West Valley Faculty is engaged on new initiatives to assist its rising scholar base of older adults in collaboration with Profitable Growing older Options and Group Consulting.
The group, abbreviated as SASCC, offers direct providers for older adults and consulting for nonprofits, mentioned CEO Tylor Taylor. On July 15, the West Valley-Mission Group Faculty District Board of Trustees voted to proceed its partnership with the SASCC for Senior Guided Pathways, the nation’s first group school program designed to make training extra accessible and significant for adults ages 50 and older.
This system creates pipelines for scholar over age 50 who’re on the lookout for job coaching and lifelong studying alternatives, or need to upscale or rescale their job expertise to stay within the workforce.
“I think oftentimes we have assumption around aging and what the needs might be, but there are some individuals who are coming back for a second career,” mentioned West Valley Faculty President Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza. “They’re rescaling or upscaling or they have certain financial needs or barriers that make them getting a certificate or degree not only appropriate but beneficial to them to have longevity and a livelihood.”
Brad Davis, chancellor of the West-Valley Mission Group Faculty District, mentioned older grownup college students are concerned with all the things from constructing their very own small companies to know-how and engineering to artwork and design programs like structure, inside design and style.
The district shaped a partnership with SASCC in response to declining enrollment. Davis mentioned the district was hit by the identical lower in enrollment that affected increased training establishments all through the nation in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The variety of college students at West Valley Faculty dropped sharply in the course of the pandemic, from about 7,600 college students in fall 2020 to round 6,900 the next 12 months. Nonetheless, that quantity has been rebounding: As of fall 2024, the coed headcount was round 7,700. Between fall 2021 and spring 2023, the proportion of scholars over the age of fifty has stayed above 6%.
Falling beginning charges and aggressive instructional alternatives added to the district’s declining enrollment, SASCC CEO Tylor Taylor mentioned. On the similar time, surveys by the nonprofit revealed that older adults have been planning to work nicely into their mid to late 70s, each for monetary causes and causes associated to objective. Factoring in its location in an space with a whole lot of older adults, West Valley Faculty pivoted to carry extra older adults into an establishment thought to historically serve a youthful demographic.
“As a society generally, we are living longer, we need more money and we need to keep ourselves going,” Taylor mentioned.
SASCC’s involvement with the district started in 2018, when Davis was president of West Valley Faculty. They labored along with the World Well being Group and the AARP to get the school designated because the nation’s first age-friendly group campus. Finally, they launched a pilot model of the Senior Guided Pathways program with the objective of enrolling 200 college students. Taylor mentioned they enrolled over 900 college students over age 50 in this system’s first time period and greater than 1,100 college students the next semester.
“We are so excited about Senior Guided Pathways, and not only have we embraced it, but we are pioneers,” Taylor-Mendoza mentioned. “We hope the model at West Valley-Mission Community College District will be an exemplar, a model for other colleges.”
This system additionally goals to assist industries that work with ageing individuals. Beginning this fall, Taylor mentioned SASCC helps develop a Group Caregiver Certificates Program to assist meet the demand for educated and expert employees within the ageing providers trade, which incorporates caregivers, group well being employees, wellness coaches and lead care managers. An advisory board on the school was shaped to develop this system, together with representatives from the AARP, Alzheimer’s Affiliation, El Camino Well being and The Terraces of Los Gatos.
SASCC manages the Saratoga Senior Middle and Saratoga Grownup Day License Facility and operates the senior transportation program RYDE. Additionally they present consulting for smaller nonprofits for grant writing, sustainability, networking and group organizing.
Taylor mentioned that later this 12 months, SASCC and West Valley Faculty will begin planning to a set up a Middle for Growing older on campus. Taylor-Mendoza mentioned that plans are nonetheless within the works however has proposed incorporating it into the school’s new wellness heart that’s because of open in just a few years.
The middle would serve a number of functions for older adults and other people with mobility wants, like offering a gathering house and permitting them to fulfill with affinity teams. It could additionally function a hub for analysis on the influence of training in later years.
“Research, if well done, can lead to a lot of fundamental policy changes,” Taylor mentioned.
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