A new report, released by the American Association of University Professors Tuesday, found mixed results when it comes to community colleges’ shared governance practices.
The report used data from the AAUP’s inaugural survey of community colleges, conducted in partnership with the Center for the Study of Community Colleges. In the first survey of its kind, faculty leaders at 507 community colleges were asked to assess their institutions’ shared governance practices in 26 different decision-making areas; faculty senate chairs and governance officials responded at 59 colleges.
The institutions excelled in some areas and proved lackluster in others. For example, at most institutions surveyed, especially those with tenure systems, faculty had an AAUP-recommended level of authority over decisions about curricula, salary policies, teaching assignments, faculty searches and evaluations, and tenure and promotion standards. But when it came to other decision-making areas—like budgets, provost selection, buildings and strategic planning—faculty were given little say, according to the report.
Community college professors also participated less than faculty at four-year institutions in most academic and personnel-related decisions, though they played more of a role in decisions about salary policies. The report speculated that the prevalence of community college faculty unions may account for the difference. At higher ed institutions where faculty engage in collective bargaining, faculty tend to have more authority in salary policies and teaching loads. At community colleges, unionized faculty are also more engaged in decisions about full-time, non-tenure-track faculty promotion.
“Community college–based faculty members and administrators can use the tools described in this report to assess governance practices at their institutions and compare those practices with national trends to identify areas where levels of faculty authority might be strengthened,” the report says. “Given the current political climate, economic uncertainty, demographic changes, and chronic underfunding of US higher education, now is the time for community colleges to identify and correct weaknesses in their own shared governance practices.”
Experiential learning opportunities provide students with a space to connect in-classroom learning to real-world situations. A student-run clinic at Widener University provides graduate health science professional students with hands-on learning and career experiences while supporting community health and well-being for Chester, Pa., residents.
The Chester Community Clinic was founded in 2009 for physical therapy services but has since expanded to cover other health and wellness services, including occupational therapy and speech-language pathology. The clinic gives students studying those fields leadership opportunities, experience working with diverse clients and the confidence to tackle their professional careers.
What’s the need: Before the clinic was established, physical therapy students at Widener would volunteer at a pro bono clinic in nearby Philadelphia. But students pushed for a clinic within Chester, which is considered a primary care health professional shortage area, meaning it lacks enough providers to serve the local population.
For some patients, a lack of health insurance can impede their ability to receive care. In Pennsylvania, 5.4 percent of residents are without private or public health insurance, roughly two percentage points lower than the national average. The clinic addresses gaps in health care by providing services for free while educating future health science professionals.
How it works: The clinic is led by a board of 12 to 14 students from each class and supervised by faculty and community members who are licensed physical therapists. Students begin service in their second semester of the program and participate in the clinic until their final clinical placement.
Most clients are referred by a physician but have been turned away from local PT clinics due to a lack of health insurance or because they exceeded the allotted insurance benefits for PT.
During appointments, students provide direct physical therapy services to patients, including making care plans, walking them through exercises and creating medical records.
Over the years, the clinic has expanded to include occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, clinical psychology and social work services. In 2024, Widener included a Community Nursing Clinic to provide pro bono services as well.
All students studying physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech-language pathology at Widener volunteer at the clinic as part of the program requirements. PT students are required to serve a minimum of three evenings per semester; board members typically serve more hours.
The clinic’s multifaceted offerings increase opportunities for students to work across departments, engaging with their peers in other health professions to establish interdisciplinary plans for care.
Free Talent
Other colleges and universities offer pro bono student services to support community members and organizations:
Gonzaga University has a student-led sports consulting agency that offers strategy ideas and tools to sports brands and teams.
Utah Valley University students can intern with a semester-long program that provides digital marketing to businesses in the region.
American University’s Kogod School of Business has a business consulting group that provides students with project-based consulting experience.
Carroll University faculty and students in the behavioral health psychology master’s program run a free mental health clinic for those in the area.
The impact: Since the clinic began in 2009, students have provided over 12,000 physical therapy appointments to community members, worth about $1.3 million in costs, according to a 2024 press release from the university.
A 2017 program evaluation, published in the Internet Journal of Allied Health Sciences and Practice, found that PT students who served in the pro bono clinic felt more equipped to launch into clinical work. They were prepared to manage documentation, use clinical reasoning and engage in interprofessional communication.
A 2020 study of the clinic also found that students performed better than expected in cultural competence, perhaps due to their experience engaging with clients from a variety of ethnicities, socioeconomic backgrounds, health literacy levels, religions and languages.
Both Widener and students in the health science professions continue to support the development of other pro bono clinics. The class of 2015 created The Pro Bono Network, facilitating advancement of student-run pro bono services among 109 member institutions across the country. This past spring, Widener’s annual Pro Bono Network Conference welcomed 250 individuals working at or affiliated with pro bono clinics, and featured 32 student leaders presenting their work.
How do your students gain hands-on experience and give back? Tell us more.
This article has been updated to reflect the addition of a pro bono nursing clinic in 2024, not the creation of it, and to identify students as health science professional students, not health professional students.
In the nearly two years since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-conscious admissions, there have been repeatedcalls for universities to address the resulting decline in diversity by recruiting from community colleges.
On the surface, encouraging students to transfer from two-year colleges sounds like a terrific idea. Community colleges enroll large numbers of students who are low-income or whose parents did not attend college. Black and Latino students disproportionately start college at these institutions, whose mission for more than 50 years has been to expand access to higher education.
But while community colleges should be an avenue into high-value STEM degrees for students from low-income backgrounds and minoritized students, the reality is sobering: Just 2 percent of students who begin at a community college earn a STEM bachelor’s degree within six years, our recent study of transfer experiences in California found.
There are too many roadblocks in their way, leaving the path to STEM degrees for community college students incredibly narrow. A key barrier is the complexity of the process of transferring from a community college to a four-year institution.
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Many community college students who want to transfer and major in a STEM field must contend with three major obstacles in the transfer process:
1. A maze of inconsistent and often opaque math requirements. We found that a student considering three or four prospective university campuses might have to take three or four different math classes just to meet a single math requirement in a given major. One campus might expect a transfer student majoring in business to take calculus, while another might ask for business calculus. Still another might strongly recommend a “calculus for life sciences” course. And sometimes an institution’s website might list different requirements than a statewide transfer site. Such inconsistencies can lengthen students’ times to degrees — especially in STEM majors, which may require five- or six-course math sequences before transfer.
2. Underlying math anxiety. Many students interviewed for the study told us that they had internalized negative comments from teachers, advisers and peers about their academic ability, particularly in math. This uncertainty contributed to feelings of anxiety about completing their math courses. Their predicament is especially troubling given concerns that required courses may not contribute to success in specific fields.
3. Course scheduling conflicts that slow students’ progress. Two required courses may meet on the same day and time, for example, or a required course could be scheduled at a time that conflicts with a student’s work schedule. In interviews, we also heard that course enrollment caps and sequential pathways in which certain courses are offered only once a year too often lengthen the time to degree for students.
To help, rather than hinder, STEM students’ progress toward their college and professional goals, the transfer process needs to change significantly. First and foremost, universities need to send clear and consistent signals about what hoops community college students should be jumping through in order to transfer.
A student applying to three prospective campuses, for example, should not have to meet separate sets of requirements for each.
Community colleges and universities should also prioritize active learning strategies and proven supports to combat math anxiety. These may include providing professional learning for instructors to help them make math courses more engaging and to foster a sense of belonging. Training for counselors to advise students on requirements for STEM pathways is also important.
