The Central Valley has a college graduate problem. Can this Fresno State program help?

When Allison Howard began attending Fresno State straight from high school in 2005, she always planned to finish.

But life got in the way, said Howard, now an American Sign Language interpreter for Clovis Unified School District.

“Between my junior and senior year, I got married, and so we moved to Tulare. I was commuting for a semester, and then I ended up getting a job,” she said. She was only about 15 units away from graduating.

“I ended up thinking, ‘Oh, I can finish these classes like next semester.’ (But) next semester never came.”

Now 16 years after she took her first class at Fresno State, Howard will be earning her bachelor’s degree in liberal arts as part of the Class of 2021.

It turns out that family and the job she has now made her the perfect candidate for Reconnect, a new Fresno State program aimed at former students who were close to graduating when they dropped out.

The journey to Reconnect

About six years ago, Daniel Bernard noticed that, since 2004, there were about 5,000 students who had dropped out of the university with over 70 units and a 2.0 or better grade point average.

Bernard, the associate dean of the Division of Continuing and Global Education at Fresno State, saw an opportunity to create a pathway for those students to return and graduate.

“Some people are good students, (but) something in their life takes them away from the university,” he said. “We know how important finishing a degree can be for professional development or to move up in careers, so that that’s really the perspective we were taking from it.”

Bernard co-authored an initial grant and tapped Alison Mandaville, an associate English professor at the university, who had worked with a degree completion program for returning adults in the Pacific Northwest. She has helped shape the program as its coordinator.

“Given that the Central Valley is an area where we actually have lower college graduation rates than the rest of the state of California, this seemed like an area that we could contribute to,” Mandaville said.

Some of the highest rates of adults without high school diplomas in the state are concentrated in central San Joaquin Valley communities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Income and poverty have been linked with educational attainment.

The biggest hurdles students faced, Mandaville and Bernard found, was finding time to attend traditional classes when they had families and full-time jobs.

She said research also found that former students were enrolling in for-profit colleges, which may have been more flexible, but are more expensive and, generally, have lower graduation rates. Some for-profits have been shut down over the years amid allegations of fraud, spurring the Biden Administration to streamline debt relief to former students.

“Our research showed that when a student leaves before graduating, unless they return within two years, they are over 90% unlikely to ever come back, Mandaville said. “We also know from research on online learning that it works best for students who have already had success in traditional college learning (face-to-face courses).”

To give students the best chance to succeed, Reconnect is 100% virtual. The courses are eight weeks long and only accessible to those in the program. The students get full advising support and can use many of the same campus resources that traditional students use, such as the library, Mandaville said.

But not all returning students are eligible for Reconnect. Applicants must have taken classes for at least a semester at the university and have completed all their lower-division courses, among other requirements.

Mandaville said the program is unique to Fresno State.

“This is the only ‘place-based online program’ I am aware of, specifically serving the Fresno State region and former students,” she said. “It is the only degree completion BA in Liberal Arts program in the CSU system.”

What can a liberal arts degree do?

About 57% of students graduate from Fresno State within six years, according to fall 2020 university data. The CSU as a whole has a 62% six-year graduation rate.

That number has been steadily moving up and is a target for the CSU’s lofty Graduation Initiative 2025, which aims to have 70% of students graduate within six years.

Mandaville said she wouldn’t consider Fresno State as having a bigger problem with graduation than other regions, “but we do have students, you know, who have a lot of challenging life circumstances in our community,” she said. “So what I would say is that it’s maybe harder in our community for them to return when hard things happen than (for) a student who has more resources.”

Students in the inaugural cohort for Reconnect, which kicked off last fall, come from various professions, Mandaville said, so offering a liberal arts degree was a way to help as many as possible.

“We have students right now in the program who work in health care, who work in education, who work in city management … we have a firefighter, we have someone in the military, we have some folks who work in social service-job programs.”

A liberal arts degree has courses that “emphasize critical thinking, problem-solving, communication, and writing, valuing of diversity and civics awareness. These are all areas that businesses and other employers have repeatedly said are the most critical 21st-century skills — making these graduates assets for future career growth and community progress,” Mandaville said.

Some students plan on changing careers, but others are hoping for a promotion at their current job.

One of those students is Andrew Dodderer, a senior fire prevention inspector for the Fresno Fire Department.

“I wasn’t super committed to being at Fresno State,” Dodderer admitted. “For about five years there, I switched majors a number of times. And then I was accepted through the (Fresno) City College Fire Academy in 2011.”

But he had always thought of returning to finish what he started.

Dodderer said he looked into several for-profit colleges but decided Reconnect was the best option for him financially. And because it was flexible while he worked full-time.

After graduating, he plans to stay with the city’s fire department and hopes it will open up more opportunities.

Other students, such as Howard, don’t have immediate plans for the degree.

“I’m excited to have this for nothing other than just myself,” she said, “to know that I accomplished something even years later.”

She’d also like to show her children and those she works with that they can reach their goals.

“If you have a goal and you set your mind to it, it’s something that you can achieve if you really work hard.”

The future of Reconnect

Bernard said they sent out almost 600 letters and promoted the program on social media beginning in 2018. Of about 150 inquiries, 13 are currently in the program, and 11 will graduate this spring.

Mandaville hopes to grow the program and believes it could serve up to 25 to 35 students in each annual cohort. She believes, in the future, the program may be able to accept former students from any CSU, not just Fresno State.

At $400 a unit, Reconnect may at times be pricier than earning a degree through traditional classes, and students may not want to earn a liberal arts degree. At least one person in the program left to earn a degree in their original major, Mandaville said. However, there may be opportunities to earn a minor in another degree, depending on how many classes are needed.

But for Howard, the money and time she spent were all worth it.

“I had work and a family, and it just seemed like impossible to actually go to campus,” she said. “Everyone is very well aware that everyone in this program also has jobs and families and things. We’re in a different stage of our life than we were when we originally went to college.”

Dodderer said he’s never liked leaving things undone.

“It’s a nice way and really a convenient way to go back and accomplish a goal that I set out to do 15 years ago,” he said. “I’ll finally be able to accomplish that.”

The Education Lab is a local journalism initiative that highlights education issues critical to the advancement of the San Joaquin Valley. It is funded by donors. Read more from The Bee’s Education Lab on our website.

This story was originally published April 12, 2021 at 5:00 AM.