July 30, 2014
RE: LETTER OF RECOMMENDATION FOR ERIK OZOLINS
Dear Selection Committee,
I am thrilled to write this letter on behalf of Erik Ozolins for the Ron Brandolini Award for Excellence at a
Two-Year Institution. I have come to know Erik from working with him for the past six years as CoDirectors of Mt. San Jacinto College’s multi-campus Honors Enrichment Program. He is the most inspiring
leader, gifted researcher, and exceptional instructor I have ever come across in my fourteen years in the field
of education. Simply put, Erik Ozolins amazes me on a daily basis with his commitment to honors education
and service to honors students.
When Erik was appointed Honors Director in 2008, he immediately set about building on the foundation his
predecessor had left behind. One of his visions was to ensure that the leadership of the Honors Program
focused on collaboration to better serve the needs of our college’s honors students. He drew on the various
talents of the faculty, counselors, and administrators that served on the Honors Faculty Committee and
organized them into groups that addressed the curriculum, conference, and scholarship goals of the program.
He incorporated the voice of students, recognizing that they would be the most directly affected by the
decisions of the committee. He also implemented a training program for faculty teaching honors so that new
and veteran honors instructors alike could familiarize themselves with the latest developments in the
program along with opportunities for their honors students. Erik’s training program helped elevate the
quality of honors instruction but also gave faculty a chance to share their honors experiences with one
another and inspire innovation and creativity in their honors classes. Erik’s leadership has earned him the
respect of faculty, students, and administrators from around our college district and helped enhance the
reputation of the Honors Enrichment Program as a whole.
Erik’s vision of collaboration also extended to student involvement. He facilitated the creation of an Honors
Mentor Program two years ago recognizing the merits of students learning from students especially in a
program of over 200 members. Each of the inaugural team of twenty mentors was tasked with organizing an
Honors event that would promote scholarship, fellowship, or community service. Over the past two years
our mentors have brought guest speakers such as Congressman Raul Ruiz and Superior Court Judge Jorge
Hernandez to our college to talk to audiences of over 300 students about the importance of education and
service, they have held open mic nights so that musicians, poets, and artists could showcase their talent, they
have led clean-ups of local nature preserves such as the Santa Rosa Plateau in Wildomar, and they have
organized an on-campus academic conference to highlight the research honors students are doing in their
classes. Erik’s belief in collaborative leadership has empowered our honors students to create an on-campus
honors experience that transcends their classroom work and ultimately has enriched the opportunities and
experiences for our entire college district.
Additionally, Erik’s mentorship as contributed to the transfer and scholarship success of our honors students.
This year Mt. San Jacinto College was one of only three community colleges nationwide that had three Jack
Kent Cooke Undergraduate Transfer Scholarship recipients. This prestigious $30,000 multi-year award is
very competitive with only approximately 80 given out every year. We were the only college in the nation
that had three recipients in 2013 as well as three recipients in 2014. One of our college’s winners Aaron
Hansen said the following about Erik, “Since returning to college four years ago, and after a daunting fiveyear hiatus, I have been so very fortunate to have been mentored by Professor Ozolins. Those formative
years were absolutely critical to my development as a student, and it all began with Professor Ozolins'
rigorous biological anthropology class. It was during that class that Ozolins pushed me to academic heights-comparable to any top tier university. Fast forwarding a few years, it was Professor Ozolins who not only
encouraged me to apply for the most prestigious undergraduate transfer scholarship in the nation, the Jack
Kent Cooke Scholarship, but he was also one of my mentors who wrote me a letter that helped me win it.
Furthermore, the JKC scholarship gave me the means to begin the next stage in my academic career at
Columbia University--one of the most renowned universities in the world. Without a doubt, Professor
Ozolins has been instrumental to my success, and I have personally witnessed his helping hand with other
students as the Honors Enrichment Program Co-Director and as a top notch professor.”
