LBCollegePromise

Five years after launching, the Long Beach College Promise (LBCP) is now a new leading partner, along with 30 other just-partnered organizations, in helping the vision of the 100Kin10 initiative become a reality.

LBCP is one of the nation’s first programs to connect a triad of educational institutions—Long Beach Unified School District, Long Beach City College (LBCC), and Cal State Long Beach (CSULB)—to specifically focus on leading students through a full education while increasing the local community’s workforce. Their work has been nationally recognized as a model for other communities that have the benefit of a tri-educational structure—a K-12 system, a community college, and an established four-year university.

100Kin10, established in 2011, hopes to have 100,000 American teachers specializing in STEM fields—courses focusing on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—within the next ten years.

“Many children grow up imagining themselves as solving one or more of our nation’s most pressing problems,” said CSULB Interim President Donald J. Para in a release. “While they don’t conceptualize things as adults do, they do encounter problems they want to fix. A fifth-grader who loses her mother to cancer may dream of someday curing this widespread disease. Yet, the challenge we face today is that too many students are not persisting in science either because they view the content as uninspiring or the math too difficult.”

CSULB’s commitment to the project, as they work closely with LBCC, is to prepare 970 K-12 teachers within the next four years. LBCC will assure CSULB that 250 of their community college transfers are ready to enter the university’s elementary credential program with a STEM specialization.

“Investment in the STEM fields is critical to our nation’s ability to remain competitive in a global economy, replicate innovate teaching practices at the local level and motivate our students to view research and development as a career pathway,” said LBCC President Eloy Ortiz Oakley.

According to 100Kin10, the first two years of the program have proven fruitful: partners involved in the initiative have already prepared 12,412 teachers, with 37,000 new teachers projected to graduate in 2016.