Economic Development & Community Engagement

College of San Mateo is a critical resource in economic and workforce development. It engages in activities to better understand the needs of San Mateo County and the Bay Area. CSM has recently created an Executive Director of Strategic Initiatives and Economic Development position and is redesigning the core infrastructure and thoughtful programming necessary to advance key economic and workforce development strategies and expanded partnership development. The campus will move through this process over three phases.

Build trust and increase understanding: It is essential to engage in experiences that will expand our understanding of campuswide efforts and great work while ex­ploring areas of collaboration in our service of students, prospective students, and the community. We will engage the Academic Senate, Classified Senate, Associated Students of CSM, and Management Council. Additionally, we will meet with learning communities, Mana, Puente, Umoja, and Project Change. We will host weekly drop-in sessions where campus team members can stop by and have informal conversations and share ideas. Internal stakeholder engagement will be a critical priority as we are committed to building trust and thoughtful partnerships across the campus.

Deep discovery: Our second priority is leading deep discovery across the campus, and our community through a Community and Economic Needs Assessment. We will design a team of campus stakeholders who will participate in the assessment development and will assist with carrying out the various activities.

Key components, such as critical data analysis and community engagement in focus groups, surveys, town halls, and asset mapping, will provide essential insight into what we can do to better serve students and our community. As we share critical data analysis and the synthesis of our findings with the campus, we will host a "Possibilities" Tour, creating a space for the campus to come together and work to "dream big"  and co-create a plan moving forward. Through this, we will realize all that is possible in making the changes necessary to best serve our students, industry, government, and the greater community through powerful external community partnerships.

Establish a shared vision: The third priority is to establish a shared vision and create a five-year plan for the College that advances partnership development and integrates equity-minded practices and leading program design across career-focused education, workforce training, early college programming, and greater service and visibility in our community.

Our approach will provide an opportunity to create a shared vision of the workplace culture we want, and how we want our campus to operate. A writing team will be assembled that includes faculty, staff, administrators, external community stakeholders, existing campus partners, and students. Their focus will be on partnership building, community engagement, increased student success, workforce and economic development strategies, and free college programming while furthering our commitment to equity and acting as a catalyst for liberation.

Engagement Strategy

CSM will employ a thoughtful engagement strategy for internal and external partnership development. It will focus on three main areas.

Pace: A sense of urgency, being responsive and timely when serving students and partners to ensure momentum and success of partnership opportunities that advance the College’s mission, vision, and District priorities.

Partnership: Enthusiastically serve the interests and needs of internal and external stakeholders and align in ways that serve an equity-focused agenda.

Practice: Employ practices and actions that advance a “student/stakeholder first” culture — and do all possible to remove barriers for students and partners to engage with College of San Mateo.

The College currently offers educational opportunities that directly support the development of key talent necessary to serve the local economy and workforce needs. We guide, teach, and train students on career or transfer paths that will lead to enhanced socio-economic mobility. Through flexible and manageable transfer, workforce training, and career pathways, CSM students can access high-skill and high-wage employment that propels the regional economy and contributes to advancing generational wealth.

Through the development of the Strategic Initiatives and Economic Development operational area, CSM has placed great importance on building the appropriate infrastructure, vision, and services necessary to build relationships with community partners and regional businesses. These relationships will help us thoughtfully address and respond to emerging career-focused education and training needs.

Early Examples of this Work

As a campus community, we are actively engaged with community partnerships at all levels. The president developed a Centennial Committee composed of thirty-eight regional businesses, community-based organizations, educational partners, and Board of Trustee representatives to guide our celebration and scholarship fundraising efforts. The Centennial Committee has evolved to become the President’s Advocacy Council representing business and community-based organizations across our service area. Members will serve as thought advisors and advocates for CSM and shape the College's strategic direction as it sets goals that will meet the ever-changing needs of our community, industry, and government partners.

Across campus, our faculty and staff are highly engaged in our community, with relationships to over 500 community-based organizations and companies across various sectors. We are eager to explore the enormous potential for additional partnership opportunities, leading to expanded collaboration as we move into our next phase of economic and workforce development.

A core element of our economic and workforce development strategy at CSM includes developing and servicing community partnerships that will further reach and more effectively serve disproportionately impacted populations and expand early college and dual enrollment programs.

