001[Music] ready in the morning right never ever ever wow can't believe we're here once again in person and seeing everybody this was the the way it was supposed to be in terms of building community uh so good morning everyone my name is manuel colon i'm the chief academic officer for the anaheim high school district proud to be here today with all of our friends uh from throughout orange county that are here today including all of our schools so thank you for being here i'd like to start by acknowledging our anaheim collaborative partners without you this cannot happen we've been together for many many years and every single day that we're with our kids you're with our kids as well and so i'd like to acknowledge all of our partners they're on the boards as you
002can see obviously from the school districts we have the anaheim union high school district and the anaheim elementary school district our college partners we have cypress colleges give them a round of applause stop race college fullerton college cal state fullerton uc irvine our community partners the city of anaheim north orange county rop ocapica and the ttr foundation and we do have an extended partner who will soon become part of the anaheim union educational pledge and that is the orange county department of education no pressure it is my pleasure to introduce some special people that are in the room i know that all of you are special but there are some people that i need to acknowledge because of their support and commitment for the work that we do first of all from our board of
003trustees our board president mr al-jabbar thank you for being here mr jabbar and miss anne-marie randall trejo thank you miss rando trejo also from the city of anaheim we have council member dr jose mourinho our superintendent mr michael matsuda superintendent from the centralia school district norma martinez cabinet member from the anaheim union high school district nancy nien from the orange county department of education marty salman [Applause] from fullerton college vice president of student affairs elaine lepice gonzalez from cypress college we have vice president of student affairs paul de dios and from cypress college dean of the school communications and computer science henry huang from cal state fullerton vice president of student affairs i'm sorry associate vice president of student affairs elizabeth savala aceves and from uc irvine uci assistant vice chancellor of educational partnerships stephanie
004reyes tuccio i also want to acknowledge our student ambassadors who are here present today joining us student ambassadors stand up and just want to say a couple of quick things our student ambassadors have been amazing every year they're amazing but this year in particular they went out and did pledge presentations to all of the anaheim elementary school district school so thank you very much abdullah for your leadership thank you all right let's get this show started so for today we wanted to obviously start with some opening remarks we felt that it was important to hear from our institutional leaders who will guide and also align their vision their goals with the work that we're doing as part of the anaheim collaborative so we will hear from them uh and and hear their remarks we are
005also going to celebrate our accomplishments um i think all of you know that this year we have our first pledge graduating class from the universities our class of 2018 are graduating today so we will also be hearing uh from our um our students those graduates who will be graduating uh in a month or so will be graduating from cal state fullerton uc irvine and cal state long beach who have gone through and have participated in the pledge and so they will speak about their experience and honor you guys for all the work that you're doing and then we will make some closing remarks so that's our agenda for today our hope is that we affirm affirm the work and the great work that we have been doing uh create some next steps we'll have some
006table top conversations for you to one reflect on what is being said and reflect on this process and just the thinking uh that we will do collectively and most importantly celebrate celebrate the great work every single day we know it's hard we know the pandemic has been hard in the last couple years but we've made it through we've made it through together and so it's important for us to obviously celebrate the space that we have so with that i'm going to go ahead and introduce our first speaker mr michael mitsuda superintendent of the anaheim union high school district thank you manuel uh as all of you know this celebration is manuel's last celebration with us i know we were manuel and i were talking about you know reflecting on his career a long distinguished career
007and what is he most proud of and as a once a teacher always a teacher manuela i think that was first and foremost he looked back on his teaching career and uh as i think all of us will who are teachers at heart uh value because that interaction with kids is something that we administrators miss right a lot he talked about his principalship at sycamore and and that was a real challenging situation because we were still in the process of you know moving cultures and transforming schools and of course he went on to become principal savannah and identified leaders teacher leaders because we've moved to a sort of flat organizational and management structure and out of that you know was it 10 years ago the whole capstone process and you think about if you don't
008have a manual cologne at the right time at the right with the right people perhaps there's no capstone in auhsd today even so tremendous tremendous work in legacy of course the pledge but the pledge coming out of the collaborative so manuel this is your legacy and i'd like to honor you today i know it's going to be one of many it's emotional manuel and uh but you have always led with uh grit and determination but really you've embodied our 50 of compassion and kindness and with so many of us here i think you've put your stamp on as many of you have led with kindness above all else because we could not have been here we could not have accomplished what we have accomplished together and had those difficult conversations putting tension on our systems
009and our people and you know out in the field and interacting with students with parents with teachers and our classified people to move this district forward and help transform public education not just from a k-12 but k-16 and beyond what we've done is transform and shift the the the driver from traditional academics to now preparing students for meaningful careers and calling and especially now so so important to go beyond traditional just you know whatever the academic metrics have been we've not sacrificed those academic metrics so and that's why our model is so powerful because our traditional academic measurements have have risen so but it's really about preparing young people for beyond their uh traditional academic journey into careers in this challenging thing called life that many of us still grapple with throughout our own lives
