Both the breadth and persistence of equity gaps for Native American students despite significant efforts to provide appropriate support suggest that a more targeted, intrusive intervention is necessary to adequately address the equity issues for Butte College’s Native American students. The newly-hired Retention Specialist is dedicated specifically to this population and is working hard to increase this group’s access to services and supports on campus and in the local communities in order to improve student success and close equity gaps. 

The benefit of having a full-time, 11-month Special Programs Clerk in the Culture and Community Center has been immense. The CCC is open longer, the student assistants have been better trained and supervised, and as a result of our mostly remote learning environment, there has been a lot more cultural programming on social media this year. Additionally, the CCC Clerk has been able to better coordinate with the overall SE department and other programs on campus that serve marginalized student populations, including the QRC and the UndocuCenter. 

African American, Native American, Latinx, Asian, and multi-ethnic male students all have large equity gaps in at least one of the five student success indicators: access, retention, transfer-level math and English completion, transfer, and earned degree/certificate.  Across the state, research suggests that male students of color are more likely than their peers to attend community colleges and are less likely to complete and transfer than their peers. This initiative provides support to faculty, staff, and students who identify as men of color.

The purpose of the API Council is to address any issues or concerns the community has as well as to create events geared towards moving forward the API community on campus. The focus has included leadership development and advancement of API students, staff, and faculty.

A graduation/ceremony committee has been created to plan graduation celebrations for special populations every May. Currently the funds requested will be used for the following groups: Native American Graduation, African American Graduation, Asian/Pacific Islander Graduation, Dream Graduation, LatinX (already in unit plan), LGBTQ Graduation (lavender). The plan is to create a template that can be replicated with small nuances, for each population that does not already have a graduation celebration planning committee. These supplemental graduation celebration events will be coordinated to take place consecutively, each day of graduation week assigned to one group.

The Cultural Awareness Community of Practice is a workshop series seeking to give faculty and staff the concepts to better understand and the practices to more fully meet culturally diverse students where they are at. The program aims to close equity gaps at Butte by fostering a culture of inclusiveness, which understands that institutional change must happen in the context of reducing intersectional—not isolated—oppressions (race, gender, sexuality, ability and class).  The goal of the program is to create a more welcoming campus environment for students of color, disabled students, queer students, and for all those living in the intersection of these identities. Individuals who go through the program will have an increased capacity to witness and an increased capacity to disrupt/question micro-aggressions, and an increased awareness of exclusionary campus spaces and the ways to make them more inclusive. Individuals will also feel more empowered to continue knowledge and skill building, capacity, and community development. Evaluations of the program content and facilitators suggest that CACP is a critical professional development offering that improves classroom practices and campus climate for racially minoritized students, student with disabilities, and LGBTQ students.

Our focus group data from disproportionately impacted student groups including African American, Native American, and Hispanic students suggests that these student groups need more visible demonstrations of their cultures represented on campus in order to feel connected, valued, and nurtured at Butte College. In order to meet the student equity goals as defined in the Student Equity Plan, the CCC must be supported with both student assistant and programming funding. This year, the social media presence of the CCC staff on issues of race has been ubiquitous and has served a much-needed sense of community for students and staff.

As a Hispanic-Serving institution, it is imperative for Butte College to be responsive to the needs of our increasing Latinx student population. These students have asked in focus groups for more culturally-relevant and family-oriented services and activities, and the Bienvenida and graduation ceremonies help the college meet this need. The Bienvenida was a very successful this year, with many Latinx students in attendance. 

Butte College has recognized for some time that there is an underrepresentation of racially minoritized faculty and staff working for the college. This underrepresentation not only suggests that our current hiring policies and procedures are racially biased, but it is also partially responsible for the large racialized equity gaps we see in success rates among students. The Faculty and Staff of Color Council at Butte College provides an outlet for faculty and staff of color to process what it means to work at a predominantly white institution and to coordinate efforts to increase equity across the campus.

FAIR (Faculty Alliance for Inquiry and Research) Classrooms is a professional development opportunity that will provide a brave space for instructors to focus on accessing classroom-level data about how different groups of students are performing in their specific courses, developing and using inquiry processes to improve student engagement and completion levels, and building a community of support with like-minded faculty who are also seeking to improve opportunities for all our students. 

In order to both meet the Strategic Direction priority of strengthening professional development and to close equity gaps, the SE Program offers multiple FLEX workshops for faculty and staff during Institute Week. When possible, we invite diverse community members to educate our faculty and staff on the history and lived experience of minoritized identities. This year, these funds supported Dr. Gina Garcia’s Spring Institute Day presentation about “Becoming an HSI.”  

The Student Equity Program hopes to increase the student engagement of disproportionately impacted student groups by funding programming and travel for multiple identity-based clubs: Black Student Union, Native American Club, MEChA, Pacific Islander Club, Rising Scholars, RISE (Regional Immigrant Scholars for Equity), and GSA. The Student Equity Program will support club meeting catering, campus events, community field trips, and conference/university travel for these clubs. 

ROOTS is a half-day orientation with follow-up activities designed specifically for those who identify as first generation, minority students. ROOTS gives first generation minority students the ability to successfully integrate into the intellectual, cultural and social climate at Butte College just before the semester begins. The purpose of ROOTS is to welcome first generation, minority students to campus; get them connected with fellow students, faculty, and staff; and help them learn how to navigate the many campus resources available to them. This program did not happen this year because they person who was primarily responsible left the college. 

The Student Equity Program provides a large fund for attendance at equity-related conferences. The purpose of this is to expose faculty and staff to equity-related issues and topics in order to better support the success of disproportionately impacted student groups. In 2021-22, most of the SE Conference funding was used for webinars since in-person conferences were cancelled. So far, many of those webinars have focused on racial equity, particularly in addressing anti-blackness on campus and in the classroom. 

African American, Native American, Asian, Filipino, Pacific Islander, and multi-ethnic female students all have large equity gaps in at least one of the five student success indicators: access, retention, transfer-level math and English completion, transfer, and earned degree/certificate. The Women of Color event is scheduled for March 2022 to align with Women’s History Month. 

The MOU for Umoja was completed in late fall 2021, and the goal is to reassign a current employee to spend some time in spring 2022 recruiting students into the program and hosting at least two events, including a Welcome Celebration. 

The Puente Program is underway, offering two co-hort model courses in fall and one in spring. Puente is working on developing a space and providing outside the classroom engagement activities, including Chico State events and a late spring rafting trip.

This program did not happen this year because the person who developed it left the college. 

USC’s Racial Equity Alliance has not yet been operational in 2021-22. 

The Black Voices Group of faculty and staff at Butte College developed in response to the horrific and senseless murder of George Floyd at the hands of law enforcement, and Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Desmond Phillips and countless others before them, which unequivocally laid bare for all the pervasive and persistent racial injustices in American society and the immense hurt, anger, and frustration felt by communities of color, particularly African Americans. The purpose of the group is to provide solidarity and community for our black faculty and staff and to address anti-black racism at Butte College to create a more equitable and welcoming environment for black students. 

Student focus groups are planned for spring 2022 for the following populations: Native American students, Latinx students, and African American/Black students. The funds will pay honorariums for the student participants.