Mary Rees: Good afternoon. We'll just take a minute here while we wait, while more people are coming in and joining us.
Good afternoon. We're gonna wait just another minute while we wait for everyone to join us for our campus update.
We appreciate everyone joining us for our January 25 Moorpark College Update. Just as a reminder that the update is being recorded.
And it is closed captioned. If you are interested in seeing the closed captioning please click at the bottom under the cc. The recorded updates will be captioned and will be posted on the president's website so it will be available for everyone.
So we do. Thank you for joining us. Good morning, or I should say good afternoon Julius.
Julius Sokenu: Hi Mary. Hi, everyone. We have a very full agenda today. So we're digging right into it.
I know there's been lots and lots of questions regarding fall 2021 and just as earlier this morning, the governor, removed the stay at home order
for the state and citing improving numbers, which is fascinating way of expressing it, but given the fact that we still have we live in a county where we have less than 15%
hospital bed availability, we're not seeing the improving numbers in Ventura County right now, but nevertheless
the governor has lifted the stay at home order.
We live in Ventura County. We're still in the purple zone and thus we're still working and abiding by the
guidelines and the protocols of purple zone, which means that only essential workers are required to be on campus and that we're doing our very best to make sure that we are
limiting the number of folks who are on campus. Questions about fall 2021. As you probably saw if you haven't the chancellor
was featured on the front page article of the Ventura County Star this morning and he expressed that the college district's goal is to bring more people back on campus and up to 50%
of our offerings back on campus by the fall. And so we are working and I thank most of you who are, those of you who are building schedules for the fall that I know that
we're trying our very best to build schedules that will accommodate that. That's a goal. The 50%
is a goal, and we hope to work towards that. To make sure that we are reach that goal we will need more faculty
who will be available to teach on ground and we also need or we will probably need more staff to support that as we do that work.
We have targeted and Mary will probably will talk to you about this some more,
if there are questions, we've targeted certain disciplines, where we see the students are struggling and it's hard for them to succeed. And the goal is to really increase on ground
presence in those disciplines and increasing on ground presence by looking at more dynamic offerings with in person on ground as well as high flex or hybrid options. So please, if you are
in one of those disciplines Math, for example, please do do seriously consider coming to deliver classes on ground in the fall.
As you all know, the vaccines is out, but it is difficult for us to get access to them. There's been challenges and logistical challenges in terms of distribution of the vaccine. Our county's no, no different than most across the country, trying to
better expand access to the vaccines. We are in phase 1B,
tier 1 phase 1B of that vaccine distribution. Thank you so much for
adding that link in the chat. That will tell you what phase 1B and who's in phase 1B, the education sector, which includes us faculty, staff, not, not necessarily students, but faculty, staff in the education sector and so they will be
in line to vaccinate and to get immunized during that time period when we are in phase 1B tier 1.
We have volunteered as a site for vaccination. We volunteered through the State Chancellor's office and Chancellor Gillespie has also shared with the
Ventura County Public Health that Moorpark College as well as Oxnard and Ventura would like to the vaccination sites and with that comes the
the benefit I guess as a way to look at it, of our faculty and staff and we hope that you know we'll get some more clarification on students,
but definitely our faculty and our staff can get vaccinated when the, when the county is in tier 1 phase 1B and if you look through that link and we'll see who falls into that category. And you will see how that one works out. In terms of
the work that we're doing regarding
next fall, again we're preparing and getting ready for that for that semester. A lot of that will be dependent upon how many people get vaccinated and how we can then
determine what the delivery of instruction on ground will look like based on that. So if we can vaccinate all our faculty and staff,
and we can vaccinate students, then we'll be able to bring more people back on campus. If we can vaccinate our faculty and our staff and we can vaccinate all students we'll have to look at how much
how many students on campus and how we can work towards
meeting the needs of our community. Our priority right now is those disciplines that are hard to succeed and those kinds of those courses and those programs in which are we seeing a significant student
either dropouts or failure rates, trying to get those students who are struggling back on campus. In terms of supporting instruction,
faculty and the Dean's Council, Academic Senate and the Dean's Council went through faculty prioritization in November and set your recommendations.
And I responded back to the Academic Senate with my decision. We will be hiring two positions in the fall for the fall semester at this point in time.
Those two positions are the EATM. The EATM faculty position that was prioritized number one by the Academic Senate and the Dean's Council joint members.
Then the second one is the CNSE position, which was not on the priority list but
based on the need to grow that program to meet the the workforce demands and needs of our service area, particularly for short term training for folks in our service area in that sector that has high demand. I am
choosing and
authorizing approve the hire of that position over the others, and I've been on the list.
I can forward to the rest of the college my rationale for that. And you can see that very well laid out. I appreciate the work that the joint council has done and the work that the faculty and staff in the programs have done to advocate for their
with their positions. My hope is that things will get better and as we go through the spring semester, then we might be able to make more hiring decisions. But right now, those are the two that
we are going to
hire and we'll begin that process as soon as possible.
