William Melhado
September 17, 2026
Community college faculty need to rethink how they teach and assess students as artificial intelligence rapidly reshapes the classroom and the world, Sonya Christian, the chancellor of California Community Colleges, said Wednesday in front of an audience of technology workers at a conference in San Francisco.
“We’re trying to bring a whole system along,” Christian said in an interview after her onstage conversation at Dreamforce, Salesforce’s flagship annual conference. “Would I say we are doing a lot in this space? Yes … Could we do more? I would say yes.”
More than 2 million students are enrolled in one of 116 institutions that make up the state’s community college system. Roughly 1 in 10 undergraduates in the United States is a California community college student.