The Child Development department at Ventura College spent 8 years collecting data on student needs and advocating with administration to supports students in increasing student success and completion. At the beginning of this journey in 2015, we realized that child development students who were largely taking classes on west campus had nowhere to gather with each other, eat lunch, meet with instructors, have access to materials and equipment to use for class assignments, or regular computer, internet, and printer access.
We collaborated with our Child Development Lab School to utilize an unused child classroom as a meeting space for students before and after practicum experiences where they could gather and keep materials needed for implementations, meet with peers and instructors, and have access to a computer with internet and a printer. We were thrilled students used this space daily, but the majority of the students were only those in practicum experiences who had site placements at the lab school.
During this time, data was not widely collected or distributed at the college level about the lives and needs of students. To better serve and understand our students, we created a needs assessment that looked beyond completion rates. We were interested in finding out where the barriers for success were. Students completed a survey that included questions about time management skills, space to study, work status, child/family care responsibilities, regular access to computers, internet, and printers, food and housing security, transportation, belief that their instructors were approachable and really wanted them to succeed, and emotional well-being.
From this data, we began revising our plan of action that had already begun with the CDC lab school space, a move to Zero Textbooks Cost classes, and offering some of our courses fully online. We scheduled our dedicated Child Development classroom so that there would be no classes occurring during the lunch hour 2-3 days per week so that all child development and elementary education students were welcome to use the space for lunch, to hang out with and get support from peers, meet with instructors, have a study area, and explore equipment and materials used in child classrooms.
We continued to advocated with VC administration for a dedicated resource area and provided data from our needs assessment, sought funding to support equipment and materials identified by students that would increase student success and completion, and advocated for additional support from the college based on the student needs assessment data (transportation, child care, etc.)
VC administration was supportive and agreed to allow us to use a pre-existing trailer on main campus as a resource lab for our CD/EDU students. Although all parties wanted a building located beside the child development lab school, the cost of moving an existing trailer was prohibitively expensive. Although this was not a perfect situation, it was a major step in the right direction and provided our students with the space needed to gain support, utilize equipment, borrow (check-out) materials, and to hone their professional skills and dispositions. Teacher Preparation Pipeline grant funds were used to initially purchase equipment and materials, and we were able to create student worker opportunities for CD/EDU students at the T-RECS.
A few years later, VC administration informed us that there was now a budget available to move forward with our original idea of having a space located on west campus beside the child development lab school. Not only would this be the ideal location, but it would also be a new building for the CD/EDU resource lab. While the new space was being designed and constructed, we continued to use the original T-RECS and provide opportunities for student workers through leveraging different funding resources including Perkins allocations. We officially moved in to our new T-RECS during spring 2024.
On behalf of our students and the thousands of children and families they will positively impact in our community over their career lifetimes, thank you for this incredible resource and the opportunity to put equity into action.
