CHANCELLOR’S C-DIRECT
May 11, 2016
Dear Colleagues:
There are just a few weeks left in the academic year. Much work is being done to boost
our enrollment as we prepare for a flat budget. We are also making efforts to capture
noncredit enrollment, using an enrollment increase anticipated in the budget. As I have
advocated several times, we owe it to our students, and to each other, to find additional
sources of revenue to meet the critical needs of both our students and faculty, in terms
of support and success. It has become clear, for example, that we must fund mental
health services for our students to help them be productive, and to provide an
environment more conducive to learning.
We are happy that two of the three Unions have settled their Contracts with the District
for the coming year. The teams negotiating the PFT-PCCD contract are working hard to
finish before the end of the academic year.
Baseball Champs
After winning their league division, our Laney Eagles baseball team fought hard against
Chabot College. They played their strong hearts out, but scored fewer runs than Chabot.
I was able to throw out the first pitch at the first game. I thought I would be nervous
leading up to the moment; I had so much going on, I literally ran to the field from my
office and onto the mound. As a result, I threw a strike right down the middle – not bad
for a first pitch ever! I attended 4-5 innings of the second game. Our Team battled pretty
hard, but Chabot kept hitting the ball where we could not catch it. They were leading by
5 runs when I had to leave to prepare for the Gala. Tina will be hosting the Team at our
house to celebrate their success this season.
Laney Biomanufacturing Program in the News
I received this fascinating email
from Douglas Bruce,
Biomanufacturing Instructor at
Laney College:
I wanted to share a recent success
for
the
Laney
College
Biomanufacturing Program. We
have been working with a local
startup called Ardra Bio, which is
developing a bio-based specialty
chemical used in the cosmetic, pharmaceutical and food industries. The goal is to replace
fossil fuel derived versions of this chemical using cells to manufacture the product.
The company wrote about us in their latest newsletter and all the great work our students
are doing. It has been an amazing experience for the four students involved. Also, I am in
discussions with another startup that wants to partner with us. Along with our continued
track record of placements in the biotech industry (we just hit 100 placements over the last
three and a half years!), it is an exciting time for biomanufacturing at Laney College.
Congratulations to Doug and his students. You can read the article here:
http://us13.campaign-archive2.com/?u=8a0bcd864d87da746a0710fc3&id=b56c41d0f8&e=42c3306a6d
Alameda Health System Gala
Thanks to our attorney, Ericka Curls-Bartling, Suzanne Kunkel and I were invited to
attend the 26th Annual Gala of the Alameda Health System, in Pleasanton. I was invited
to two other events, including our Hall of Fame event, but chose the Alameda one this
time around. The Gala afforded a great opportunity to network and help move us in the
right direction.
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One reason I wanted to attend the event was that I knew that Elñora Tena Webb,
Executive VC for Strategic Partnership and Advancement, was a member of the Alameda
Health System Foundation Board. I did not know, however, that Interim VP of Student
Services at BCC, Dr. Josefina Castillo Baltonado, is the Chair of the Foundation Board.
Josie, as we call her, represented us very well and made sure that everybody knew I was
there with my wife, Tina. In looking at the event and the mission of the Health System,
and especially of Highland Hospital, I could only imagine Peralta Colleges with a similar
foundation to tout the greatness of our faculty/administrators, students, staff and
Trustees. In less than a year, the Alameda Health Foundation has raised $23 million. In
contrast, we need not raise that much to establish a strong endowment for our Colleges.
Our aim should be to support the efforts Dr. Webb will undertake in the next couple of
years, believe in ourselves, focus less on what divides us, exploit what unites us
(students and our community), not being afraid to support progress and not being
afraid to take on the task. Supporting Dr. Webb’s efforts are the small steps that will get
us to a high level of recognition by our community.
I believe that it is absolutely unconscionable for our community to not have a state-ofthe-art and highly functioning first responder set of programs: Emergency Medical
Services, Emergency Medical Technician and Paramedic and Fire Technology. Much
smaller communities, where there exists a community college, have them, and they
serve their communities well, e.g., Duluth, MN (population 86,000) and Reno, NV
(population 233,294). At the Alameda Health Foundation event I met the Fire Chief of
Oakland, Teresa Reed. She shared with me how desperately they need trained first
responders. My goal is to bring together all the Chiefs of our local communities to
ensure that we serve their needs. This should be part of our Social Justice Leadership
Institute that works hard to elevate the living standards of many in our society who
struggle to participate in our economy. The first responder jobs are usually a great start
and life transforming.