Community Partnerships Taking Shape: The Coast-to-College Plan

As mentioned above, after initial data analysis, CSM identified the Coastside as a key underserved neighborhood. As part of our Coast-to-College plan, the Coastside Education Center is scheduled to open in Fall 2023. Over the next five years, a key priority will be to develop and expand partnerships to better serve this community. Our Coast-to-College efforts exemplify the power of community partnerships and our efforts to serve disproportionately impacted populations, specifically Latinx individuals.

Inspired by the work of Team Innovate, recovery task force member Sophia Layne started the roundtable, which has expanded to include affordable housing advocates, labor and trades, and higher education. A strong relationship was established with CSM and a strategy has been formed.

The Coastside Workforce Development Roundtable began in August 2021 with exploratory conversations among non-profit, government, K-12, post-secondary education, and business partners who wanted to address long-standing challenges related to workforce development, job training, and greater connections to college on the Coastside.

The College led two town halls with Coastside community members (including resident employees) to identify challenges and opportunities.

These town halls were used to develop a comprehensive Coast-to-College Education Plan with the following community partners:

• Ayudando Latinos A Sonar (ALAS)
• Boys & Girls Club of the Coastside
• Cabrillo Education Foundation
• Cabrillo Unified School District
• CoastPride
• Coastside Hope
• Greater Coastside Regional Economic Development Coalition
• Half Moon Bay City Council
• Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber
• Half Moon Bay Library
• Latinx Leaders
• Moonridge Coastside Family & Labor Housing
• Rotary Club of Half Moon Bay
• Senior Coastsiders

The Coast-to-College Education plan was presented to the Board of Trustees on April 27, 2022.This plan is the first of several to serve communities with under-represented populations. Coast-to-College will assemble a program design team to develop a suite of offerings, including but not limited to:

1. A complete general education pattern
2. ESL coursework
3. Workforce development and transfer degree and certificate pathways
4. Student support services

As we grow our outreach to serve more communities, we will support and serve students in their efforts as they pursue upwardly mobile career paths with livable wages that contribute to the vitality of the communities we serve.

Our workforce development programs and services represent additional opportunities to engage community partners for economic development.

Existing Employer Partnerships

CSM engages a community of industry partners focused on workforce development. Together, they enhance the regional culture of collaboration that will bridge labor market supply and demand to impact the economy. In addition, community partnerships improve outreach to our service area as we expand to deliver programs and services for entry to or advancement in the workplace.

The workforce team has established partnerships with local and regional employers to align career education programs with employer-demanded skills. Through participation in local advisories, employers provide critical input into program development, and redesign programs to ensure they remain relevant and keep up with trends while also providing connections to paid internships and job opportunities for CSM graduates.

Employer partners include but are not limited to Adobe, Amazon, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), CalCPA, CitiVentures, Communications & Power Industries (CPI), Deloitte, Equinix, Google, Hewlett Packard, International Facilities Management Association, LinkedIn, PricewaterhouseCoo­pers, Sony, Splunk, Tesla, and Zendesk.

Partnerships with organizations such as Amazon Web Services have led to training opportunities for students to up­skill for career advancement. The College serves as a certified Amazon Academy and offers an industry-developed curriculum to support the attainment of industry-recog­nized cloud computing certifications. In addition, training is offered in partnership with San Mateo Adult School and San Mateo County Community College District’s (SMCCCD) Community, Continuing, and Corporate Education program.

Paid Internships & Expanded Work-Based Learning

Community and corporate partnerships will be leveraged to support CSM's Cooperative Education and Work Experience programs. These programs allow students to earn college credit for participating in a job, internship, or volunteer experience closely aligned with their field of study and expand work-based learning experiences. Over the next year, the workforce team will build upon its relationships with community-based organizations across the county to make career education more accessible to underserved student populations.

Teams will collaborate with faculty and industry partners to design paid internship programming and services and expand dynamic work-based learning opportunities for students across various programs. They will also ex­plore ways in which entrepreneurial activities and services, and the use of student enterprises, can support work-based learning.

New Program Development & Redesign

The Strategic Initiatives and Economic Development team will facilitate engagement with faculty partners to explore opportunities for new program design in areas of high-demand career growth. This will ensure students can access innovative career-focused training and education in emerging areas. Additionally, the expertise of industry partners will be used to shape opportunities for faculty to redesign or update existing programs so that they remain relevant and prepare students for dynamic careers. CSM's workforce partners collaborating with faculty and campus stakeholders is critical to our career pathway development.

