Second, Lamb said DVC has tried to recruit more students both from in and out of state, including foreign students. In addition, DVC has offered a range of other “in demand” courses based on current corporate and market trends for job seekers, showing that the school is listening to California’s large and diverse business community. As a result, in recent years DVC has been catering more to what students want to study, from liberal arts, science and math to courses ranging from cooking, drama, filmmaking, astronomy, languages and music. For one, administrators realized that the school-which offers a total of 487 courses, higher than most California community colleges-needed to present more focused programs to make it stand out from the college pack. Lamb attributed several factors to DVC’s rise in rankings among community colleges. Many UC/CSU schools offer automatic admission for DVC students upon completion of a two-year Associate Degree of Transfer, or 60 units of credit in predesignated courses with a specified GPA. The cooperation assures UC/CSU admissions officers that the transfer students coming in have received a similar education and are able to move up to the next level of advanced courses. She explained that DVC works together with University of California and California State University to develop curricula.

“This award demonstrates our commitment to excellence and the team’s hard work” in educating our youth, said President Lamb. The award recognized the college as a “2019 Champion of Higher Education for exemplary work in implementing the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT).” In an interview with The Inquirer, DVC President Susan Lamb discussed a recent award issued to DVC by College Opportunity, a non-profit that works to enhance quality of education in California. The graduation rate of all transfer students nationally is about 60%, while DVC’s rate is 66%. Other figures recently released by UCLA’s Center for the Study of Community Colleges show that DVC’s transfer rate to four-year universities is 34% percent versus the national average of 20%. That’s according to recent reports by and the California Post-secondary Educational Commission, which highlighted DVC’s rising academic reputation not only in the Golden State but nationwide. Diablo Valley College is now the fourth top-ranked community college in California and ranks number one statewide in transfers to four-year schools.

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