Episode 20 with Chancellor Sonya Christian, Ph.D.

[MUSIC] Hello and welcome to leading community colleges in California, a podcast that goes in-depth with California's most effective leaders in higher education in the largest public sector of higher education in the United States, California Community Colleges. I'm your host, Larry Galizio, President and CEO of the Community College League of California. [MUSIC] Dr. Sonya Christian, State Chancellor of the California Community Colleges. Welcome to leading community colleges in California. >> Thank you, Larry. Happy to be here. >> Well, we really appreciate you taking the time. And I'm sure there will be a great deal of interest to hear what you're looking at in terms of the beginning part of your tenure and perhaps further out. But on this podcast, what we like to do is we like to start with background just so that listeners who might not be familiar with your background and some of your influences have an opportunity to hear them. So if you wouldn't mind, if you could tell us a little bit about your background, perhaps where you grew up, where you went to school, anything else that you wish to let us know about. I grew up in Kerala, India, which is a coastal region, southwestern tip of the subcontinent. And Kerala means land of coconut trees. And I know when I was growing up, Kerala was always referred to as God's own country. And I did not realize how special a place it was until I came to the United States. And in fact, when I became president of Bakersville College in 2013, one of my colleagues sent me a link to the Washington Post article, which featured Kerala with a header that said, they don't call it God's country for nothing. So if you can imagine the scenery, coconut trees, beaches, something like Kauai, the literacy rate is 100%, and the focus has always been on educating women. So when I look at a lot of my values as faculty member here at Bakersville College and later as an administrator president, I always keep going back to those foundational roots and values. My mom, Pam, didn't go to college. My dad, Paul was a dentist in the town I grew up, Kwailan. I went to high school, a convent school, a monk, a karma, a convent, all girls, Catholic high school. And what is really fascinating looking back now, what was just natural when I was growing up, my two best friends, Saita and Suda, one was Muslim and the other a Hindu from a Brahmin family. So to think about, you know, Catholic, I am a Catholic, I still carry my rosary in my purse, but sort of coming together in this convent high school, sort of has the essence of what Kerala is all about. I did my bachelor's degree in mathematics at a local college and then came to the University of Southern California as a grad student. And this is where I discovered community colleges. I was just amazed at an institution of higher education, where everyone could go. There wasn't an application process. We have community colleges, we have a lot to be proud of, and yet a lot of work to be done. Over the last 30 years, I've realized that the vision of access to college, being truly open, is pretty incredible. And yet, when we look at it practically, when we disaggregate a data and we look at, whether there are populations that are left out of the community colleges, whether there are disparities, we see that vision of an open access institution, we still have a lot of work to be done. But let me stop there and then get to turn it back to you. Yeah, no, thank you. That was very helpful and instructive. So apart, perhaps from a immediate family, are there any particular individuals, teachers or people with whom you worked or friends that you have been particularly influential? You know, going to college was a given at my high school and among, you know, my family. So I don't even remember having a conversation about whether we would go to college. You know, we have four kids, two boys, two girls. I was the youngest in the family. And just like going to Mass on Sunday or going to the movies or visiting Grandpa and Grandma, you know, going to college was just a thing we did. And, you know, I realized later when I was, you know, became a faculty here in the US, that I realized that most families, that it's not part of the conversation they have at their, you know, dinner table. And so this concept of, you know, really thinking about first-generation students and thinking about how college can be really customized in a way that a first-generation student can feel at home, you know, became sort of a driving motivator for me during the time when I was a faculty member. And taking college to high school students, I mean, you know Larry that way back in our days in Oregon, you and I, the idea of making, you know, you see, you do what you can see and making college visible to high school students and even sooner, became a mantra that I've carried with me over the last 30 years, hard to believe it's 30 years, but building those equitable systems not to have sort of an opt-in model, but have an opt-out model that colleges is a given. I mean, in the case of dual enrollment, we've done really well in California's community colleges with dual enrollment, but when you look at the data and you disaggregate the data, we see that from an equity lens that there are certain groups that are left out of dual enrollment, so this concept of it being default, it built into