Merced College Women Driving Key Initiatives on Campus

By Luciana Chavez

For Women’s History Month, we feature four individuals who are doing impressive work to improve services, systems and curriculum for Merced College students.

Each of these professionals is leading an effort that might some day help our students become leaders themselves.

Valerie Albano, Dreamscape Learn

Professor of Biology Valerie Albano applauds the Merced College administration for bringing high-end, innovative tools to our students “to engage in and learn from.”

One of the biggest recent examples is the commitment Merced College has made to using virtual reality (VR) for immersive learning through Dreamscape Learn, developed in collaboration with Arizona State.

Albano was the brave soul willing to tackle how best to first bring the VR tools into real classes for real Biology 1 students. She was moved by immersive VR’s potential to bring equity to STEM students.

“Learning is not one-sided,” Albano said. “It’s an exchange. So if we start by having some fun studying an intergalactic dinosaur in a VR landscape, then we start on an even playing field. None of the students know this creature. They all come to it new. It takes away this notion that some students know more than others.”

Biology 1 classes use the Dreamscape Learn story behind a sick, intergalactic creature. The students “enter” this world using VR headsets, and “observe” both the habitat and elements affecting the creature. Then, students do hands-on experiments in the wet lab to reinforce what they’ve learned.

The curriculum covers concepts like the scientific method, data collection and observation, and more, including cell biology, genetics, ecology, and physiology.

In this first full year that Biology 1 students are using Dreamscape, Albano almost immediately noticed them—normally so intimidated by STEM concepts—eagerly attack the interactive, visual, hands-on, fun lessons that feel so much like a video game.

“And about halfway through the semester, students' data literacy—meaning data collection and interpretation and graphing numbers—was substantially higher using Dreamscape Learn,” she said. “They’re not afraid of data, numbers or graphs. They’re interacting with all of it and it’s been a huge win for our Biology 1 students.”

Early results are clear: Students in biology courses that use Dreamscape Learn have a 3.7% higher course completion rate and 8.2% higher course success rate than students in non-Dreamscape classes.

The immediate feedback and success feels so satisfying to Albano, who grew up Latina and indigenous on her mother’s side and caucasian on her father’s side, in a poor area called Chimayo, N.M.

She became a biologist in part thanks to support of a family friend, who worked in the Los Alamos National Laboratory. That father of a friend encouraged Albano to apply to the University of Washington, where she studied biology and zoology and also did undergraduate research in audiology.

This passionate scientist and teacher who landed at Merced College 23 years ago had been that student who felt like she started from behind.

“When I was an undergrad coming from a disadvantaged background, science was really hard,” Albano said. “As I worked my way through, I had fabulous tutors at the University of Washington. I realized they were taking the fear out of learning for me. They were taking feelings of inadequacy out of learning for me. They made something as mysterious as science, something I had confidence in.

“And now I get to demystify what biology is, to show the beauty of it. That’s my job now, to make students feel comfortable in class no matter where they come from.”

Libby Soria, Competency-Based Education

When Professor Libby Soria and her colleagues were tasked with creating a competency-based education (CBE) modality for the Child Development program four years ago, she said they started by “blowing up everything we even thought we knew about teaching it.”

“We were weeding through what we had and thinking about what we wanted to create and realized that early childhood education already has a strong foundation throughout the California Community Colleges (CCC) system,” Soria said.

Merced College has long offered a traditional, classroom Child Development (CD) pathway. Five years ago, it began offering the same in a fully online pathway. CBE is the third modality and will bring even more equity to this popular program.

“Higher education has long been designed around textbooks,” Soria said. “But this CD CBE modality is designed around actual skills. It’s more efficient. It’s not tied to class time. You can move to show competency in a skill as quickly or slowly as you need to. The new modality keeps Merced College competitive and gives students choices as to how to complete their education.”

Among eight colleges originally approved for the state grant, only Merced and one other sought to zero in on childhood development. Early on, the college realized they would need time to also add general education requirements to flesh out a full degree pathway.

The grant organization gave grantees an additional year to both add those general ed courses and to construct the pathway in the Canvas learning platform. Soria said Merced College will launch the child development CBE modality in Fall 2027.