010in our own journeys and holding i think the other the other thing i forgot manuel is you are a person of grace because i think that is one of the most important attributes of becoming a whole person is giving grace to yourself and others as well if we are to grow and reflect and and move forward as as human beings in this difficult volatile society that we live in that we find ourselves with i feel that there is there needs to be a sense of urgency moving forward because the the stakes are very high for our young people moving ahead so moving from and defining social justice away from sort of the traditional drivers of academics and looking at the academic gap we have if you think about civil rights and social justice from martin
011luther king jr chavez to glorious diamond steinman it's always been about equity and access to meaningful and purposeful jobs and so that is the transformation moving away from you know sort of an s.a.t multiple choice driven world to preparing kids for purposeful meaningful jobs and of course this is robert moses the founder of the algebra project who recently passed away but this this quote has always affected me the most urgent social issue affecting poor people and people of color is economic access and of course he went on found the algebra project which you know he doubled down on the importance of stem we call it steam to the future of young people and the future of this country so i really like the way he framed this it is about access to meaningful and purposeful
012jobs and of course our cpsf embodies that and i think many of you here are familiar with our three drivers but i would like to today in the few moments i have to draw attention to the top driver how do we develop purpose and meaning how do we connect the child's students identity and their voice to purpose and the sooner that we can address that i think the better for them and the better for our society so some of you know um have heard of dr home nguyen he's the founder of mine kind which over the last five years has helped transform us into more of a reflective culture uh we we we are a more meditative culture and um he has influenced me a lot and he shared because we've had conversations about how
013do we tease out one's purpose in one's calling in life and he asked me if i've heard of martin seligman a psychologist from university of pennsylvania who in the early 2000s posited um i mean this whole research was really about finding happiness and joy through optimism you know and that's so important optimism and hope especially now post pandemic there's a lot of negativity and pessimism and that hit that theory has guided a lot of scholars in psychology including amy wisnowski from yale university who built on seligman's work looking for job and career satisfaction and satisfaction and joy with life so she came up with three different ways to look at work we can look at it as a job a career or a calling and um i am reminded of the story of the three
014bricklayers they're all laying brick and there's an observer who goes to the first one and asks what are you doing and the first bricklayer says i'm doing my job i lay brick okay goes to the second one who's also laying brick what are you doing i'm doing my career i'm laying brick and i hope to become a manager of bricklayers right so i can be the the boss the bricklayers that's my career and he goes to the third person who's doing the same thing what are you doing i am building a cathedral for god and they're all doing the same thing and when i'm reminded of this metaphor i think about the collaborative and about what we are doing here in au hsd we are building a cathedral for public education we are building yes
015thank you and each one of us needs to really remind ourselves of our purpose and who we are and how do we fit into this great cathedral that we are building this is a custodian who's been with us for 25 years rafael munoz and i've known him for probably 20 years and he's one of the type of people who just takes pride in his job every day and always with a smile he and that everything's always working and i know him and his uh through his and he shared his story his sons both went to savannah high school his oldest is going to be a doctor went to ucla and is going to be a doctor he's in residency right now second one is going to be an engineer because of the education that they
016received here in auhsd and when i asked him the other day you know what how do you always come so like happy and joyful and working so hard and that's what he said he goes it may not seem much but i know the teachers need clean bathrooms in good spaces so our kids can reach their dreams and you know he is building a cathedral he knows he's part of something bigger and even though his kids have already graduated right he's continuing to lay those bricks brick by brick because he knows and he's part of something bigger than who he is just as each of us are but we cannot build a cathedral for public schools without addressing the really really vital issues affecting this society and without addressing the intersection of race ethnicity class and
017gender and um i think that it's really really important that we as leaders develop skills to address that the ascension of the latest supreme court justice brought this discussion to the forefront for all of us and it reminds us that we we have a long ways to go and um in achieving the uh and achieving equity in society people talk about equity all the time but really what does that truly mean i am really proud of our family our auhsd family for challenging ourselves and addressing these difficult issues i um i know that with our hr brad jackson who's been part of these discussion our entire cabinet has been part of these discussions on how do we move the needle and it's not just about you know specifically people of color but it's about all
018people that we recruit and promote and hire who have the understanding who get it in terms of what we need to do i'm really proud that in the last eight years we have focused on recruiting and hiring employees regardless of color or gender who are advocates for kids for students and their families especially marginalized students and families i am proud of the fact that we have doubled the amount of we have more like tripled the amount of people of color in administration administrative roles and doubled the amount of women in our district is it enough no it's not but we are getting there and we're moving in that direction um we have as you know that we're the first district i think in orange county to address black lives matter we have created a task