It is important for us to make sure that we encourage our students
to focus on staying in school. I ask that you please reach out to students if they are not showing up in class and check on them and make sure that they're okay.
We'll be doing, we'll be using some of our resources to reach out to those students but you faculty in particular and program leads in particular have
more access to these students then then the rest of us do. And so I will emphasize and promote that.
That you connect to those students and let them know, particularly because we're seeing an increase in fraudulent enrollments in the California Community College system.
I was just told about an hour ago that in our college district, they've identified at least 100 fraudulent enrollments and we'll get some more detail as the week
unfolds regarding where those hundred fraudulent enrollments are and how we can address them as soon as possible.
Those enrollments are estimated to cost us, which means $300,000 to $12 million dollars as a district. I think the $12 million dollars is way too high, but the $300,000 seems a bit low as well. So if students are not showing
and they enrolled in your class there may be some students who are doing this for us to collect the CARES money and we're working with our Financial Aid office to address that challenge as well but
faculty are our first line of defense in this, and I hope that you will connect with students and communicate to them.
They need to drop if they're clearly not in the not coming to the classes and if they are not seeming to be legitimate students, can you please share that with your dean or department chair. Next slide please?
I'm going to forward
the baton to Allison. Allison, please share with us Covid dashboard information.
Allison Case Barton: Alright, so this is just our, our weekly update on cases on campus and it's what you can see is that we have 12 current cases of people that are on campus and have checked in through the MyVCCCD app. That we've had 18
that have recovered. So we have, we've had a total positive cases since September 2020 of 37. So, and most of those have been over the last maybe month or so since the
Thanksgiving and the Christmas holidays. So it's just a little snapshot for you kind of to see the epidemiology of this on our campus.
We do have a couple of updates from contact tracing and the Student Health Center.
First of all, big shout out to Denise Stevens and Dina Stephen, Dina Stevens and Denise Stevenson, sorry about that, who have just been working very hard to keep our campus safe and healthy with the contact tracing.
They ask that we please, please, please be attentive to answering the questions correctly. The wording has changed a little bit of it has changed and
I think it becomes easy to just click no, no, no, no, no, down the list, but it's really important to read what they say, because
we have some students coming to campus that are symptomatic and who have ended up being positive for Covid, so just please be attentive to that.
Be careful to answer the temperature question. It changed to make it easier, but we still have people misanswering that one.
And then if you're, if you've got a positive Covid test please report that on the MyVCCCD app.
When you pull that app up that be tile for it is kind of hidden. You have to scroll over to the left a little bit to see the tile, but it's there.
You'll be asked to upload a photo or an image of your positive test. So just be aware of that and be prepared for that. And then I know that people have put the community vaccine update information
in the chat, but I just want to make sure everybody knows that they can always go to the Student Health Center website and on there one of the menu items is a,
is a link to our Covid update website and that information is on there too for LA County and for Ventura County, along with all kinds of other Covid information
too. So it's a rich source of information. It also has this dashboard on there as well. And then finally, if you have questions about this, don't, you know, try to avoid assuming that your symptoms are okay or whatever, just give the Student Health Center, a call.
805-378-1413 and we will answer your questions for you. We just want to keep everybody as safe and healthy as possible. Thanks.
Julius: Thank you. Next slide please?
Mary: Julius, we did have one question about Covid. I think there was some questions about what you were saying, as far as who could get the vaccine. I believe you were including faculty and staff?
Julius: Yes.
Mary: Thank you.
Julius: Okay, so congratulations to Nenagh. Professor Nenagh Brown, History. Professor Haleh Risdana, Theatre Arts. Professor Deanna Franke, Chemistry, and Professor Kyle Loughman, English.
Faculty members who have been approved by the Board to go on sabbatical. And you'll see the terms in which they'll be going to taking that sabbatical opportunity to
rejuvenate to develop and further build out their professional capacity and skill sets, and
come back to us and to our students with great ideas and great ways of engaging in learning. I just wanted to use this as an opportunity to congratulate Nenagh and Haleh, Deanna and Kyle. Next slide please?
Okay, so, as you know, we put out a call for a diversity, equity, and inclusion coordinator and the position that is really reassigned time
from our resources from the college president's office and the goal is to have this position, help us coordinate the work that we're doing with that social justice
effort and particularly the, excuse me, with our social justice work groups. You will see the expectations that we have set for the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Coordinator.
The coordinator reports to the Office of the President and works with our vice presidents, as well as the leads of the social justice work groups to facilitate this work to engage and involve more individuals in it and help us make sure that we're on track.
The successful candidate for this was Professor Tamarra Coleman, Tammy Coleman, who you all know, and Tammy Coleman is with us just to give you a little
I guess sort of interest in and share with you, you know, her perspective of the position and
what the position entails and how she's going to help support this effort. So, Tammy, please take it away.
