Mary Rees: Good afternoon. We're going to wait just a couple minutes for everyone to come join us. I hope everyone is doing well.
Everyone is so prompt. We're going to wait just another minute or so until everyone has a chance to join our group, join in the update. So it'll just another minute.
Well, good afternoon. And thank you for joining the Moorpark college campus update for July 13th. Just as a reminder that the update is being taped and it will be
loaded and put up on the website under the presidential's web page. So just after the transcripts are evaluated and edited, make sure that we've got everything correct on there.
I want to thank you and know that we do have, that the update is closed captioning. If you click the CC at the bottom of your page, you'll be able to see the closed captioning and that is available as well.
If you have questions, please type, (throat clearing) excuse me, please type them into the Q and A and we will attempt to answer them as we go along. So during the update
we have a couple of different time slots where we will try to address any questions that are particular that probably would be
needing additional conversation or will be important to a whole broad group of people. We have a really full agenda for today. We're going to start with an update from Julius, from our interim president, then some additional discussion on our social justice talk into action.
Jennifer will give us an update. Fiscally we will have a little update on where we are as far as classes for fall,
update on fall student services, and then we are continuing our highlighting of some of the fantastic work here done on campus, and we have our theater department here to do a spotlight.
It should be very exciting. We have a little time for questions and answers and then a special tribute to acknowledge a major loss here on campus. On that note, Julius, good morn-good afternoon.
Julius Sokenu: Hi everyone, and welcome, and thank you for joining us this afternoon. I hope you had a restful weekend. It was broiling here in Pasadena and I understand that there are places closer to the coast where it was actually pretty decent, so hope you'll be safe and
taking care of yourselves. We appreciate you and we,
you know, we look forward to the opportunity to be able to at some point in the near future be able to sort of celebrate and gather together again. But for now, we do this through our zoom
updates. So just to go straight into it as, as some of you are aware about almost two weeks ago now there was an incident at a protest in Simi Valley,
where it was alleged that a faculty member of Moorpark college spat on a protester, and that incident, that alleged incident, took on quite a bit of life on social media.
And a lot of concern about, you know, the values of the college. A lot of concerns about the actions of the college and the College District in response to this, and quite a bit of concern, really, that was sort of
shaped in context of people being really surprised
based on the reputation of Moorpark college and based on the reputation of our faculty, our staff, and administration that, you know, that see college as a beacon of equity and inclusiveness and they were concerned.
And so there was an email that I sent out to the college last week, and it was also posted on social media, and the email attempts to really address,
you know, some of your concerns. I know that there's quite a few people who have contacted us
from the general public as well as from our college community. I mean, really wanting to know, you know, what have we done to correct the situation as they perceive it.
And I just want to say two things. The most important thing is that we as a college try our very best to prove to support and follow our
Due Process protocols. So if an allegation, an incident is brought to our attention, you know, an investigation is conducted
at the local level, which is at the campus level. If it needs to it will be, you know, escalated to the district level, and that then involves, you know, district
processes, and then decisions are made. And in this particular situation, once we heard of the allegations, we went ahead, first of all, contacted everybody, and thank you to John Loprieno and Dina Pielaet. Thank you to the executive team
who were very swift in helping us get the message out to the folks that really kind of address the concerns that people posed. First, we were very clear that, you know, we support people's right to protest.
We are college that fosters robust dialogue and that we also support people's write to protest without violence,
and without any kind of intimidation involved in that, in that civic activity. We also were very explicit that we cannot share the proceeds
of an internal investigation, the personnel matters, we cannot share that with anyone on campus or with with the public in particular.
And particularly now that this has become a law enforcement issue that we cannot share that information. What we can speak to is values of our college. What we can speak to is how we move forward beyond this moment, and I hope that, you know, the email that was sent out addresses that.
And again, this sort of brings us back to the conversations we've been having in terms of social and racial equity and injustice,
and the work that we're doing, and the work that's come out of the serious dialogue that's happened on this college campus through our student town hall, through our faculty staff town hall. And then, as you know, you know, our athletics program also held
a discussion through zoom last week, so there is such a commitment to making sure that we are,
you know, beacons and advocates for equity and advocates for anti racism and anti hate. So we continue to do that, we continue to present ourselves and hold ourselves accountable for that.
And I think that those workshops...I know that those workshops and those conversations we've had have spurred us on to be further committed to doing this work.
So as you remember, there was four themes that we explored, could you please go to the next slide, there are four themes that we explored.
Yes, Thank you. The four things that we explored and those themes
are, the first one was really to diversify our curriculum and learn about black history and culture, but also other histories and cultures.