I also met at the event: The CEO of the Alameda Health System, Delvecchio Finley; the
Public Relations VP; Terry Lightfoot; Board President Michele Lawrence (Josie
introduced me to her and to Mr. Finley); and Teresa Reed, mentioned above. According
to Nursing Director Dawn Williams, as Highland became a magnet hospital, someone
from the administration shared that our nursing students were no longer welcome, nor
would Highland hire our nursing graduates. From my recollection, a call was made to
one of the county supervisors, and the issue was probably passed down, without
further investigation. The consequence was that for two years or more, our nursing
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students have lost access to their community hospitals paid by taxpayers in Oakland,
Berkeley, Piedmont, Emeryville, Albany and Alameda (plus the rest of the county).
When I learned about this, I was determined to have productive conversations to make
sure we find the right balance to bring our students back to the hospitals, both as
learners and practitioners.
The administrators I met have committed to work with us on the issue. As you will
recall, when we talked about the Laney Garden, I suggested to some of my colleagues
that we not fight to keep the garden, but instead hold productive dialogues and end up
with solutions we never expected. We are approaching Highland in the same way, so
that we end up with greater solutions than if we start a fight with them. As I get older, I
am realizing that when you fight, you are stressing your mental capacity. I am more
aware that when we sit around the brotherhood and sisterhood table, we can relax and
make good decisions and work out differences, if people are willing to do so. I believe
that Highland and PCCD want to do just that. I look forward to reporting great results to
you.
Wow! The gala was a fun event for me and a wonderful opportunity to expand PCCD
partnerships with the community.
eTranscript California Coming to Peralta
I received this good news from the eTranscript California Steering Committee:
Congratulations! Peralta District Colleges (Berkeley, College of Alameda, Laney, and Merritt
Colleges) have completed their testing phase and are NOW live on eTranscript California. All
colleges are NOW Sending and Receiving electronic transcripts through eTranscript
California. Please add all colleges to your list of eTranscript California trading partners for
electronic transcript exchange.
If your college also uses Credentials Solutions (as does all Peralta district colleges) for
processing through eTranscript California, please make sure that Credentials includes all
colleges within their tables for delivering transcripts to the colleges via eTranscript
California. For a complete list of colleges visit the website http://etranscriptca.org/collegesonline.
eTranscriptCA has over 120 participating members and has processed more than 848,000
Live Transcripts!
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Adela Esquivel-Swinson, our Associate Vice Chancellor, Student Services &
Registrar, added:
I would like to emphasize that by joining eTranscript California our network has expanded
so that students can send transcripts. The sending and receiving of transcripts is very quick
it takes minutes to send/receive an electronic transcript. This was a project that took very
long to complete but we are very happy that we finally accomplish it.
This is indeed good news and thanks to everyone who made it happen.
Peralta Colleges Foundation Golf Tournament
The Foundation held its golf tournament on Monday. Present as ever, Governing Board
President Riley was on board to salute everyone and spearhead the activities, as was
Trustee Handy. Several staff members lent a hand to make the program successful,
including Jennifer Seibert who helps the Foundation with sponsorship. At the last
tournament, we had former BCC President Budd playing. This semester, we had David
Yang and retired Budget Director Susan Rinne. Although he did not play, Student
Trustee Adrian Abuyen was on hand to greet the golfers. I hope that when the next
tournament comes around, more faculty and staff will take part. When Foundation
Executive Director Kevin Kosik calls on you, please respond. I have been there for two
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tournaments, but did not stay for the day. I pledged to Dr. Riley that I will be there all
day next time, especially to encourage our donors. Who knows, maybe they will support
a gala for us similar to the Alameda Health System’s gala. Please join me in the next
tournament, even if you do not golf. We can all hang around together and enjoy the
day’s activities.
PAAAA Student Recognition
It was great to see many faculty and staff
honoring the scholarship recipients from
PAAAA on Friday. This was PAAAA’s
eighteenth year of recognizing students.
Kudos to all faculty and staff who support
the goals of the organizations. Eight
scholarships of $500 were awarded to the
students.
