The PCC XL Pathways first year experience program is still seeking grad students for our hourly part time paraprofessional success coach positions, to start mid-July and continue into the 15-16 school year to May of 2016. For those who may not have heard of our program, I will attach a link to our website below. Also, the job announcements should provide thorough information about the purpose of the program and these positions.
Some people are new to this list, so my plan is to provide information about PCC’s XL Pathways program and the function of our paraprofessional success coach positions. For those of you with a good grasp, you don’t have to read all of this note. I’ve added point people from the Counseling grad programs CSU Fullerton and CSU Dominguez Hills.
Briefly about XL Pathways and the coaches
We are about to begin our fifth year of having paraprofessional grad students work with us providing essentially transition oriented case management services to a cohort of PCC’s first year students. This cohort is comprised of people who are currently graduating from high school—the 17-19 age group. Our first year experience program has enjoyed much higher retention rates to second year for our students than the rest of our first year population of first-time-in-college students.
Our experience in this award-winning and internationally recognized program tells us that our selection of grad students with whom this population of 17-19 year old urban, often first generation, kids can connect with works best. The other population we serve are International students, who are also a young population with considerable transition issues.
These positions are temporary, generally held for one to two years. They are not direct steps toward professional community college counseling positions, although some of our coaches have used this experience to apply for counselor training programs at other colleges. They stop gap measures for people needing a job, any job. We have enjoyed having people who have either started their graduate counseling program or somewhere in the middle and grasp the needs of our population. We have also hired students in their last year, which has posed some turnover challenges, but they are also welcome to apply. We do not accept candidates with no supervised experience helping others in one to one or small group settings. This means that we are not really a place to learn how to counsel and lead workshops as we aren’t staffed to do so. Our expectation is that coaches will acquire this training in their graduate program. So, these are not internship positions even if some folks are using them that way for their grad school.
At any rate, we need a few more coaches to serve both our general and international student population. Our program has grown dramatically and our most recent search hasn’t completely filled our openings. Attached you will find the job announcements to share with your students. They will have about a month to apply.
Here’s the new contact, as I am retiring next month!
If you have any questions about the positions, please call me before June 4th. I have been the professional counselor coordinator for this team and will be retiring as of June 4th. Taking my place will be Myriam Altounji (mmaltouni@pasadena.edu, 626-585-7012). I will provide her contact information on the job announcements as well.
Take care,
Cecile M. Davis Anderson
Counselor