We are committed to, you know, to a diversity agenda and a robust one at that.
We also, the second theme was making sure that the faculty and staff and I would say administrators on campus represent racial and ethnic diversity. That's our hiring diversity initiatives.
The third theme from those conversations was leadership on racial injustice issues, and particularly students wanted to be involved in that,
and they wanted to see that the college was taking a proactive stance, not responding or reacting, being proactive.
And the fourth was culturally responsive support services so that the needs of our students and the various identities that they bring to the college, to the classroom, to our offices honored and support it.
And those four themes, as we mentioned about two weeks ago, we've continued to work on even over the summer.
And the next. So when we say what are our next steps, we're talking about the next meeting, which is next Monday, July the 20th. Our campus update will really be devoted to addressing these themes. So I ask you if you would please
identify for yourself a group to which you would like to be associated, a project on which you would like to work,
and once you identify that, please let us know. You can put your preference in chat.
You can email me, you can email Mary, you can email Amanuel, or Jennifer. You can communicate your interest to the Academic Senate President Erik, Dr. Erik Reese, or to your classified senate president Linda Resendiz. And so that way we're all getting this information and we can then populate these workgroups.
Next Monday's update we will spend that time really doing this work, we will break into small groups by theme,
and you will meet your colleagues. You will then as a group really do the work of trying to figure out what does it mean to work on
opportunities to learn about black culture and history and other cultures. What does that mean for Moorpark college?
It is out of the deliberations, it is out of the conversations that you have that the work that we will do will be defined.
You know, we've reached out to some folks who expressed interest
prior, and ask them to please help facilitate this and their question is how much work does this entail? How much are we investing in this? And the real answer to that question is, it depends. It really depends on how you as members of this work group want to
operationalize this, how you want to move this agenda forward. Next week's campus update and when you break out into small groups, this will give you an opportunity to, as a group, discuss that.
Each of these groups will have representation from each of the stakeholder groups. We will have faculty, we will have staff, we will have students, and we will have
classified professionals. They're not sharing in the sense of what we think about our governance group, but they're all kind of revolving leadership of it.
So our hope is that each of these four groups will have a faculty, a student, an administrator, and a classified, quote unquote, lead.
But those folks are going to be sharing that leadership. But we're also hoping to do, and what we plan to do is to find somebody who will be a campus wide lead for this. So if you think about our Guided Pathways initiative work,
when you think of guided pathways, well, when I think of Guided Pathways, I think of Traci Allen, because she's the person who's invested with that responsibility and she then kind of does that work in collaboration with the various
area leads. We're looking for someone who can take that on as well, who can take this on as their thing.
And then they will help us as we move this agenda forward. So the conversations next week during the MC update, which will again will be in this groups based on interest,
Will be about trying to define what you want to do with this, how you want to go about this. Bear in mind that we will have resources from the US race and ethnicities center. We will have resources
that some of you have provided us with already in terms of connections to websites, and to books, and to speakers. All of that will be at our disposal.
So again, for this to really work, we're not going to sit down and talk, we're not going to just sort of plan to write a report. Our goal is to
actually be action driven. We need to do something and build it over the course of the next year with deadlines, with outcomes, with measurements, assessments, so that we can identify our goals.
This is important in terms of how we impact the lives of our students, how we impact our own lives and in the working environments in which will find ourselves.
And you know what? Our main goal as institutions of higher education is to prepare members of our society for living together in civic harmony.
Part of that work has to address anti-hate and anti-racism work. There's no way we could do it without that. So really this is really up to you. So when folks gather together next week,
and again, please identify your interest, when folks gather together next week, whatever outcomes come from that conversation will be reported out on the 27th of July
during our MC update. So, we will have an MC update next week, but that MC update really will be addressing the social injustice issues, then we will come back to our traditional MC update on the 27th. Next slide please.
Mary: Julius, would you mind going over that one more time? I think there's a little confusion.
As to what are the four groups. And
then they have to either respond in the Q and A, not the chat, because that's... Julius: Oh, the Q and A part that's right.
Mary: Or send the email out to Amanuel, Jennifer, yourself, or I which group they would like to be in if you wouldn't mind going over that again.
Julius: Yes, so let's go back to the previous slide then. The previous slide of these four themes out here.
The first one says opportunities to learn about black history and culture and the history of others. And I see that as a diversifying the curriculum
agenda item. So this is ways in which our students said they wanted the curriculum to reflect and represent a variety of cultures, and particularly our blacks, and said we don't see our culture in your curriculum. We don't see opportunities to
relate to the curriculum in ways that are from our historical experience. That's what they've said we heard it, we were all there.