019force and um and we have built on the work of the collaborative and in terms of at ethnic studies we are one of the first districts to offer ethnic studies through our collaboration with cypress college and fullerton college and i think that deserves a round of applause and we have focused on recruitment in promotion and i've got to say this i recently interviewed a young lady who's a graduate of anaheim high school she's a third year at ucla cindy guzman co-founder of the crown which is basically like the bros so you listen to her on auhsc future talks but she speaks very candidly about these issues about you know what's the difference between black lives matter and all lives matter why should latinos are whites are asians support black lives matter um i asked her
020about you know the issues of implicit bias that all of us have i've asked her about toxic masculinity within the latino culture within the asian culture right these are tough issues and one of the big takeaways for me was she said that we need more the students need more vocabulary to express themselves in these issues they're so volatile right and that begins with us as adults we need to develop the words right understand what those mean so that because if we do not have the courage to address that where is it going to happen in society right it's so quick that they come through our system and before you know it they graduate and they're gone and they're adults they're voters right i feel that we need to double down on democracy schools on civic
021engagement on developing student voice so kids can ultimately have a purpose and a calling but we cannot do this without healthy mentorship and i'm proud of all of you because we're trying to mentor kids through our aim program um quick shout out to scott rendell who's really helped us with our aim programs but it's not just the kids that need mentoring as all of us and that's why i'm so proud of our partners and hire ed because they mentor us and we you admins are out there mentoring uh other young admins for succession and i'm proud of the uh of actually seeing that in action um this young lady uh is a product of our district she was in elementary school in our district that's then she went to sycamore junior high she went on
022to anaheim high school that's her as a i think a ninth grader and then she went on to cal state fullerton and then she came back to give back to the district as a bilingual aide at sycamore she went on to get her teaching credential and became a teacher an el an english teacher at sycamore and then she decided i'd like to go in administration she came in an assistant principal in our district and because of really strong mentors that she had this past year she was elevated to principal of south junior high so give it up for yoli represents many of our admins who are not only have the experience the lived experience of the intersection of race class gender but she owns it and she has agency and she does have the vocabulary
023to talk about these tough issues and the courage to talk about these tough issues because she's had good mentorship and i'm really proud of all of you for being very intentional about building young people building young people up who are grounded in the five c's and especially that fifth one of compassion and caring and kindness because and grace i mean all that those are not that's like 10 c's or you know but i i'm really proud of all of that because ultimately it is all about building a new type of cathedral for k-16 education a new transformative cathedral that's not only transforming orange county but i think will serve as a model for this country to help move us forward our doors are open welcome thank you very much you mr masouda for starting us
024off and inspiring us um every minute um at this time i'd like to introduce uh our speaker from fullerton college uh elaine lipis-gonzalez who is the interim vice president of student affairs thank you so much manuel superintendent matsura all of you for having me here today on behalf of our interim president at fullerton college dr gilbert contreras it's a pleasure for me to be here with you all to celebrate the successes of both the anaheim collaborative and the pledge program long before the pledge program was in place to tie together all of our educational institutions all of our campuses and schools anaheim union high school district cypress college fullerton college cal state fullerton uci were all busy at work serving students and our community and my family in particular is a beneficiary of that commitment
025and service across all of our institutions i want to tell you a little bit about my family my father is a graduate of anaheim high school coming to this country not knowing any english really not understanding the culture he went to anaheim graduated and because of the open access mission of our california community college system in particular the excellent academic programs and the stellar support programs at fullerton college college was a reality for him and that laid the foundation for educational attainment in our family we are a family full of hornets chargers anteaters titans a few more hornets and his start at anaheim high school is what laid the framework for us to be able to transform the trajectory of our own family and i share that story with you because my family is an
026example of many many many other families in anaheim that depend on all of us to row in the same direction to row in the same direction of making education and a college education possible to make it relevant to make it accessible and to make it transformative for themselves as individuals but also transformative for their their families and for our community at large and in particular the pledge has been instrumental at fullerton college it has allowed us to showcase our excellent academic programs our support services and to showcase that we are a vibrant campus community that allows faculty staff and students to come together both in person and in the virtual space to teach to learn to engage to build community and to really capitalize on their big dreams and so that we can give them
027the tools and resources they need to actualize their goals we have an amazing team many of whom are here today working very hard on behalf of our pledge students at fullerton college and i want to thank them for their tireless commitment to making sure that each and every one of our students and in particular our pledge students are successful at fullerton college we're very excited to welcome another pledge cohort in the fall we're very grateful for the pledge students that you have entrusted in our care they have added so much to our campus community so much vibrance strength resilience and and so much more and we're very happy to have them as part of hornet nation looking ahead to the fall i want to share with you a couple of developments one in particular that
