Mike Muñoz: College champion of marginalized students
LA TimesMike Muñoz bears the lofty title of superintendent-president of Long Beach City College. Progress among Black and Latino students is particularly striking, with rising enrollments and persistence rates, meaning more students continued their studies after entering instead of dropping out. He and his team have provided more campus jobs using unspent federal work study awards; free after-school care for children of student parents; a food pantry, academic resources, a new Black student success center and tailored supports for men of color, who are at greater risk of dropping out. Long Beach was one of the first California colleges to provide its parking structure as a safe space for students living in their vehicles, as Muñoz did in earlier years. He was an early advocate of dropping placement tests for entry into transfer-level math and English courses, saying they were biased against underserved students; Black student completion rates of those English courses have soared from 9% in 2018 to 25% this year while Latino rates grew from 12% to 35%.
Discover Related