And so we we're putting a group together to address that issue.
The second issue is about faculty and staff and management hiring. It's a diversity in hiring issue.
So if you're interested in diversity hiring, if you're interested in looking at, you know, unconscious bias and the way in which we
engage the hiring process, if you're looking at how we outreach to communities so that we can bring
as much diversity as well application process, if you're looking at our hiring protocols and you're interested in being a part of revisiting that and revising that, that's the group to belong to.
The third group is a leadership on racial and social justice issues.
If you remember a couple of years ago,
President Sanchez was very engaged and interested in building a civic engagement agenda for the college and and we had the interest and the leadership of Professor Tammy Coleman
working on this and making it you know, beginning to build a partnership for doing that we are taking that work we taking that energy and focus on it and racial justice issues
so that we can be very specific. Let's not just talk by civic engagement at large. Let's focus on this issue that is of importance to our country and to our civilization and really to our world right now.
And then the fourth one is looking at culture responsive support services. So how is our tutoring. How's that counseling our admissions and records offices? How is our
Financial Aid? How all of these folks been responsive to the diversity of experiences and diversity of our student population?
How are we wherever we sit on this campus being responsive to the service and support that various kinds of students need?
And this is not just racially based need this, they may be
gender based needs. They may be language based needs, there may be students who are coming back to the institution, after having been incarcerated,
and their experience is so different than the rest of our students. How are we as members of this community, providing them culturally responsive support services?
That's what that theme is about. So those are the four themes and those are the areas in which you will choose a group to belong to and participate at next week's campus update.
My hope is that we'll get at least 10 people per group, because this is not one of those things where you just kind of sit down and talk, it's action driven and we need bodies, we need minds, we need commitment.
So our campus update schedule is as follows. Next week, we'll have social and racial justice work groups.
On the 27th we'll have a campus update just similar to this. And during that campus update there'll be a report from members of the group who met on the 20th
On August 3, there's a campus update and we'll focus on the operation plans for fall 2020. This is where we will have our depth conversation, in depth conversation about our plans for the fall. My hope is also that through our
Professional Development and Flex week activities that we'll also have training sessions that's built into that
opportunity so that everybody's ready and knows what we'll be doing when we come back, for those of us who are coming back on campus, come back to campus in the fall.
But those of us not coming back on campus and working remotely, we also know what we're doing and what the expectations are of working remotely.
On the 10th of August, we will have a campus update and social justice work groups session. I'm hoping we can break that to 30 minutes per, per group a campus update for 30 minutes and the social justice work groups for 30 minutes
we'll see how that does, but that's the plan. On the 17th, that's our first day of fall. I
It's really to be determined if we'llll have a campus update, but we'll have that setup for for kickoff conversations as needed. August 24 is our campus update again, just traditional campus update, and then we'll look at August 31st social justice racial justice work group
gathering. These are all again, things change. You know, they're, we're flexible will move things around, (cough) excuse me. But for now, here's the plan for
our upcoming campus update schedules. Um, Matt, would you go back two slides I can refer back to convocation?
Thank you. So, everyone. And as you know, we are going to be remote, for the most part in the fall, 90% of our course offerings are online about 10 or 11% on ground.
Convocation will be remote, it will be Zoom convocation so that Friday morning,
we will not be providing I know crullers and donuts and all of that, you've got to get your own donuts. But we hope that you will bring your donuts and your mug of coffee or tea or whatever else you're having that's not alcoholic,
and you can just say that you know your workstation and you can visit with us for Convocation.
You will hear more about the events for Professional Development week and Convocation. I think it's in two weeks, if I remember correctly.
That they will be presented to us. But for now, that day, we are going to close campus, close as in we're all coming to this, we're not working at our different offices at our homes,
but we are going to participate in Convocation, and so we'lll work with the supervisors, so that folks who need to modify their hours and modify the hours but on that day,
from I would say probably 8 till about 4, we are doing Convocation. It is a Friday. So we're doing Convocation. So we'll be moving our hours around so everybody can participate in Convocation.
We need your participation, this year, more than ever, because there have been lots of information coming at you. There's been lots of deliberations and that we need to have during this period and your engagement and your presence is very much required.
