UCLA

California community college data shows that most community college students will never earn a degree (The Community College Research Center, 2018) or take a long time to do so (Horn & Skomsvold, 2002; Jenkins et al., 2017). Low success holds significant impact for students of color since California community colleges serve 72% of all Latine undergraduates (The Campaign for College Opportunity, 2021b) and 64% of all Black undergraduates (The Campaign for College Opportunity, 2021a). The Guided Pathways framework comes as another response in a chain of completion initiatives. However, most research in Guided Pathways has been done from a bird’s eye view and Guided Pathways has been criticized for its lack of intentionality for students of color (Rose et al., 2019). This case study provides the story of one institution’s attempt to engage Latine and Black students using Guided Pathways as an opportunity to redesign learning assistance centers into Success Centers- physical spaces for an institution's meta majors. Although the study hoped to learn how Success Centers engage with Black and Latine students from the perspective of Success Center faculty and staff, the goal was not to provide a list for institutions to adopt. The case provides a lesson on how an institution with an abundance of ideas and talent struggled to create and sustain change in one area of campus. The Success Centers attempted a formal initiative to engage Black and Latine students, but it faded over time. Currently the centers utilize a mix of informal practices to build community, promote diverse tutor representation, alter their physical spaces, and outreach to other centers and students. Ultimately, due to challenges such as stakeholder involvement, unclear roles, leadership and a lack of community, participants did not feel the redesign has impacted engagement with Black and Latine students but are hopeful it may still succeed to do so. Such findings reflect a need for the adoption of methods of improvement science tethered to an equity framework, a combination of vertical and shared leadership, as well as discussing change in small, informal settings.