One of the most important and far-reaching initiatives CR has engaged in over the last year and a half has been establishing a productive relationship between College of the Redwoods and Humboldt State University. For many years and in many districts across the country, universities and community colleges have talked about building meaningful academic and student services partnerships, particularly those in major metropolitan areas. However, because of the different academic cultures in the two types of institutions, collaboration has historically been difficult to achieve.

There has been a lot of research done that illustrates how challenging it is for students to reach their academic goals and earn a bachelor’s degree. The Chronicle of Higher Education published an article in 2018 titled “These 2-Year and 4-Year College Partnerships Keep Students from Falling through the Cracks.” The author Katherine Mangan noted that “while 80 percent of students attending community colleges say they’d like a bachelor’s degree, only 14 percent have one six years later”, and this in large part due to the inefficiencies in the transfer process between two and four year institutions.

In attempt to improve these numbers and eliminate barriers, the California Community College Chencellor’s Office spearheaded the Associate Degrees for Transfer (ADT) initiative, which created seamless four-year transfer pathways for certain academic programs. This was a good and important first step; however, it did not help all of our students.

When HSU President  Dr. Tom Jackson and I met for the first time in 2019 (that seems like so long ago now), we agreed that developing a unique partnership between CR and HSU, one that went much deeper than just ADTs, was not only possible, but essential in our rural area. Because we already shared so many students, faculty, and staff, we knew we had an opportunity to create a truly innovative and collaborative model that went beyond developing academic pathways. We held our first CR/HSU summit in the fall of 2019 and signed a Memorandum of Understanding that laid the foundation for initiating and strengthening collaborative activities between CR and HSU.

The pandemic slowed us down, but did not stop us from moving our collaboration forward. Dr. Jackson outlined our progress we’ve made thus far in his Education Matters Column from last week, but I would like to talk about what came from our second meeting last Friday.

On Friday, February 19, over 50 representatives from our two institutions came together via Zoom and explored ideas relative to five collaborative areas:

• Academics
• Student Services
• Enrollment Management
• Facilities, Safety & Human Resources
• Community Partnerships & Athletics

While my note taking skills have diminished since my graduate school days, I was able to jot down some exciting opportunities our working groups identified. Some of those ideas included:

• Exploring joint grant opportunities
• Engaging industry partners to align curriculum with workforce needs
• Better engaging our Indigenous Tribes in developing pathways between CR and HSU
• Combining our career centers
• Creating joint professional development opportunities for our faculty and staff
• Creating a joint admissions process
• Leveraging our joint purchasing power
• Linking our Emergency Operations Centers
• Creating reciprocal agreements for us to use each other’s campuses to hold classes
• Hosting joint sporting or other events
• Establishing a CR/HSU alumni organization

I want to close this article by noting that community colleges represent one of this country’s major contributions to higher education. Since the 1960s and 1970s, community colleges have led the way on many of the core educational values and goals of the 21st century: access, diversity, affordability, innovation, community partnerships, distance learning, and career preparedness. 

In this same tradition, I believe that CR’s collaboration with HSU should be recognized as an exemplary model for community college and university partnerships. As I have said before, I could not have found a better partner in this unique collaboration than HSU President Tom Jackson. I have great faith and confidence in the ability of the faculty and staff at both institutions to move our partnership forward for the betterment of our community.