WHCCD Risk Management Committee:

 The WHCCD Risk Management Committee for the North District Center has began meeting to coordinate a formal table top drill for the center and its child development center.   

The first meeting was held on Nov. 9th, attendees included representatives from the City of Firebaugh, the local police and fire departments, representatives from the City of Mendota and West Hills’ employees from the district office, North District Center and its CDC. West Hills and first responders with the help of the district’s consultant Ken Lake, projects manager for the Placer County Office of Education, have been planning a drill, which will allow all segments to test their emergency response plan. Staff training began on Friday, Dec. 14th for the NDC and Firebaugh CDC employees for the Incident Command System (ICS), State Emergency Management System (SEMS) and National Incident Management System (NIMS) training.   

After all staff has been trained and the drills have all been completed, the committee will begin to revise the Emergency Response Plan draft to incorporate any changes identified as a result of the drills. After college and district review of the plan is complete this plan document will then be reviewed for approval by the board of trustees. Once the plan is approved it will be implemented. The district developed a short video from the Coalinga and Lemoore MCI drill events to be used for new staff orientation, the video will introduce new staff to the district’s Emergency Response Plan and explains the ICS concept in place at the district.

The CDCs now have 150 employees, serving nearly 800 children throughout the district. The program is preparing to open its eighth child development center and anticipates its opening early February. The new program is at Tamarack Elementary School in Avenal and will provide a high quality preschool program to 24 four-year old children. With the opening of this program, we are now serving 160 children in the Avenal community.

CDC staff members have been participating in training. The program is preparing for its annual Early Intervention Conference scheduled for Mar. 29th at the Lemoore Conference Center. Many of the trainings provided to staff have been in collaboration with the California Preschool Instruction Network (CPIN) and both Kings and Fresno County Local Planning Councils. CDC staff members, in both Kings and Fresno county sites, are able to earn stipends offered by their local planning councils for workshops/trainings they attend and working toward their educational goals.

Three staff members, Conne Cleveland (site supervisor, Coalinga), Nancy Jeffcoach (site supervisor, Lemoore), and Lorri Redding (master teacher and infant/toddler education coordinator) are completing the remainder of the requirements to receive their Bachelor of Science in Child Development through California State University Fresno (CSUF) and will be graduating this May. Most CDC staff members are continuing their education through courses offered at West Hills and several staff members are enrolling in BA/BS degree programs offered through CSUF and Fresno Pacific University. All of the CDC teaching staff needs to be enrolled in coursework leading toward a BA/BS degree in order to meet the educational requirements set by the National Association for the Education of Young Children.

The board is still evaluating the merits of another bond measure. They are approaching the possibility of a bond using the option of developing Special Facilities Districts (SFD). This is different from our past efforts in that we always went out as an entire district. If the board attempts to use the SFD method, they will divide the district (for taxing purposes) into three areas. The areas would represent a Fresno County northern district, a Fresno County southern district and a Kings County district. These are the concepts under discussion and review and it is very possible changes will be reflected in the final outcome. This topic will be discussed at most of the meetings in 2008, please follow our agendas or minutes on the web for more information.

type content here

type content here

The enrollment services department is busy with fall 2007 semester year end activities.  In addition, we are preparing for the spring 2008 semester. Maria Lourenco and I will be attending a workshop in Bakersfield in March 2008 regarding new  Title  V changes. 

As rain pounded the Coalinga area this week, Farm of the Future staff and students came to the rescue of the district office staff when overflow runoff threatened to flood the office.  Thanks to Richard Larson, Jim Brixey and ag students for coming to our rescue—again!

Financial aid has had some sad farewells and great additions to our departments at both the Coalinga and Lemoore campus. At the Lemoore campus, farewells go out to Isabel Gutierrez and Fidela Byars. At the Coalinga campus, farewells go out to Melissa Richerson and Emma Santos. Isabel has pursued outside employment closely related to her major in child development, while Fidela, Emma and Melissa have advanced in positions within the district. Financial aid will definitely miss them, but we are proud of their desired accomplishments.

 

New additions to the department are, Sheila Papas, financial aid assistant, at the Coalinga campus. Sheila began her position August 2007 and Rebecca Riddle is working in a temporary position as a financial aid assistant for the Lemoore campus until permanent replacement recruitment is completed. Rebecca began her position October 2007. Dolores Smith is serving as the interim district financial aid director.  Dolores started her term July 1, 2007. If you haven’t done so already, please stop by the financial aid offices to say hello or send a welcome e-mail.

Over the summer, financial aid staff spent much time attending trainings, seminars and conferences on federal and state financial aid processes and updates. This has prepared us just in time for the new FAFSA year. The 2008-2009 free application for Federal Student Aid is due March 2, 2008, for students to be eligible for various grants. We have planned on-campus FAFSA workshops to assist new and returning students in the completion of their FAFSA online. These will be hands-on workshops where students will be guided through the financial aid application step by step. Our staff will also be visiting all the area high schools to assist seniors with their FAFSA. A list of dates and times for these workshops will soon be posted on the following websites: www.westhillscollege.com  and www.cashforcollege.com. 

The West Hills Community College Foundation office is staying busy as we continue to prepare for various upcoming events. The foundation is currently planning two major events.