028applies at north orange county community college district-wide and another that is specific to fullerton college as you may know our board of trustees in the fall of last year implemented a vaccine mandate and that's very similar to other community college districts certainly in line with csu and uc last month our board of trustees extended that vaccination mandate to continue through the end of this calendar year um with the addition of a single booster requirement and i share that with you as colleagues because as you work with your students that may be considering community college after graduation and in particular fullerton college and cypress college we want you to know that we're absolutely committed over the next few weeks and months making sure that all of our continuing students certainly our incoming students are prepared to
029meet that requirement so that they can take advantage of all the the classes that they would like to take both in person and virtual that if they want to come to campus to interact with our programs and services in person to receive support face-to-face they can do that and so we will be sharing information with you all certainly with our students and parents and families that attend our events in the spring and the summer so that they know well in advance what the requirement is the resources available to them to become in compliance and how we can help them get there the second highlight i'd like to share with you specific to fullerton college is about our brand new foundation you may or may not know that we have a new foundation it's called the
030friends of fullerton college foundation and friends is very busy at work building our endowment awarding scholarships to students and also to get grants in that not only provide financial support to our students but also expose them to career readiness opportunities and meaningful work experiences and so we're very excited about that because we know that our pledge students have significant financial support when they come to our to our campus but we also recognize that they continue to have unmet need with regard to books and all other expenses associated with being in college and we want to make sure that they are fully taken care of and at this time what i'd like to do if you'll indulge us for a moment i'd like to invite rolando sanabria to join me i know that rolo doesn't need
031really an introduction in this space but for those of you that do not know rolando he is our counselor and also outreach coordinator at fullerton college absolutely instrumental in the development of the pledge from its inception and he's going to join me up here so that we can collectively share our gratitude to humanwind manuel thank you for being such a strong friend and ally of fullerton college we are so grateful to you you've been a friend of the college and we wish you the best of luck in this new chapter we promise to pledge our continued commitment to the collaborative to the pledge moving forward and felicidades there is so much to say about manuel and it's all good but for the sake of time that for the sake of time i'm just going to
032read a quote from maya angelou and she said i've learned that people will forget what you say people will forget what you did but people will never forget how you made them feel manuel and i i know for myself and a lot of people have worked with you made us all feel good about ourselves there was never an act of power struggle there was never an act of who gets credit it was just a matter of let's do the right thing for students i still remember five years ago the five of us sat together for a year and we created the pledge uh and and those moments are for me special because uh because i share them with you so in appreciation for your contributions to the fullerton college community we present you this plaque
033and we sincerely hope that you enjoy your retirement as well to serve my friend thank you manuel thank you for indulging us in that moment of gratitude and recognition to to manuel and send your students to fullerton college we promise that if they come to hornet nation we will we will take care of them with the same kindness compassion and love that you all have invested in their success here at anaheim union high school district so send them our way thank you so much thank you dr libius gonzalez and thank you rolo and i agree those were special moments and thank you for for everything you do i really appreciate it with that we go on to our next partner again inspired by the work that they do and the work that we do collectively
034i'd like to introduce the vice president from cypress college of student affairs paul dios good morning everyone thank you manuel and uh superintendent matsuda i was talking to manuel this morning he said he has 30 days superintendent i know there's board members in here can we add a zero to that make it 300 no but in honesty uh meanwhile you're going to be sorely missed but on behalf of uh president uh joanna schilling at cypress college and our team here at cyprus who was here this morning good morning to all of you first of all i'd like to thank manuel carlos amanda santana adriana elaine denise and gisela and the rest of the event planning committee for this opportunity it's a truly honor it's truly an honor to be here it's hard to believe that
035four years ago the first inaugurate inaugural pledge class graduated in 2018. many things have happened since then our second graduating class in 2019 has graduated however none of us would have experienced or foreseen the challenges of our scholars in 2020 and 2021 they had to endure a lot it was early in the fall of 21 when we made that transition to return to work at cypress college i believe it was august 2nd in particular and for many of our second year pledge students it was the first time they've ever stepped foot on campus i was i remember walking and then i subsequently talked to one of our charger experience students who was also a pledge student who graduated in 2020 she's currently our as president at cypress college and she was talking about her amazing
036experience as a pledge student obviously it caught my attention i wanted to engage in further dialogue with her a few minutes later but some of the themes that resonated in our conversation was that she was very involved in high school she knew about the pledge program the charger experience program at cypress college and she knew that she wanted to attend cyprus because of the reputation in our community it's students like sydney pike who graduated from kennedy high school in 2020 and countless of others who were prepared by auhsd for this transition from high school to college or university life it's students like haley bersumian who will you you will meet a little bit later who graduated in 2018 from cypress high and who is one of the first cohorts of pledge and she's also a
037charger experience student ambassador all of this reminds us how important our work is and how she is now going to be graduating soon from the university with her bachelor's degree so it's students like sydney it's students like haley and also other students who knew the answers to these questions how do i pay for school what do i want to do with my future what classes should i take who is here to advocate for me and who will be my guide while sydney and haley and the student ambassadors our student mentors who all from the pledge they continue to pay it forward by helping future pledge students have that smooth transition to cypress college these are some of the students that we've seen firsthand that there are some students that we've seen firsthand that struggle to
