Incoming Pasadena City College Board President Details Two Significant New Programs Now Underway

Pasadena City College is ramping up two significant inter-related programs for its students as well as for students in Pasadena Unified School District high schools who are interested in taking advanced community college courses, Pasadena Area Community College District Board of Trustees President Ross Selvidge said Tuesday.

Selvidge said PCC plans to take full advantage of a recently passed California law that makes it easier to accommodate high school students who want to take community college courses at their high school.

“We’ve entered into an agreement with a couple of high schools in the [Pasadena Unified School] District and we’re going to capitalize on that,” Selvidge said. “This is a program by which high school students can take community college courses at their high school during a regular school day, and the course would only have high school students in it.”

Selvidge said the program will be taught by instructors who meet the requirements for community college instruction and who have cleared their syllabus and teaching plans with the community college administration with which they are collaborating, which in this case is PCC.

“When the students graduate from high school, they’ll get their high school diploma, they’ll also have a community college transcript,” Selvidge said.

Selvidge added the program is different from what PCC and PUSD are currently doing at Pasadena’s John Muir High School, where surplus space after the regular school day is used for teaching community college courses to college students.

Additionally, Selvidge said PCC is now focusing on a Strong Workforce Initiative, which aims to make certain the college’s career and technical education thrust responds suitably to the need for employable students coming out of community colleges in the region.

Selvidge said the Initiative is a program that is currently being emphasized statewide such that certificate programs at the community colleges, including PCC, will match the requirements of businesses and industries in the area.

“There’s special money coming down to the various community colleges to make sure we are not overlooking that aspect of our multi-aspect mission of the community college,” Selvidge explained. “This year, we’re putting emphasis on very systematic planning and analysis on what the types of career and technical education programs are called for by the people out there in the economy who are to employ students coming out of the community college.”

Board Member James A. Osterling noted that “47% of all of the jobs in California are what we call mid-skill jobs, which means it requires a skill level that’s greater than a high school degree, a diploma, but it doesn’t require a four year college degree. Let’s just round that off to half the jobs in the state. So, the community colleges generally, and PCC specifically are ideally positioned to be helping to meet the needs of that mid-skill level job. And of course these are better paying jobs and these are not, generally speaking, minimum wage jobs, they’re good paying jobs. And again, it’s half the jobs in our economy.”

This is the first year the region-wide initiative is underway, Selvidge said, adding the colleges are also reaching out to parents, community members, and the business community in Los Angeles County and Orange County to find out how their certificate programs could better respond to the needs of future employers.

“We recognize that PCC is not just educating people from Pasadena; they’re educating people who’s going to work in LA County, Orange County, in the Southland, and so we’re going to make sure that, throughout the region, we understand what people need, what these employers need in the way of well-trained and skilled students coming out of PCC and the other community colleges around here,” Selvidge said.