About Us

The Institute of Community and Civic Engagement advances education for democracy with full participation of all of our communities as its core value.

Our Goals

• Empower students to be agents of change in the social, economic, political realities of their lives, their communities and beyond.
• Define education as a transformative and deeply relevant force in students' lives.
• Emphasize the teaching and practice of democracy for advocacy and change through community-based learning and collaboration.
• Embrace the cultural and social contexts of students as learners representing different ways of knowing, understanding, and experiencing
• Foster a democratic environment in our interactions with each other and in our efforts for institutional change.

Background and Need

De Anza College is a major force in the social, cultural, and economic life of what has come to be known world-wide as the "Silicon Valley." The college is a large, regional, multicultural community college serving over twenty three thousand students per year, of whom over 73% racially identify as non-white. It regularly ranks as one of the top three institutions in California in terms of how many students it transfers to the UC and CSU systems.

Consequently, De Anza has a reputation for being one of the best places for students to get a solid academic foundation. Students who transfer to a four-year institution from De Anza outperform those who begin their studies at either the UC or CSU. As testament to this, students travel past an average of two other community colleges to get to De Anza. In addition to its successful academic and transfer programs, De Anza offers more than thirty vocational certificates.

Although proven in academic excellence, we recognize that our diverse student population is still underserved and its assets are underutilized. For the past six years the college has been engaged in a concerted effort to achieve educational equity across different racial and ethnic groups. Our master plan states a goal of having not more than a 5% difference in the average success rates between racial and ethnic groups (with success being defined as the rate at which students pass a class with a grade of "C" or better). In the years of work toward this goal, we have identified two of the major reasons for a lack of equity as socioeconomic pressures and a sense of alienation faced by our students. (Rothstein, 2004; Smith, 1991).

Civic engagement can help us to reach our equity goals as well as to achieve other long-standing goals of the institution. If students see the college working in their communities, then they are less likely to see college as something separate from their everyday lives; if the college's curriculum is deeply related to things relevant to students' lived concerns, then being in school will be less alienating; if we prepare students to be leaders in their communities, they will be able to address some of the serious problems that face those communities.

Service Learning has a proven track record of boosting student achievement on a number of indicators (Eyler, Early, 1990). We expect our program of civic engagement to boost our enrollment and retention of all students by offering them exciting opportunities to work with and in surrounding communities as part of their academic growth. Consequently our college will also open opportunities for meaningful relationships with potential students and teachers, particularly from underserved communities.