Tamarra Coleman: Thank you Julius.
I'm really excited about this role and I'm grateful that the leadership team is trusting me to do this work on our campus.
Mostly I'm really excited about working with people who have already been doing this work and have an interest in social justice and ensuring that we have a campus that's inclusive,
a campus that's equitable, and a campus that
values all voices. I really want to encourage folks who maybe have who have not been involved and have wanted to get involved to reach out and
share your thoughts, your ideas about, you know, what this work is going to look like in the long term, right? And I think that's a big part of this role is not just
continuing with these small informal work groups on our campus, but really thinking about what this looks like in you know 10 years 15 years down the road and how to sustain this work on our campus.
So I encourage folks to join in the work to, again, reach out with ideas, shoot me an email, and sort of, you know, get involved. There's a lot of work to do and ultimately, it can't be done without all of our sort of support and this work and our efforts towards a
a just campus right for all of our students, faculty, staff, and administrators. So thank you, Julius and to the executive leadership team for trusting me.
Julius: Thank you Tammy for taking on this responsibility. We appreciate the energy and the focus of all of the campus stakeholders who have been involved in doing this work to date and Tammy is here to sort of serve as our champion and your champion on this work. Next slide please?
Okay, so
I will pass it on to Dr. Jennifer Clark our Vice President of Business and will share with you our business services update.
Jennifer Clark: Hi everybody, glad to be here today. I'm going to try to go as quickly as possible. We have a full agenda. So wanted to first of all update everybody on our CARES
money, our CARES funding for our students, direct aid. As you remember,
April of last year we awarded about $2.57 million dollars from CARES, one time money, federal money for student aid.
We have nearly expended those funds. Yea. We've helped a lot of students. More than 2730 students all in told that we've given emergency grants to which is wonderful.
We've expended about 85% of that allocation. So I know Kim Korinke in Financial Aid and her entire staff is very, very busy allocating the last few hundred thousand
of that award to students. We definitely expect to award, all of those this spring semester and those funds will be fully spent.
I did want to update you that there is another there's been a supplement, another federal stimulus supplement that you may or may not have heard about that was signed by the, the Feds so the,
you know, the legislature December 27, 2020. So that is referred to as it's the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund or HERF.
Some people call it the CARES supplement, CARES 2 point o (2.0), but it's another federal stimulus of one time money to help us with the pandemic and its effect. The good news, there's a couple of good news
factors or points about that other than just getting money period to help us with this is wonderful,
but it is a little bit more flexible than the CARES money that we were given previously, which is great.
There's also additional money were given more we were given or
we are going to be given, I'm sorry, allocations have been announced, but the money hasn't been, hasn't slowed yet so we're still waiting to receive the funds, but we know what that those funds are going to look like.
The feds have initially they've said that for direct student aid, we need to spend at least the same amount that we spent with our CARES, which is $2,571,000 approximately.
So we will be getting that again for students for emergency aid for the next year.
Additionally, we will receive institutional funding in excess of the CARES funding that we received previously.
Previous we got also 2.571 million for our institution to help the institution deal with the effects of the pandemic.
This time around the feds are awarding Moorpark College almost $8 million dollars for our institution to deal with the effects of the pandemic. They've said that
the feds have given us only one year to spend it. So we're going to be putting our heads together. We've already started putting our heads together about a plan that's going to sort of not only help us deal with
today, the pandemic and, you know, at Moorpark, instruction, student services, and the like, but it's going to better set us up for future, because we know that future is going to look somewhat different than perhaps it has done in the past, so.
A couple other announcements that I have, I wanted to just let everybody know that we did receive, we've purchased some hot spots for students
from the CARES money. Those hot spots have already started to be allocated to students. If you know of any students that
are in need of a hot spot, don't have internet access, etc, please have them contact Linda Resendiz.
She is the first stop, if you will, in the approval process. At the end, the library. The library is actually the
the hub and will actually be giving out the hot spots, or is giving up the hot spots to students but Linda Resendiz is the beginning of the process. So please contact her.
I wanted to address the Cal/ OSHA training that is mandatory for all, all employees. Again mandatory for all employees, faculty and staff
whether or not you are on campus regularly, or whether or not you are on campus, you know,
a day here in a day there to pick up your mail, whatever. If you're going to be coming on the campus or you do,
you need to be taking this training. If you haven't received the notification from your supervisor yet, no need to worry.
I will be as well, sending out a notification from Cynthia Osuna. So look for something from Cynthia Osuna, probably later today sent on my behalf to all employees with instructions. So there'll be a link to where you go.
Who to send the certification to when you're done. All of that will be included in the email.
It takes about 20 minutes to complete. I've already done it. Pretty simple, pretty easy to follow.