Okay, let's go on to the other slides. Let's if I'm missing something else. I don't think... oh yeah so
There is a series that is being sponsored by a range of organizations as Chancellor's Office,
California State University. This is a certainly a system wide
five part series called Black Minds Matter and it will have, as you see on the flyer, Michael Brown
Sr.,the father of Michael Brown, Pamela Benge, mother of Alfred Olango,
Shante Needham, sister of Sandra Bland and Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, and the series really does kind of going really good detail and looks at really sort of the movement for black and African American
justice, the movement for and the history that supports that, and it's an opportunity for us to not only engage those issues, but find strategies that will be applicable in our learning environment.
So again, this is one other resource that we have to address these issues of race and ethnicity and of social justice and anti-
anti-racism and I think it's important that if you are interested, it is a free service from what I remember, please do take part in this series, and it would count as as part of your professional development for faculty that we do and document in your
end of year reports. Um, let's see what else am I missing. Next slide.
Okay, so I'm going to transition to to Jennifer and we can address questions later, right, Mary? Okay, so I will transfer to Dr. Jennifer Clark of Vice President of Business.
Jennifer Clark: Good afternoon everybody, happy that you could all be here and join us on this beautiful Monday, I just have a few
like three updates for you, just to kind of close the loop on some stuff and bring you up to date, we have a very full agenda.
I wanted to update you on the CARES Act funding, as you know, we received about $2.7 million to assist or directly our students, we've allocated,
we allocated about $385,000 for the summer. And then the rest of the of that $2.7 million is to help our students in the fall and in the spring.
I'm very happy to to update you and let you all know that summer we are almost at our goal. We've awarded over $330,000 already to almost 600 different students.
So that's wonderful that we've been able to help so many, we are down to about our last $50,000 for summer, which is great news. We want to give all that money away.
In the fall, for fall, we've already awarded almost $190,000 to well over 200 students. And again, we're still awarding, we're still dispersing money. So this is really good news.
Regarding our campus reopening plan, I just wanted to let you know that our draft is coming together it's happening very, very fast. We've been
discussing and the various different groups, you know, what if scenarios, looking at the guidelines issued by the Chancellor's Office, issued by the draft of our own.
camp- sorry, district reopening plan sort of looking at all of those frameworks and guidelines and working within those and really trying to flesh out, what does that look like for Moorpark College? What are the
you know, when we get down to the brass tacks of reopening and having some of our folks, some of our students, you know, 10% or so,
and a few faculty and staff on campus, what is, will that look like? And then again some what if scenarios. If this happens, or if that happens, you know, what's our plan. So that's coming together very, very rapidly.
And the last thing I wanted to update you on is the budget. So I'm sure you've all heard me say this before that, you know, taxes were
that are traditionally do earlier in the year, April, etc. were delayed or deferred
to July 15 which is only two days from now. So that means that we should within the next couple of weeks or so, certainly, we will start hearing information from the state level as to how that tax collection is going and how it went.
So we'll know exactly how we're going to be impacted for the adoption budget.
Our adoption budget process kind of statewide and also ours for the district, has been delayed a month. So, we will not have an adoption budget before the board before October,
which is unusual, usually it's September, but that again is giving us more time to adjust to whatever new information comes out of the state in the next couple of weeks. So we are prepared though, we are prepared, we've looked
at our budgets, we are prepared for a 5% reduction, we're prepared for a 10% reduction and I'm very happy to say that it does not negatively impact anybody, any of our, you know, regular employees,
you know it's good, we're in good shape. We have some one time money that you all are aware of the SEFF money that's going to help us weather the storm. So, you know, Moorpark is ready for what comes from the state. Thank you.
Mary: Jennifer do want to mention about the pantry, the location for the pantry?
Jennifer: Yes, thank you. Thank you. So yes, our COVID testing site is actually being moved
variety of reasons, but the COVID testing site that's in the large parking lots at the top. I think I don't know the campus, is that A, B, C?
Is that those that, yeah there's lots at the on top. It's being moved to the lots D and E, which is right by the observatory. So that will impact the food share program. I know that's where they do, they
they drop off and or there's pickup, food pickup. So instead, the food pantry delivery will be moved down by the hockey field, I believe that is parking lot
F is it F or is it I'm trying to remember which parking lot, it is? It's right by the hockey fields, does someone know? I'll have to look, I'll have to get back to you. But it's the parking lot right by the hockey fields.
Thank you Mary. I'll put in chat when I confirm what letter that parking lot is.
Mary: In the Q&A right?
Jennifer: Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry, Q&A, thank you.
So thank you Mary I am done.
Mary: Great, thank you. Um, just real briefly, we have so many things to talk about today, but I want to just say I'm absolutely overwhelmed with the response to Julius's
call to action and everyone's I guess really call to action here, we've got all the 20 people that have already signed up.