Career education programs and curricula will be designed in ways that will serve all students with efforts to ensure culturally relevant pedagogy and representation across experiences and course tools/materials. Our goal is to engage students early and often in career exploration and college course experiences, building their confidence, and ultimately transforming their lives.

The earlier we can engage students on career or trans­fer pathways, the better we can support persistence and completion, the greater the opportunity we have to increase their socio-economic mobility, reduce their educational debt, and advance the regional economy as a whole. High school students represent our upcoming generation who contribute to the regional economy and become tomorrow’s leaders across the county and region. By reaching them in K-12, we can successfully support their transition to CSM for either transfer or career education opportunities.

High School Transition Programs

Partnerships with our regional high schools enable stu­dents to access higher education and provide an early pipeline for educational attainment. In collaboration with community partners, CSM develops programming to support high school access to college courses and work-based learning experiences. We support early access to college while reducing the cost of college for the communities we serve. CSM works with our high school partners to align and advance career education opportunities and connections for students while building seamless transitions to college.

Dual Enrollment is a partnership between CSM and our local high schools that supports high school student participation in transfer and career pathways. Dual Enrollment provides high school students — who may not yet be college bound or who are disproportionately impacted in higher education — the opportunity to earn high school and college-level credit at no cost. CSM will continue to expand dual enrollment partnerships across the county and enhance experiences for students to visit and explore CSM’s campus.

Concurrent Enrollment visibility and partnership development will also be expanded to support more students in experiences that will provide enrichment and increased access to college programming for 9^th through 12^th graders so that they can gain experience and earn college credit at no cost (up to 11 units).

Middle College is an established high school program on College of San Mateo’s campus, where students earn high school and college credits. High school students complete their 11^th and 12^th grades with Middle College high school faculty while taking CSM courses to complete their remaining high school credits. Middle College was established in 1998 and in recent years has expanded to serve approximately 200 students annually. Middle College serves San Mateo Union High School and Cabrillo Unified School Districts. Program partnerships and prospective student outreach will continue to increase participation for Latinx, Black/African American, and Pacific Islander students.

To facilitate a seamless transition from high school to college and to maximize program efficiency, CSM aligns Dual Enrollment/Early College Programming with Guided Pathways and the Promise Scholars Program.

We bridge students’ experiences beginning with dual enrollment support and programming – which includes wrap-around, proactive support services, and strategically scheduled coursework. Dual Enrollment, Guided Pathways, and the Promise Scholars Program are highly coordinated to afford students every opportunity to succeed in completing their degree or certificate goals. Dual Enrollment provides early access to post-secondary education and a well-supported on-ramp to College of San Mateo.

As the initial entry point to college, Dual Enrollment can significantly increase the number of students attending college and more effectively support access, persistence, and completion of college for Latinx, Black/African American, and Pacific Islander students.

CSM currently partners with the following high schools for transition programs:

• Aragon High School
• Burlingame High School
• Capuchino High School (served in collaboration with Skyline College)
• Half Moon Bay High School
• Hillsdale High School
• La Costa Adult School
• Middle College
• Mills High School
• Peninsula High School
• Pilarcitos High School & Alternative Education
• San Mateo Adult School & Career Education
• San Mateo High School

Our strategy includes working with high schools to create a dual enrollment team of local experts and building strategic and structured pathways that align high school to CSM for career education or preparation for transfer.

Our work will focus on continued and expanded student recruitment, program marketing and visibility, program participant engagement, assessment, partner teacher and faculty collaborations, and professional development that supports pathway expansion within each high school. In addition, we will support district strategic priorities and advance free college programming initiatives grounded in an equity-focused approach.

Over the next two academic years, CSM will expand dual enrollment programming to serve 1,500 students in the 2022-2023 academic year and 3,000 students in the 2023-2024 academic year.

Our combined efforts and greater collaboration with community partners, industry, and higher education to establish pathways and programs to economically viable opportunities for our students are substantial. We will continue to diversify and expand our efforts to serve students as they pursue career and transfer opportunities that result in workforce and economic development for our region.

Through this work, we will collaboratively make the chang­es necessary to be recognized as best-in-class service to students, workforce training and development, career technical education programming, free college initiatives, and partnership development across San Mateo County, the Bay Area, and the entire state.