[Michael Gavin] The Latino task force of Delta College, really is more of a guiding element for us to make sure that we are achieving our goals and thinking through the ways in which our relationships with the community, specifically in this case the Hispanic community, are achievable.

And that that, those relationships drive student success.

There are some things that Delta College needs to learn and some things that we could provide teaching of to collaborate in a reciprocal way.

To ensure that students feel welcome, and that they see that college is not scary.

If before they try to apply and subsequently that they enter into Delta College College's doors, knowing that we're here for them and that their support network around them once they start taking classes.

To achieve the goals of ensuring that we were reaching our completion rates at an equitable level, I started meeting with this group of leaders, my first semester at Delta College three years ago.

We met once a semester.

Since then, we have found that there's some more engagement desired.

And so this last winter semester, we've met four times, I believe it was.

And from those meetings we identified some high level goals.

And instead of it being more of a reporting back of how we're doing, the community is desiring to engage, which is really exciting for us.

Tonight, what we're doing is to roll out an actual plan for action that has been developed as a result of the input that we've got garnered from the four meetings last semester, from the community and from the steering committee.

And we're really looking today where the outcomes of tonight, the most ideal outcome is that people volunteer to come to our first, kickoff meeting, which is at the end of October, and rolling out from there, an actual pilot of action to get into some of those spaces that I was talking about earlier and also be some mentors.

I think the major goals are really to ensure that we have tapped into all of the pockets of the community to offer opportunities to education, to all students or potential students.

Traditionally in higher education, we rely on going through the K through 12 system and not necessarily thinking about other places that families may gather.

So we're thinking through that.

And then also, once we have students in Delta, we want to be sure that we keep them.

And looking at some mentorship programing that we could collaborate with the community members and staff members on together are the two major goals of this task force.

We only have two major goals at Delta.

And I actually see them as one.

It's to complete as many students, meaning getting a degree or certificate with an equitable levels.

And basically what we need to do to ensure that is that we're achieving that is to be sure that all of our demographics match our institutional demographics, match the census data, and also meaning that we should have the same kind of percentage of student population as we have in the in all sectors of each area that we serve.

And the second part of mentorship is that basically is the best way to retain students.

All of the literature shows that, so we're going to try to match up students to community members of like kind.

Recognizing that not everybody necessarily wants to see somebody that looks like them all the time as a mentor, they might want to have somebody who's a auto mechanic first and Hispanic second.

But we're, we have the software to make sure that we do that kind of matching, and that should be able to allow us to increase our retention and completion rates with this population.

This task force is a collaboration of my office and some of our staff members at Delta, with leaders in the community to sort of think through the issues making sure that the college is achieving its goals with regard to Hispanic community.

the community volunteering towards these this pilot is actually the entire success rests on it.

So, we're doing really good work at Delta College already with regard to all students and specifically Hispanic students right now, We've increased the completion rate for all students by 9%, and specifically Hispanic students by 10% in one year because of the work that we're doing.

But the collaboration with the community is one way that we can live by the value system of being a community college, one of the community.

And then also thinking through the fact that one of my major goals at Delta is to ensure that we're uplifting the entire region through education.

We only have a 32% completion and graduation rate of the associate's level in Saginaw City.

That means there are a lot of people out there that could use a degree, and we're obviously not going to be able to rely on our traditional modes of, recruiting students and also keeping them in the in college.

So we need to think through with our community partners where we should be, where we haven't been before.

And also ways of retaining students that we haven't thought of before.

So I think it's vital.

And I think one of the most foundational reasons that it's vital is because it helps us to build trust with the community.

And I think most of the work that we do is based on trust and relationships.

And for us to be seen in the community, working with leaders is going to be foundationally important for Delta success and the region's success in general.

Anybody who would like to join in this effort, they would reach out to Chris DeEulis, at Delta College.

And if that is a hard name to spell, you can always reach out to me directly and I'll get him the information.

Michael Gavin@delta.edu.

We're looking for all the support and connections that we can make.

So we really enjoy your participation.