Chaparral 2023-2024: Spotlight on NonCredit

Following our April issue theme of Strengthening Our Legacy at GCC, one of the many successes we have had this year is the growth of Noncredit on both campuses. Chaparral spoke with several of our wonderful colleagues about their experience as part of the Noncredit community and their hope for the future. First is a short summary from Division Chair Maria Czech followed by video interviews with ESL Instructor Edgar Zardaryan and Student Success Instructor Kim Perner. Lastly, we check in with ESL for College Prep Instructor Jacqueline Vega Lopez. 

Chaparral was lucky enough to talk with Maria Czech, Division Chair of Noncredit Business and Life Skills Division. In addition to being chair and an adjunct professor, Maria interfaces with Short Term Vocational Certificates and Courses, Allied Health, Parent Education, and Lifelong Learning at Garfield Campus. We asked Maria about the legacy of her various Noncredit areas and her vision for the future. Let’s hear from her here!

Maria began her journey at GCC with Adult Basic and Secondary Education (ABSE) in 2011. For Maria, building community is contingent on meeting students’ needs first; particularly to bolster their career and college plans with the ever changing GED and Career Readiness requirements. Understanding the needs of students also means looking at the critical connections between Noncredit and Credit programs. Using teamwork, the immense experience of staff and faculty, and strategic communications, according to Maria, Noncredit has been able to establish a sense of belonging for students in person.

When the pandemic occurred, it was hard to instantly create that same sense of community at a distance. For the first two semesters, Maria and her colleagues met weekly then every other week to talk about what was happening in the community,what is working, and what is not. There are challenges to building community in a wider ranging program so, as division chair, Maria maintains a consistent and open presence. She holds division meetings a few times a semester and meets with different departments where they are and in multiple modalities. The overwhelming majority of Noncredit staff and faculty were already on board to support students using new methods and many just “wanted to be heard”. Together, they recognized the need to transition offerings based on need and were interested in building a new sense of campus under new leadership styles.

As a leader, Maria sees her role as twofold: a facilitator of the tension that comes with change and someone who finds the balance between people and compliance. In the first instance, Maria has timely conversations to get folks to understand that accomplishment may include conflict. However, experiencing that tension and still being committed to figuring out compromise is key. For the last instance, Maria maintains that there are decisions, Curriculum and Instruction for example, that must be made within confined systems. Again here, her role is to facilitate understanding and compromise with what we must do and what we can do for our students.

Maria sees her legacy at GCC as a two way highway: students can move and flow easily between Credit and Noncredit departments based on what their needs are at the time. In addition to a symbiotic relationship between Noncredit and Credit, Maria hopes that between dual enrollment, adult high school students, and short term vocational courses, GCC can leverage existing resources to on-ramp students for credit for prior learning and strengthen their foundational skills. Lastly, Maria’s vision for the future of Noncredit includes increasing Parent Education and Lifelong Learning opportunities for our community. An expansion in these areas, she says, provides training and development for people not only as parents but caretakers and professionals. With the growing number of seniors in Glendale, Maria has been in conversation with the City on how their needs can be met, possibly with the support of a Lifelong Learning Coordinator position at the college. To Maria, Noncredit and Credit are resources to one another and a natural environment for all kinds of learning. She invites all readers of Chaparral to come visit sometime!

Chaparral was delighted to also speak with Jacqueline Vega Lopez about her experience in Noncredit ESL College Prep. Here's what she shared:

Chaparral: How has Noncredit English as a Second Language (NCESL) successfully built a sense of community at GCC over time?

My time with the NCESL division is just shy of three years, first as a Faculty Diversity Program Intern and now as an instructor. In those three years, the level of commitment I have witnessed from staff, faculty, and counselors alike to nourish the feeling of belonging for anyone and everyone involved in noncredit continues to overwhelm me with gratitude. Our student population is an exceptionally rich collection of individuals in terms of language, culture, personal history, and goals. And I have seen our division serve these community facets through supportive parent- and child-centered events, bustling cultural commemorations, communities of practice for students with unique academic or professional goals, and a cozy language learning café full of spirit – just to name a few examples that have taken place in the last week alone! The entire Garfield campus team cultivates a flourishing community of empowered students that succeeds in part because of the skillful combination of targeted resources, and in part because of safe, equitable, and mutually supportive networks guided by our Caring Campus principles. It is difficult to wrap the feeling of the NCESL community up into one word, but I think that the Danish and Norwegian concept of hygge comes incredibly close—it is a word that captures large, human characteristics like “valiant, comfort, and joy” all wrapped in one concept. 

Chaparral: As a NonCredit College Prep ESL Instructor, what would you want your part of the GCC legacy to be in the division and our campus overall?

I am eager to continue collaborating with my division colleagues and look forward to expanding my circle with colleagues from any other spaces who have shared pedagogical interests! One of my classroom goals is to continually workshop and experiment with creative and effective ways to leverage my students’ inherent linguistic and cultural diversity into our classroom. It is my responsibility as an instructor to figure out how to best utilize their unique cultural skills for the purpose of maximizing their co-construction of knowledge with one another, as well as providing individualized support to promote educational equity and boost student outcomes. As part of my personal GCC legacy, I want to work on ensuring that strengths-based approaches like these are used to create not only culturally-sustainable individual classrooms, but a culturally-sustainable school and education system (including our leadership, curricula, policies, and so forth) achieved through critical and at times challenging reflection.

Chaparral: What is the vision for GCC NCESL for the future?

As enrollment for the Garfield campus (including NCESL) has surpassed projections, a principal goal for the future is to keep up with student demand. For Fall 2023, we had higher enrollment in our division than we had even before the pandemic, and that momentum has continued well into this year with an unparalleled number of students attending our pre-spring semester placement workshops. This means, as part of our future goals, increasing the number of classes and shifting more toward in-person modalities to align with student preference; further, it also means engaging in intentionally inclusive practices to build a sense of belonging with the express purpose of improving student retention and helping students realize their academic goals. It is a privilege to be able to serve the community in this way and we are lucky to have such impressive rates of enrollment. And it is easy to see how our NCESL team works to uphold our high education standards to welcome and support all students.