We'll put forward a link so it makes it easier for people rather than me quickly writing these down, but it's absolutely just touching everyone's willingness and desire to call into action.
A little bit as Jennifer was mentioning about our plans for fall, as you all know, we are basically online for fall, which means that more that approximately 90% of our offerings will be completely online.
We are going to have about 10 to 11-ish percent of our classes that do have some kind of an on ground component,
at least this is our request to the district and to Public Health. We have not gotten any approvals yet, this is just our plan. We are moving forward with our plan and we will keep you appraised as we hear more.
We've been, you all have done a huge amount of work looking at from what do students needs, from the staff, from the faculty, from the support areas,
how do we meet with students need by a mixture of online and on ground?
So we're going to in future updates go through some of the processes we're setting up for when people do have come after they've gotten approval,
how do you come on campus, what are our safety processes, what is our procedures and we'll go through those in an update, so everybody knows
what we want you to know that most things are online, you will know if you are
have an on ground component because you will have reached out. No one is being forced to be on ground. These are all efforts, for example, and
an example is in the anatomy classes. They've got special software, but the faculty have requested that they be able to have students come on
for four different days to work with the cadavers, something like that. So it's something an outcomes that are needed.
EATM, the Nursing, EMT, Rad Tech all have specific requirements for an on ground component.
For the faculty, staff, and students coming on ground in the fall, there'll be very elaborate processes because safety is our number one issue.
Again, safety of our faculty, our staff, and our students, our number one issue. And we're going to move forward with a safe as we can be, and also pursuing the excellence that defines Moorpark College.
We will have a software where people will fill out their exposure, any symptoms, they'll verify that they don't have Covid, that haven't been exposed, don't have any of the
symptoms as defined by the CDC before they come on and then their cell phone will have a nice little mark on it that says you're, you know, certified and can come on campus. When you come on campus, there'll be specific
parking lots that you'll be directed to and they're either there or
near them in on the campus grounds, there'll be sites clearly marked to have your temperature checked and then that will complete your certification. We want to make sure that we're doing everything we can. We will follow, anyone on campus will be following the required PPE.
Faculty, that will be teaching will be using masks or face shields all according to CDC and our local county requirements. So we'll have more information on that coming along in future
webinars to go over that.
Just one kind of nice note, we got some additional funding for our Ames grant which reaches out and helps us provide educational, engineering
opportunities for our Hispanic students. So we have a lot of exciting things going on, and we're really trying to do it in a very measured, structured process. Amanuel?
Amanuel Gebru: Thank you Mary.
Good afternoon, everyone. I just have a few updates from some of the support services areas.
And one of the updates is from ACCESS, just want to remind you, that students should still contact ACCESS for accommodations,
and so their really willing to work with all our faculty and staff in regards to that, all meetings and services will be provided online still,
they're still answering phone calls on their main line. So continue to call them if you have questions or refer students to them.
Confidential memos are now in the form of an accessible PDF that will be emailed to instructors and I will provide you the email information where you can send that on the, on the chat.
Instructions can be found on the form as well. So if anyone has also a clear mask that makes lip reading possible and was impressed and how well it held up or how that works,
please share that information with Silva and Silva will try to buy additional masks that have a clear screen that will help you help our students be able to engage with you in terms of reading your lips when they're presenting.
Additional update from ASMC they're working to implement a digital student ID cards. Students who buy their semester or year long ID card will receive an invitation to activate a digital version
with the option of obtaining a physical card upon request.
They could still produce physical ID cards, but students should visit the link, which I'll post as well for instructions on how to request those ID cards.
So those are just basic updates in terms of information from ACCESS and our student government office.
In terms of Admissions and Records, just want to let you know that those folks are working really hard, in terms of supporting all of our incoming students. This fall semester we have 3,704 students that have applied, these are all new students and
350 have registered. So we have 354 students that we're trying to target and reach and get them registered. So there's a lot of work happening terms of our admission staff.
Dave has provided some more other detailed information that I'm hoping at another one of these meetings that he can present or his staff, on some data in terms of number of students we are serving, in terms of
degrees, in terms of summer completion, and all those things that will be helpful for you to see via PowerPoint.
In addition to that, our Outreach folks, since we usually do New Student Welcome and the purpose of that is to really have students come on campus,
and get the campus experience meet faculty and staff, go on a tour, get to know the campus before they start, since we're not able to do that we are kicking off our first virtual New Student Welcome.