The foundation along with the All Class Reunion Committee, continues to plan and prepare for the West Hills College All Class Reunion, Celebrating 75 Years. The event is scheduled for Saturday, April 26th, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. at the West Hills College Coalinga gymnasium.  Lunch tickets are on sale now.  Purchase your tickets on or before March 7th and receive the early bird sales price of $15 each. After March 7th, tickets will cost $20 each and must be purchased by April 11th. For more information or to purchase tickets, call Karen at (559) 934-2127. Buy your tickets now; seating is limited to the first 600 tickets. 

Also, the foundation continues to plan the West Hills Community College Foundation 12th Annual Golf Tournament, which benefits the WHC President’s Scholar Program. The tournament is scheduled for Monday, May 12th at the Kings Country Club in Hanford. 

The grants department continues to zip along. We are all busy keeping up with grant closeouts and start-ups. In the last few months, we have written several partner grants and met to develop spring funding strategies for grant development. The Westside Institute of Technology is offering classes and assisting Firebaugh, Mendota and San Joaquin residents in getting jobs. Carole was appointed to the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization and is being considered for an appointment to the Business and Workforce Performance Improvement (BWPI) Executive Advisory Committee of the California Community Colleges System.  This is quite an honor. 

We hear lots of good feedback from the high schools and partner agencies about the excellent work that is done by so many of you utilizing grant funds. Thank you for your leadership: David Castillo, David Reynolds, Cecilio Mora, Leonard Bass, Bettie Leone and Rebecca Brownlee. Your support of our grants and workforce development efforts makes our job very rewarding and this in turn benefits all our communities.

 

On a positive note: Carole’s closing in on state board approval of Lemoore’s new nursing program, Penny will  be a grandma in May, Cathy is super “Gamma” and Maria is very excited about watching her son, Aaron (character actor par excellence) perform in the CHS drama “Experience the Magic” (Beauty and the Beast).

Marissa Chavez and Melissa Fees have joined the human resource department. Marissa joins West Hills College from the City of Coalinga where she worked as a human resources analyst. Melissa worked as the work-study coordinator at West Hills College Coalinga. If you have not stopped by the district office and introduced yourself, please do so when you have a moment.

 

Mark you calendars. The human resource department along with CSEA President Mark Millet and your campus staff development committees are currently planning a Staff Development Day for February 15th. This training will include all classified staff. We will be offering many sessions that will meet everyone’s needs. More information will be provided soon. 

ITS programmers John Wright and Keith Stearns worked very hard over the holiday break to install release 18 of Datatel. The new release does not have many visible changes for most users of the system. The major changes in this release involved the back-end infrastructure and design of the system.  Although they are still working through some small issues, overall the installation went very well and only had a few hiccups. We still expect to uncover minor issues for the next couple of weeks. 

 

During the spring semester, we will be launching several huge Datatel projects - district payroll processing, Web site redesign including a web content management system, ActiveCampus Sharepoint portal system, and Colleague Advancement software for the foundation. The implementation of these systems will involve many individuals across the district, and will dominate this entire year, if not a bit longer.

type content here

Our spring semester radio campaign featured the Ernie G spots in both English and Spanish with mention of free parking on our campuses.

 Dialogue mailed to 80,000 homes the first week of January with the deadline for the next issue on Feb. 7th. Please send story ideas as soon as possible. 

Career Focus magazine was finished and has been distributed to 80,000 homes in our service area.   

We’re having great response to the 75th anniversary book. If you didn’t pre-order, it’s not too late to get your copies now. They are available in the Lemoore and Coalinga bookstores and at the district office.

The Office of Institutional Effectiveness, in conjunction with WHC Lemoore’s Retention Committee, conducted a survey to collect faculty perspectives on relevant issues that may affect student retention. In addition, students will be interviewed in order to obtain student perspectives. The goal is to collect feedback from students and faculty to identify issues that can be addressed to improve student retention.

 The California Community College Chancellor’s Office has released its draft of the 2008 Accountability Report for Community Colleges. The Office of Institutional Effectiveness is reviewing the draft report for accuracy. A second draft will be released this month that will require a self-assessment of the results. The final report will be released in March 2008.

 

The Office of Institutional Effectiveness continues to assist the colleges and district with data reports, accreditation responses and the creation of SLO assessment tools. To support these efforts a membership has been established with Economic Modeling Specialist to access their Strategic Advantage Web based tool. The Strategic Advantage Web tool integrates data from over 80 data sources that will help support informed decisions to influence the positive growth and development of our academic programs. To learn more about Strategic Advantage visit the link below.
http://www.economicmodeling.com/webtools/

Last week Learning Resources utilized a new Web-based calling system, “call-em-all.”  Recommended by Dr. Lewallen, this system allows us to upload student names and phone numbers, record a message, and then the system (for a nominal fee per phone number) will broadcast it. On our first run, we got the following report:number of intended recipients:  515; contacted in person: 267; messages left: 153; busy or not answered: 60; invalid numbers:  35; not Called:  0. We are using the system to let students know they have registered for an online course and where to go for their Blackboard login information. Using this resource, we hope to reduce the number of no shows in our online courses. 

type content here