EMT and Fire Discussions
Several Merritt administrators joined new Merritt VPI, Jeff Lamb, and President
Ambriz-Galaviz to discuss, with Wellington Jackson and Sean Gasciè, the future of the
EMT and Fire programs. Though most of the time was spent on EMT, we touched on
Fire and have a real predicament with the program being shorter in hours than what it
should be. Both Mr. Jackson and Mr. Gasciè are part-time faculty. At the meeting, what I
realized is that we need to provide much stronger support for our part-time faculty to
work out the details and the intricacies of academia.
In the case of the two part-time faculty, they are experts in their fields, but they are not
experts in the processes and the bureaucratic means we use to set up a program. They
have reached out to colleagues to help them, but on the campuses we need stronger
support from other faculty, as well as academic administrators, to increase support.
This task is an important charge for each College Academic Senate, as well as the
District Academic Senate and the group of deans and Vice Presidents. My hope is that
we will become successful soon to hire full-time faculty in these programs.
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Year Up
Year Up is an organization that helps young
people with internships in the area of
Information Technology. It focuses on those
who are not traditionally involved in the
industry. It is a year-long program where
the students are provided training and
orientation for six months, followed by internships in the industry for another six
months. Year Up started in Boston as part of a Harvard Business School student project
and has been in existence for over ten years. The program partners with a few
community colleges around the nation. Locally, their partner is Foothill College in the
Foothill-De Anza District. They would like to expand into the East Bay, and are seeking a
partnership. The leaders at Year Up were referred to us by Lisa Lee, Director of
Diversity and Inclusion at Pandora, where we visited a couple of months ago. Marques
Cook and Emily Schaffer, who met with us, will follow up after looking at what we have
to offer as IT curriculum. If you want to learn more about Year Up, its website is
www.yearup.org.
Meetings with Meryl Siegal, Sui Song and Tamika Brown
Last week I had the opportunity to visit with three colleagues: Meryl Siegal, Sui Song,
and Tamika Brown. Dr. Siegal was offered a Fulbright, which she turned down, but will
be going to Japan to study and observe, firsthand, second language acquisition. We had
a good conversation about professional development for teachers of ESL and the
creation of a potential certificate in the area that could be part of a Workforce
Development and Continuing Education program. It was our first ever meeting, and I
was very impressed with her background and depth of understanding of what we can
do as a District. Our exposure to innovation being done in Japan helped us both
understand the potential of what we can do here on a grand scale.
Sui Song is the Executive Administrative Assistant for the Vice Chancellor of Finance.
She was interim director of Budget for two years. I was simply curious about her
background and was pleased to discover that, not only does she have a Bachelor’s
degree from UC-Davis, she has also completed her MBA at Mills College. As we
sometimes struggle to find highly educated people to fill some of our positions, it is
good to know about the gems we have among us (such as Nestor Alvarado, our
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groundskeeper, who is a poet and holds a Master’s Degree in History). Back to Sui: We
discussed some steps she could take to be ready to serve and use her knowledge when
the call comes. I drafted her into our upcoming Management and Leadership
Development Academy (more about the Academy later). When we can utilize highly
educated colleagues from within the District and help them develop – to step up – we
can have fewer vacancies and more employees committed to having their careers at
Peralta.
Dr. Tamika Brown is a member of the Ethnic Studies faculty at Laney and cocoordinator of Equity. Little did I know that she is also a trained professional in Student
Affairs. Although there are various routes to get into Student Services. Student
Personnel and Student Services is a discipline like other disciplines. She is trained in
that area and enjoys her involvement in instruction as well. We discussed some of the
challenges we have in Student Services. She has played the role of staff member in
Enrollment Management before. She is willing to allow us to use her expertise to serve
our District.
Management and Leadership Development Academy
As I promised in my first speech to the District on August 20, we are offering an
academy to do two things: 1) Strengthen and develop our current managers; and 2)
Develop future managers and leaders. The goal is to have interactive and practical
sessions for our managers and prospective managers.
The selection process includes current managers/leaders, with priority given to
managers recommended by their supervisors. Managers may also nominate themselves
and others may nominate managers. The tentative schedule is June 1-3, 2016, from 8:30
a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
For Faculty and staff, the priority will be on current faculty and staff being promoted to
management. Faculty and staff with degrees in management, and who desire to be
promoted and serve as interims, can also attend, with others nominated by supervisors
or via self-nomination. These sessions will be June 1-3, 2016, from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m.
