CSUDH News

The primary source of news and information about California State University, Dominguez Hills, its students, faculty, and staff.

philanthropy

CalMatters: $33M to Ease Preschool Teacher Shortage

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CSUDH student doing educational activities with children.

Source: CalMatters

California needs 11,000 more pre-kindergarten teachers by 2025, as lawmakers embark on a huge expansion of free early education in California. 

Could $33 million in donations to two California State University campuses, announced Wednesday, increase the pipeline of educators for these little learners? 

The larger of the two gifts, $22 million, is the biggest-ever donation for Cal State Dominguez Hills. The grant is from the Ballmer Group, a limited liability company and philanthropy co-founded by Los Angeles Clippers owner and billionaire Steve Ballmer. The group also gave $11 million to nearby Cal State Long Beach for much of the same programming. The gifts will be doled out annually at roughly equal amounts for six years; both campuses got their first allotment in June.

The two schools educate a large share of low-income students. The campuses will spend about 80% of the money on scholarships for aspiring teachers and the rest on hiring personnel and expanding teacher training.

While most students at Cal State get enough financial aid from state and federal sources to avoid paying tuition, “the issue is that becoming a teacher is a lot more expensive than just being an undergraduate student,” said Jessica Zacher Pandya, dean of the College of Education at Dominguez Hills.  

Students aspiring to be teachers must pay hundreds of dollars in licensure exams and commit to 600 hours of student teaching. The Ballmer Group scholarship will help students cover those fees, work fewer hours and borrow less so they can focus on completing their studies and teaching credentials.

Dominguez Hills plans to support roughly 1,200 students over a six-year period starting this spring, Pandya said. Students will get awards of $2,500 to $10,000, the largest amount reserved for those fulfilling their student-teaching hours. Some of that scholarship money will fund students who plan to teach in schools with large numbers of Black students, including in high schools, Pandya said.

The university is also developing a credential that will focus specifically on early grades, pre-kindergarten to third grade. The Ballmer Group money will help pay for faculty to develop that curriculum. Right now, the standard credential is for teaching grades kindergarten through eighth grade. The new credential is “much more developmentally appropriate” to teach younger students, Pandya said.

And as the Los Angeles area and California shift more of their early education from private institutions to school districts that pay higher wages, the Dominguez Hills campus hopes to graduate more teachers specifically trained to educate those young kids.

The campus hopes to attract current early-education instructors, who are typically women and people of color, into its programming, Pandya said.

EdSource: New Grants Support Early Childhood Educator Training

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CSUDH student teaching children at an educational event.

Source: EdSource

California State University Long Beach (CSULB) and California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) today announced $33 million in funding from the Ballmer Group, a philanthropic organization, to support programs designed to address the shortage of early childhood educators (ECE). These grants are intended to help close the emerging ECE teacher gap as well as provide living wage jobs for these educators.

California school districts need an estimated 12,000-15,000 credentialed ECE teachers to drive California Gov. Newsom’s expansion of early childhood education such as TK, or transitional kindergarten, experts say.

CSULB and CSUDH both have key programs that train early childhood educators, a profession long dominated by women of color in California. Whereas preschool teachers often exist on meager wages, TK teachers are paid the same as K-12 teachers. That’s why these programs should increase the economic mobility of ECE teachers who can use their new credentials to access jobs with better pay and benefits.

CSUDH to Bolster Racially Diverse Educators with $22 Million Gift from Ballmer Group

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Teacher doing building activity with young children.

The historic gift marks the largest donation ever given to CSUDH.

More than 1,000 new teachers of preschool and early elementary school grades will start work in the Golden State over the next six years thanks to two new programs being launched at CSUDH, following a transformative gift announced today.

Ballmer Group is committing a historic $22 million to CSUDH over six years, marking the largest donation ever given to the university. The majority of the gift will fund scholarships for students through the university’s Toros Teach L.A. program, which will help address California’s severe shortage of early childhood educators by preparing, graduating, and placing culturally competent, racially diverse teachers and leaders in schools across the Los Angeles region.

“This program, supported by a generous gift from Ballmer Group, will have an outstanding impact on communities with a high need for credentialed preschool and early childhood educators,” said CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham.

“It will support communities of color by creating a pipeline of teachers working and staying in the area, and improve those educators’ ability to create positive outcomes for their students through the use of culturally competent pedagogies.”

California’s early education workforce faces a serious shortfall of teachers, with some estimates putting the need at nearly 10,000 educators as the state expands access to transitional kindergarten to all 4-year-olds by the 2025-26 school year. CSUDH’s Toros Teach L.A. program will include two initiatives to address this need: Early Childhood Excellence and Black Educator Excellence. Through these, the university will build equity-embedded credentials, help districts recruit and support their Black educators and all educators of Black children, and enable educators to forge successful teaching careers with less debt and improved career retention.

