Cañada College’s Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, Wins Internationally Recognized Award for College Project

Change Makers: Phi Theta Kappa(PTK) Journal of Student Leadership features the work of community college students collaborating with their college administrators to implement projects that support the mission of their colleges and generate positive changes on their campuses. The Hallmark Awards Program recognizes superior achievement in Phi Theta Kappa’s programs while encouraging excellence, reflecting fairness, recognizing quality, and enhancing individual and chapter development. The Hallmark Award is an award that is extremely honored for those helping their communities.

Each of the articles published in Change Makers demonstrates exceptional planning, leadership, and service activities carefully designed to improve the college community and campus environment. To be considered for publication in Change Makers, a chapter must submit a Hallmark Award entry for the chapter’s College Project. These College Projects begin with carefully planned meetings between the students and the college administration. Here, students explore the college’s mission and offer voluntary service to complete projects that the administration deem both crucial and necessary to support the college and its overall mission. 

As we all know, working through the pandemic has been a challenge for everyone. When the pandemic began in 2020, many people were lost and did not know what to do with schooling. As students began to transition to virtual schooling, it was difficult to feel connected and prepare the steps of preparing for transfer to a four-year university. With this, student leaders from Beta Zeta Nu, Cañada College’s Chapter of Phi Theta Kappa, decided to create a series of workshops focused on transferring students as part of their 2020 College Project. Their first step was to meet with the College President to see if they agreed that students would benefit from this project. With the full support of the College President, the PTK team began their project.

Student Bella Zhang shared and explained her team's hard work on their project. The PTK team supported the Transfer Center by creating online workshops, made with alumni, about topics specific to the transfer experience. Workshop topics included scholarship opportunities such as the Jack Kent Cook Scholarship, how to write personal insight questions on the general transfer application, obtaining letters of recommendation and more. A popular workshop included three alumni who had transferred to UC Berkeley and shared their experience with students, including student life, the transfer process, transportation, housing and academics at UC Berkeley. Students who attended the workshops shared that they felt more confident in the transfer process. Students feeling supported was the main goal of this project for the PTK team, and students were appreciative of their efforts to assist while they navigated through the pandemic. 

Part of the project was a reflection of the PTK team as leaders and how the team felt about their contribution to the College; everyone involved was very satisfied with their experience because they helped their community feel safer during hard times. The reflection included how the team created the project idea, along with the plan, execution and impact it would have on their community as well as how much they learned along the way.  The PTK team’s hard work resulted in having their 2020 College Project published in the PTK International Journal called Change Makers. You can read the article here. In addition, the team’s project was placed in the Top 15 out of 1,200 Chapters, internationally. 

The PTK team is currently engaged in another College Project. This year's project is in collaboration with Cañada Financial Aid Office, where they are designing student-to-student outreach to increase the rate of Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applications at Cañada College. The goal is for more students to complete the application and take advantage of the financial assistance available to community college students.