CSUDH Partners with LA Community Colleges

California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH) and Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) signed a Memorandum of Understanding during a Board of Trustees meeting at the district’s headquarters on Dec. 13 that will ensure the seamless recruitment, retention, and graduation of LACCD students at CSUDH.

The partnership will provide better support to LACCD students intending to transfer to CSUDH, increase the transfer rate of LACCD students to CSUDH, and improve the number of students from the district attending a four-year college.

Under the agreement, CSUDH will guarantee admission to all LACCD applicants who complete minimum CSU admissions requirements, and will also expand its number of Associate Degree for Transfer offerings. New data-sharing practices will enable CSUDH to redirect first-time, first-year applicants who aren’t admitted at CSUDH toward a pathway for easy transfer at LACCD institutions. Similarly, the agreement allows LACCD to hand off transfer-ready students more effectively to CSUDH.

“Our job in our community college systems and in our state universities, and even in our research universities, is to clear the pathway so that our students have unparalleled access to education,” said CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham in his address to the Trustees ahead of the signing ceremony.

“We are being entrusted by this community to provide students with an educational experience that we are so proud of at California State University, Dominguez Hills,” he said. “We want you to know that we’ll nurture the souls that you pass on to us.”

LACCD Chancellor Francisco C. Rodriguez welcomed CSUDH President Thomas A. Parham and members of his Cabinet to the event, calling the partnership a formalization of a shared vision that extends back to Parham’s appointment as president of CSUDH.

“His inauguration was a wonderful opportunity for the community and the LACCD to embrace this amazing individual,” Rodriguez said.  “From day one, we’ve had congruent goals and values around equity, student access, support, building community, building capacity, empowering people, lifting people out of poverty, education as a tool for emancipation, education as a tool for liberation.”

Rodriguez added that he and Parham “have worked together, both in and outside our respective roles, in community organizations, the LA Chambers of Commerce, business and industry,” and that the MoU that the board unanimously approved back in July simply codifies an existing commitment to “creating pathways from L.A.’s nine incredible colleges to Toro Land.”

LACCD, the largest community college district in the U.S. and one of the top producers of transfer students to CSUDH, comprises nine colleges: East Los Angeles (ELAC), Los Angeles City College (LACC), Los Angeles Harbor College (LAHC), Los Angeles Mission College, Los Angeles Pierce College, Los Angles Southwest College (LASC), Los Angles Trade Tech (LATTC), Los Angeles Valley College, and West Los Angeles College.