And that's really it. I wanted to just also just to shout out to the people who are, will be coming onto campus. Please, please, please, please remember to
let your dean or request from your supervisor or your dean at least 24 hours in advance, give us a good business day to
to get you on the list and notify police and fisc, no not Fiscal, FM & O for cleaning, etc. and so on. Again for contact tracing purposes. It's super, super important that we know
who is coming on a campus, who's been on campus in the event, there's any kind of exposure. We want to know who's been on campus. So thank you very, very much. Thanks, Mary.
Mary: Jennifer, a question for perhaps you or for Julius at the Board meeting, there was a money set aside for faculties
and staff, I believe?
$500?
Jennifer: Yes, so sort of a type of stipend, if you will. I don't know if that's really the proper terminology, did you want to address that Doctor Sokenu?
Julius: Yes. The Board approved $500 for Covid related expenses for faculty, staff, and administrators, and you should be seeing that $500 in your paycheck in February.
So at the moment the process is making sure that the checks. Well, the deposits are remitted to the individuals and then you will see them in your paycheck in February.
Mary: Thank you very much.
As Jennifer was mentioning, there's an OSHA training that she's going to send the email out the link out too. Again I've taken it as well. It's very straightforward just reminds us
about best practices as far as social distancing, how Covid gets transmitted, and how we can work to
keep everyone as safe as possible, because clearly, that is our is our goal. I'm hoping you're having a good start to the semester.
Even with the power, and the winds, and now the rains, but thank you for everyone's effort in keeping, you know, our students moving forward on their educational path.
There's been a lot of conversation about using our app. Hopefully everyone is already done that, where you've taken your cell phone and you've downloaded the VCCCD app.
That will allow you to do a pre screening at home before you come on campus, and as Allison asked you, please be attentive to the questions. Don't just,
don't just go through it too quickly.
The second is make sure that you screen when you come on campus, that you go to one of our screening areas.
And then third, once you're on campus, be sure and scan in the QR codes. So that for contract tracing, we can identify
where you've been so that we would know who to notify in case there is any problem. There's going to be another component to it, not only if you are positive, how to
put that into the the app as well, but in addition, once we do get vaccinated we'll be able to upload that into the app as well. So
this is going to be really helpful to not only help us with the screening, for monitoring where people are going on campus for contact tracing,
for identifying if someone is positive, how to do contact tracing for those people, and then for helping us track for the vaccination. So I do make sure that you're utilizing that
as we can.
The...
Julius mentioned about about fall and I think it's going to be really important for us to be always
keeping safety and students, those are our two big words, you know, here at Moorpark College. We want to be moving as safely as we can and providing alternatives for our students.
We do recognize that some students are struggling in our current systems and we want to provide whatever opportunity we can to help them. Additionally, high flex classes, additional online labs, additional classes on ground I should have said on ground labs, on ground classes
following all safety requirements and any social distancing
is our goal. In the list of courses we are going to indicate whether it's a synchronous or asynchronous, so students can search and select the pedagogy that works best for them.
And we want to make sure that we have a lot of alternatives, both for the faculty and for the students so that we can match the ideal pedagogy for them. So please
work with your colleagues, work with your deans to try to figure out what we can do to help keep our students moving forward successfully in their classes.
One of the things we can do is the we used to call it early alert back in a couple of iterations ago, but Starfish is a software now that provides us some real advancement to the old idea of early alert.
It allows faculty at this point, or anytime throughout the semester to
notify that your student is having trouble and bring in resources to help the students. So when you get the early alert notice or the Starfish notices faculty,
please look through your students that could use extra help when you sign them up for that
or indicate that they could use extra help, the notice goes to bring in a whole group, brings in coaches, brings in
counselors, brings in the tutoring. So it's not just going nowhere. It's going to a whole group of people that can come in and help support your students.
So I do hope you'll look at that and we're going to have additional trainings on ways that we can use this Starfish software to really maximize our support for our students.
Amanuel. Do you have some guidelines or some updates for us as well?
Amanuel Gebru: Yes, Mary. Thank you. Good afternoon, everybody.
Just a few updates and reminders in terms of how we can continue supporting our students.
We've had several raider registrations the last couple of weeks. And I want to thank our student support team for doing a phenomenal job of helping transition all of our students to the spring semester.
And we will continue doing those throughout the semester, in the next couple of weeks, they happen on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. So please refer students to the Counseling department website
or the Student Support website in regards to any questions, students may have about registering for classes, needing to see a counselor, or any questions they may have for some late start classes that they need support with.
And then also wanted to say thank you to all faculty and our staff for continuing to support our students last week during a power out, power outage. And then also
thank our faculty and staff for being flexible, and also trying to work with their supervisors, or their chairs and making adjustments during the challenging time we had last week.
A few reminders, our First Year Experience and Second Year Experience will be holding spring reconnect events for both programs they will be on Wednesday, January 27.
