Chancellor Sonya Christian took part in a time-honored tradition to speak with Community College journalists on April 29 to address new initiatives that the Chancellor is hoping to realize on the Senate floor. These meetings have been held for almost 10 years and are available to all community college newspapers to join monthly.
The main topic of this meeting was efforts to introduce more internship and practical job experience opportunities for community college students. “There are over 100,000 internship opportunities for California students, but only 36,000 for community college students, so we must go out and bring more of those opportunities to the community college students,” Christian said.
Christian’s efforts to expand these programs are supported by a recent report showing the benefits of learning practical skills on the job while also pursuing supplemental general education at a university. Christian expressed that her vision was a future where every associate’s degree obtainable at a CCC had an internship opportunity connected to it. “This concept is revolutionary, and would be a new paradigm for the rest of the country,” Christian said.,“We in California are the first to attempt this, and we have the ability to do so.”
Additionally, a pilot program, as outlined in AB2301, will select 10 community colleges to start to offer bachelor’s degrees in science for nursing as part of their college pathways. If passed, this bill will be another landmark step toward moving community colleges into four-year institutions.
Answering questions facing current community college members, Christian underscored the value of AI literacy while acknowledging the cultural hesitation with the technology at large: “We in California have a big sway to how technology plays out,” she said.“If we are AI literate, we will be informed enough to create good guidelines and guards to make sure that AI empowers the human element. We can then forge a future where it becomes an ethical tool, and not something that turns humans into a commodity.”