038navigate our educational system these are the students who may ask themselves those same questions those same earlier questions that i just asked these questions are viewed with a different lens though a lens that some of us have first-hand experience with which are those who experience uncertainties and have food and housing and resources insecurities these are all questions i've heard and continue to hear from students especially first generation college students many of our students are first in their families to even pursue a post-secondary education but the resources of auhsd cypress college and all of our pledged partners are definitely invaluable as a parent of a sophomore student at kennedy high school i receive those weekly texts those those emails those calls about resources so that our students and their families don't have to worry as much
039about basic needs so i want to personally thank all of you who are tirelessly paving the way for students to meet their educational goals but most importantly life goals as they balance everything that's going on in their life now pledge students will be walking across the stage at cypress college's 55th commencement on may 20th sydney pike will be earning her associates degree she well actually we are waiting to see which university is going to offer her enrollment in the fall the same goes for hundreds of auhsd students who came to cypress college and are just waiting for that that confirmation letter or email saying you've been accepted to university all of these stories continue to make me so proud and energizes me every day which leads me to the importance of the anaheim collaborative from
040kindergarten to college and university life the collaborative has been very clear about its educational priorities for every single student the original members of the collaborative came up with an idea of bringing the educational institutions together in the same room and i know that rolando mentioned those five people as a result cypress college is thankful that we are invited to the table we're also you know able to witness the students excel in education especially through our our service area in anaheim union high school district the collaborative continues to unleash the potential of students while giving the partners the ability to operate in the best interest of their students this continues to be the forefront of the work of the collaborative thank you to superintendent matsuda manuel rolando santana adriana evelyn and everyone who i failed to
041mention again thank you for inviting cypress college to the table thank you to the high school principals counselors and support staff for your partnership and tireless efforts to assist your students with the important transition from high school to post senior dairy education we couldn't have done it without you now i know that giselle will be sharing with you some data in a few minutes but before i conclude i'd like to share some cypress college updates so charger fridays will continue through may which we pay our through our equity funds buses to bless your students onto our campus and we're proud to say all 11 high schools in anaheim union are participating in charter fridays our commit to cyprus event is on thursday may 5th at 4 o'clock where we will be celebrating those students who've
042made that commitment to come to cypress college our charter experience fall registration events are going to continue in the summer so we can help those students transition from high school to to college our very their very first day by making sure that they register for all their classes and they register for the right classes during the summer we're going to continue to provide free laptops that students can actually keep right they can take home they can keep you know we're going to continue to do that through the fall and finally we know that so much more work to there's so much more work to do but the collaborative will continue to address what's in the best interest of our students we look forward to sharing the journey with all of you thank you and congratulations
043to the auhd inaugural pledge cohort thank you thank you dr davioson and your commitment personal commitment to the collaborative and obviously cypress colleges um so again very inspiring uh continue to inspire the work that we do collectively uh it is my honor to introduce elizabeth savala sevis it is a special one she's the associate vice president of student affairs at cal state fullerton and she was my student at catella high school [Applause] how do you follow that right good morning everyone buenos dias it's a pleasure to be here and um you know i get to see mr colon i hope not the last time but one more time and um again my name is dr lizavala sevis i'm the associate vice president of student affairs at cal state university fullerton not only am i a
044pride titan i'm a pride catella alum sycamore junior high alum sunkes elementary alum locally homegrown it is an honor to oversee what we call the college access and career pathways cluster within my division which i call the powerhouse of what makes the world go round at cal state fullerton because i have the distinct pleasure of overseeing adriana badillo's team center for educational partnerships which has our gear up our talent search our upper bound many other initiatives within our auhsd anaheim school districts and also get to oversee the outreach recruitment orientation team the admissions team the financial aid team the center for internships the community engagement team um and the career center so if you really think about the the cycle of pre-prospect all the way to matriculation to csuf and beyond we really are getting
045students prepared for not only college higher education but also the pursuit of a career or calling and ensuring that they have these lifelong learning skills beyond cal state fullerton i know that auhsd is very large and big in regards to not only creating college access but career pathways the aauhsd titan talks had our our own president verdi i saw the the video and really i know that there's a lot of great work happening within the school district not only because i know because of the collaborative but also because i get to experience it via my my own children who come to the school district and i almost think wow how amazing is it that you're this old and already know about brown nyu cal state fullerton and many others and it's because of the great