And this will be from August 10 to 12 because it will be online and because of our online capability and that we can have all 3700 students all on one day,
we've set up in our Outreach team with Alejandra, Claudia and other faculty and staff who have a small group are finalizing the details, but the time will be from 9:00AM to 1:30.
This is an opportunity for students, parents, to get the same information in regards to Title IX, in regards to how to transition to being an online student,
and other critical information, also a welcome from our college president, Dr. Julius Sokenu.
So we will try to create the same type of welcoming environment, but via online. But most importantly, we are trying to get the students to understand what the transition will be like for them,
in terms of their online experience, in terms of finding out information in regards to the counseling, services that will still be available to them and all the detail that parents
and students may ask us. So we will be sending out save the day flyers to the community to the students to the parents this week,
and we hope that most of you are some of you can be involved in some capacity in terms of welcoming our new students that will be starting with us in August. So that is all I have for my area, Mary. Thank you.
Mary: Thank you. We'll go ahead to the theater and come back to questions. We've got tons of great questions as well.
Suxanne Fagan: Hi, thank you so much, Mary. My name is Suzanne Fagan, and I'm a theater instructor here at Moorpark college and
I just want to give you a little background about the theater arts department. Every semester we do a main stage show, as most of you are familiar with, and this
past year we were able to do the last days of Judas Iscariot in the fall and Romeo and Juliet in the spring, but we also every semester produce the student one acts in our smaller black box theater.
These one acts are written, directed, and acted by students, myself, or John Loprieno for the past semesters. We've been alternating who is the producer.
And I've taught at a lot of different community colleges when I was part time and none of the other colleges I worked at
allowed students the opportunity to produce their own writing. So it really is an incredible opportunity for these aspiring writers and artists.
And a lot of students prefer participating in this production because it allows them the opportunity to write, produce their writing, and have control of the artistry of their show as directors.
It's a much smaller venue, it's more intimate, more film like, and it really is what we call in our industry and actors workshop or
a Writers Workshop or an artist's workshop. And I love that, and the students love that, and we love that. And so when we were ordered to be shelter in place, right, we all went into triage mode.
And Romeo and Juliet was lucky enough to get in two or three performances and then the film department, Michael Grimes, and TN also taped it.
We were able to put that up on the YouTube. But the one acts, because we have a longer time to
fail and succeed and try different things, we weren't slated to open until May. So pretty soon after we had the shelter in place orders we had a zoom meeting.
And of course, I have my own ideas about how we can solve these problems and perform these one acts in a different way, but I definitely wanted to allow my
students and these young artists to come up with their own creative problem solving. And I thought that was really important. So when we had these zoom meetings I was
truly astounded and inspired by what these students came up with. It went beyond my expectations and I have to be honest, just thinking back about when we all went into shelter in place,
it really affected me and I'm sure it affected many of you. I didn't know it was affecting me at the time, but I was dealing with a loss.
Right, we had a loss of life. We weren't living this life anymore. We were living a different life. I was dealing with confusion, and the unknown, and depression, and
I took as many naps as I could because that was my coping mechanism.
And all while maintaining face for my students, and even my own kids. So to be able to meet with these creative students, these artists, I have to say, I can honestly say, it really did
feed my soul, and that's why I have that Stella Adler quote up there. So I encourage you, if you have not seen these one acts, and if you're tired of doom scrolling at night on your Facebook before you go to sleep at night.
Turn that off and please listen to these one acts because they are so innovative and wonderful. They've come in the form of radio shows, they've rewritten their shows a little bit to present as a podcast. Their storytelling through cartoon stills and so they're really...
you'll enjoy them. So you can go to the next slide. Thank you, Matt. So before I introduce I'm going to show you two clips and I just want to say thank you so much to
the college and the district for keeping us safe, and our interim dean at the time, Monica Garcia, who was very
supportive and trusting. And then there's this guy John Loprieno. Now I don't know if you guys know him. He's kind of shy. He stays in the theater building a lot, but he was really helpful. And then also
Matthew Spinneberg was so amazing and with helping all of us with the closed captioning, which the students ended up doing on their own.
And it was a hoop they didn't know they had to jump through. And he was so patient and so kind, and even though they were begrudgingly doing this last final step, it really showed them
how it's so important to open up your art to everyone. So the first clip I'm going to show you is from this comedy called "The Tale of Tortilla".
