Collaborative Planning That Eliminates Roadblocks for Adult Learners at Mt San Antonio College

WestEd’s Center for Economic Mobility partnered with Mt. San Antonio College to build stronger connections between noncredit and credit educators by helping them examine student outcomes, understand barriers from a student’s perspective, and design practical solutions.

The Challenge

Many community colleges offer noncredit courses to reach learners who might not enroll in traditional programs. For example, noncredit courses can help build language skills, offer short-term training for jobs, and support people to earn a high school equivalent like a GED.

But there’s a problem: Students who start in noncredit courses rarely transition to credit programs that lead to degrees or better paying jobs. Administrators at Mt. San Antonio College, located near Los Angeles, realized they needed to better understand where the college was successfully supporting noncredit to credit pathways, which learners were being left behind, and how they could improve internal processes.

Administrators needed to learn the following:

  • where successful transitions were already occurring and what made them work
  • which groups of students were getting stuck and not making the transition
  • what barriers at the college were making it hard for students to move between programs
  • how to get their noncredit and credit divisions to work together better, since they had historically operated independently

How We’re Taking Action

In 2023, we began our partnership with Mt. San Antonio College by compiling baseline information about student transition and completion rates, broken out by program type, and interviewed dozens of faculty, staff, and administrators to better understand their priority issues.

Members of the noncredit team met to review the information and mapped the processes that a noncredit student must navigate, from first hearing about the college to successfully completing a noncredit program to starting credit coursework. Connecting the data to student journeys inspired the college to create a set of action teams that tackled specific problems of practice.

Later that year, WestEd convened a larger group that included experts from across the campus, including college leadership, counselors, and IT staff, in addition to the noncredit team. The day focused on dissecting the process of filling out the college application form, including examining challenges that different types of noncredit students experienced as well as universal stumbling blocks.

The exercise yielded concrete action plans to remove unnecessary barriers to enrolling in credit courses, which were assigned to the action teams. Thanks to the shared understanding built during the day, these teams now include staff from both the noncredit and credit sides of the campus.

Mt. San Antonio College implemented a number of improvements based on the insights they gained through WestEd’s research and facilitation. For example, they created a tip sheet that helps workers from across the college understand the difference between credit and noncredit so they can better advise students. They also worked with the admissions department to provide students with just-in-time support for filling out the residency portion of the application form—which is a sticking point for both noncredit transitioners and other new students.

Resources

  • Video describing the project (closed captioning available)

I’m very inspired and motivated that we were able to gather so many different people from different departments on campus, that so many people are interested in improving the systems we have to benefit our students—both noncredit and credit students.

Shelly Laddusa Apprenticeship Project Manager, Mt. San Antonio College

What Makes Us Different

Student-centered perspective – Rather than starting with institutional structures or policies, we centered the actual student journey. This approach helped staff see beyond their departmental responsibilities to understand how students experience the college holistically—revealing barriers that weren’t visible from within siloed operational units.

Data-informed but human-focused – While quantitative analysis provided crucial insights, we balanced this with qualitative understanding of the human experiences behind the numbers. By connecting data patterns to real student journeys, we created compelling narratives that motivated institutional change.

Cross-functional collaboration – Instead of reinforcing traditional divisions between credit and noncredit programs, our process deliberately brought together interest holders who rarely collaborated. This approach not only yielded more comprehensive solutions but also built relationships that will sustain the work beyond the project timeline.