046work that is happening not only to think about college as an option but career and a calling and i know that it's happening through the transformational work that is happening through the partnerships and so forth at cal state fullerton you may know we are known for many accolades but i think the ones that make me the most proud is not only being one of the largest csus within the csu system but awarding the most degrees to our latinx community being fifth in the nation of awarding degrees to our underrepresented students but the ones that i feel most proud about is really knowing that our pipeline and our access to csuf comes from our partnerships over 50 percent of our students at csuf that get admitted and enroll and matriculate are from the partnerships um and
047just recent yes that reserves a round of applause [Applause] and you know another accolade that i i feel really really proud about is we recently got named and were certified as the seal of excelencia institution through the excelencian education nonprofit centralized in washington dc and only 10 institutions nationwide got the award you really need to demonstrate not only the enrolling piece of the nhsi but the serving piece and what makes me the most proud about the application i led a 20-member team to to apply for the for the application it took us about nine months to put it together um but the the most crucial piece of it that stands out the most and the story that keep bringing back to our campus is that these partnerships are crucial and important the application has so
048many examples of the partnerships that were highlighted in this application that demonstrate the college access the pipeline transition in and out and how when we receive your students how we service them and their families because it's not just them that are coming to csuf it's their families it is their community as you may know more than 60 percent of our students are first generation college students like myself predominantly the information that we provide needs to be relative to their language it needs to make sense to their communities to their families last weekend we hosted one of our largest yield events after the pandemic we had close to i would say about 7 000 perspectives csuf signs that were admitted i know jose mourinho you mentioned your daughter came to csuf um and some others are
049still wondering if they're going to step but we really hope that your students come to csuf because when we admit them our job is to ensure that they graduate that they graduate in a time and pace that works with them that when they graduate at graduation that they're ready for life after college whether that be a career whether that be graduate or professional school or have not and as you know as a csu we are committed to not only eliminate the equity gaps that exist but also to work on our graduation rates and to ensure that our students are graduating a timely manner that works within their life um so it is an honor and pleasure to be here with all of you we as a campus are doing a lot to ensure that when
050they get here we are ready for them and some of the things that we're working on i know my team is going to highlight some of those things but we are making sure that it once you hand them off that we're ready for them we're working on our transfer initiatives as well to make sure that we have a transfer and adult re-entry center that is comprehensive for our transfer students we are also working and have worked with our first generation career exploration program through the i am first we got some donor donations to continue the program to ensure that students get their career pathways at the time that they come as a first-time freshman and as a transfer student because as this transfer student as you may know once you step foot on our door
051if you're ready for graduate professional school that clock starts ticking the moment you step foot so there's a lot of great things we're doing in addition to eliminating the digital divide all of your students who come to csuf will have access to technology laptops etc those things are important and one of the things i also want to highlight um in my role that also makes me proud to sit where i'm at is that i get to be in the room where it happens i get to be in the room and decide on some of these important factors that are very transformative to our families you know we no longer have sats sats i get to now be in the room and talk about what does that mean if we're really providing college access and focusing
052on equity and inclusion to our local families and communities what are some of those factors that we need to also identify beyond the s18 sats right so at cal state fullerton as you may know we are moving and have adopted the multi-factor admissions process that not only looks at the gpa but also takes into account these partnerships puts a cap on some of the a3g requirements because we know that some school districts may have more a3g offerings than others ap courses and so forth so we get to be in a place where we make decisions that benefit our community if we really are about college access and equity it is through these partnerships that we have these collaborations and have a lens and pulse on what our community needs um as you may know mr
053manuel colon transformed my life i hadn't even thought about college until i stepped foot into a spanish class and you know i don't even know dr uh mr colon you probably thought i was always late to your class [Music] because i was that one student that i used to carpool with everyone and and it was always late and he would every time i would sneak into class and he'd be like muchachas but he was the one spanish teacher who you know paid attention he saw the potential he not only taught us spanish he brought culture into our high school you did the ballet for corico i think you were the only teacher who brought that to our campus i appreciate you i always talk about you you might have not known the impact that you
054had in my life but i stand before you very honored and privileged to have learned under your wing and i will always honor your purpose because this is why i'm here today and i want to thank you for everything that you've done not only for me but the other individuals that look like me sound like me have experienced the same type of first generation college experience and i am truly honored to be here and i want to thank you we want to honor you as well for all the work and collaboration that you've done and i know that you and superintendent matsuda had a meeting with our president president virgi maybe three weeks ago i saw him in a chief of staff and they said liz you are so lucky to have your kids in
055that school district because they are doing great things and i said we are doing great things so thank you so much um [Applause] do not expect this i did not so thank you thank you liz um dr savala and you know cal state fullerton is close and dear to my heart not only obviously because uh you know dr savala sevis is you know there and doing the great work that she's doing uh some of you may know both my kids are at cal state fullerton my daughter yay my daughter will be graduating in four years from cal state fullerton in may one more month and i will tell you she is very prepared she's very prepared she's doing communications and she's ready for the world she's applying for reporting across the state she might be