Community colleges must make their course schedules more student-centered, by offering evening and weekend courses and ensuring that courses required for specific degrees are not scheduled at overlapping times. They should also help students with unavoidable scheduling conflicts take comparable required courses at other colleges.
At the state level, it’s critical to adopt goals for transfer participation and completion (including STEM-specific goals) as well as comprehensive and transparent statewide agreements for math requirements by major.
States should also provide transfer planning tools that provide accurate and up-to-date information. For example, the AI Transfer and Articulation Infrastructure Network, led by University of California, Berkeley researchers, is using artificial intelligence technology to help institutions more efficiently identify which community college courses meet university requirements. More effective tools will increase transparency without requiring students and counselors to navigate complex and varied transfer requirements on their own. As it stands, complex, confusing and opaque math requirements limit transfer opportunities for community college students seeking STEM degrees, instead of expanding them.
We must untangle the transfer process, smooth pathways to high-value degrees and ensure that every student has a clear, unobstructed opportunity to pursue an education that will set them up for success.
Pamela Burdman is executive director of Just Equations, a California-based policy institute focused on reconceptualizing the role of math in education equity. Alexis Robin Hale is a research fellow at Just Equations and a graduate student at UCLA in Social Sciences and Comparative Education.
The Hechinger Report provides in-depth, fact-based, unbiased reporting on education that is free to all readers. But that doesn’t mean it’s free to produce. Our work keeps educators and the public informed about pressing issues at schools and on campuses throughout the country. We tell the whole story, even when the details are inconvenient. Help us keep doing that.
Two years ago, Nicolle Orozco Forero walked into an in-home day care in Seattle, Washington, looking for a job. She was barely 22, a whole five feet tall — if that. But she was calm, focused. Her presence struck the owner, Stephanie Wishon, because it’s not easy to find qualified staff who can work with children with disabilities.
Orozco Forero had experience working with kids who had autism back in Colombia, so Wishon had her come in for a trial run and hired her after the first day. The children, who needed someone who had love and care to give in abundance, gravitated toward her. She was good at the hardest stuff. She changed diapers and outfits the moment they were soiled. She was vigilant; her kids stayed pristine. And she got them to do the things they wouldn’t do for other people, like say “ah” when it was time to get their teeth brushed or sit still long enough for her to twist a braid down their back.
Some people just have that way about them.
And people like Orozco Forero are exceptionally rare. Already, the staffing shortage in child care is near crisis levels. It’s far worse for children with disabilities — about a third of those families say they face significant difficulty finding care for their kids, partly because there are too few people with the ability, expertise or desire to work with their children. Immigrant women like Orozco Forero have been helping to fill that void. They now make up 20 percent of all child care workers.
At home, Orozco Forero was also caring for her own young boys, one of whom started to show symptoms of a serious illness over the past two years that doctors have not yet been able to diagnose. She took some time off to care for him last year, before returning to the kids at Wishon’s day care.
Her work has kept an already precarious safety net together. Without women like Orozco Forero, families who have nowhere else to turn for care have to make difficult decisions about how to survive and keep their children safe. Without her, the safety net snaps.
And that’s exactly what happened on June 18, the day she was detained.
It was supposed to be a routine meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Orozco Forero and her husband had been to all their monthly meetings for the past year and change, since their asylum charge was denied in April 2024.
The family — Orozco Forero; her husband, Juan Sebastian Moreno Acosta; and their two sons, Juan David, 7, and Daniel, 5 — fled Colombia two years ago. Moreno Acosta, a street vendor, had been persecuted by gangs who target vendors for money.
After arriving in the United States, they sought the help of a lawyer with their asylum claim, but when they couldn’t pay his full fee ahead of their hearing, he pulled out. They represented themselves in court and lost the case. With no knowledge of the U.S. court system, they didn’t know they had 30 days to appeal the ruling, either. Ever since, ICE has been monitoring them, requiring they wear a wrist tracker and meet with an immigration officer once a month, sometimes more, according to a family member. (The 19th is not naming the family member to protect their identity.) It’s unclear why ICE has allowed them to stay in the country all this time, though it’s not necessarily uncommon; ICE typically prioritized immigrants with felonies for deportation.
Orozco Forero had seen the reports of illegal immigrants being rounded up at their immigration appointments. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation effort has led to the detention of about 30,000 migrants with no criminal record, like Orozco Forero, who now make up about half of those detained. Her husband does have a misdemeanor reckless driving conviction for driving under the influence of alcohol on his record, but he completed a court-mandated alcohol course for that and has no other convictions.
Still, Orozco Forero wasn’t worried when she headed to her appointment on the morning of June 18. If ICE planned to detain her, Orozco Forero thought, they would have asked her to come with the boys, right?
And she had been doing everything right: She’d gone to all her appointments, taken documentation to show she was going to school at Green River Community College taking courses in English and early childhood education. She had completed a child care internship that trained her to open her own licensed in-home day care. Her licensure approval was set to arrive any moment, likely that same week, and the day care was just about ready to go.
But that morning, her family was still wary, asking her to share her location just in case.
Shortly after 10 a.m., Orozco Forero texted her family member: “They are going to deport us”
“Nicolle what happened? Nicolle answer me,” they texted back. “What do I do?”
“I can’t speak I feel like I’m going to faint,” Orozco Forero replied. And then: “I’m sorry it wasn’t what we expected.”
Two-and-a-half hours west, on the coast of Washington in a town called Southbend, Wishon was frantic. Orozco Forero had texted her, too. ICE was asking for the boys.
In two years, Wishon had grown incredibly close to Orozco Forero, who had cared for her own kids. After her family moved to the coast, Wishon rented out her house in Seattle to Orozco Forero, whose boys were excited to have a home with a yard.
Wishon’s husband, Gabriel, hopped into his truck and headed to Seattle. Wishon, meanwhile, got on the phone with the Orozco Forero family’s ICE agent and every lawyer she could. They were going to take them into detention at a facility 2,200 miles away in Texas, a facility that was reopened earlier this year by the Trump administration to detain families. Wishon wanted to find a lawyer who could stop the deportation order, and she wanted to make sure the boys would be reunited with their parents if they took them to meet the ICE agent.
Nicolle Orozco Forero’s sons play with a child their mother takes care of. (Stephanie Wishon)
And that was especially important, not just because they were young children, but because Juan David is still sick.
For the past year, he’s been seeking treatment at Seattle Children’s Hospital for an illness that is turning his urine muddy. So far, doctors have determined he’s losing red blood cells and protein through his urine, indicating a possible kidney issue, but they haven’t yet zeroed in on what is causing the problem. They likely need a kidney biopsy to be sure.
“Given the complexity of his case, it is essential that Juan remain in the United States for continued testing and treatment,” his nephrologist Jordan Symons wrote in a March letter to ICE. “We kindly request that you consider this medical necessity in your review of his immigration status and grant him the ability to stay in the United States until his treatment and evaluation are completed.”
Juan David’s care team has been monitoring him closely to ensure his red blood cell and protein levels never drop too low. His condition could become serious quickly.
“You can die from that,” said Sarah Kasnick, a physician’s assistant who is familiar with his case. Kasnick is also a foster parent, and Orozco Forero provided care for her family.
When Gabriel Wishon arrived to pick up the boys, they were confused and disoriented. Where were their parents? Why was everyone crying? They didn’t want to go to Colombia, they told him on the drive. They wanted to stay in the United States.
