Chancellor’s C-DIRECT

March 30, 2016Dear Colleagues:

Welcome from spring break for most of you. Spring break marks the last part of the academic year. There will be many activities going on to bring the semester and the academic year to an end. Among the important tasks to be accomplished is the writing and gathering of evidence for our Accreditation Reports from the four Colleges; these four College Reports will incorporate the District’s responses. As you read two weeks ago, a lot of work has gone into the Reports with many people participating. Additionally, we will be graduating thousands of students and helping to make many dreams come true. Finally, during the summer over a hundred students will travel the world: Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.

Opening of the Africana Center

Dr. Siri Brown and her colleagues from the Africana Center will have a grand opening of the Center this afternoon at 5:30pm at Merritt College, Building L, Room 127. This Center features interactive software. We hope you can, not only attend the opening, but also take the time to visit the exhibits and learn a few things or two that may help enhance students’ learning. As I said before, the Africana Center team did a great job to build a Center we can be proud of.

The People’s Breakfast to Celebrate Cesar Chavez Day

During the MLK weekend, I realized that our District did not hold a commemorative program for that awesome day. Living in Vacaville at the time, I decided to celebrate at Solano, only to learn that, for 2016, the event was canceled. I mentioned that we need to do something about this and other celebrations at the

District, and not leave it for us to partake in someone else’s celebration. When I brought

the idea back to the Cabinet, President Blake agreed we should not postpone until next year what we can now do, and put together - with her team and Cabinet feedback - a breakfast to celebrate Cesar Chavez Day. I was excited to be at the College of Alameda yesterday for this celebration. Former Peralta Trustee and Oakland City Councilmember Abel Guillen was the keynote speaker for this first annual event.

The event not only had a tremendous breakfast, but featured musical selections and also featured amazing dancers from the COA Dance Department, led by Danny Nguyen. The Costa De Oro Ballet Folklorico kept everyone entertained. We were also happy to welcome Dr. Rafael Jesus Gonzalez, poet, professor and recipient of the 2013 Cesar E. Chavez Lifetime Achievement Award. Dr. Gonzalez shared the following poem in honor of Chavez:

At the End of April At the end of Aprilthe vines already green with buds,death came to the field-worker,to the caesar of the grapes dressed in blue,of the onions in white petticoats,of the apples in red vestments.

She said to him, “Come, César!”

And took him from the poisoned grapes,the watermelons, the melons full of ill,the battles of the furrows,the ambushes of the ditches,the Guadalupe standard,the red and black flag.

But in the furrowshis voice left plantedhis longing for justice — which is to say, his demandsfor bread for the hungry,healing for the sick,books for the innocent.

His voice will bear fruit and there will be rejoicing

in the furrows,

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in the ditches,round the tablesin the land.

© Rafael Jesús González 2016

We will, of course, celebrate Martin Luther King Day next year, and the Cabinet is putting together a calendar of other events. If you know of certain celebrations we should highlight, please let Dr. Crawford know.

Enrollment Management

At the last Board meeting there was a lot of discussion on enrollment management because of the pending enrollment decline. The discussion generated appropriate inquiries. Trustee Yuen subsequently asked me several questions to which I responded. If you are interested in the responses, please let me know. In the meantime, I want to share the following with you pending regular reports to the Board:

There was a session with the Presidents on enrollment during the second week of March, where we challenged ourselves to improve enrollment and NOT be discussing the same issue next year. A follow-up meeting will take place to continue the conversation.

Last October, I started conversations with Dr. Herbert Kitchen and Jeff Heyman regarding greater and more coordinated outreach strategies among the Colleges and the District to cover our attendance area schools. Some progress has been made in that area, but much is left to be done.

We conducted a marketing campaign supported by the Cabinet to reach out to non-enrolled students. The initial results were phenomenal in terms of students’ satisfaction with our reaching out to them.

In February, I met with the Deans and the Vice Presidents and shared with them the expectations we have to increase enrollment, especially with the opening we have in dual enrollment, as well as the expectations of sharing their programs within the District and collaborating throughout. This was an email I received from Dean Perlas at Alameda:

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Hi Chancellor Laguerre,

I wanted to thank you for inspiring the colleges to work collaboratively together. As a result of your speech, I have invited the CTE Programs from Laney, BCC and Merritt to participate in COA’s CTE Fair scheduled on March 15th, 2016 from 10:30a – 1pm! We already have 300 high school students RSVPd! 

Thanks again!

I shall share more with you as we must take this action further with a greater push.

