Recently, a network of our California community college partners joined together for our first regional workshop in the state. Since we first established relationships in the California educational landscape, partners consistently expressed a desire to unite as a regional community.
The goal was to enable these partners with strategies to leverage predictive analytics to improve student outcomes, particularly within the context of their state. California schools do not receive state funding, which adds complexity to their planning and student success initiatives. This regional workshop was an opportunity for our California partners to connect with like-minded colleagues and develop progressive plans to serve their unique student populations.
The
Los Rios Community College District, comprised of
American River College,
Consumnes River College,
Folsom Lake College and
Sacramento City College, worked alongside
Coastline Community College,
Golden West College and
Orange Coast College.
Representatives from each college engaged in two days of community building activities, including a dinner presentation from Senior Civitas Fellow Gerardo de Los Santos, Ph. D., who highlighted emerging trends in the community college space, including ecosystem urgency, the learning imperative, and a focus on creating a culture of optimization.

The workshop also served as an opportunity to unite student success professionals across the two California districts. Collectively, the group embarked upon activities — grounded in design-thinking principles — that intimately allowed them to reflect on their unique data sets with the student perspective in mind.

They used
Illume Students to identify institutional trends across specific student segments. Once insights were gathered, small teams worked together to create precise, data-inspired nudges for the specified student segments. The small teams then shared their recommended outreach with each other to generate more ideas, discuss best practices, and find consensus around the most effective way to communicate to their students.

They leveraged our
Nudge Hub, which houses resources and templates for our partner community, to further support coordinated, targeted student nudge campaigns. With these messages and outreach strategies, our California partner community is identifying opportunities to intervene at the right time,
taking action with confidence, and encouraging students to continue on their higher education path.
To learn how you can incorporate nudge campaigns in your student outreach, download our free ebook: Driving Student Success Through One Precise Nudge at a Time.