“When I came to the Child Development program, CBE was not in the hopper at all,” she said. “But we were already doing a lot of things online. Our hardship at that time was figuring out how to move lab classes online. Then COVID hit, and we did figure that out.”

The college’s curriculum committee eventually approached Soria, the department lead chair, to ask if they’d be the first department to attack CBE.

“I said, ‘Yeah, we’ll jump in,’” Soria said. “It has not been easy, but it has been amazing. We have to embrace change, which isn’t easy for everyone to do. But I feel confident in our leadership.

“I know we don’t have to fear this change. Now we can lead the way for CBE across campus. A lot of people are nervous, but I’m happy to be a voice saying, ‘Yes, we can do this.’"

Angel Comer, Coordinating Transfer Pathways

Career and Transfer Center (CTC) Student Support Coordinator Angel Comer found a passion for higher education during a campus tour at her alma mater, Colorado State University Pueblo.

“When I went on that tour, I knew I wanted to help students discover their own path on campus,” Comer said.

In her first full year at the CTC and her third at Merced, Comer does similar work while specifically publicizing Arizona State University Online as a transfer option for Merced College students. These students receive a special tuition rate thanks to the partnership. UC Merced and Stanislaus State are the college’s other transfer partners.

“We got the word out about it early this year, and we could see right away how intrigued our students were by the possibilities,” Comer said.

The CTC helps students choose how best to continue their education. The crew at the CTC likes to say they “triage what the student needs so as to give a warm, efficient handoff” of the student to a four-year university.

The CTC offers workshops, seminars, campus visits, one-on-one counseling and more to future transfers. They saw the success behind those efforts during a recent trip to San Jose State University. There they met a Merced College graduate, an international student, who had recently transferred to SJSU.

“It was a full-circle moment and so rewarding to see how far she’d come,” Comer said. “It was a testament to the work we do at the CTC.”

The CTC also now offers the California Law Pathway. Cal LAW will connect students interested in law careers with orientations, counseling, transfer support, conference visits, and mentorship from instructional faculty and legal professionals in the field.

Comer, who also has a master’s in education from University of Sioux Falls, chose to work at Merced College because it felt like a vibrant place to be.

“I have grown to love this community,” she said. “The students and the people, how they support students, that matched my own goals to connect students to their goals and encourage them to believe in themselves.”

Lorena Calderon, Articulation & Transfer Help

Counselor Lorena Calderon has spent the past two years as co-faculty lead in the counseling cohort, helping the college articulate general education courses so students have an easier time transferring into the University of California or California State University systems.

“I want to see our students go to impacted campuses like San Diego State or Long Beach State,” Calderon said. “I want to make sure we’re doing all we can to help our transfer students.”

Another initiative this year was establishing “Word on the Quad” days. Twice a month, counselors set up shop in the quad so students can stop for information or to have a chat.

“We always tell our students to see a counselor if they have any trouble, but our first-generation students struggle to navigate on their own,” Calderon said. “So it’s great for us to reach out to them in a more casual setting.”

Calderon, who started her career as a Los Banos High counselor, recently reconnected with one of those students who said Calderon’s steady presence was the reason she went to college.

“She’s at CSU Stanislaus studying to be a teacher,” Calderon said. “It’s gratifying.”

Calderon was that student. Her parents loved and supported her, but the practical knowledge about how to do well in college eluded her. Calderon searched for those answers at Dos Palos High and Stanislaus State.

“My pre-calculus teacher at Dos Palos, William Marroquin, encouraged me to go to college and filled in those blanks for me,” Calderon said. “When that one student of mine shared what I had done for her, it amazed me. I realized the range of people we can connect with in life who can then inspire our potential.”

Calderon, who will bring female colleagues and faculty members on the trips to the quad, reminds us how important it is for female students to see women in public-facing positions.

“They can see we’re all working towards goals that are achievable,” Calderon said. “Also, being first generation, I approach counseling by first building trust. I’m investing in their futures, so they need to feel heard and supported. But I also want them to feel brave enough to take risks and ask questions that they could never have imagined asking.”