Phi Theta Kappa Recognition

When I was a Vice President in Maryland and Superintendent-President at Solano, one of my greatest joys was to attend the PTK ceremonies statewide, and to learn of the outstanding students we had in the state and at my institutions. As Chancellor, I do not even know whom we have in PTK at Peralta, nor when PTK events take place. Luckily for us, President Ambriz-Galaviz represented the District at the last PTK event in Sacramento, where Xiaokai Zheng was recognized as a Phi Theta Kappa Coca-Cola Scholar. She is a Diagnostic Medical Sonographer major at Merritt College. I am hoping the Board can recognize her at the next Board meeting, which is taking place at Merritt on April 12.

I was hopeful that we would have at least four honor society students recognized – some from each of our colleges. For students to be recognized, they need to participate in a college-based PTK program, the honor society of community college students. In the past, chapters existed at our colleges, but are now defunct. I hope to hear from anyone with information about any Chapters (or not) that may be at our institutions. Let me know, so if they don’t exist, I can encourage faculty to sponsor a chapter.

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Eco-Fest Sustainability Festival

I received the following email about our upcoming Eco Fest Sustainability Festival that I wanted to share with you:

On April 21th, 2016, the Peralta Community Colleges District will hold the annual Eco Fest Sustainability Festival on the Laney Campus by the Estuary Channel. The Festival celebrates our commitment to educating students, faculty, staff, and the community about sustainable practices of good health and all that it encompasses: exercise, food, human rights, transportation, proper care of planet earth, and more.

During the festival, our community joins together for an afternoon of great food by Laney culinary students (and this year, faculty), music and Dance (samba!), Cosmetology, CTE, and informative dialogue between exhibitors, students, faculty, staff, and the community at large to share ideas about improving the health of the community and the planet.

This year we are adding a new component to the festival: Recruitment and Transfer. We want to highlight the services that Laney provides our students. We are inviting many colleges, universities from around the state, and neighboring high schools to come and visit our campus and for students to consider becoming a member of the PCCD community. But I can’t do this without your help. I am asking for staff, student ambassadors, and faculty, to represent their programs, services, clubs, and classes in booths up on the quad and by the estuary. So join us and contribute time, your most valuable talent, to insure that our festival is once again a success.

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I have made a commitment to this cause, and we cannot continue our tradition of success without help from you, the PCCD community. I want you to bring your talent of commitment to students at PCCD College to help our numbers grow. Are you up to the challenge? It is fun event. I rely on the generous support of members of our community such as you to keep our campus as the vibrant source of education for students in the six cities that we serve.

Please read the attached flyer and form. There is no fee for our community; we need your involvement to make the recruitment and transfer process occur. Please reach out to others who are interested and can help in promoting this event. Students want to know what we have to offer.

THIS IS OUR FESTIVAL! THIS IS YOUR FESTIVAL!

PLEASE CONTACT CHANDEVY ENG FOR INFORMATION ABOUT SIGNING UP FOR THE FESTIVAL. IT IS FREE TO FACULTY AND STAFF WHO WISH TO PARTICIPATE AND HAVE AN INFORMATION OR PRESENTATION BOOTH.

Thank you,Pinar Alscher, Chemistry Department

Meeting with the Port of Oakland

Dr. Crawford and I met over the phone with Amy Tharpe, Manager for Social Responsibility for the Port. We scheduled a meeting for the middle of April. During the phone conversation, we determined exactly who from the Port will attend the April meeting, as well as the different positions and individuals we need from our Colleges to be in attendance. From the Port, the attendees will include the managers responsible for Maritime, Aviation and Logistics.

The purpose of this meeting is to develop a framework for meeting with the employers, not only to listen to them, but also to have a ready list of what Peralta is able to do for them. The Port managers will help us pick from a menu of what we offer to support their employees. The needs may sound technical, but they involve all kinds of skills, from CIS to marketing and accounting. The meeting is tentatively scheduled for April 18th at 9 a.m. in the District Office, Chancellor’s Conference Room. Please let Dr. Crawford know if you would like to be there, and if you are interested in establishing connections with the Port. This is a critical meeting for us as we begin to forge a good relationship with the Port of Oakland.

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Jowel C. Laguerre, Ph.D.Chancellor

In recognition of Cesar Chavez Day, here are some quotes fro him:

"Students must have initiative; they should not be mere imitators. They must learn to think and act for themselves - and be free."

"From the depth of need and despair, people can work together, can organize themselves to solve their own problems and fill their own needs with dignity and strength."

"We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about progress and prosperity for our community... Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of

others, for their sakes and for our own."

"Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot uneducate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. You cannot oppress the

people who are not afraid anymore. We have seen the future, and the future is ours."

"Preservation of one's own culture does not require contempt or disrespect for other cultures."

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