FYE Spring Reconnect will be on Friday, January 29. If you need more information on in regards to this please work with our
FYE Supervisor Claudia Sitlington and the FYE and also Second Year program and she can assist you with any questions you may have. But the dates are January 27 and then also Friday, January 29 for our FYE and then also our Second Year Experience program.
Also another just reminder, continue to please let our students know that we have Raider Central still available to them this semester.
It's every Friday from 12:00 to 4:00 in parking lot H. So far in January 2021 they've served 57 students, distributed 83 bags of food, and assisted 208
student family members. So this is really helpful for our students, given the pandemic and given, you know,
food insecurity. So please continue to remind our students of support that they have through our Raider Central. And that is all I have. I'll pass it back to you, Mary, or the next group of people presenting.
Mary: Thank you, Amanuel truly appreciate it.
We have the Student Equity and Achievement update. Johnny can you help us on that?
Johnny Conley: Sure, Rena, did you want to
okay, great. Pulled up the slide. Good afternoon everybody hope everyone's doing well.
So we have a spotlight that we wanted to provide the campus on some of the equity work that we've been working on for the last 18 months. So some of this will be a review, some of it will be an update or some new information for the campus.
So this is a three year plan. So we're halfway in the middle of the plan. It expires June 2022. Next slide?
So prior, this is a little history. So prior to the SEA,
our SEA and Equity and Achievement Committee, which was the SSE committee oversaw three grants, the Basic Skills Grant, the Equity Grant, and triple SP grant.
And starting in 17-18 we had an integrative plan from the State of California, where we condense all three of those plans, which in the result had the SEA plan. Next slide?
So as of 8/2018 and the present day we are overseeing the Equity and Achievement Grant with approximate of $3.5 million dollars annually. Next slide?
So from the state and again, a lot of this stuff is review if you're in the SEA Committee or other
stakeholder committees, but these are the five metrics that the State of California Chancellor's Office is holding our campus to. This access essentially is outreach retention from one semester to the next,
completion of Math and English within the first year of enrollment, and completion of the vision goal, and transfer. Next slide?
So when we wrote our plan, a year and a half ago,
how inclusive Moorpark has been, we kind of had a lot of students that we wanted to include in our original plan and we had over close to 20 populations and they're disaggregated by men and women.
Just recently, before we went to break, we reintroduced this to our SEA Committee and we kind of kind of honed in and kind of drilled down on the equity
gaps in where we wanted to focus a lot of our effort in for the next 18 months of this plan.
So the committee decided that we were going to focus on these seven groups and some of them are disaggregated by male and female to really linked the dollars to staffing interventions to moving the needle with the seven groups. Next slide?
So this is a busy kind of a busy slide, but I wanted to be transparent in regards to the money and where the dollars are allocated.
Those of you that don't know, the state gives us an amount of money on a one, it's one year, it's two years of spend one allocation.
So we're typically given $3.5 million dollars to spend in two years. So you'll see in the left hand column
all of the expenditures that we spent on year one, and you can see majority of the resources are going to salaries and benefits.
And then we had a little carry forward money that will be ending this coming June 30, a little bit more than $700,000 and that is kind of budgeted again majority in salaries and benefits and those are the tutors, student workers, professional experts.
We have some adjunct counseling that happens, our overload counseling, some conferences that we're looking to have folks go to, for example, the A2MEND Conference that's coming up in March, or HACU, the Student Success conference that we typically do in October, as well.
Next slide?
So we're working currently on to SEA budgets. So the one that I just showed you in the last screen
was 19-20 money. So we spent majority of it year one, we're now wrapping up the rest of the expenditures by June,
and this allocation that began this past July 1 to June 30, 2022 all of those resources are for permanent employees. A lot of you might be a meetings with me that I say hard coded employees. So those are the permanent employees that we have on campus either counselors,
deans, directors, classified, faculty,
Institutional Research staff. So those dollars are hard coded and allocated to those and we'll find out probably the next couple of months
depending on all these other resources that are coming from the state, if there's going to be any other carry forward money that we'll have another year of life. And then this coming July 1,
we are again looking for another $3.5 million dollar allocation to the college. Next slide?
So here are some of the interventions. I know this is a tag team with Rena and I, but I kind of wanted just to kind of show you some of the great work that the college has been doing a lot of individuals
in our area that I wanted to kind of just highlight as a list. I won't go through all of them, but I just wanted to acknowledge all the great work and how we are connecting, not only the plan, but also the DI groups and how the money is working on how to close the equity gap. So next slide?
So everything that is in blue will be outlined with with Rena but I just wanted to share a list of a lot of the great work on the student support services side on how we are
really addressing access, retention, transfer, and completion.
And there's a few pictures that we have here just to kind of highlight some of the work and some of the intentional outreach and recruitment that we're doing, or just camaraderie events that we've done in the past with the international Thanksgiving celebration,
and then some of the direct aid obviously is helping a lot of our students definitely in this time. Next slide?