Around 5:30 p.m. that evening, he met with the ICE agent, who had waited past her work hours for them to arrive.
“Bye boys, you are going to see your parents right now. They are right inside,” Wishon told them. He watched them walk in carrying two stuffed animals, a Super Mario doll and Chase, the popular cartoon dog dressed as a police officer.
The families Orozco Forero cares for are now in a free fall.
Jessica Cocson, whose son has been in Orozco Forero’s care for more than a year, described her in a character letter to ICE as a “blessing to us in ways I struggle to fully express.”
Orozco Forero and her husband “support working families, provide quality childcare, and demonstrate compassion and commitment every day,” Cocson wrote. “It is heartbreaking to think that someone who gives so much and asks so little could be forced to leave.”
Tamia Riley, whose two sons with autism were also in Orozco Forero’s care, said losing her was like watching “a father walking out the door.”
“These people, these day care providers, sitters, they are a form of family members for me and my children,” Riley said.
Now, the day care she was set to open lays empty. Inside, the walls are plastered with posters listing colors and sight words. There are cushioned mats on the floor and play stations. Tables with tiny chairs. A tall pink dollhouse. High chairs and a pack and play for the babies. Outside, two play houses, a ball pit, toys to ride on and little picnic tables set across an artificial turf. But no children to enjoy any of it.
Big Dreams Day Care she was going to call it, for the dreams she wanted the kids in her care to strive for, and the ones that were finally coming to fruition for her.
Orozco Forero’s detention has rattled child care workers across the country. In Texas, workers represented by the Service Employees International Union have been rallying in her name. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat, spoke in support of the family’s release at a rally on June 29 in San Antonio. And a group of union workers is attempting to deliver supplies to the family. It’s an effort Orozco Forero knows little about; she only has limited communication with those on the outside.
Tricia Schroeder, the president of the Seattle-based SEIU chapter that represents care workers, said that, for years unions like hers have been working to improve quality, access and affordability in child care, a system in such deep crisis it’s been called by the Treasury Department “a textbook example of a broken market.”
Immigrant women like Orozco Forero were part of that effort to improve access, doing jobs few Americans want to take on.
“Detaining child care providers, especially those who care for kids with special needs, just deepens the crisis in early learning,” Schroeder said.
Nicolle Orozco Forero was going to community college for early childhood education and planned to open her own daycare before she was detained by ICE. (Stephanie Wishon)
Orozco Forero was also the connective tissue that kept families employed. Her loss has rippled across industries.
Kasnick, the foster parent, said one of the children in her care had been tentatively set to start at Orozco Forero’s day care as soon as it opened. Orozco Forero had been the only provider who would take the child, who has autism and is nonverbal.
Orozco Forero had cared for the girl at Wishon’s day care as if she was her own, even taking her in once when the child’s care had fallen through and no foster family in the entire county would take her in because of the complexity of her needs. The girl arrived at Orozco Forero’s house at midnight on a weekend “with no clothing, toys, medication or any of her belongings … this did not [deter] Nicolle and Sebastian instead they immediately went and purchased all the things” the child needed, a social worker wrote in a letter to ICE. Kasnick said Orozco Forero was even considering becoming a foster parent.
Without her, Kasnick is out of options: She quit her job as a physician’s assistant to care for the child after Orozco Forero was detained.
“There are now 44 patients a day who don’t have anyone to provide their health care, and I can’t go to work because Nicolle’s day care didn’t open,” Kasnick said.
In the weeks since, Kasnick has had an overwhelming feeling of helplessness, she said. How could this happen to someone who gave back so much?
“The security of knowing that you can be in your home one day and in a prison the next week, and you didn’t do anything except exist?” she said. “It makes you feel like there’s no good left in the world.”
Orozco Forero’s family has now been in ICE detention for nearly a month awaiting a bond hearing that could buy them time in the United States. Orozco Forero and the boys are together; her husband is in the same facility but separated from them.
Juan David hasn’t been eating. It took three weeks for him to receive medical care, Orozco Forero told her attorney, James Costo.
Costo has been working to get the details of why ICE allowed the family to stay in the country with monitoring after they lost their asylum case last year. There has been an order for their deportation since then, but ICE never attempted to deport them until the Trump administration ramped up efforts. The number of immigrants without criminal convictions who have been detained has doubled since May.
The process to fight an asylum claim and appeal a denial is complicated — there are court deadlines, documents that need to be submitted and translated.
“They think maybe they can do it themselves and go in and say what happened but they are not understanding the whole legal process,” Costo said. “The system isn’t made for things to be easy.”
Costo is hopeful a judge will allow them to stay in the country temporarily as Juan David seeks care. They have almost no family left in Colombia, and no way to obtain care for him there, their family said. If they can stay, then perhaps Orozco Forero could try to obtain a work visa as a domestic worker.
He has gathered letters of support from numerous people whose lives the Orozco Forero family touched, and Wishon set up a GoFundMe to cover her legal expenses.
In the letters, Juan David’s first grade teachers call him an exceptional student who went from one of the lowest reading levels in the class — 10 words a minute — to one of the highest at 70 words a minute.
“He shows the qualities of a model citizen at a young age — dependable, ethical, and hard-working,” wrote his teacher, Carla Trujillo.
They were all on their way to shaping a better future, Wishon wrote in hers. The couple “worked tirelessly to build a better life for their children and to open their own licensed child care business. In all my years of employing and mentoring caregivers, I have rarely met a couple as responsible, driven, and capable as Nicolle and Sebastian.”
“This family is not a threat,” she concluded. “They are an asset.”
The Trump administration is holding up hundreds of millions of dollars slated for adult education programs as part of a review of education spending.
The roughly $716 million was supposed to be disbursed to states July 1 and then divvied up among their adult education providers, such as community colleges. But the funding for high school equivalency classes, English as a second language programs and other adult education services never arrived. The news comes as the Trump administration continues to withhold $7 billion from states for K–12 education, including ESL classes and after-school programs, which includes the adult education money.
The freeze is part of a broader “ongoing programmatic review of education funding,” an unnamed spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget wrote in a statement to Inside Higher Ed.
“Initial findings show that many of these grant programs have been grossly misused to subsidize a radical leftwing agenda,” wrote the OMB spokesperson, citing examples of states and schools using the money to support students in the country without proper documentation as well as for a seminar on “queer resistance in the arts,” though the statement made no mention of adult ed programs.
The fate of the withheld funding remains unclear. “No decisions have been made yet,” the spokesperson said.
Now states and their community colleges, which offer a significant share of adult education programs, are scrambling to figure out how to continue providing adult education services despite staggering funding shortfalls.
“If funding is not provided, there are nothing but bad options for institutions,” said David Baime, senior vice president for government relations for the American Association of Community Colleges. He predicts community colleges would have to reduce adult education services, lay off personnel and vie for funds to fill in the gap from states and other sources. But even so, “the funding is so substantial in a number of places that there’s no immediate source of replacing that money.”
He emphasized that adult education programs have received “broad support from both parties for decades”—and they were already underfunded relative to student need.
Adult basic education is “a core function and a core part of the mission of community colleges across the country,” he said.
Adult education is one of several programs on the chopping back in the Education Department’s proposed budget for fiscal year 2026. Officials wrote in budget documents that states and localities are “best suited to determine whether to support the activities authorized under this program or similar activities within their own budgets and without unnecessary administrative burden imposed by the federal government.”
