Show Notes
Equity Leadership Now! hosts conversations with equity-conscious leaders from pre-K through university settings who transform structures and strategies for educating students, particularly for those who are marginalized.
In this episode of Equity Leadership Now!, host Dr. Jabari Mahiri, co-host Dr. Jennifer Elemen, and guest Dr. Marina Aminy discuss the intersection of equity, innovation, and access in California's community college system. Dr. Aminy begins by sharing her personal and professional journey, rooted in her experience as an Afghan refugee and first-generation college student. Aminy describes her journey as a first-generation doctoral candidate, recognizing Mahiri's mentorship as transformative for her academic experience. She details how taking an undergraduate education course taught by Jabari shaped her professional trajectory early on. Aminy points out, “No one in my family had ever gone to college, much less graduate school, before me and my brother. And I remember Jabari … was like, the only person that got me excited about education.”
Dr. Marina Aminy currently serves as the Executive Director of the California Virtual Campus and Associate Vice Chancellor of Foothill-De Anza Community College District. She leads an initiative designed to expand access and accelerate student success across California’s 116 community colleges, which serve over 2.1 million students. This initiative is the California Virtual Campus, an innovative campus exchange system that allows students to easily enroll in online courses across institutions without reapplying to multiple colleges. This system streamlines enrollment, registration, and financial aid processing, aiming to eliminate barriers to timely degree completion, especially for students in historically underserved and rural communities.
Dr. Aminy emphasizes the importance of options and that students should have agency when choosing which educational pathways work best for them. She highlights the impact of the Zero Textbook Cost and Open Educational Resources Initiatives in the California Community College system, making courses more accessible and affordable to students by lessening the burden of textbook costs. Ultimately, Aminy advocates for expanding flexible and hybrid educational modalities in K–12 settings, highlighting how these options can better serve diverse student populations and break away from the rigid models that traditionally favor dominant cultural norms.