There will also be summer continuation sessions on July 7, July 14, July 21 and July 28,
from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m., as well as “Fifth Fridays” sessions September 30, 8:00 to 11:00
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a.m., March 31, 2017, 8:00 to 11:00, and June 30, 2017, from 8:00 to noon. These
sessions will be designed to continue our training efforts.
East Bay Community Foundation
Mr. James Head is the President and CEO of
the East Bay Community Foundation. I
reached out to him to seek partnerships in
helping PCCD leverage some major funding to
help to increase achievement and to establish
the Social Justice Leadership Institute. One of
the basic functions of the Institute will be to
help students make it through college, in
instances when lack of a small amount of
money at the beginning or toward the end of
the semester may prevent them from getting there. Furthermore, it will serve as a
resource for those who fall between the gaps, because none of our established
programs can catch them. Like Mr. Jameson and Mr. Mao’s program, there are many
other community-based organizations we will partner with to assist our citizens and
our youth.
Meeting with BART and Mayor Bates
There is a parking mitigation fund that was set up as part of an agreement between the
City of Berkeley and PCCD concerning the construction of Berkeley City College. A
parking garage is about to be built, and the Mayor was interested in discussing with us
whether these funds could be used for two purposes: To reduce payments for 70 or 80
parking spaces, or for a reduced BART fare for BCC students.
This agreement generated a meeting with BART and the Mayor, attended also by
Interim BCC President, Dr. White, Dr. Webb, and Dr. Crawford. The BART employees
who were there with us shared information about a joint project BART is doing with
San Francisco State University. The results of the student surveys we conducted showed
a lot of interest in pursuing this opportunity. We have invited BART representatives to
attend a meeting of the PCCD Student Council this week, in order to hear from the
students and to share what is being done with San Francisco State.
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Following the meeting with BART, Berkeley Superintendent of Schools, Donald Evans,
joined us to discuss the Berkeley Promise. A staff member from the Mayor’s office is
assigned the task of bringing stakeholders together. There seems to be a well-organized
group taking on the project with BCC, but made it hard to invite other cities to join
Berkeley. PCCD will need to dialog with Emeryville and Albany in order to explore what
we can do together for their students in regard to a Promise. The same is true for
Piedmont.
Chris Iglesias
Mr. Iglesias is the CEO of the Unity Council. Trustee Handy connected us and we had a
very good conversation. Currently, according to Mr. Iglesias, Merritt College has a
presence in the Fruitvale District. However, the program has not grown nor is it tightly
connected with the stakeholders in the area. He will put together a proposal for us to
review with the Presidents and explore what we can do to provide greater access and
success for residents of the Fruitvale.
Foster Youth Partnership
I met with Robert Jameson and Sokham Mao. They
have been part of a movement that has elevated the
success of foster youth. They are interested in
helping us with our population. We are awaiting a
formal proposal from them to present to the College
Presidents to see what we can do together.
WIOA Meeting
The Federal Government changed the name of the Workforce Investment Board to the
Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act. There are several of these organizations in
our region, including one in the City of Oakland. I was appointed to the Board of
Directors by Mayor Libby Schaaf. We had our first meeting last week, which served as
an orientation. The organization will fund training programs for Oakland residents.
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Commencement Dates
We look forward to your participation in as many of them as possible:
May 21
African-American Graduation
May 25
Merritt College Graduation
May 26
BCC Graduation
May 27
COA Graduation
May 28
Laney College Graduation
BCC Presidential Finalists
Finalists’ interviews will take place on May 18, and will consist of an interview with me,
meetings with constituents and an open forum for the College community. All the
events will take place at Berkeley City College. These individuals have been vetted
thoroughly, pending the reaction of the College. We should have a recommendation for
hire at the June Board of Trustees meeting. More information on the times of the forums
and the candidates will be forthcoming
Jowel C. Laguerre, Ph.D.
Chancellor
In honor of Mother’s Day!
“Mama was my greatest teacher, a teacher of compassion, love and fearlessness. If love is
sweet as a flower, then my mother is that sweet flower of love.”
- Stevie Wonder
“All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother.”
- Abraham Lincoln
“God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers.”
- Rudyard Kipling
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