Higher ed advocates worry other programs like the Child Care Access Means Parents in School program that are on the chopping block could suffer a similar fate.
Concerns Across the Country
Community colleges in red and blue states alike are anxiously waiting for the adult education funds to come through.
Heather Morgan, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community Colleges, said if the pause persists beyond two months with no alternative funding, Kansas’s 19 community colleges will have to make “tough decisions” about laying off or furloughing staff.
She added that college leaders were given no notice, leaving them with no time to prepare.
“Situations where funding doesn’t come as expected are real hardships on small colleges and really leave staff in a position of wondering and not knowing what’s coming next,” she said.
Joe Schaffer, president of Laramie County Community College in Wyoming, said the withheld funds risk hurting high-demand, successful adult education programs in the state.
He noted that, historically, the coal and oil industries in the state offered well-paying jobs that didn’t necessarily require a high school diploma. But now, because of changes in technology and the state’s diversifying economy, many jobs do require at least a high school education. Wyoming workers hit with that realization are coming to adult education programs later in life to earn high school equivalency certificates, commonly referred to as the GED.
And the programs work. Roughly 80 percent of Wyoming adult basic education students get a job or enroll in college after their programs, and 84 percent earn a credential beyond a GED. These programs graduate more people with a high school equivalency than any one high school in the state, making the programs arguably Wyoming’s “largest high school,” he said.
Because the state funds half of these programs, he believes Laramie County Community College can make do without the federal funds and continue to offer these programs for another year, with some belt-tightening measures.
But still, the move to withhold federal funds risks “reducing the flow of high school graduates at a time when the workforce pipeline, the talent pipeline, is a concern of everybody across the nation,” Schaffer said.
Morgan agreed that state economies would suffer if adult education programs took a permanent funding hit.
For many Kansans, “this is their option to get out of poverty and to get into a higher-paying job,” she said. “The ability for them to get skilled up is important, and we have to have the resources to do that, and the uncertainty that’s been injected into the system is not helpful in trying to meet our mission, which is to prepare citizens for the Kansas economy.”
The Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD) may be facing state takeover within two years due to overextended hiring and budget mismanagement, as discussed during a May 2025 meeting of the Los Angeles Valley College (LAVC) Academic Senate. Faculty warned that the looming financial crisis could result in mass layoffs—including tenured staff—and sweeping program cuts.
Start Minutes LAVC Academic Senate
“R. Christian-Brougham: other campuses have brand new presidents doing strange things. If we don’t do things differently as a district, from the mouth of the president in two years we’ll be bankrupt and go into negative. Chancellor has responsibility C. Sustin asks for confirmation that it is the Chancellor that can and should step in to curb campus budgets and hirings. R. Christian-Brougham: the Chancellor bears responsibility, but in the takeover scenario, the Board of Trustees – all of them – would get fired E. Perez: which happened in San Francisco C. Sustin: hiring is in the purview of campuses, so they can’t directly determine job positions that move forward? R. Christian-Brougham: Chancellor and BoT could step in and fire the Campus Presidents, though. E. Perez: in next consultation with Chancellor, bringing this up. C. Maddren: Gribbons is not sitting back; he’s acting laterally and going upward E. Thornton: looping back to the example of City College of San Francisco: when the takeover happened there the reductions in force extended to multiple long-since-tenured members of a number of disciplines, including English. For this and so many other reasons, it was a reign of terror sort of situation. So we really need to push the Chancellor.”
The dire financial outlook comes as new scrutiny falls on LAVC’s Media Arts Department, already under fire for years of alleged fraud, resume fabrication, and manipulation of public perception. Central to these concerns is the department’s chair, Eric Swelstad, who also oversees a $40,000 Hollywood Foreign Press Association (Golden Globe) grant for LAVC students—a role now drawing sharp criticism in light of mounting questions about his credentials and conduct.
Over the past two months, a troubling wave of digital censorship has quietly erased years of documented allegations. In May 2025, nearly two years’ worth of investigative reporting—comprising emails, legal filings, and accreditation complaints—were scrubbed from the independent news site IndyBay. The removed content accused Swelstad of deceiving students and the public for over two decades about the quality and viability of the Media Arts program, as well as about his own professional qualifications.
In June 2025, a negative student review about Swelstad—posted by a disabled student—disappeared from Rate My Professor. These incidents form part of what appears to be a years-long campaign of online reputation management and public deception.
An AI-driven analysis of Rate My Professor entries for long-serving Media Arts faculty—including Swelstad, Arantxa Rodriguez, Chad Sustin, Dan Watanabe, and Jason Beaton—suggests that the majority of positive reviews were written by a single individual or a small group. The analysis cited “Identical Phrasing Across Profiles,” “Unusually Consistent Tag Patterns,” and a “Homogeneous Tone and Style” as evidence:
“It is very likely that many (possibly a majority) of the positive reviews across these faculty pages were written by one person or a small group using similar templates, tone, and strategy… The presence of clearly distinct voices, especially in the negative reviews, shows that not all content comes from the same source.”
A now-deleted IndyBay article also revealed emails dating back to 2016 between LAVC students and Los Angeles Daily News journalist Dana Bartholomew, who reportedly received detailed complaints from at least a dozen students—but failed to publish the story. Instead, Bartholomew later authored two glowing articles featuring Swelstad and celebrating the approval of LAVC’s $78.5 million Valley Academic and Cultural Center:
* *”L.A. Valley College’s new performing arts center may be put on hold as costs rise,”* Dana Bartholomew, August 28, 2017.
Among the most explosive allegations is that Swelstad misrepresented himself as a member of the Writer’s Guild of America (WGA), a claim contradicted by official WGA-West membership records, according to another redacted IndyBay report.
This appears to be the tip of the iceberg according to other also scrubbed IndyBay articles
Other questionable appointments, payments, and student ‘success stories’ in the Los Angeles Valley College Media Arts Department include:
* **Jo Ann Rivas**, a YouTube personality and former Building Oversight Committee member, was paid as a trainer and presenter despite reportedly only working as a casting assistant on the LAVC student-produced film *Canaan Land*.
* **Diana Deville**, a radio host and LAVC alumna with media credits, served as Unit Production Manager on *Canaan Land*, but her resume claims high-profile studio affiliations including DreamWorks, MGM, and OWN.
The film *Canaan Land*, made by LAVC Media Arts students, has itself raised eyebrows. Filmmaker Richard Rossi claimed that both it and his earlier student film *Clemente* had received personal endorsements from the late Pope Francis. These assertions were echoed on *Canaan Land*’s GoFundMe page, prompting public denials and clarifications from the Vatican in *The Washington Post* and *New York Post*:
Censorship efforts appear to have intensified following the publication of a now-removed article advising students how to apply for student loan discharge based on misleading or fraudulent education at LAVC’s Media Arts Department. If successful, such filings could expose the department—and the district—to financial liability.
But the highest-profile financial concern is the 2020 establishment of the **Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s $40,000 grant** for LAVC Media Arts students, administered by Swelstad:
As a disreputable academic administrator with a documented history of professional fraud spanning two decades and multiple student success stories that aren’t, future grant donors may reconsider supporting the Department programs – further pushing the Los Angeles Valley College and by extension the district as a whole towards financial insolvency.
Civil rights groups have been piling on to intervene in the recent Texas court case that ended in-state tuition for noncitizens living in the state. Now Austin Community College and a Texas undocumented student are joining the effort to defend the now-defunct law.
College officials worry they’ll lose students and revenue if undocumented students’ tuition prices suddenly skyrocket. Austin Community College is the first Texas college to try to join the lawsuit.