056in northern california next year which i don't like but you know what cal state fullerton prepared her very well and so we're really proud of her and thank you to cal state fullerton for educating both my kids with that i'd like to introduce and bring up again somebody who has been with us since the beginning in terms of the anaheim collaborative super committed to the work that we do on a daily basis speaks of us nationally internationally wherever she gets a chance to speak because she is a true friend and has been a partner in all the work that we've done i'd like to introduce from uc irvine the vice chancellor assistant vice chancellor of educational partnerships stephanie reyes tricho thank you manuel it is so exciting to be here i don't know if the
057rest of you are feeling a little bit emotionally overwhelmed like i am um and it's not just the thrill of being physically in each other's presence but also just the amazing grounding framing remarks that were provided at the beginning by your superintendent um it's a different kind of work that we do here you know people often ask so our charge is to work with any school district that has at least 50 percent or more of their students are would be the first in their families to go to college and our students of need and so but there's only so many of us to go around and i want to also before i even move forward thank my amazing team in the back who um who actually do this work on the ground on a daily
058basis um but there's only so many as hard as they work there's only so many of them to go around so and there's so many students of need in this county and we work in la as well and i explain well it's a it's a really um scientific process to figure out which precise school district we work with it's those that want to work with us that's it it's those that truly believe in the value of what we can do together and that we can do something better together than we can do on our own and that we want to take the time and put in the effort to build the relationships have the conversations and do the work together so that students can move seamlessly through our systems and not have to figure out
059different language different policies different procedures and just battle their way through that obstacle course and this district just came in with that in spades and i'm just really uh reflecting right now on what it was like five years ago to be in this room where we had a few of our other partners um from other school districts that we've worked with sharing about you know what we what they had done and what could happen and now here we are um and there's just some tremendous things to share um so who that's who the district is and who is uci we're lucky enough to also have some pretty amazing leadership both at the campus level and at the school level our chancellor i worked under three chancellors the end of one and then two and this
060chancellor that we have now was the first chancellor ever who called me and said you have students coming on campus i want to come talk to them usually it's the other way around we're begging their executive assistants to get time on their calendar for them to come to an event this time they called us because they said we care and he came and he spoke about himself being a first-generation college-going student and he made the point that i think is grounds our work you know uci is not an elite institution on the hill it is paid for our salaries are paid for by the parents in this district and our school belongs to the students in this district it's their right and it's our obligation and our responsibility to make sure that they have access
061and not only that but we know that we can't achieve excellence without them so we are really thrilled that the partnership has enabled us to bring on more anaheim students and for them to do amazing things one of the things the superintendent also noted in his opening remarks was that the there's a mentorship relationship between us and i want to make clear that that mentorship relationship goes both ways we are absolutely mentored by the leaders and the teachers and the sky site leaders and the administrative leaders in this district and the students we've been doing this work for many many years um i'm blessed um to have a calling um and we always did it based on the notion early on that of course students want to go to college of course students need to
062go to college so let's just help them figure out how to get to college and make them believe that they can do it but what we were missing is we have to respond to the change conditions of our world and the change conditions that students live in and students now require meaning they require personal personal individual meaning for their lives and connecting college to what their lives are going to be about not just that degree and so we're really excited to be focusing more than ever and growing our programs that really help students think not just about college and not just about particular majors but for what towards what purpose and just kind of a little uh headline of things to come we're going to be really focusing on building out pathways in education business
063health engineering and computer science in the next few years the piece around education is really critical and i want to share that our work used to be connected to student affairs now it's connected to the school of education wonderful things to be gained by connections with both units what's the difference well right now we're now under a leader whose research and focus has always been underserved students and higher ed access so we've got somebody in the leadership seat who for whom this work is central and we are really stepping into that so in the next five years you're going to see a lot of work coming out in two different domains that relate specifically to this partnership one is p20 work what sounds like jargon preschool through grade 20 graduate school basically looking at the
064whole spectrum the whole pathway connecting all those pieces so that's directly tied to the partnership and then the other is really leaning in to preparing teachers so in the past the csu has always had done the lion's share of work in terms of creating and credentialing new teachers and we believe that this is something that we can be doing together not as a competition but as a partnership lending the unique research expertise and piece of the uc system to this broader work of creating pathways for teachers and we're starting that by creating pathways to teachers to be to the teaching profession in community college we've written several grants now we're going to start working on building a pipeline and pathway for students from the community college to become teachers to become faculty to become professors