Here are some of the academic support and professional development that we've done. Again, everything in blue will be outlined.
But I wanted to kind of just share, you know, some of the TWMOCAs and the Veterans Center, we did a tailgate, a couple years back.
Also are highlighting some of our students from the A2MEND student charter at a conference last year that received a scholarship. This is just some ongoing great work
that we've been doing on campus in addition to some of the social justice work groups that we've been working on, some of the equity in the classroom and cultural competence that we're working on, and obviously, with
Tamarra back on while we'll be bringing all of this in and tying a lot of the work that we're doing with her in this new role. Next slide?
Some of the upcoming future projects. I've had extensive conversations with Dina, and thank you for all the work that you've done with the videos and the newsletter and so forth. So
I'm working with her to kind of have a SEA website and a logo that I want to bring to the committee to SEA Committee to kind of sign off on it,
to kind of house all of what we've been doing for the last eight months of what we're moving forward and doing. I also want to highlight the USC eConvening Race and Equity Center trainings. Some,
dome of you may have gotten emails from me about the eConvenings on a monthly basis. And we actually got one spot left over that there's a conference, there's a workshop on
hiring people of color. So we don't have any faculty that are on board. So if there's any faculty members that's on this call
or this webinar that would like to participate, let me know, so I can get that out to the other individuals so you guys can sign up for this Thursday at 1:00 to 4:00. However,
part of the USC training, we are they're conducting a campus climate survey this spring semester.
And it's a comprehensive survey that's at a national level with the frameworks that they have and we should get our final report fall 2021 to report back to the campus.
So we're excited for that. And then one thing in regards to Raider Central you'll see that all of the tents, and the branding and I want to thank Tim Lumas
and Brittany Swede, and all the volunteers that kind of helped with the turkey giveaways and all the food that we're providing our students that we're exploring maybe a food share
pantry. That is kind of similar what Ruben Castro does because these resources at some point will dry up. So we're looking at other sustainable resources to become a food pantry in collaboration with Ruben Castro to continue and have sustainable efforts to get out food to our students.
Next slide?
You'll hear after us about, you know, Black History Month, but these are some, you know, historically,
cultural events that we've had throughout the year. You'll see some stuff we've done for Veterans and Multicultural Day but you can kind of get a gist of what we offer the entire campus and
and excited for Black History Month that's coming next week. Next slide?
I promised as we wrote the plan for 19, 2019-2022 that once we were able to gather the data and evaluate some of these interventions that are written in our plan that I would go on the road,
maybe Oleg and some of his staff, and I want to thank Oleg and his staff on providing some evaluations that I would be presenting in tandem, particularly with
the IR team to show where we are, you know, are we moving the needle, are we coming up short, are we just staying mediocre. And these are four of the areas that I want to present to if there's any other groups or committees that would like that presentation,
I would welcome that, just let me know and we'll go on a virtual road to present some of that data. There's a maybe about 20 some evaluations, if I'm not mistaken, that we proceed
through the Institutional Effectiveness Department. So this will outline a lot of where our work and resources are leading us towards. Next slide?
So here I want to turn it over to Rena to finish up the presentation. Thank you.
Rena Petrello: Thank you, Johnny and I sure love hearing the young voice in the backs doing some spelling.
So hi, I'm my name is Rena Petrello I am a Math faculty member and I'm really here to sort of represent
what's formerly known as the Basic Skills Committee now called the Learning Support Advisory Committee, and I wanted to share some of the cool things that
the original pot of money Basic Skills, basic skills initiative, which is under the SEA Grant how that was spent. So here's some highlights.
We are so excited. The third floor of the library has gone through somewhat of a renovation with new furniture and technology.
The college hired architects to redesign the layout of the third floor for the purchase of the new furniture.
And as a reminder, if you haven't been up in the third floor of the library. This is where our teaching and learning center is the tutoring centers for Math and Science as well as the Writing Center.
This is the old furniture. Notice those chairs.
These are the original chairs from when the building was first built and they actually ended up being a safety hazard. Anyone deciding to lean back in their chair often found themselves on the floor because they fell over. And then you see the round tables.
So in various years, the iteration of the grant, we had $30,000 to spend so we replaced half of the chairs one year and then the next year
we replaced all the other chairs. So all the chairs on the third floor of the library are soft and comfortable and students have said that, I mean there aren't any other places on campus that I'm aware of with soft seating. So students actually come in and they stay.
Those, this picture is with the old tables around tables and so here, as this picture is from last month... we have new tables.
These tables you can see the center part of the tables have power, this has been something students are constantly asking about, "I'm studying I'm up here a long time, and my devices dying." So here we have
USB ports as well as power ports there for students. And this is a cool factor that we didn't consider when we originally purchased
the tables. These are six feet by six feet wide. So while this normally would seat eight students. We could pair this down to three or four and have socially distant tutoring and studying.