The Texas Dream Act, which allowed noncitizens who grew up in the state to benefit from in-state tuition, was overturned last month after the Department of Justice sued Texas over the law. The state didn’t fight back and instead sided with the DOJ mere hours after the legal challenge. A week later, the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a Latino civil rights organization, filed a motion on behalf of a group of Texas undocumented students to intervene in the lawsuit. The group argued the swift resolution of the DOJ’s legal challenge denied those affected any chance to weigh in, so the students should become intervenors, or a party to the case, and have their day in court.
Other groups quickly followed MALDEF’s lead. Since last week, the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas, the Texas Civil Rights Project, Democracy Forward and the National Immigration Law Center have joined the fight, representing the activist group La Unión del Pueblo Entero, the Austin Community College District’s Board of Trustees and Oscar Silva, a student at University of North Texas. The groups filed emergency motions on their behalf to intervene in the lawsuit and get relief from the judgment that killed the law. If these legal efforts are successful, a case so quickly open and shut by Texas and the DOJ could be reopened.
Austin Community College board chair Sean Hassan said in a news release from the Texas ACLU chapter that college officials deserved to have their say on the policy shift.
“Employers and taxpayers are looking to community colleges to produce a sufficient number of highly skilled graduates to meet workforce needs,” Hassan said. “If legislation or court decisions will impact our ability to meet these expectations, we should have a seat at the table to help shape responsible solutions. The action by our board asks the court to ensure our voice is heard.”
Calculating the Costs
In court filings, Austin Community College leaders argue that the institution will lose revenue because of the abrupt end of the Texas Dream Act. They estimated that about 440 students will see their tuition rates quadruple, and as a result, hundreds of students will stop out and prospective students will avoid enrolling in the first place. College leaders also argued in the motion to intervene that the need for scholarships will rise, putting extra financial pressure on the community college.
They cited other potential costs as well, including setting up new processes to identify and notify noncitizen students of tuition rate changes and ramping up public relations efforts so the college can continue to “market itself as an accessible, inclusive, and affordable institution for all Texas high school graduates,” despite the policy change.
“The loss of these students will have a cascading effect on campus life, academic programs, and student support services,” Austin Community College chancellor Russell Lowery-Hart said, according to court filings.
The motion also detailed how Silva, the student, would likely have to withdraw from his joint bachelor’s and master’s program at the University of North Texas if he lost his in-state tuition benefits. He was expected to graduate next spring. Silva has lived in Texas since the age of 1 and attended Texas K–12 schools.
“The Texas Dream Act means everything to me,” Silva said in the ACLU of Texas news release. “This law has made my education possible. Without it, college would’ve been out of reach for me as a first-generation college student.”
The motion comes after Wynn Rosser, commissioner of higher education for the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, sent out a June 18 memo directing colleges and universities to determine which of their students are undocumented and need to be charged higher tuition starting this fall.
Trouble Over Timelines
Texas, the DOJ and civil rights groups have since been haggling over how fast the U.S. District Court should move in response to the new motions.
The civil rights groups want a decision soon. But, in a joint submission to the court on June 30, the Trump administration and Texas argued emergency motions were uncalled-for and the legal proceedings shouldn’t be expedited, though they acknowledged the intervenors raised issues “which merit response.”
“Expediting responses to intervenors’ motions would only serve [to] put the United States and Texas at a disadvantage, having to brief and respond to intervenors’ myriad of arguments in a drastically shorter timeframe than would otherwise be necessary, and would do nothing to help intervenors expedite any potential relief,” the response read.
But the civil rights groups representing Austin Community College and other intervenors weren’t having it. On July 1, they asked that the court deny the request.
The attorneys argued that the state and the federal government moved quickly to resolve the DOJ’s lawsuit and end the Texas Dream Act, but “when asked to respond on an expedited basis to the consequences of their actions and the imminent harm raised” by the motions, “the parties balk, insisting that the court should postpone its consideration of these motions until well past the point when the looming harms become irreversible.”
That same day, Judge Reed O’Connor gave the Trump administration and Texas until July 14 to respond to the motion to intervene, which aligns with their requested timeline. He also delayed briefings on the motions to stay the judgement and for relief until he rules on the motion to intervene.
As this fight plays out in Texas, the DOJ is targeting other states that offer in-state tuition benefits to undocumented students. Last month the Trump administration filed similar lawsuits in Kentucky and Minnesota, which have yet to be resolved.
The Maine Legislature’s budget-writing committee voted last week in favor of ending the state’s free college program, to the great disappointment of community college leaders.
The move by Democrats on the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee contradicts Governor Janet Mills’s proposal earlier this year to make the program a permanent fixture. The free college program, which Mills initially put forward, went into effect in 2022 to support students affected by the pandemic. It originally covered two years of community college tuition for anyone who graduated high school between 2020 and 2023, after other forms of aid were applied. Though created with one-time funding, the program enjoyed strong bipartisan support and was extended in 2023 to include the Classes of 2024 and 2025. Students have a certain amount of time to enroll; for example, 2025 graduates have to start college no later than the 2027–28 academic year to take advantage of the program.
Since the program began, Maine’s community college enrollment has surged—enrollment of all degree-seeking students in the system jumped from 11,308 in 2022 to 14,278 in 2024. A total of 17,826 students have participated in the program since it started, according to data from the Maine Community College System. Many hoped, and expected, the program would continue.
But the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee’s proposal would give the community college system $20 million over two years to help current participants finish their studies before winding down the program for good, Maine Public Radio reported. The recommendation comes as Maine faces a lean budget year, with federal funding for the state hard to predict. President Donald Trump threatened to cut Maine’s federal funds after a tense exchange with Mills in February over his executive order barring transgender athletes from competing on the teams that match their gender identity.
Maine representative Michael Brennan said at the committee meeting last week, “We’ve had to make hard decisions about what we think we can afford and not afford,” though he called the free college program “tremendously successful.”
Senator Peggy Rotundo, co-chair of the Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee, emphasized in a statement to Inside Higher Ed that state lawmakers are honoring their commitment to fund students who graduated in 2025 and expected to receive the program’s support. She implied the program could still be made permanent in the future.
“When considering what comes next, our focus is on ensuring this program’s long-term sustainability,” she wrote. “The Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee is seeking additional data and evaluation from the community college system to inform a responsible, future-focused approach. In a tough budget year, we have a duty to balance expanding opportunity with fiscal responsibility—and that means looking ahead to build a durable model that can serve Maine students for years to come.”
The decision to nix the program isn’t set in stone—the state budget still needs to make its way through the state House and Senate and finally to the governor’s desk. But state legislators indicated they plan to wrap up the budget by today.
David Daigler, president of the Maine Community College System, wrote a letter to the system’s Board of Trustees on Saturday expressing “deep disappointment” over the committee’s vote. He told the board it’s “highly unlikely” there will be any major changes to funding for the free college program at this point.
“Ultimately, the committee’s vote reflects the state’s challenging financial situation, which made it hard to get support even though Free College is a very popular, effective program that directly benefits Maine families, students, and employers,” Daigler said in the letter. “You can be certain that we will build on the momentum of this program to emerge stronger, wiser, and re-dedicated to providing an affordable, accessible education to Mainers looking to improve their lives.”
In February, Daigler and community college staff members advocated for the program before the committee. Multiple students also spoke out in support, some arguing they wouldn’t have attended college without the program.
