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The Story of 3CSN
Beginning with a retreat immediately following the Strengthening Student Success Conference in October 2007 and over the course of nearly a year, a group of CCC leaders including system representative organizations such as the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO), ASCCC, CEOs, CIOs, CSSOs, The RP Group, plus expert practitioners, including me, and private foundation groups that promote the scholarship of teaching and learning such as Hewlett, and representatives of statewide initiatives like Career Ladders Project, got together for a series of convenings in support of the concept that, as is clear from research literature, professional development contributes to student learning when it is a) ongoing, b) linked to curriculum and instruction, and c) undertaken collaboratively. The group coalesced around the purpose of creating a systematic, collaborative, and permanent network for professional learning that would support and promote increases in student access, success, and equity. Thus, a statewide, networked communities of practitionersconcept was conceived, and over the past fifteen years, largely with the CCCCO’s consistent funding and support, has matured into the vibrant, expansive California Community Colleges’ Success Network, a.k.a. 3CSN, which has connected and supported tens of thousands of faculty, staff, students, and administrators across all 116 community colleges in California.
3CSN Executive Director, Deborah Harrington
Original 3CSN Regional Networks & Communities of Practice
3CSN has built its work primarily through its infrastructure of regional networks and communities of practice:
The regional networks hold regular meetings centered around local needs and best practices, and regional network coordinators provide technical assistance to improve each college’s capacity to generate research, apply research to program development and evaluation, and to build each college’s capacity for ongoing professional development, including participation in local, regional, and statewide communities of practice.
The networked communities of practice center on curricular and institutional redesign and involve empirically studied interventions including Reading Apprenticeship, California Acceleration Project, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, and Habits of Mind.
Original 3CSN Network Campuses
American River College, Butte College, Cañada College, City College of San Francisco, College of the Canyons, Cosumnes River College, Cuyamaca College, East LA College, Foothill College, Fresno City College, Grossmont College, Imperial Valley College, LA City College, LA Harbor College, LA Mission College, LA Southwest College, LA Trade Technical College, LA Valley College, Los Medanos College, Merced College, MiraCosta College, Mission College, Mt. San Jacinto College, North Centers of the State, Center Community College District, Palomar College, Pasadena City College, Pierce College, Reedley College, Sacramento City College, San Diego City College, San Diego Continuing Education Center, San Diego Mesa College, San Diego Miramar College, Southwestern College, West LA College
3CSN’s Theory of Change
If we provide training on networking and we use action research methodologies, community college professionals will transform their identities and environments to create communities of practice that will produce powerful learning and working across campuses. This will lead to greater student success.
Pasadena City College
Pasadena City College
Pasadena City College
To design their first year pathway, PCC had already learned deeply about Reading Apprenticeship practices, technology-assisted learning, embedded tutoring, and math bridge programs by engaging with 3CSN. When they sent their first team to BSILI, they worked on developing a first-year experience program, PCC Pathways, that would include a new class called College One. When they returned the following year, they were building the professional learning program they needed on campus to train the more than 60 teachers from across disciplines who would be teaching the new course so that students would experience a consistently rigorous and productive experience in the classroom and in the Pathways Program as a whole. PCC Pathways now serves 45% of all entering students and for those who participate, achievement gaps are nearly erased. PCC was a finalist for the Aspen Award for Excellence in Community Colleges.
Fullerton College
Pasadena City College
Pasadena City College
Fullerton educators participated in 3CSN’s first networked Community of Practice, California Acceleration Project. Many of these educators had attended multiple 3CSN professional learning workshops throughout their region, Orange County Regional Network. Leadership training at BSILI and engagement with other year-long institutes equipped them with the skills they needed to scale their accelerated English curriculum to 19 sections per semester, serving well over 1,000 students a year. Data shows that 59% of students who took the accelerated developmental English course completed College Writing in just one year. The campus has also implemented a campus-wide Habits of Mind initiative which includes a Growth Mindset intervention that has reached over 2, 000 students, a Supplemental Instruction program that supports 120 sections, totaling more than 4,000 students, and a first year experience program that had served over 700 students as of 2017. Fullerton College was a finalist for the Aspen Award for Excellence in Community Colleges.
College of San Mateo
Pasadena City College
College of San Mateo
Through 3CSN regional events and BSILI, CSM faculty from across disciplines were introduced to Reading Apprenticeship. In less than two years, 68 faculty members have participated in Reading Apprenticeship faculty professional development, 30 student tutors have been trained to incorporate metacognitive conversation into their tutoring sessions in the Learning Center, CSM’s summer bridge program has incorporated Reading Apprenticeship into the curriculum for first-time college students and the Academic Senate declared Reading Apprenticeship to be their highest-ranking institutional priority.