every schedule, not for some, but for all. And recently, when, you know, after I was named February 23rd as a state chancellor, you know, I've been working with colleges and with CEOs in looking at the ninth grade option. How about right in the ninth grade getting students to take that one college class right away so they can, you know, get those 12 college credits, so 12 college credits in four years of high school, which is a part of Governor Newsom's roadmap. And what is quite, you know, ironic is that AB 288, which was passed by Holden, I was a new president at BC in 2015, when this piece of legislation was passed, and now eight years later, when we look at it, only 6% of nine graders are participating in a college class, which for folks like me who college was a given, you know, we've got to bring that to every student, particularly our first generation student, by creating that college class right in in the ninth grade. So I'm sorry, you were talking about influences, but, you know, that influence of having that, you know, college right at early ages, I think is critical. No, no, that I think it was a logical progression, and we'll probably talk more about that. And certainly people, we don't have enough time to go through everything about your background. And I do hope people take time to talk to you and to read more about your background, but just moving past many years and move straight to Bakersfield, could you talk a little bit about your experiences as Bakersfield College president? Perhaps if you did work concerning a dual enrollment, but I know there were other really significant issues. So not everybody knows what your leadership and what you did at Bakersfield College with your, with your colleagues, but can you just talk a little bit about some of your some of the initiatives and things that you worked on? On a practical level, you know, when you look at the different pieces of work, whether it's, you know, guided pathways, which was the framework that was rolling out among the California community colleges. In fact, was rolling out nationally when the book redefined America's community colleges came out. And it was in my formative months as president at BC. And then the dual enrollment, you know, we approached our equity work through BC's rural initiatives. So we did a whole lot of, you know, sort of mobilizing our community, our internal campus community, and our external community as well. And mostly what I did was really bring people together, people who have talent, dedicated to move the work with diversity of perspectives, and that diversity of perspective really helps create that 360 degree view so that, you know, it really sharpens our strategies and it really brings about much better solutions. And the only way to do work at scale is to really focus on people and then they provide the power to transform. Let me talk a little bit about the rural initiatives work because I think that was sort of a defining piece of work at BC. When you look at the surrounding areas of Baker'swick College, like Delano McFarlane, Shafther, and Wasco, Arvin, Lamont, those who really know the rural communities immediately, the images that come to mind when I mention the names of these cities are poverty, you know, poverty, migrant farm workers. Are those communities are primarily Latino, Latina communities first generation, baccalaureate attainment rate of 2%, 3%, so when you talk about my commitment to baccalaureate attainment, it's significant because that's where I was as a faculty member at BC way back in the 1990s and then most recently as president in 2013. So that equity agenda of understanding the population, disaggregating the data, recognizing a 2% baccalaureate completion rate. So when you're talking about regional equity and the central valley, it really comes down to community colleges like BC, you know, galvanizing, mobilizing, and looking at other social determinants and providing the support so students can really focus on their studies and then completing that first English class, that math class, which are momentum points to degree completion. I mean, our outcomes, you know, at BC and the current community college district in terms of success are really off the charts. And Romans have been strong and even the recovery after the pandemic has been strong because of the deep work we did with guided pathways and the only way that we could do the work was through what I call distributed leadership. And often, you know, if you talk to our academic senate, if you talk to our classified leadership, you know, the language that they would use to describe the work we did together, you know, agile distributed leadership, we were focused. And when I say leadership here, it's not just the president, it's not just the vice president of instructional student affairs. It's really senate leadership, student leadership, all coming together and locking arms in moving. We really focused a lot on outcomes. So, you know, a lot of the metrics that are embedded within the vision for success was what we did with the guided pathways work. So you will see with our student-centered funding formula, which for example, is really the vision for success. Those early outcomes, English and math completion, and nine plus credits in CTE, completing 30 college credits in the first year, all of those, you know, kind of outcomes focused with equities are always