And these brilliant students ended up taking their one act into the Sims world. And I don't know if you know the Sims world, but it
is insane, and you can create a thousand different things, and they pooled their money together to create these castles, and these sprawling English fields, and even a dragon, which you can't really create a dragon in Sims world so they
fixed a dog to look like a dragon. And I just want to mention as well that this logo and the press release, that's all student created
with the supervision of us as the producers. So you can go ahead and go to the 40 minute clip. And in this clip, this is when nacho knight confronts Tortilla the dragon. Press play
Nacho: My name is Nacho! I am a knight. And now I must slay you in order to put wealth to name again.
Tortilla: Ironic. After eating all of Taco Bell’s inventory I was actually in the mood for a nacho.
Nacho: The dragon is the only one who gets my name right… You have got to be kidding me.
Narrator: Choose your character! Nacho versus Tortilla.
Suzanne: Okay. Well, I didn't see the clip, but maybe that was just me, but maybe we'll have...oh well there's part of the clip. Okay, well, we'll come back. Okay, great. Here we go.
Nacho: My name is Nacho! I am a knight. And now I must slay you in order to put wealth to name again.
Tortilla: [Laughter] Ironic. After eating all of Taco Bell’s inventory I was actually in the mood for a nacho.
Nacho: The dragon is the only one who gets my name right… You have got to be kidding me.
Narrator: Choose your character! Nacho versus Tortilla.
Suzanne: Alright, thank you. And then we can go to the next slide.
Super fun. So the next one I'm going to show you is
it's called "Before You Exit". And this one is a 55 second clip, and there's this thing on Tik Tok and Pinterest, if you're young and into that, where it's like aesthetics, like kid core aesthetics, or Los Angeles aesthetics. So this is kind of
more in line with that sort of a presentation. And also, I don't know if you guys listen to chill hop while you're doing your work, or
falling asleep, or studying or reading or whatever. But it also kind of has a chill hop vibe to it.
And this clip is a 50, 55 second clip, where Angie confronts her boyfriend slash ex boyfriend Ezra, and you can see that she's from and on many different planes, and the director really had a fun and unique way of presenting that, so whenever you're ready you can present that clip.
Narrator: The waitress, a few feet away from the table, began to recite Angelica's words in a simultaneous flow.
In that moment...
They were one person.
Waitress/Angelica: You don't think I know what you're doing? Making how i feel irrelevant?
I'm surprised you're not being ironic! You saw the producer talking to me.
You knew that was gonna be a BIG opportunity. For my career.
And that's when you, you... ...you interrupt us.
Come into OUR conversation and start talking about YOURSELF. Right in front of me.
Casually telling her about MY fuckups and YOUR successes. What the fuck?!
Who does that?!
Suzanne: Excellent. So, and you can go to the last clip.
So...
This is our upcoming Fall, and we are going to have a zoom meeting this Thursday for incoming and returning students just to give them a heads up about all the different
irons we have in the fire. Theater artists are known for being thrown a wrench and then doing something totally different and it still being successful. So we have a lot of different ideas for how to
do performance in this Covid world. Our main stage is we're going to do Macbeth, and we're kind of going to do a Blair witch-y sort of
project with it, where we either, you know, get together for a little bit, you know, like four days or you know 90% we're going to rehearse online and 10% will be on campus if we're allowed by the
Ventura County Public Health, and it's going to be an all female version. Definitely what we're going to
think about the different ways toxic masculinity is infiltrating government, maybe, I don't know. And then also student one acts, we will be doing.
And we're going to be filming all of this. And then the student one acts, we're going to be a
possibly a pageant wagon play, which is what they did in the medieval times, when there was a play, again, when government and religion shut down theater. Interesting.
And also for theater for young audiences we're looking at Shakespeare in the (Moor) park, which is something that I've wanted to
try to stir up. We're also looking at different things where maybe we partner up with a
senior citizen living center and do a story about somebody. Every actor partners up with an individual and,
via zoom, we create a story or a monologue for them, just really cool and innovative
things that we're trying to think of. You look at things like Hamilton on Disney plus and how that theater and that production has turned into a film, and very successfully, and we're not, you know, we understand that that's the future.
And just in the responses that I've gotten from students about, you know, these are all the irons we have in the fire.
Students have responded with, you know, "you have restored my faith in 2020", and "best news I've heard all year". So the arts and theater
are really important to my well being, and I know the students mental health and well being, as well. So thank you so much for letting me present and definitely check all of us out. Oh, I'll put the YouTube for the
student one acts, it's still up. I'll put it in the Q and A or the chat, whichever ones working. Thank you so much.
Mary: Thank you, Suzanne. We have just a couple of questions before we go into the
Celebration...
Recognition.
Julius when will people know what's going to be happening for Fall? When will be the date?
Julius: Very good question.