Brianna Michaud, a health-science student at Southern Maine Community College, told the budget-writing committee she considered not going to college because, despite her working two jobs, her family couldn’t afford it. Then she heard about the free college program.
“As a first-generation college student who’s entirely responsible for paying off their education, the Maine free college scholarship is the reason why I’m able to put my hard work and dedication toward fulfilling my purpose in life, which is to help others,” said Michaud, who plans on becoming a pediatric occupational therapist.
Payson Avery, a student representative at Southern Maine, said he graduated high school in 2020, during the height of the pandemic, and didn’t know what to do. He felt like his grades senior year didn’t show his potential. After two years, while working at a restaurant, he decided to take the state up on its free college offer. Now he has plans to attend the University of Maine at Farmington to major in education, he told the committee.
“Without this program, I’m not sure I would have been able to make it to this point,” he said.
[Editor’s note: The first installment of Corruption, Fraud and Scandal at Los Angeles Community College District is here.]
“HR has been weaponized against our faculty for speaking out and complaining about
discrimination.” This was a public comment made by Los Angeles Community College District
Academic Senate President Angela Echeverri at the March 2025 Meeting of the LACCD Board
of Trustees.
Echeverri’s remarks were not isolated either and were echoed by Deborah Harrington (California
Community Colleges’ Success Network Executive Director), “Our HR leadership is not living up
to the standards that we deserve. Our members remain quite frustrated.” More reporting can be
read in Pierce College student newspaper ‘The RoundUp’ and LACCD Youtube Live-Streamed
meetings.
These accusations come three years after longtime administrator Annie G. Reed (Annie Goldman
Reed) left her position as Omsbudsman/Associate Dean of Students at Los Angeles Valley
College was promoted to Interim Dean of Employee and Labor Relations collecting an annual
salary of $284,935.00 in pay and benefits in 2022 according to Transparent California last year of
reporting.
A survey of public records including news articles, lawsuits, accreditation complaints, and emails
to show that Annie G. Reed has a long history of this sort of behavior across multiple LACCD
campuses – going back to the 2000s.
In an October 27, 2010 article ‘Grade Grievances Give Students Voice’ by Lucas Thompson in
‘The Los Angeles Valley Star’ Annie G. Reed is quoted as cautioning students against using their
rights to challenge unfair grades stating, “It’s worthwhile if a student really thinks they have the
proof to forward with the process . . . It’s their right to, [but] we don’t encourage frivolous
[cases], because that’s a waste of college resources.”
The article further quoted disgraced ex-College President Sue Carleo who left the institution in
2013, with the College finances in the red and on Warning Status with the Accreditation
Commission of Junior and Community Colleges. Carleo warned that students should simply
view mis-grading as “Human Error.” (https://archive.org/details/cavgchm_002210/mode/2up?
q=Annie+Reed+LAVC)
When the ACJCC placed Los Angeles Valley College on Accreditation Warning it cited multiple
standards violations and specifically;
College Recommendation 5:
To fully meet the Standards, the college should ensure that records of complaints are
routinely maintained as required by the Policy on Student and Public Complaints Against
Institutions
(Standards II.B.2, II.B.2.c, II.B.3.a, II.B.4)
This came after Annie G. Reed failed to have student records or complaints available for
inspection to the visiting Accreditation Team.
Three years later Reed was again in hot water when a student filed an Accreditation Complaint in
June 2016, specifically documenting multiple faculty members in the Los Angeles Valley
College Media Arts Department engaging in fraud and deceptive practices – supported by sixty
pages of documentation.
The complaint further stated that Reed refused to facilitate student complaints as was her role
and threatened action for ‘disrupting the peace of the campus’ by making complaints. This was
followed by a second accreditation complaint by another student regarding the same issues and a
student Facebook Group discussing issues.
Reed’s response was to suspend the first student running a smear campaign that he was potential
active shooter citing the complaints he brought, suspend a thirty-year old single mother in the
Facebook Group for Academic dishonesty after she forgot to have a college transcript from when
she was eighteen-years old sent to LAVC, and then threatened the second student who brought an
Accreditation Complaint for vandalizing school property.
[Below: Text exchange between LACCD students alleging that administrator Annie Reed created a smear campaign against them.]
Student 1 was suspended for a year (though not expelled by the Board of Trustees after
investigation) a semester short of graduating. Student 1 would have earned six associate degrees
and eight occupational certificates. Student 2, was ordered to pay a substantial amount of
financial aid back to the college as “restitution.” Several months later, she was subjected to a
reversal of hours by LAVC Grant Director Dan Watanabe in the Media Arts Department, for a
campus job she worked and ordered to pay back several thousand dollars. Student 3 ended up
going to Los Angeles City College to take final classes needed to graduate and was nearly
refused graduation by Department Chair Eric Swelstad.
These actions also happened right before and after LAVC Media Arts Faculty Eric Swelstad,
Chad Sustin, Adrian Castillo, Dan Watanabe, and LAVC President Erika Endrijonas lobbied the
LACCD Board of Trustees to approve construction of a new Media Arts Building that was later
reported by The Los Angeles Times to be a massive racketeering scheme – Aug 4, 2022, Teresa
Watanabe, ‘Corruption and fraud beset long-delayed L.A. Valley college theater project, lawsuit
alleges.’ (https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-08-04/corruption-alleged-in-long
delayed-la-valley-college-theater-project)
These actions mirrored the treatment of a student who sued LAVC’s Media Arts Department in
2009, alleging the same type of fraud and misconduct by nearly all the same Department Faculty.
Enrique Caraveo vs Los Angeles Valley College, Eric Swelstad, Joseph D’Accurso, Arantxia
Rodriguez, Dennis J. Reed among others. Filing Date: 05/18/2009 (https://unicourt.com/case/ca
la2-enrique-caraveo-vs-los-angeles-valley-college-et-al-621337)
In that case, Caraveo stated:
46. When plaintiff complained about the above referenced matters, Swelstad and other Valley
College officials retaliated against plaintiff by refusing to grant him a Certificate and creating a
hostile learning environment for him in class.
47. On or around June 2007 plaintiff satisfied the requirements to get a Cinema Arts Production
Certificate (“Certificate”) at Valley College.
54. On or about October 2008, Swelstad denied plaintiff the certificate via a letter even though
plaintiff has fulfilled the requirements to get the Certificate.
55. On or about October 13, 2008, plaintiff notified Delahoussaye and Reed that plaintiff had
fulfilled all requirements for the Certificate and that they should take care of the matter as soon
as possible. On or about October 13, 2008, Yasmin Delahoussaye and Dennis Reed denied
request.”
Dennis Reed, was at the time the Dean over the Media Arts Department and the husband of
Annie G. Reed. Dennis Reed was later profiled in LAist Magazine on April 27, 2016 article ‘Jerk
Driver Who Ran Cyclists Off Glendale Road Charged With Assault, Lying To Police’ (https://
laist.com/news/justice-delivered-almost)
More to the point – Dennis Reed also oversaw a grant program at Los Angeles Valley College
Media Arts Department known as IDEAS – Institute for Developing Entertainment Arts and
Studies at LAVC. The Grant was run by Dan Watanabe. (https://archive.org/details/
cavgchm_002241/mode/2up?q=Annie+Reed+LAVC)
Watanabe was also named in the Accreditation Complaint for Wage Theft, Improper use of funds
and fraud in the successor grant ICT Doing What Matters, due to the college receiving Grant
Money but immediately eliminating the curriculum the grant application said they would provide
and like Caraveo’s complaint not providing in class training or labs. The complaints to
Accreditation and the LACCD Personnel Commission by students also questioned the legitimacy
of a number of professional experts, including Robert Reber – who was listed as both a ‘student
worker’ and ‘professional expert’ in 2008. Student 1 further provided evidence to both that Dan
Watanabe had asked him to falsify his resume claiming fictitious jobs and cited an employee in
the LAVC Payroll office as being behind it (that employee immediately denied it and Student 1
refused).
