Events

Our third annual Champions of Higher Education celebration highlighted the exemplary efforts of California leaders and institutions to improve student success. This year we honored:

2018 Champions of Higher Education for Excellence in Transfer

12 Community Colleges and 4 California State Universities are honored for their excellence in implementing the Associate Degree for Transfer

Learn more about our 2018 college and university honorees.

Unsung Hero

Alfred Herrera | Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Partnerships, UCLA

Rising Star

Jorge Reyes Salinas | Former California State University Student Trustee

Rising Star

Alexa Victoriano | Former Los Angeles Community College District Student Trustee

Legislative Champion

Holly Mitchell | California State Senator 

Change Maker

To view photos from the evening, click here.

Thank you to our sponsors!

Master Sponsors

Baccalaureate Sponsors

On November 13th, the Campaign for College Opportunity hosted our inaugural Hope on the Horizon: Charting a Course for Student Success celebration at the Citizen Hotel in Sacramento, where we hosted higher education partners from across California for an evening of celebration and reflection on the past year of higher education policy. The evening was also an opportunity for community members to gather as we honored California Attorney General Xavier Becerra; UC Immigrant Legal Services Executive Director, Maria Blanco; California Community Colleges Board of Governors Vice President, Pamela Haynes, and three California Community College and California State University student leaders for their extraordinary work in serving and supporting California students.

Labor and civil rights activist, Dolores Huerta kicked off the evening presenting the 2018 Change Maker award to California Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Becerra, a son of immigrants and the first in his family to attend college reflected on his journey through the higher education system in California as a Latino and looked ahead at the work to be done to support Californians like himself pursuing a higher education. Unsung Hero Maria Blanco called on the urgency to serve and support the state’s undocumented and DACAmented students, while Pamela Haynes called on the need to invest in the success of all students, regardless of income or ethnicity. We closed out the evening with a spoken word performance from UC Davis student Malissia Bordeaux, who spoke on the barriers to college opportunity and the doors her degree as a Black student will open. You can watch the celebration and all of the speeches below.

Official Reception Sponsor

Benefactor Sponsors

Patron Sponsors

Click here to view all photos.

 Location: California State Capitol

Our latest report, “Left Out: How Exclusion in California’s Colleges and Universities Hurts Our Values, Our Students and our Economy, analyzes faculty, academic senates, and college leaders by race and gender for the California Community Colleges, the California State University, and the University of California. In conjunction with the report, we presented “Changing Faces,” a series of conversations across the state to share the report findings and discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion in California’s higher education leadership.

We hosted an event for each of the three systems of California higher education to engage in robust conversations about potential solutions and opportunities for change.

Changing Faces at the University of California

Changing Faces at the California Community Colleges 

Changing Faces at the California State Universities

Click here to view all photos.

Location: California State Capitol

The Campaign for College Opportunity, the California EDGE Coalition, and the California Community College’s Chancellor’s Office hosted a joint briefing on Basic Skills implementation and innovations throughout the California Community College System. Representatives from Cuyamaca College, Sacramento City College, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, and the California Acceleration Project joined the conversation around high impact practices in implementing basic skills programming as well as the challenges that large scale implementation presents.

Click here to view all photos.

Location: California State Capitol
The Campaign for College Opportunity and the California Community College Chancellor’s Office hosted a joint briefing on the state of transfer in the state of California. Read the Campaign for College Opportunity’s full Transfer Maze Report here.

Click here to view all photos.

Location: Campaign for College Opportunity Los Angeles Office
The Los Angeles Campaign staff moved into a new building in downtown in early March. We celebrated by inviting former Secretary of Education and now CEO of Ed Trust, John B. King for a timely conversation on college opportunity under the Trump Administration.