July 2023

NFN News Center

Los Rios Community College District Comes to Life

New Video Collection Showcases District’s CTE Success.

Strong Workforce Program funding covered the lights and the cameras. As for the action? It was there all along.

The hands-on, high-energy programs of the Los Rios Community College District (LRCCD) are on full display in a new series of promotional shorts from the Los Rios Community College District. The videos aim to shine an action-focused spotlight on career education pathways hosted by colleges throughout the region, including American River College, Consumnes River College, Folsom Lake College, and Sacramento City College. 

“We want to share student success stories as well as allow viewers to imagine themselves in the same scenarios in reaching their academic and career goals,” says Dana Wassmer, Associate Vice President of Instruction for Economic and Workforce Development at Cosumnes River College. “We want to introduce potential students to our programs, so we intentionally kept the videos short to keep the attention of the viewer, but poignant.” 

The 17 Strong Workforce-funded videos showcase the graduates of their respective colleges running the show in their chosen career fields. Take Humberto German Rodriguez Jimenez, star of the Design and Digital Media program video and first-generation Sacramento City College grad.

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Summer of Tech: ICT-Focused TESI Program Returns After Successful Pilot

College of the Redwoods TESI Program. Summer of Tech: ICT-Focused TESI Program Returns After Successful Pilot 

Enjoying sunny skies, watching waves beat against the bluffs, hiking a trail in the California heat — these are just a few activities that may pop into your mind when you’re thinking about the dog days of a Far North summer. For a few high school students in Humboldt County, though, summer break means something slightly different. 

Trade the open air for an air-conditioned computer lab, the waves with wi-fi connections and the cool cover of the forest for a blazing 12th-gen processor, and you’re closer to the description of a TESI student’s ideal summer.

The Technology Career Exploration Summer Institute program — or TESI — invites Humboldt County high school students to the College of the Redwoods campus to explore their passion in technology and gain real-world, hands-on experience. The program connects students with other aspiring techies, bringing in expert advice from a network of professionals representing notable companies like Deloitte and IBM. 

“TESI provides students with a fast-paced yet focused introduction to many different facets of Information Technology,” says Clay McLaughlin, Associate Faculty in the CIS program at College of the Redwoods and TESI instructor. “I think that programs like TESI are an incredibly valuable opportunity for high-achieving students to challenge themselves and explore their interests and aptitudes in the ever-changing world of technology.”

The four-week program takes place in mid-July and invites high school students across Humboldt County to explore the possible career pathways in information communication technology (ICT). With instruction from Strong Workforce-funded faculty, students gain a versatile view of what the ICT program, and the industry that supports it, has to offer.

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News

Education and Career Planning in High School: A National Study of School and Student Characteristics and College-Going Behaviors

What Can We Learn About College and Career Readiness from More Comprehensive Datasets?

 When it comes to designing equitable college and career readiness policies, context matters. From decades of research on inequalities in schooling, we know that students’ educational trajectories are not solely a function of individual choices. They are shaped by the classroom, school, and neighborhood conditions in which students learn. Yet, today’s students learn within highly stratified educational systems, in which racial and economic segregation is on the rise and access to rigorous curricula, high-quality postsecondary pathways, and prosperous careers remains out of reach for many. This stratification of opportunity begins early and compounds as students progress through their educational journeys. The practice of tracking students into different classes and course sequences based on their perceived abilities, for instance, can influence their subsequent access to advanced coursework, their college-going behaviors, and the types of jobs available to them.

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California's Highest-Earning College Majors May Surprise You

As millions of high school and college students graduate this month to pursue higher education or launch newly minted careers, the data highlight the powerful role that their majors play in determining post-graduate earnings regardless of the prestige of the institutions they attend. The analysis comes amid growing scrutiny over the value of college degrees — and whether higher education is worth the rising costs.

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Immigrants, Refugees, and Speakers of Other Languages Now Represent One in Five U.S. Workers

Yet English instruction largely remains a workforce development afterthought: The U.S. currently serves just 4% of adult English learners. 

 It's time to close that gap. Our new survey offers insights on how. 

 We connected with more than 6,000 EnGen learners —workers from 230 partner organizations and companies, including Amazon, Chobani, Target, Walmart, and Taziki’s Mediterranean Café — in a first-of-its kind effort to quantify the impact of English upskilling on economic mobility and employee retention. 

 Survey results, published to sync with #ImmigrantHeritageMonth in June, were both insightful and encouraging.

Full survey results here: https://getengen.com/impact 

NFN K-12 SWP

Designing Equitable CTE Pathway Programs

Thank you to everyone who participated in our workshop of Designing Equitable CTE Pathway Programs on 5/25/23.  Below you will find the recording and the slide deck for the presentation, if you missed this great opportunity.  We will be providing a second workshop in this series in August, date TBD.  We will follow up with the date and time once it is scheduled.

Designing Equitable CTE Pathway Programs Recording

Designing Equitable CTE Pathway Programs Slide Deck

Tanya Meyer, K-14 Technical Assistance Provider, tmeyer@frc.edu