disaggregating the data, was part of our strategy, data, data, data. So what I would call, you know, being attentive to regular use of data, consistent use of data, and intentional use of data. And the other piece is a sense of moving with urgency and moving with clear purpose. And, you know, the idea that, well, if we wait for six months, we're going to be, you know, missing this group of students that we have, you know, with us right now. So that sense of urgency and that sense of purpose have been very critical to all the large scale initiatives that you refer to, you know, the rural initiative, the dual enrollment, even the baccalaureate, we were early adopters of the baccalaureate at BC. What was it SB 850, right, which was the pilot 15 colleges. And now we have, you know, AB 927, which is a reason for us to absolutely celebrate the community college baccalaureate. Yeah, distributed leadership and creating a sense of urgency. And of course, I would presume that many listeners know you, you were president of the Baker's Field College, but then you most recently were the chancellor of the current district. Yes. Is there anything else you think is important for people to know as you work as the state chancellor position about your experiences. At Kern and in Baker's Field that that you will bring to your your new position. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you know, when I moved from president of BC to the current community college district, you know, I really thought it would be a gentle step because I was within the district structure for, you know, close to 10 years and, and I thought of becoming a chancellor. We're not just said next, but it was really a quantum leap in really getting into you know, now I'm reporting to a board, you know, seven individuals and then understanding the state system. And in fact, Larry, one of the points that I would like to to make and I made it recently when, you know, the Ed source reporter Emma Gallegos had spoken to me. You are the leader for the California Community College League. And what you do is you work with districts like the current Community College District in really advancing the Community College agenda, the local agenda and the understanding coming in a state chancellor that it takes all of us working together to move a very difficult and aggressive student success with equity, you know, socio economic mobility with equity student access with equity takes all of us working together and incredibly important for all of us to collaborate and again, and lock arms and particularly given that we are we are moving into a time when the legislators and the Department of Finance and and everything that we're looking at in in Sacramento shows that our revenue stream is declining. So we are potentially getting into some hard budget time. So this is the time that I'm even more conscious that what I have done at the current Community College District is recognizing the value of collaboration and the value of trust, the speed of trust. And my commitment is that all of us come together and prioritize and really stay focused on what are the biggest priorities to the Community College is so that we can work together with our local governing boards, our board of governors, all of us advancing the agenda given our given tough budget times, but I will I'm not pessimistic I see the glasses have full so I would say that our greatest challenges allow us to do our greatest work. And when I'm looking at the leadership at the league, you know, I see friends that I've had relationships for a while and I think together we can do the next era of Community College work the next five years are going to be the best year years, I think for our Community College is fantastic. You've got one person very inspired and looking forward to it and I think a lot of listeners are will be very pleased to hear that, you know, your approach and recognition of the diversity of the colleges and that diversity of the colleges is a strength. Certainly it presents all kinds of challenges, but it also is California and to do great things. It is helpful that you're a math major though and recognizing that at least from the perspective of most of the economic indicators that the revenue picture will be a little bit more challenging. So speaking of challenging issues as you embark upon this this new role, what do you view as and you've mentioned some, but what do you view as particularly salient issues and priorities for you, recognizing that circumstances might change that you never know what's going to happen. But some of the issues that you really. and close attention to. Yeah, I'm happy you mentioned, you know, these sort of preliminary items that are, you know, in conversations with other colleagues, you know, we've already talked about dual enrollment. We've talked about baccalaureate attainment and I want to just revisit baccalaureate attainment for briefly, you know, this concept of ninth grade to baccalaureate completion. I'm calling it the critical eight years. So when we start with the dual enrollment in the ninth grade, we've got to be thinking of baccalaureate completion as a possibility for all of our students. Now, certainly that doesn't mean that every student has to get a bachelor's degree. What it means is that every student has the option of getting a bachelor's degree, which is not the case. When we look at