Another view.
Also we have purchased sign in stations.
Many of us didn't know or I didn't know until recently that when students get tutoring from either the Math and Science Center or the Writing Center the college earns money.
We earn FTES. So it's really important that students log in and log out and so this is going to be great. We'll have some new computers in these as well.
Oh yes I did.
Then we have 14 computer stations. This is much less than what we had before. We cleared away many of the stations. The five, five of them are brand new IMAX. ACCESS really advocated for this because IMAX have some
accessibility features that non-
Apple computers have. So that's kind of cool. That was paid for by Basic Skills money. Another view.
And then there are other ways that the money was spent.
You may have heard of AB-705 it's a new bill that basically says that we at the community college level can no longer mandate that students take prerequisite courses below the transfer level course.
So that means if a student isn't really ready for the transfer level course,
the bill really wants us to remediate them as they go, while they're taking the transfer level course.
So you can imagine this, put the English faculty and the Math faculty in a position where we really had to think outside the box. So,
one of the ways we have met the needs of the students is to create support courses that they take alongside the transfer level course. And so
here's an instance where to faculty members, Vahe Khachadoorian and Katrina Topolinski, they created workbooks for two support courses and they're beautiful.
Once more, and the grant went to pay for that work and it pays for all the printing of the workbook. So anybody
enrolling in that class, we get the workbook for free, even in the pandemic, the grant pays for the mail for the postage to send it to their homes.
The same two faculty members also created a whole many, many, many, many hours of videos, which I'm sure we're all familiar with that process nowadays.
But they were ready just in time for Covid as it turned out, and that's been really great.
Both English, the English Department and the Math Department,
created faculty lead bridge workshops. So these would be workshops that the students would take immediately prior to the course beginning. So as a quick brush up, just to, you know, give, give them the remediation just in time for them to take the class.
As it turns out, the, the math bridges were so popular a couple of years ago that we decided to institutionalize them.
So now, thanks to the grant, we were able to do all the legwork and curriculum writing and all that stuff in order to create, we actually now have eight bridges,
bridge assigned to eight different courses and now we earn FTES for that. So the grant continues to pay for itself, or however you wanna say it.
One thing the English Department and the Writing Center is especially excited about is a summer bridge for athletes.
So that was, that was an awesome experience they hope to continue when they can.
And
the grant also
paid for some faculty professional development. We were able to host a 3CSN conference on campus, which we're really proud about and that's a really awesome thing.
And that was called Growth Mindset, Growth Mindset for STEM and and then also we have the Faculty Inquiry Group FIG which is like a book club, essentially, but for for faculty members. Both of these events
are led by our wonderful colleagues that Beth Gillis-Smith and Tracy Tennenhouse.
There is so much more to say, there's so much more that this grant has done, but I just want to say thank you.
The grants have allowed the faculty and staff to innovate and create new ways to support our students and it's been an invaluable, and there have been so many deans and administrators
over this grant over the years, many are still here, many are not, but we just, we just want to thank you for your support and for supporting the students.
Mary: Wonderful information Johnny and Rena, thank you so much. Ranford, I believe Ranford and a couple of our students are going to be able to tell us a little bit about Black History Month.
Ranford Hopkins: Okay. Thank you Mary.
Ranford Hopkins here, I
teach History.
If it is February, it must be Black History Month. I wanted to provide a quick little perspective on the month.
When Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous I Have a Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August of 1963 he asked the question he begged people to judge not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their color. Some 40 odd years later,
or really 40 years earlier, Harvard trained History professor Carter G. Woodson had a dream, a goal. His goal, if White Americans if Black Americans receive a true and accurate history,
of Black people, and if we all learn the contributions that Black people have long made to the nation into the world,
then misperceptions about them as a group would change and ideally race relations in the nation would also improve. On the other hand, what happens if African American history is lost.
Woodson said this, "If a race has no history. It has no worthwhile tradition. It becomes a negligible factor in thought of the world.
And it stands in danger of being exterminated." In short, Dr. Woodson launched Negro history week in February of 1926, of course, now called,
Black History Month since 1976, and there he hoped to educate the American people in to save the race. As educators we must continue to learn and share that history.
To shine a light on the 2021 Black History Month program our Ka Ren Mac Calla, and
and Analisa Jugan, critical members of the Black History Month Planning Committee and the Black Student Union so I turn it over to them to guide us through the program. Thank you.
Ka Ren Mac Calla: Hello, my name is Ka Ren Mac Calla I am the Director of Public Affairs and marketing for BSU. The first thing I want to start with is addressing the registration link.
It'll be included in the chat. So you can look out for that. The registration, the registration link is where you can choose which webinars you want to attend.
You will submit your name and email address in the form, and then shortly thereafter, you will get a notification in your email, and then you'll have the links to
it will have one link for the webinar for all of the events that you choose to attend. You can choose to attend one, several, or all of them.