“We are excited to work with Ballmer Group toward educating and mentoring culturally responsive teachers for the preschool-3rd grade classrooms of the Los Angeles region,” said Jessica Zacher Pandya, dean of the College of Education at CSUDH. “With this generous gift, we can offer this training to more future teachers, who can then serve the communities they come from while helping to alleviate this critical need for the state.”

The grant supports scholarships for up to 1,200 students, allowing them to earn bachelor’s degrees and PK-3 or K-8 teaching credentials. The program also includes training and upskilling for current teachers, including new units needed for the PK-3 credential once it becomes available and certificate coursework for current teachers who want to improve their ability to teach ethnically diverse learners.

“This significant, impactful gift accelerates our rollout of the new PK-3 credential, while also fostering a diverse pool of future educators,” said Mi-Sook Kim, dean of CSUDH’s College of Health, Human Services and Nursing, which houses the Department of Child Development. “Our Child Development program will also support current teachers looking to upgrade their learning and earn a new credential to progress in their career.”

Ballmer Group’s grant to CSUDH was paired with a gift of $11 million to California State University, Long Beach, to support similar programs on that campus.

“Early education is a game-changer for giving kids a fair shot in school and life,” said Kim Pattillo Brownson, Director of Strategy and Policy for Ballmer Group. “Teachers are vital to this work, and CSUDH and CSULB will now be able to support LA’s future early educators through scholarships, degree programs, and partnerships to support our children’s learning.”

Connie and Steve Ballmer co-founded Ballmer Group in 2015 to focus on improving economic mobility and opportunity for children and families in the United States who are disproportionately likely to remain in poverty. Ballmer Group directs its philanthropy to help ensure that a person thrives through a healthy birth and stable family, a safe childhood and adolescence, a good education, and a career that can support a family.

Daily Breeze: CSU Dominguez Hills Launches Institute to Train More Computer Science Educators

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Students demonstrating live coding

Source: Daily Breeze

Cal State Dominguez Hills will try to address the lack of diversity in the tech industry by training more educatorsto teach computer science in K-12 schools – thanks to a $5 million grant from the company that owns social media application Snapchat.

CSUDH sudents, teachers, administrators and alumni, as well as Snap Inc. representatives, recently gathered to celebrate the launch of the Snap Inc. Institute for Technology and Education, which is housed within the College of Education on the Dominguez Hills campus, with support from the nonprofit CSforALL.

The institute will train aspiring educators to effectively impart computer science skills to students with an ultimate goal to make equity-centered computer science a key part of K-12 education in Los Angeles.

“It is an investment in the mission and the purpose of trying to educate the next generation of students to provide them with a technological advantage,” CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham said at SITE’s opening celebration last week. “There is a big divide in this nation and it isn’t just political, it isn’t just racial; it is technological.”

This divide is present in the homes of Los Angeles area students, he said, with many of them sharing devices among family members and lacking a stable internet connection. These challenges coupled with the limited computer science education available in schools means that many low-income students and students of color are not set up to acquire tech skills and potentially enter that industry.

The $5 million donation was partially prompted by Snap Inc.’s own poor track record with diversity, said Jasson Crockett, the company’s public policy manager.

“Snap has a bit of a diversity problem. Not so much a problem perhaps as a glaring, gaping deficit,” he said. “And we’re certainly not alone.”

Black employees comprise 5.2% of staff and Hispanic/Latino employees make up 7.2%, according to Snapchat’s 2022 diversity report. Google’s demographic breakdown is similar, according to its 2022 diversity report; Black workers comprise 5.3% of staff and Latino workers make up 6.9% at Google, according to the diversity report.

Reflecting on this industry-wide problem led Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel to ask where his company can invest to make the biggest impact on diversity in tech, Crockett said.

“If we want more people of color to pursue careers in tech, we have to expose more youth of color to computer science early,” Crockett said. “If we want to expose more students of color to computer science, let’s make sure we’re training enough computer science teachers.”

CSUDH, which is in the Carson area, was selected for the $5 million donation – the largest in the university’s history – because of its stellar reputation for providing economic mobility, its diverse student body, and because it is one of the leading producers of K-12 teachers in Los Angeles.

The university ranked second in the nation for creating economic mobility in a study by public policy think tank Third Way. Its student body is around 90% people of color, including 65% who are Hispanic/Latino and 11% who are Black. The majority of students in the College of Education, meanwhile, come from – and go on to teach in – communities within a 50 mile radius of campus, said Dean Jessica Zacher Pandya.

Parham said he hopes the work done at SITE will have a ripple effect in communities where graduates work.

“We will train teachers to provide technological education for these young people and the students they teach at every level,” Parham said during the Thursday, Sept. 22, celebration. “It is those students who will then come back and train their parents and impact their communities and impact the next generation of students coming behind them.

“That is the magic that we look forward to.”