our data, when we look at our inter-segmental data with our transfer agenda or our community college baccalaureate completion, we've got to be doing both pathways when we're looking at baccalaureate completion. In fact, in 2015, I remember as president looking at a report put out by PPI-C, the Public Policy Institute of California where they make this call for an additional 1.1 million baccalaureate degrees by the year 2030. And I of course started sitting down and doing the math. And looking at if we continue the trajectory with our transfer agenda, we're not going to be able to meet that goal that is needed to keep California strong. So the idea of looking at the proportion of transfer students going into our CSU's and UC's. And of course, our independence, we need to increase the proportion in order to be able to meet that. And that by itself is not going to solve the problem. So AB 927 really opens up the gates for the community college baccalaureates, which is what I consider a bachelor's degree with equity. And many of, you know, in the current community college district, we have colleges that are rural colleges. And many of those students are placed bound and they're not going to be able to make use of a transfer to a CSU or a UC. So we've got to be looking at all of our options, including the community college baccalaureate. So I'm going to be focused on that working in collaboration with our CSU's and UC's always committed to collaboration and not taking my eye off that agenda that 1.1 additional baccalaureates by the year 2030. So the other pieces of work that I'll be focusing on is what I'm calling systems development to get our data to flow. So let me, let me frame it this way. Okay. In the last decade, we had, you know, a lot of policy reform. The better part of the last decade was policy reform. I mean, I can name the different policies, right? 705, 1705, you know, 928, 1440. So we've got a lot of policy reform. And policy reform is absolutely critical. However, if we don't have the infrastructure in place or the policy reform to be executed, students are not going to meet the intent of the policy reform. And AB288 is a great example. Dual enrollment eight years ago. But when you look at the number of students doing dual enrollment, they're very few. The percentage is very small and it's not then equitable. So we've got to set up the systems to have to in place. So when the call that I'm making is let the data flow, when a student enrolls in dual enrollment in 9th grade, we have the information. We have the demographic information, the profile of the student. We know that classes, the student is taking in high school. Why does the student have to apply to come to the community college when we have the information, let the data flow from the high school to the community college. Then once they get to the community college, they want to get into EOPNS or DSPS, they have to apply. If they're foster youth, they have to apply. They have to apply. They have to apply. Why do they have to apply? Let the data flow. So once we have the data, we need to let the data flow so that the programs like EOPNS can now contact the students and say, guess what? We invite you to the EOPNS program because you qualify. We have your profile. And then going from the community college to the CSU, why do we have to have another application? The CSU is ridiculous in the year 2023 that we have to have an application when we have the information on the student and all the courses they have taken, let the data flow, whether it's to the CSU or to the community college, baccalaureate or to the UC. So that is going to be the systems to create the system. These highways at the data flow and the student information system is going to be a priority that I'm going to be asking all of our state-wide organizations like our chief information officers, chief instructional officers to kind of come together and with the league, with our trustees, with our CEOs, let's go and make this happen because the default systems are the ones that are equitable. And of course, I know I'm going here at breakneck speed, but I've got to talk about workforce before I punted back to you Larry. Now workforce, you know, the governor's priorities in the roadmap is clear, you know, he talks about healthcare, climate, and talks about technology and education and healthcare, we must do it, we can be importing our our healthcare workers, we need to grow our own, particularly in communities, our rural communities, our vulnerable communities. We've got to find places where there are low income adults. We've got to go find them, not wait for them to come. You know, the field of dreams, Kevin Costner build it and they will come, does not work if we're approaching it with equity. We've got to find our low income adults who are in partnership with our industry partners with CBOs, with the unions, with SEIU, with our building trades unions when we're talking apprenticeship. So we've got to make those partnerships so that we can look at social economic mobility for our low income workers to meet the healthcare workforce demand. And then climate is really close to me. My slogan is we've got to take care of our students, we've got to take care of our communities, and we've got to take care of our planet. So this is where Larry, when you were talking about the diversity of our community colleges and we've got