The San Mateo County Community College District is providing summer professional development to 1,000 instructors, counselors, and student support staff at Cañada College, College of San Mateo, and Skyline College. The 25-hour training program involves technical training, mentoring and peer support to enhance online education across the community college district.   

With the COVID-19 pandemic forcing most Bay Area colleges to remain in online, distance education, or hybrid formats, the training will help to enhance the quality of the learning experience this fall.

The scope of the training program is massive, providing professional development for 650 college faculty and hundreds of counselors, staff, and administrators. The training program is supported by more than $1.4 million in Federal CARES Act Funding, as well as District funds.

“This is a sweeping program to support our faculty in providing the very best online education possible,” said Michael Claire, Chancellor of the San Mateo County Community College District. “I am so proud of the way our faculty, staff, and students made the sudden adjustment to online learning when the virus struck this winter. We are committed to working with our faculty to offer best-practice online courses and keep our students on track throughout this pandemic.”   

The new training program, called Quality Online Teaching & Learning (QOTL), provides foundational instruction in five key areas:

1. Use of technology for teaching online
2. Digital literacy
3. Best practices for online communication
4. Educational equity in online courses
5. Student readiness through support resources

The 25-hour training program is led by highly experienced online teachers from the District’s own rank of faculty. These facilitators guide class cohorts through a set of standards that have been established by the state Online Education Initiative and a rubric for online courses developed by the Peralta Community College District.

The District is also involved in a large professional development program for San Mateo County schoolteachers. SMCCCD’s Community, Continuing, and Corporate Education division partnered with the San Mateo County Office of Education to design a summer series of two-week workshops designed to help teachers teach online. The program will prepare about 350 teachers this summer. See more at the Office of Education website.

San Mateo County Community College District Food Insecurity Program Reaches More Than 10,000 Families

When San Mateo County sheltered in place in March, faculty and staff at the San Mateo County Community College District knew it would hurt its most vulnerable community college students. The District had already established a $1 million program to get healthy food to hundreds of students with food insecurity at Cañada College, College of San Mateo, and Skyline College. With students losing jobs and campus food pantries forced to close, the food insecurity problem was about to get worse.

The District mobilized to start emergency food distribution on the College of San Mateo campus. Cañada College’s Adolfo Leiva and District Vice Chancellor Tom Bauer formed a partnership with Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. By April 3, the San Mateo County Community College District Emergency Food Distribution was up and running.

View the video on YouTube

Every Friday from 11 am to 1 pm at CSM, District employees and community volunteers distribute fresh food supplied by Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. Each family receives a 39-pound box of food worth about $60. The food distribution is open to the public and serves a large number of college students as well as community members.

As of Friday, June 19, the District has distributed nearly 400,000 pounds of food, worth nearly $600,000, to more than 10,000 families.

In addition, the District purchases and mails Safeway food cards to its list of food-insecure students once a month. Since March, the district has sent more than 3,400 Safeway cards worth $331,000 to students who need food.

“I want our students and our community to know that we are here for you,” said Michael Claire, chancellor, San Mateo Community College District. “As we continue to work to flatten the curve against COVID-19, as we will continue to work to help them through this very difficult time.”

The San Mateo County Community Colleges Foundation has set up an emergency fund to support these efforts as well as emergency scholarships and other student needs. Please visit foundation.smccd.edu to support our local students.

San Mateo County Community College District Partners with 2020 Census to Train 2,000 New Enumerators

The Census is the largest peacetime mobilization of people in the United States. This year the 2020 Census is preparing to contact more than 100,000 housing units in San Mateo County that have not yet responded to the 2020 Census. To accomplish this our local Area Census Office needs to train 2,000 new employees – called enumerators – to conduct these face-to-face interviews.

The three colleges of the San Mateo County Community College District—Cañada College, College of San Mateo, and Skyline College—are providing sanitized classroom space for the training program.

“The Census is critically important in determining funding for critical educational, social, housing and transportation services and resources for our county,” said SMCCCD Chancellor Mike Claire. “I cannot think of a more important use of our college facilities than for training the people who will do this important work to ensure that everyone in our county is counted in the Census.”

The Census enumerator training program entails eight days of face-to-face, in-home, and online instruction. Workers begin with a three-hour session in which they take a required oath and receive training on the digital devices used in the Census interviews. That three-hour session is the component being held at the college campuses. 

“We are so grateful for this partnership with the San Mateo County Community College District. The enthusiasm from the District, and district staff in helping to ensure we have a successful count in San Mateo County is unparalleled,” said Sonny Le, Partnership Specialist. “This allows us to run a safe, efficient training program that will prepare our enumerators to go into the field so San Mateo County can receive their fair share of federal resources.”

So far, San Mateo County’s Census response rate is 73.2%. The average for California counties is 63.4%. Census workers must interview individuals in more than 100,000 housing units in San Mateo County in eight weeks.

Training will take place from July 31 to August 5. About 200 trainees will be on each campus each day, using five classrooms on each campus in order to maintain social distancing. Trainees and instructors will wear face coverings and undergo health screening before entering campuses. College staff will sanitize each classroom at the end of each day.

There is still time for those who would like to self-respond online. Go to 2020census.gov.