SITE: Scholarly Institute for Teaching Excellence

SITE's Pledge

SITE is committed to facilitating professional relationships among educators, administrators, and staff who want to make a positive change at El Camino College. In order to make this positive change, SITE believes that it is paramount for ECC's employees to be actively anti-racist, and that this positive change can only come from how we address and repair systemic racism within our institution.

SITE is committed to the continuous, consistent work of examining one's own individual blindspots, biases, privilege, and racist ideas, practices, and actions, of challenging and dismantling racist policies within our institution, and of striving to achieve racial equity. To be anti-racist is an active and ongoing endeavor.

SITE is committed to building an antiracist-driven community by supporting our Focused Learning Communities who work across disciplines, with faculty and staff, and in collaboration with existing programs to pursue inquiry-based questioning that probes at the heart of racial inequality to ignite difficult, honest, ongoing conversations; we believe these conversations about racism on our campus will facilitate meaningful scholarly research, will reflect the reality of how difficult it is to dismantle and repair systemic racism within our institution, and will lead to impactful resolutions to racist campus policies.

What is SITE?

The Scholarly Inquiry for Teaching Excellence (SITE) is a framework for educators to make productive, professional relationships that facilitate positive change at El Camino College.

SITE provides professional learning opportunities that are in line with the principles of a Guided Pathways college and organized by highly challenging learning goals, supported by educator-centered facilitators, and channeled through communities of peers.

Who is SITE?

SITE is facilitated by four core ECC faculty members from English and Math, but the SITE community is driven by ECC educators, counselors, administrators, students, and more. Learn more about each of the four SITE facilitators. Then visit our FLC page to meet our community members.

SITE Focused Learning Communities (FLCs)

Our focused learning communities are the integral part of SITE. It is because of the ongoing work that they do that allows SITE to exist and offer this unique opportunity for professional development at El Camino College.

SITE Summer Institute 2019

The SITE Summer Institute is a four-day seminar that takes place in August at El Camino College. In 2019, over 50 participants attended and were introduced to our central inquiry question of the year:

"How do we re-frame our beliefs to eliminate inequitable practices and to cultivate authentic learning?"

At the end of the seminar, participants formed focused learning communities (FLCs) in which they will participate for the academic year, 2019-2020. At the end of the year, the FLCs will share their newfound insights and research with the campus.