The plan is to have our, you know, our drafts
approvals from Ventura County Public Health hopefully in the next week. So once we get that and then we'll be able to go back and really fine tune the concrete operational plan.
And my hope is that by the 27th when we meet, that there will be an opportunity for us to share with you and give you
some rather, you know, introductory information about things like in which classes are for sure online,
which classes are for sure on ground, what programs are on campus, three days a week as opposed to the ones on campus, you know, four times over the course of the semester, that degree of knowledge. And then we'll start doing the kind of training and
preparation that's necessary by August 3rd. That's where we are right now, but we should be hearing back from Ventura County Public health
between now and next Monday we should hear back from them with the
approval for our overarching plan. So we sent them the district wide overarching plan and if they say yes to it
then we can go ahead and send them, you know, piecemeal, our individual programs for each college. But if they say yes to the overarching plan, then we're going with that
and we can just sort of do the rest, you know, as we move along. But clearly, we hope to be able to give you all of that information by July the 27th at the very latest.
Mary: Thank you, Julius. Amanuel, would you mind giving us a little bit of information about ACCESS? I think there was some questions about that, that maybe you could help us address.
Amanuel: Yes, I'm trying to post it in the in the chat. So I'll send it to Matt so he can post it for me. What's the question, Mary?
Mary: You had some information about how students where for students that wanted to sign up for ACCESS and wanted to get their student ID or get approval for their class where would they would be set for Fall.
Amanuel: Right, in terms of ACCESS, it's basically any accommodations that faculty need in terms of their students. Reach out to Silva, and then I'll try to post information in terms of how to send any information in regards to documents.
And in terms of students getting their ID cards, I'll post a link in regards to how they can get their ID cards in person. The instruction will be posted on here, but
they're able to get the ID cards they received and they would activate them digitally. So I'll post that information on the chat as well.
Mary: In the Q and A, yes. People don't have access to the chat so into the Q and A would be wonderful. Thank you, Amanuel.
Amanuel: I'll send it to Matt and see if Matt can post it for me because I'm having a hard time with the chat piece.
Mary: Perfect, thank you. Also, there were some additional questions about the pantry. So it was marked down that it was an H.
How are we going to be dealing with the refrigeration concerns and those type of concerns?
Jennifer: Well, I know that there was communication this morning between John Sinutko and Alejandro Castro, I believe.
So I don't have the information at this point, but I know that there was communication this morning over those issues. And I know that they're working them out.
Mary: Great, so we'll just provide additional information and links as they become available.
Jennifer: Yes. Mm hmm.
Mary: Fantastic, as well as we'll provide additional information about the new student orientation and parent orientation as well, Amanuel?
Amanuel: Yes, absolutely we'll be sending an email once we have everything solidified.
Mary: Fantastic.
Julius we'll turn this over to you at this point.
Julius: So many of you, I hope have had a chance, or you may have seen the email I forwarded out to the college community through Linda regarding the passing of Nick Zingo.
Nick Zingo was a faculty member in our criminal justice program, and Nick had been with our program post retirement from the Los Angeles Police Department.
He taught for us, he taught for CSUN, and we were lucky to have Nick on our faculty working with our students. Providing them the hands on experience that they so needed to be able to be
dynamic, engaged,
precise, investigators. And if anyone had the chance to experience his investigation class, they will tell you,
anyone who had that opportunity will tell you that the way in which he moved students through the process of a crime scene, the way in which he sort of explained to them the rationale behind action,
was magic. I mean, I had that opportunity a couple of times to go see him do this in the basement of the parking structure and walk students through this, and him Tim Lumas sort of just moving students into various roles.
We were lucky to have had that and that professionalism, that expertise, mentoring and nurturing our students and
our condolences to his family. I spoke with his wife on Thursday, and it was a sudden heart attack. And so it was not...he'd not been ill. He had just gone jogging with his dog the,
you know, the morning before. And so we really want to use this moment to celebrate Nick. Not his death, but his life. So, I ask that if you would please just take a moment of silence in honor of Professor Nick Zingo.
Thank you, the obituary that was sent to the college community was written by his colleagues in criminal justice. Chad Basile,
retired professor...
Goodness I'm blanking out now.
Melville, Professor Melville, and I believe it was also written by Tim, and I appreciate the work that the group used to honor their colleague,
and we are grateful to you all, and we embrace you, truly, in your loss. Okay. Um, I think that ends our, our update today unless there are other particular questions that folks have for us.
Mary: I think most of them have been answered and we'll also put any links in addition, I think this is a good note to end on huh?
Okay.
Julius: Have a great week. Everyone