Merced College’s 2025-28 Student Equity Plan will see the school pursue even loftier academic goals for students than the previous iteration of the plan.
The college is building on the success of its 2022-25 equity plan, which implemented ideas that moved the dial for students facing disproportionate impact.
“We’re confident in what we’re doing,” said Estelina Muñoz, Acting Dean of Student Equity & Success at Merced College. “Every decision we’ve made for the 2025-28 plan is data-driven. We knew which questions to ask and which gaps we still have. We also know why our Black and Hispanic students, and male students in general, are key student groups to zero in on next.”
Equity plans are mandated by the California Community College’s Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO), and the philosophy of disproportionate impact is built into CCC Chancellor Sonya Christian’s Vision 2030 program. Disproportionate impact is a neutral policy or practice—applied equally—that results in a harsher, negative effect on a protected group of people from a particular race, ethnicity, gender, age or disability.
Successes
Faculty Inquiry Groups (FIGs)
The 2022-25 plan introduced Faculty Inquiry Groups (FIGs), which redesigned courses to improve inclusivity and cultural relevance. FIGs also found course materials called Open Educational Resources (OER), which are free text, media, and digital assets from the public domain. The college is adhering to the Zero Text Cost (ZTC) Program from Vision 2030 which seeks to ease financial strain on students.
Student Success Teams (SST)
As part of the previous plans, Student Success Teams (SST) were built around specific areas of study and include instructors, along with classified professionals from Student Services, counseling, financial aid and more. In the past, students often shared their struggles, but that information didn’t always make it to everyone who needs to hear it. With SSTs, someone from every spoke on the wheel can hear what’s wrong and discuss fixes.
Tutoring
The college also put tutors in more spaces so students could work with them more readily. One way is virtually 24/7 within the Canvas learning portal through BrainFuse. Then there are Supplemental Instructors embedded in classes who work closely with all students in real time. Finally, tutors work out of the Tutoring Center in the Downey Learning Resource Center (DLRC).
Identity-Based Support
The plan added identity-based support like the Puente Program, which works to improve transfer numbers for Hispanic students. For Black students, the college added Umoja, which provides culturally relevant educational experiences for Black students, and African-American Male Education Network & Development (A2MEND), a mentorship and leadership-training program.
Access
Building on COVID workarounds, the college began offering in-person and virtual appointments for Student Services. They also expanded Extreme Registration, where students can work with a counselor to apply, enroll, get student IDs and work out financial aid on the same day.
Aspirations
Given those successful efforts, one piece of data still surprised Muñoz while preparing the 2025-28 plan.
“Many of our students still have confusion as to how to access all of the support services, so they remain widely underutilized,” she said.
Disaggregated 2022-25 data—broken down by race, age, gender, etc.—also revealed that Black males, Hispanic students and males overall at Merced College were still struggling to complete transfer-level math and English in their first year of college.
The way to address these challenges were also informed by the data.
See tutor, will pass
“We saw that if students attend 10 or more tutoring sessions for a class, they moved into the 90th percentile for passing that class,” Muñoz said.
Umoja instructors and leaders—including Mathematics Professor Caroline Dawson, Assistant Director of Equity Louis Foy, English Professor Victor Smith, Psychology Professor Rene Salazar, and EOPS/Equity Counselor-Coordinator Cimmaron Ruiz—suggested ways to get to students to work with tutors more often.
Dawson suggested taking students on tours through the LRC so they could find everything, including classrooms and the Tutoring Center. They then identified times when tutors had few customers and scheduled classes at those times.
Then Ruiz said, “Let’s just move our classes into the LRC.”
Now students pass by tutors going to and from class. They can comfortably step in for help without having to publicly ask for it.
Build confidence, will grow
The equity team found they were planning great enrichment events all over campus that few people were attending. So Foy has begun bringing community partners, speakers and events to the Equity Hub, where many students gather each day.
They’re also sending students from Umoja, A2MEND and the Black Student Union, who hang out at the Hub, to grow as people by working with community organizations.
This year, students have helped with Coats for Hope with Boys & Girls Club of Merced County and a toy drive with CalWORKs. The Black Student Union is also partnering with the Faith Love Hope organization to create a program that will see Merced College students mentor local junior high and high school students.
“To have our young students of color working in the community and sharing their stories and struggles, they mature quickly,” Foy said. “It’s been so cool to see, and our students are happy to do more.
“It helps their confidence, this realization that they’re not the only ones going through tough things. All of that work off campus will help us reach the goals in this Equity Plan. And when the college succeeds, we won’t be the only ones sending that message to the world. Our students sell the value of their education to other students and everyone else.”
Find partners, get results
Graduation rates among Black students increased from 49% in 2023 to 69% last spring—which is great, but no one thinks that’s high enough.
So when the college was approached in 2025 to join the brand new California State University Young Males of Color Consortium, for CSUs and select community colleges, they jumped at the opportunity.
The consortium brings those partners together to plan, share best practices and resources, and track progress to better attack the challenges behind “historical racialized misalignment and misinformation in education.” It’s a training ground for instructors to do that work. While the consortium focuses on young men of color, the goal is to scale effective programs that help all students succeed.
The CSU system started the YMOC consortium to figure out their own problems, but the best way to attack those issues was to partner up and build up the community college pipeline.
“Lou and I see the bigger picture and have the support to run with it,” Ruiz said. “Some of the stuff we’re doing, we’ve shared with the consortium and they see us blowing it out of the water. We’re becoming the CCC model for the consortium.”
For example, Guidance 48 is a course—new for Spring 2026—designed for Asian males, Native American males, Black males, and all young men of color to help them plan their futures, something they largely hadn’t been doing.
“Without a plan, they tend to shy away from continuing, so it hinders success,” Ruiz said. “Guidance 48 will give them information to eliminate that barrier. We decided on an all-male class, because our equity gaps don’t show the same dynamic with our women of color. Just because these young men are not clear which future they want, it doesn’t mean they don’t belong in college. They do belong here.”
Muñoz said there is an important shift going on within the CCC system thanks to the introspection and work necessary to complete the Student Equity Plans.
“We’re intentionally moving away from a student deficit mindset,” Muñoz said. “Instead of asking what students are doing wrong, we’re asking what barriers we’ve put in their way as an institution. Our focus is on removing those roadblocks and taking a closer look at our processes so we can actually improve outcomes for students.”