Dennis Reed had also spent years lobbying for the approval of the VACC building –
unsuccessfully.
In short, Annie G. Reed’s retaliation and cover-up in 2016, may have been to help realize her
husband’s failed building project as well as preemptively shutdown any investigations or audits
that might trigger further scrutiny regarding how the IDEAS Grant was administered under his
time as area Dean.
Reed’s behavior of covering up abusive behavior towards members of the LACCD Community
was also not limited to retaliation against students.
In 2017, then LACCD Board President Andra Hoffman accused former Board President Scott
Svonkin of abusive behavior and demanded sanctions. According to an article in the Los Angeles
Daily News, ‘LA Community College board postpones sanction hearing vote against former
4
president’ August 28, 2017, Annie G. Reed again inserted herself into the matter to cover-up for
Svonkin.
“The allegations do not strike me as related to governing and seem best suited for mediation,”
said Annie Reed, a district employee for 22 years and a representative of Teamsters Local 911. “I
don’t ever recall a time, or a place, where he has treated his colleagues poorly.”
Others disagreed, including two former women board members who did not speak at the
downtown meeting.
They said Hoffman’s critics — who they said weren’t present during the abuse — had a tendency
to blame the victim, while ignoring Svonkin’s allegedly brusque treatment of employees.”
(https://www.dailynews.com/2017/07/13/la-community-college-board-postpones-sanction
hearing-vote-against-former-president/)
Her behavior is further documented in a series of lawsuits against the LACCD District.
Filed October 03, 2024 Dr. Christiana Baskaran (Plaintiff), Linda Silva; Dr. Ruth Dela Cruz,
Dr. Adriana Portugal, vs LACCD (including defendant Annie Reed). (https://trellis.law/doc/
219882998/complaint-filed-by-dr-christiana-baskaran-plaintiff-linda-silva-plaintiff-dr-ruth-dela
cruz-plaintiff-et-al-as-to-los-angeles-community-college-district-defendant-board-trustees-los
angeles-community-college-district-defendant-los-angeles-c)
“[other defendants] Annie Reed to discriminate against female faculty and staff, refused to
investigate immediately or to take preventative action. Then Defendants and EMPLOYER
DEFENDANTS retaliated against PLAINTIFFS and others to try and prevent them from
complaining to authorities. When PLAINTIFFS opposed these illegal practices, they continued
to retaliate against them.”
24. As set forth herein, ALL Defendants were officers, agents. Defendants and directly or
indirectly used or attempt to use their official authority or influence for the purpose of
intimidating, threatening, coercing, commanding, or attempting to intimidate, threaten, coerce, or
command PLAINTIFF and others for the purpose of interfering with the right of that person to
disclose to an official agent matters within the scope of this article. EMPLOYER
DEFENDANTS aided and abetted MARY GALLAGHER, ARMANDO RIVERA-FIGUEROA,
ANN HAMILTON, JAMES LANCASTER, JOCELYN SIMPSON, JIM LANCASTER, ANNIE
REED and Victoria Friedman District Complaince Officer, Genie-Sarceda-Magruder Interim
Director Office for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Rick Von Kolen to violate this statute.
28. . . .Dr Hamilton admitted to other illegal activity such as planting drugs on employees to
destroy their reputation and get them fired. Dr Silva filed a grievance against Dean Hamilton to
try and get her to stop the illegal activity, the union did nothing.
32. Ms. Silva complained to Human Resources filed a title IX complaint, made a report to the
police and was retaliated against.
Filed October 19, 2023 Sara Adams, An Individual VS California Institute of Technology,
California Corporation. (https://trellis.law/case/23stcv25556/sara-adams-an-individual-vs
california-institute-technology-california-corporation)
“21. On April 7, 2023, Mr. Wu continued to report the pay disparity to Annie Reed, Upon
information and belief, Annie Reed is Caltech’s Employee and Organizational Development
Consultant (Human Resources Department).
22. Annie Reed spoke about the report of pay disparity to Ofelia Velazquez-Perez, Caltech’s
Senior Director, Total Rewards and Director of Employee and Organizational Development
(Employee Relations).”
Filed March 08, 2021, Mitra Hoshiar, an individual, Plaintiff, v. Los Angeles Community
College District, (https://trellis.law/case/21stcv08950/mitra-hoshiar-vs-los-angeles-community
college-district-an-unknown-entity)
“28. On December 3, 2015, PLAINTIFF then filed a discrimination complaint against Sheri
Berger (“Berger”), VP of Academic Affairs, and Fernando Oleas (“Oleas”), Pierce Union
President. During PLAINTIFF meeting with Dean Barbara Anderson (“Anderson”) at
Anderson’s office on June 10, 2015, Berger and Oleas stopped by and started making remarks of
PLAINTIFF’s accent for reading the graduates’ names on the ceremony with a non-American
accent.
29. Thereafter, On December 11, 2015, in meeting with Dean Annie Reed in conjunction with the
non-collegiality investigation Walsh, Union Grievance Rep and Oleas stopped by at
PLAINTIFF’s office in order to prevent PLAINTIFF from Union Representation. They made
PLAINTIFF to Barbara Anderson, whom was PLANTIFF’s chosen union rep and request for
Anderson to not join the meeting because Walsh and Oleas had to choose who could be the union
representation in the meeting.
30. Based on what had transpired on December 11, 2015, on December 14, 2015, Plaintiff filed a
Whistleblower/Retaliation Complaint at the District’s Complaint at the District’s Compliance
Office against Walsh, Oleas, and McKeever (department and union delegate), and other members
of her department. No action was taken by the Compliance Office.
Annie G. Reed’s, current interim Dean of Labor and Employee Relations, has been involved in
covering up wrongdoing in the Los Angeles Community College District for decades. Her targets
have involved employees, students, faculty, and even a trustee. And so far has never been held
accountable.
Multiple stories were published on newswire IndyBay, the news outlet branch of the San
Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center between 2023 and 2024. They were then
scrubbed (along with other stories) over the weekend of May 18, 2025.
Recently, newly appointed Chancellor, Dr. Alberto J. Roman has been alerted to Ms. Reed’s
disturbing history – it remains to be seen whether he will take corrective action, or continue to
6
keep around the same problematic individuals that resulted in his predecessor’s resignation after
a vote of no-confidence by the LACCD Academic Senate.
School and other learning environments are often a safe place for students who have difficult home lives.
I know, I was one of those students. I take that knowledge into every classroom that I enter, and my understanding of student engagement and student experience are woven into my pedagogy of care and teaching to transgress.
I cannot, (and do not wish to!) separate my lived experience from my teaching. As someone who dropped out of the university that I now work at, I do have an interesting insight into building community and belonging into the curriculum.
As I wrote here with Lisa Anderson, we require a radical shift in how we consider the needs of students. I want every student in my classroom to experience it as a safe and welcoming space.
These are not buzzwords or trends, it is how I ensure that students are able to learn – I want them to be in the room. Teaching is a relational activity that requires commitment, experience, honing our craft and being willing to adapt.
