Our partnership with Fresno Unified School District supports the success of guided pathways that lead to smooth student transitions, dual enrollment credit, work-based learning opportunities, and an education that aligns with regional workforce needs. This support is achieved through a myriad of ways.
Firstly, we focus on a well-rounded curriculum that brings our students into a shared professional learning environment with high school and post-secondary educators.
Secondly, we give students the opportunity to take transferable college credit courses to accelerate their collegiate timeline.
Thirdly, we give students the opportunity to experience on-campus housing to demystify the often intimidating experience.
Our students will get to enjoy guest speakers, industry-specific summer camps, job shadowing, mentors, and more through this partnership. This project particularly includes pathways within STEM related fields, including engineering, agriculture, education, advanced manufacturing, finance, and technology. We especially hope to create a positive environment in STEM for our students of color and foster youth, who are historically underrepresented in this field.
Our Summer 2021 camps were created with hopes of having students on campus to experience hands-on learning activities. We also worked with organizations to provide virtual internship opportunities specific to technology and start-up elements associated with both Engineering and Accounting/Business.
Our goal is to expand participation as far as possible, but especially to marginalized students. This past semester, we reached a milestone when we trained Fresno Unified dual enrollment teachers in Canvas and Simple Syllabus. This is a wonderful way for us to educate our students on the kind of organization and course documentation that awaits them at the university level.
