC, have completed the report, which will be available on the CVHEC website and delivered to interested parties.

Central Region / Mother Lode Consortium

CVHEC partnered with the Central Region/Mother Load Consortium to bring regional CTE practitioners and educators together to deliver CTE training and education at member colleges. CVHEC convened a meeting of presidents to discuss regional legislation and funding.

Central Valley Advocacy Policy Summit

Planned for October 2-3, 2016, the summit will occur annually. Participating college/university leaders, policymakers, advocates, and philanthropists will:

  • Highlight unique needs of first generation, low-income underserved students
  • Discuss innovative changes in academic learning focused Valley students.
  • Support faculty to pilot new approaches in learning.
  • Support academic programming that enroll, retains more at risk students.
  • Support innovative programming that increases student graduation rates.
  • Serve as advocate for educational policy reforms at local, regional, state levels, and discuss higher education challenges facing California and the nation.

The CVHEC Strategic Plan is committed to

  • More students completing remediation and finishing academic programs on time.
  • More students improving their educational outcomes.
  • More institutions implementing proven-effective strategies.
Central Valley Higher Education Policy Summit

The 2016 summit is scheduled for October 2-3 and will take place at Tenaya Lodge, Yosemite National Park. College presidents/chancellors from the 26 CVHEC colleges and universities plus Valley legislators, philanthropy partners, higher education policy partners, and K-12 partners will be in attendance. The summit will focus on the Lumina-funded Fresno Compact work groups which were formed to improve college going and completion rates, and on scaling up these efforts from Bakersfield in the south to Stockton in the north.

Lumina Foundation Community Partnership for Attainment

CVHEC partnered with the Lumina Foundation to reach its goals of inclusion, by making college more accessible to more students. The partnership will showcase a Lumina Foundation leadership role in:

  • Inclusion of at risk students.
  • Improving retention and completion rates for all students.
  • Improving the number of degrees and certificates awarded annually.
  • Striving to have students graduate within two years (community college) and four years (university).

CVHEC Joined Lumina Foundation Goal 2025 Campaign to

  • Leverage a Lumina Foundation initiative toward this goal.
  • Increase proportion of residents with high-quality degrees, certificates and credentials by 2025.
  • Commit to an outcomes-based approach.
  • Focus on designing and building an accessible, responsive, accountable higher education system.
  • Foster a regional sense of urgency to achieve Central Valley Goal 2025.