065we want to lay out the the sky's the limit for students and we want to lay that pathway out for them that's seamless and supported so that's something coming soon another piece that we're going to be working on is to take a really hard look at the relevancy of our programs make sure they're really speaking to the needs of schools and students right now we want to include new certification and develop new certification programs and ethnic studies to respond to the need for teachers to have additional training and support in that area we also are going to be developing a bilingual education certificate program to contribute to students becoming bilingual and multilingual we know that's absolutely critical and we're also going to be developing school specific latinx thriving and black thriving initiatives to complement the
066university-wide work that's already going on in that domain then i want to share a little bit about successes i don't want to take too much away from the presentations that are to come but i just have to share that something really exciting has happened when we work together to both highly prepare students and then highly support them when they get to uci we've been looking at the data of what's happened to your students anaheim students who come through fullerton and cypress and then come to uci the class of 2021 has a retention rate of 98 percent that's unheard of that's unheard of no matter what what district you're from it's unbelievable um not only that it's just it's amazing what's what these students are doing not only that the transfer students because of the pathways
067and the dual enrollment and the support that they're getting in the district they're entering uci they need to have a minimum of 60 units to enter the lowest amount of units that any student from this pathway through anaheim to cypress and fullerton was units they came with 90 units minimally speaking that means less debt that means a shorter time to degree and that means more opportunities additionally this is what's really very um inspiring to me is the point is not let's just get them out of there and get them in the workforce as soon as possible for some folks that's what they're looking for but let's also think long term about higher education degrees and additional graduate degrees because that's what we're going to need if we are ever going to have a professoriate that
068reflects the students which is a major goal of mine 30 percent of the class who entered last year already graduated from uci one year they were there one year and they're also applying to graduate school at uci so now we're starting to see students applying directly to graduate school so it's amazing it's amazing and so as the students are lifted our institutions are lifted we are um we're looking at our third year of being one of the universities um doing the most for the american dream one of the top universities in the country for social mobility of students we're our 10-year anniversary this year for the school of education and we just became one of the top 10 schools of education in the united states both public and private and we're developing we not only
069that but we are the only school of education in the top ten that is both a hispanic serving institution and an asian american native american and pacific islander serving institution that is our strength and we know that deeply committed to the work of the district and we're looking at what's next right so i you know the pandemic was this time of of um of death both literal and figurative for all of us i think and it's so amazing to be part of this moment of rebirth and i see that and i feel that um and we're just we're looking forward to all that we can do next um but before i close um i want to bring up my colleague who needs no introduction [Laughter] i'm sure but if you haven't had the pleasure uh
070deputy director of cfp's santana ruiz to share um our own token of appreciation um for dr colon i have to say that this um this work only happens because of relationships absolutely it's the foundation of everything and the most grounding relationship that has started this from the very beginning has been assistant superintendent manuel colon his kindness his generosity of spirit makes it truly a pleasure to walk in these doors of this district and sit down in an office and talk about the work that everyone is doing from the heart and he enters with his heart and encourages everyone else to be able to work from that place and do great things so we have a new uniform for you no more tying jacket we have a t-shirt and a baseball hat we love you and
071we'll miss you but i know you won't be gone no thank you all [Applause] thank you dr dania estricho and santana always thank you um so you heard our institutional leaders share their vision share their excitement about our partnership share their commitment to the work that you're doing so with that we'd like you to turn to the people at your table and share from those opening remarks what inspired me what from all the great things they said inspired me so i'm going to give you about five minutes to have that quick conversation there is somebody at your table who is taking notes who is uh listening intently and who will uh guide you you don't have much time so those that jump in first will get their thoughts in so again you have five minutes
072to share what inspired you from the opening remarks thank you [Music] advice [Music] in some ways [Music] channel [Music] is like there's thank you uh okay 30 seconds so all righty let's go ahead and finish your last thought and bring it back all right so we heard our institutional leaders share their inspiring remarks in terms of the work that's being done many of them gave you a preview of the data that uh we are now seeing we talk about right where does the i i don't know the you know that where does the rubber meet the road is that the where does uh you know where did where's the meat and potatoes in what's going on well you will now hear the meat and potatoes um we are going to have a presentation of data
073from each of our institutions to share what has the journey been in the last six years since we signed the pledge back in 2017 and where are we now with our first graduating class the class of 2018 from auhsd and the class of 2022 from our institutions so to kick it off i'm going to turn it over to our very own amanda bean our anaheim union high school district director of career preparedness systems framework thank you manuel uh good morning and it's my absolute pleasure to represent anaheim union today to speak about the collective work of our site teams our partners as you heard from our partners before many inputs are being put into ensuring that we're creating opportunities for all of our student groups and in particular underrepresented student groups and um since the
074pledge was developed in 2016 we have seen