to value it and tap into our local community colleges who reach into the communities. We don't get to the communities from Sacramento. Our local community colleges and their governing boards are connected to the local communities. So when we are moving a climate agenda, which is very much focused on equity and community engagement, we've got to be working in partnership with our local communities. When we are looking at grid resilience, the governor, his ambitious, right? It's not just for the workforce, but also to build micro grids in our communities. Who is in our local communities? You find a community college or a community college center in our local communities. And that's where the governor needs to invest in his infrastructure plan. When he's talking about battery storage, micro grids and battery storage, he's talking about electrification and electric cars and charging stations. When you're talking about the communities, we don't want just the rich to have access to that. When you're talking about taking charging stations to the community colleges, we already have an infrastructure called the California's Community Colleges that are an asset. So we can build those infrastructures for electric vehicles, charging stations within the centers of every community college is in just by utilizing we can save money for that infrastructure plan. So the community colleges are essential in two ways for the climate agenda. Number one is workforce. We know that everyone knows that we've done it, you know, period full stop. But what I am proposing in addition to workforce development is for the infrastructure. If we need to get into the communities we've got to use our colleges and the centers for the governor's infrastructure development. So we need to have a front and central role in that particular agenda as well. So I can go on and on, but I'll stop right there and turn it back to you. No, no, thank you. That was that was very helpful. I think for everyone to hear very exciting. And I completely concur with with your analysis and what you're saying. And the structural barriers that you described that we place in front of students, those are within our sphere of influence. And when I say our meeting with our, as you mentioned, partners at the CSU and the UC and the private and independent institutions to some extent trying to figure out how to create opportunities for our students to go there as well. Going to back to the PPI-C analysis of the labor shortage of baccalaureate degree workers, 1.1 million. And of course, we're seeing that California, to some extent, while we have always had a really robust higher education system, we've also relied heavily on in migration. And we see that for a variety of reasons, out migration is something that's happening. And so we have to cultivate educated and skilled workers and citizens from within. And so what you're describing, I think, is exactly that. And I appreciate that you're not recognizing, but just the capacity that we have at our colleges because they're all over the state. And in comparison to the East Coast, where community colleges came quite late for the most part, and in California, we really built this massive infrastructure, which is we have to tap into. Very exciting. Are there any other ideas, initiatives, or things that you would like to talk about, or say before we wrap up? No, I'm just initially, I was, you know, there was a nervousness, you know, it was a huge, huge job, you know, complexities. And all of a sudden, as, you know, I'm sort of getting into this role, I feel a sense of calm and a sense of confidence that we have a lot of talented people, Larry. We have a lot of people who care and who work really hard. So I feel a sense that, you know, this is the time that we're all going to come together and there's going to be this rising and this force field that is going to be generated from California community colleges to tackle these big agendas through that, our governor, and that our state that we have, we are going to be really crafting and moving the solutions. So all of a sudden, I feel there's so many of us. We have this team. We have this team that is strong. It's about two million students and hundreds of thousands of employees that we're going to get in and really our time is now. And that's my slogan, our time is rolling now. So thank you. This is sort of the first podcast that I'm doing and I'm so pleased that it's the league that is doing my first podcast and you and old friend from Oregon doing this first podcast. So I appreciate the invitation. Thank you, Larry. Now of course, our pleasure, we're grateful to you. We're very much looking forward to doing work with you and there's a lot of excitement and really pleased to hear that you're a friend of the league and we want to maintain that. We hope that down the road we'll do another podcast. We could talk about all the accomplishments and then the hard work ahead. So Dr. Sonia Christian, chancellor of the California community colleges. Thank you very much for being our guest today. [MUSIC PLAYING] Thank you for listening. Be sure to join us for the next leading community colleges in California podcast for more inspiring conversations with California community college leaders on their own professional and personal journeys and on the most significant and challenging issues confronting leaders in higher education today.