Feb 25, 2020

CENIC Recognizes California Community Colleges for Developing the Student Onboarding Platform MyPath

CENIC Announces Recipient of 2020 Innovations in Networking Award for Educational Applications

La Mirada, CA & Berkeley, CA — Feb. 26, 2020 — CENIC has selected the California Community Colleges as a recipient of the 2020 Innovations in Networking Award for Educational Applications in recognition of its online student services portal, CCC MyPath, which helps millions of students seamlessly navigate through their educational journeys. The CENIC Innovations in Networking Awards recognize exemplary people, projects, and organizations that leverage high-bandwidth networking.

With 115 colleges and 2.1 million students, the California Community Colleges is the largest system of higher education and the largest workforce training provider in the nation. MyPath is a customizable, guided pathway onboarding platform that provides information and resources to incoming students and bridges the gap between online applications and a college’s local systems. With its integrated relationship to CCCApply, the system-wide online application for all California community colleges, MyPath sources information from each local community college, simplifies it, and provides students with an individually tailored and structured educational pathway from the time of application to graduation.

The MyPath platform is supported and facilitated by CENIC’s California Research and Education Network (CalREN), which provides robust Internet service and facilitates data exchange between all of the community colleges throughout the state. Project leaders being recognized are: Mike Caruso, MyPath Product Owner, CCC Technology Center; Dr. Jennifer Coleman, Statewide Programs Director, CCC Technology Center; Barney Gomez, Vice Chancellor, Digital Innovation and Infrastructure, CCC Chancellor’s Office; and Rhonda Mohr, Vice Chancellor, Student Services and Special Programs, CCC Chancellor's Office.

“MyPath is a model for higher education institutions who wish to implement far-reaching and high-impact technology strategies,” said CENIC President and CEO Louis Fox. “By empowering students and local colleges with streamlined access to educational pathways, California Community Colleges are facilitating student success and ensuring that California’s workforce remains competitive.”

Colleges adopting MyPath have noted that the tool increases enrollment by presenting applicants with suggested next steps, keeping them engaged with the college and promoting a sense of belonging while they wait for further communication from a college enrollment advisor. With personalized guidance and reminders set for specific actions, new applicants are more likely to follow through on creating an account, attending orientation, making an education plan, and registering for classes.

Between January 2019 and November 2019, students at colleges with access to MyPath completed a total of 568,095 tasks related to enrolling and onboarding. Students completed 1,576 tasks daily between January and June, and 2,067 tasks daily from July through September during the busy 2019 college application season.

As of November 2019, 47 California community colleges have adopted MyPath, including all nine within the Los Angeles Community College District. Of these 47 colleges, 25 were live, while another 19 were in the process of deploying the platform for their students. Metrics from Golden West College in Huntington Beach, CA showed that 84% of all incoming applicants from July to September 2019 engaged in the MyPath onboarding experience, while Solano Community College in Fairfield, CA showed rates of 75%. These percentages indicate that students were highly engaged during application and enrollment period, a time which typically shows a significant decrease between the number of students that apply and those that enroll.

By decreasing enrollment attrition and keeping students engaged in their educational goals, MyPath aids in increasing graduation rates as part of the California Community Colleges Vision for Success, a multi-year plan designed to substantially increase transfer and graduation rates. The framework for achieving the goals of this bold Vision for Success is Guided Pathways, with MyPath acting as a key tool to support the project.

The CENIC Innovations in Networking Awards are presented each year at CENIC's annual conference to highlight exemplary people, projects, and organizations that leverage high-bandwidth networking. The CENIC conference will be held March 16-18, 2020, in Monterey, California. Learn more and register to attend.

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