Erik’s great success as a leader, instructor, and mentor is also well recognized by our college’s
administration. When I asked the President and Superintendent of Mt. San Jacinto College if he could
comment on Erik’s contributions to the Honors Program, Roger Schultz stated, “MSJC and our students are
blessed to have someone as dedicated, talented and energetic as Erik to serve and lead our honors program
community. Erik, along with a team of committed colleagues he has assembled, has transformed not only the
honors program but the culture of the college. Our students now have higher expectations for themselves and
their futures because of his fine work in creating a scholarly community that is charged with excitement
while engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and learning. The evidence of his effectiveness is the amazing
success of our student achievements in recent years. And it is worth noting that many of these students have
come from disadvantaged backgrounds and are first generation college students making his work even more
remarkable. And to think he has done all this during one of the worst financial crisis in the history of the
state truly shows how gifted a leader Erik is.”
In addition to Honors students and the college administration, Erik is a well-respected scholar who has made
important contributions to honors education at our college. Dr. Nick Reeves, Professor of Biology told me
the following about his experience team-teaching the Honors Seminar with Erik, “During the Spring
semester of 2012 I team taught an Honors Seminar course about Sexuality and Society at our college with
Erik Ozolins. Erik has been a driving force behind the honors seminar courses at our college and it was
exciting to get the opportunity to be an instructor with him for this rich subject matter. The Honors Seminar
courses at our college are faculty driven and interdisciplinary. Any faculty member can submit a seminar
topic idea to our honors faculty committee for consideration. Erik and I chose Sexuality and Society because
the topic can has been explored by many disciplines and the findings of different disciplines create a
dynamic and multifaceted portrait of humanity. During the Honors Seminar courses instructors from several
departments on campus are invited to speak about the chosen topic. Erik has helped to develop a great
reputation for these courses and the faculty at our college feel privileged to be selected to present to our very
best honors students. For this course we chose faculty from a range of disciplines including but not limited to
foreign languages, history, political sciences, biology, and literature. As the semester progressed the students
took on an in depth research project culminating in an extensive paper and a short summary lecture. The
research projects that resulted from this course were of high enough quality to be submitted to the Honors
Transfer Council Committee for presentation at the annual Honors Transfer Council Conference at UC
Irvine. From our course, one student was selected for a presentation about the factors that lead to engaging in
a sadomasochistic relationship and her abstract was published in the conference abstract book. Clearly this
type of seminar course at the community college level is a unique and rigorous learning experience that
prepares our students extremely well for upper division course work. Moreover, this seminar topic that Erik
developed gave students and faculty the opportunity to investigate a difficult topic that is not covered by
many other courses. This chance to explore new intellectual landscapes through a scholarly lens can change
student perceptions and expand their awareness. The benefits are also not only for students but also for the
faculty. The Honors Seminar course provides our faculty with a special chance to research and share
knowledge about an area of their field that may be less well know to them. I was extremely enriched by the
variety of presentations and the chance to collaborate with more faculty at our college. Erik has helped to
create a scholarly community at our college that considers important topics in depth and from many
perspectives.”
Testimonials such as these demonstrate the enormous impact Erik has had as Mt. San Jacinto College’s
Honors Director. These contributions are on top of Erik’s leadership as a former President and Vice
President of the Honors Transfer Council of California (a committee of honors directors and counselors
representing over fifty college from across the state) and his service as the Conference Chair of the annual
HTCC Student Research Conference held at the University of Irvine that showcases honors student research
completed at their community college. He has also given presentations at the NCHC Conference and
provided ongoing support for other honors programs in Southern California. I have further articulated his
accomplishments at the state and national level in the nominee profile that accompanies this letter of
recommendation.
Personally it has been a joy working with Erik for the last six years as his Co-Director. He is a constant
source of inspiration to me in his dedication to the Program and to his students. I have learned so much from
him in terms of working with faculty and administrators and helping cultivate our students into leaders and
scholars in their own right. Based on his leadership experience at the local and state level, his commitment
to promoting honors education through academic presentations and classroom instruction, his involvement
with NCHC, the Honors Transfer Council of California, and the academic conference at the University of
California, Irvine, as well as for his phenomenal success at Mt. San Jacinto College as award-winning
instructor and Honors Director, Erik Ozolins is truly deserving of the NCHC Ron Brandolini Award for
Excellence at a Two-Year Institution. I give him my absolute highest recommendation as his colleague and
Co-Director of Honors at Mt. San Jacinto College. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any
questions or need additional information.
Sincerely,
Christina Yamanaka
Associate Professor and Department Chair, History
Co-Director, Honors Enrichment Program
Mt. San Jacinto College, San Jacinto Campus
cyamanaka@msjc.edu
951-487-3522