The university sector is not in a good place, and as committed as I am to my research, it is teaching that brings me joy and new ideas every single time I enter the classroom. When we teach to transgress, it is for us as much as it is for the students.
The classroom reminds me of what is possible. Engaging strongly with the literature of the UK’s leading emergency and disaster planner, Lucy Easthope, I recognise the education will be impacted forever by the pandemic, and I want to play my part in the recovery.
Crime, justice and the sex industry
I lead the largest optional final year module in my department, with 215 registered students, based on my 23 years’ experience of the sex industry. It was a community of care that got me here, with colleagues from around the country (and globe!) sharing material and ideas with me when I launched this module in 2020. Collaboration and teaching go hand-in-hand and we must allow time for this.
The module is underpinned by my nonlinear pedagogy which I write about here. The design empowers students to have control over the direction and pace of their learning. All content is uploaded to our virtual learning environment Canvas in week one. There are weekly recorded lecture summaries, and 2-hour weekly workshops.
The content also includes a comprehensive library reading list, weekly reading folders, watch folder and collaborative tools.
This year the module is celebrating its fifth birthday and the student engagement is better than ever before. Here are some things that I have learned and that I am reflecting on.
A welcoming classroom and learning names
Where possible, I always enter the classroom ten minutes before class begins (this is definitely not always possible in a large and busy campus with extreme demands on estates and our time) to provide a prepared and calm setting for students to arrive. This is also helpful for me as a neurodiverse teacher.
I like to greet students as they arrive, and learn names wherever possible (photo class lists are your friend).This sets the tone for our warm and welcoming teaching community. It demonstrates the way in which we will invite peers to contribute and talk through the content. It may seem a small thing, but it makes a huge difference to teaching and learning.
Front-loaded prep
As a dyslexic I need to be prepared. This is a large module, and a busy teaching load. I spend the weeks before semester begins frontloading my prep so that I am ready to go. This involved re-recording the summary E lectures, updating workshop materials, sheets, reading folders, module guides, etc.
Visitors to my office are surprised to see a row of 12 piles along the floor- with each week’s content printed out, highlighted, and ready to go. I am always very grateful once semester starts that I took the time to do this. It creates a calm tone to classes that students explicitly comment on.
Lesson plans
This year I went old-school in multiple ways, including buying a hardback lesson planner, in which I mapped out the learning objectives for every workshop – mapping against learning outcomes for the module.
Physically mapping these out, with prompts, links to the readings and case studies, was something that students positively picked up on. This also ensured adaptability and that I was reflecting upon and updating my material. Students need calm and expert guidance; experienced teachers are key.
Workbooks
Acting on student feedback from the previous year, I designed a workbook that students can print out or use digitally. Students always make a lot of notes on this module, and the workbook helps them with organising those thoughts. In class, I was very pleased to see rows of pink workbooks looking back at me.
The workbook also includes space for questions, and learners can bring this to my student support hours. I have been learning a lot from school teachers, and recognising how much extra structure students need post-pandemic.
Learning through tempo
I made an active decision this year to experiment with the tempo of each workshop class, with differences even between some workshop groups. This was in response to student feedback who wanted some slower sessions in order to read in class, and more time to talk with their groups/peers.
This was music to my ears (pun absolutely intended) and it made me reflect on the pace and rhythm of my classes. I am a high-energy teacher and I like to pack a lot into classes, but stripping (pun not intended!) some of this back to create quieter time (for class reading) and slower sessions with more time for groups to talk, has been a game-changer. Students actively requesting some slower workshops so they could read together in class, was amazing to witness. Students reacted overwhelmingly positively to my ability to respond and adapt.
Learning through play
It is interesting in this post-disaster period of the pandemic to witness students enjoying, and requesting, playful activities in class. As I argue here, we need to build community into the curriculum to boost attendance.
Poster paper and felt tip pens might have attracted horrified faces a few years ago and a low uptake, but this year, every single “play” activity that I have offered has been taken up by almost every student. I always offer a range of engagement tools, with non-verbal options such as our collaborative google doc, padlet, and other online tools, and I offer the option for sheets, paper, pens etc.
A welcoming, hospitable classroom where students know they are being considered, pays dividends in engagement and mutual respect. Once students feel safe and able to take risks, no matter how low-stakes, they open up, and engage in difficult and complex debates.
One group activity looked at sexual entertainment venue closures using five different pieces of coloured card to map out key findings from two different journal articles, identify and apply concepts from earlier weeks in the module, examples of venue closures, and examples of campaign group discourse.
A “fun” activity that involves deep critical thinking and the ability to successfully weave together multiple forms of evidence to formulate a convincing argument. I then took a photo of the giant map we all created across the module. Every single student wanted to take part; students are actively seeking community and togetherness within the classroom.
The activity with foam stickers, which I thought students would resist, was the most popular activity of the semester (after the guided walk, below). Through the mechanism of light-hearted play, students successfully navigated a tricky and sensitive topic examining the harms, dangers and exploitation associated with online sex work. We ended up with students stickering their laptops, phones, their workbooks, and themselves! We cannot forget that these are all students of the pandemic, they missed out on so many opportunities to interact with peers. They are embracing every opportunity to connect with each other within timetabled sessions.
Guided walk
Another activity on the module (and the one that students most favourably comment on) is our guided walk of sexual entertainment venues in Liverpool city centre. I provide online material for accessibility purposes recognising that not all students can walk around the city, or may not wish to.
For students who attend, we map out the city in terms of gendered harm and risk, and I give a lecture inside of a sexual entertainment venue that opens exclusively for our class. This brings the Policing and Crime Act 2009 to life, and gives students a unique insight into what the key texts are discussing. It is also very much a community building exercise, with a large proportion of our module cohort in attendance. Learning outside of the classroom is very important for student engagement.
Scaffolding learning
I intentionally choose to layer texts: curating texts of various complexity, using tools such as padlet. Students choose what texts to access based on their own areas of interests and confidence, as they progressively build up skill and academic knowledge of the area. This ensures that the module is accessible to all students, with learners challenged at a point which feels appropriate for them.
It also means that students always have supported content to work with. In week ten, we looked at the media, and we returned to a key text from week eight, to apply three media myths from a journal article to three documentary clips. Using worksheets, the students demonstrated a sophisticated ability to apply a criminological concept to media sources.
Responding to ongoing feedback
Building a rapport with students through modelling a pedagogy of care and inclusion, equips students with the ability to provide feedback throughout the semester. Students appreciate the wealth of resources available from the beginning of semester, but others may feel overwhelmed with choice.
In rapid response to student feedback, I started to provide recommended readings in addition to the large selection. Students appreciated this speedy closing of the feedback loop, and being valued co-producers of the module approach. The student feedback for the module was the best yet.
Accessible assessment as the default position
With growing numbers of students experiencing health issues, it is good practice to think of accessibility as the default position, not an additional bolt-on. I am in favour of different modes of assessment that students can choose from, or developing an assessment that can be approached in different ways. I have written here about my letter assessment, inspired by the work of Katie Tonkiss. Students often feel worried about “academic writing”, and this assessment allows students to use the first person, and to use a more colloquial writing tone if desired. The students develop a nuanced, convincing and influential writing style, with the ability to hold conflicting and competing harms in tension.
Ultimately, it is about remembering that teaching is a huge privilege and blessing. We get to have an impact on so many people and play a part in shaping ideas and innovations of the future. I will never lose the gratitude for getting to do this job and remembering where I come from.