Analisa Jugan: Thank you, Ka Ren, and thank you Professor Hopkins. That was an awesome introduction to Black History Month, along with
Professor Hopkins doing a presentation on Black History Month on February 1 for our opening opening day, we also have a film that's being directed by Dina, oh, I also want to give her props she made this flyer, she did an awesome job and I do know we have
a link
to a website on Black History Month, that will also be
included in the chat and you will have access to this flyer so for any distribution.
And the, the interview. I'm really excited about, I know Ka Ren and I just the other day were working on it with Dina, and I'm really excited for you all to see it. And with that, I'll give it back to Ka Ren for the next event.
Karen: So, on February 5 from
4:00 to 6:00 the Black History trivia game knowledge bowl will be hosted by the BSU Madam Co-Advisor Banea Sumpter and the Secretary Trinity Hooper all schools within the,
you know, Ventura County District will be placed into teams and they will basically compete against each other via Cahoots. Only top scores will be counted and then all students are welcome, and if you win, you know, like first, second, and third place, I think you can went up to $200.
Analisa: Yes. So if students need incentive,
let them know.
For our next event fittingly our new DEI Coordinator. Congratulations again professor, Professor Coleman and also our other Madam Co-Advisor, of the Black Student Union Professor Tamarra Coleman will be doing a panel with Black female activists in social justice.
And I know MLK has all my respect and admiration, but Black woman have played such an instrumental role. So I'm super excited to see that panel.
Ka Ren: On February 10 from 12:00 to 1:15 pm,
Professor Lauren Snowden will be hosting a film discussion, the topic will be Remember the Titans, and the life lessons that, you know, taken from it.
Attendees should watch the film on their own prior to the discussion. There's a there was a link to the film that was listed on the flyer, so, you know, when you go in the chat and you look it up, there will be a link to it, you can be able to watch it ahead of time and
yeah.
Analisa: And then next on February 18 we have a Black Identity and Leadership panel and this is being moderated by Dr. Julius Sokenu and
BSU President Gerald Richardson the Third. So as you can see some of the speakers will be Superintendent Tony Thurmond. We also have Assembly Member Mike Gibson and Major
Aja Brown of Compton and Dr. Thomas Duncan, who is the Chief of Trauma Surgery and the Ventura County Medical Center and
to my knowledge, I know Gerald is working on getting a few other panelists or, you know, it is still developing. So I'm excited to see that. And I will get it back to Ka Ren.
Karen: Thank you and Analisa, I just have one more point about that event.
Like, you know, she said President Gerald Richardson the Third and Pauline Nassar have been working tirelessly to secure both a US Senator and a Congress person so,
kudos to them. And then on February 2 from or 22nd my bad, from 5:00 to 6:00 Professor Patty Colman will be hosting this event with a special guest.
It'll be a lecture Q&A style conversation which will cover the National Park Service and the Ballard family legacy, 170 years of making a difference in LA.
Analisa: And then we have on February 23,
Professor Hopkins and I are working on a presentation. I know he'll be
discussing the Wilmington riots and I'm excited. I'm going to be talking about black wall street and
it is kind of still developing, but we are planning to have a little trivia section with that and have gift cards as a prize. So I'm super excited to work on that or continuing to work on that with him.
Karen: So, on February 26,
we are still diligently working on a special final event with more details to come. So please be sure to sign up with the registration link and check out our web page so you can stay tuned about this special details and all the like.
Analisa: And then we have, I know, as was mentioned throughout this webinar, everyone is going through a tough time with this pandemic and there's definitely food insecurity and so we do have the Grab and Go. So we encourage faculty and staff, everyone, you know, to let students know
the fact that this is an option that this resource available to them. And we also have, again, I know I mentioned it earlier, but we do have the website link about Black History Month. So again,
this flyer will be on there along with like our mission statement and other things relating to Black History Month. And I do want to say thank you so much and give props to everyone who's been working on this, and I know Ka Ren would like to also say something as well.
Karen: You know what Analisa just said is I want to thank everyone who has just dedicated any type of time or effort into this, this next month,
it's been a work in progress, but we've done so much, put so much into it and I'm excited to see how this is all going to play out. So I hope all of you can take the time to use the link to register and see all of you there.
Mary: Fabulous offerings Ka Ren and Analisa. Thank you all so much for everyone who's been working on this. Julius, do you have any last comments for us?
Julius: I just want to say thank you for the presenters today. We've gotten some wonderful information about what
resources we have available to students and what programming
aimed at supporting student success, and most importantly, that we as a college community are doing phenomenal work, phenomenal work in celebrating our similarities and our differences, and making sure that all cultures are heard and involved in our
work. Please, please, please, be safe. Please make sure that as you do go around that you're washing your hands, staying six feet
distance, and that you are wearing your masks. We need you all to be healthy and we need you all to be here to support our students and help our community grow. Have a great week.