End of the summer is the busiest time of the year for the vice chancellor and the business services. The department is responsible for year-end close outs of all budgets, the preparation of both the tentative budget and adopted budget for the district and preparing for the annual audit by the district's auditors.

 

You can see the proposed fiscal year 2008-09 adopted budget, the fiscal year 2007-08 adopted budget and the annual audit report for the year ending June 30, 2007 here.

 

WHCCD Risk Management Committee:

The district wide risk management committee has been busy over the summer months with our

biannual safety assessment inspections, confined space inspections and fire department inspection at West Hills College Coalinga. Current OSHA required program plans; Bloodborne Pathogens Exposure Control Plan, Hazard Communication Program and Heat Illness Prevention Plan are all due for final review and approval by the committee at the September 12, 2008 meeting.   

 

After recent inspections and because of new fire code requirements, the district is in the process of installing new exit and emergency lighting fixtures at all locations. 

 

A big thanks to Becky Cantu for her hard work in getting the WHCCD Risk Management Web page up and running. You can visit the page by clicking here.

 

Once the page is completed, you will be able to see the district's approved OSHA-required safety plans along with a link to our Valley Insurance Program (VIP) Web site and the online safety training program, which will all be available before the end of year.  I hope that you will take the opportunity to visit the Web page and take a look at the minutes to see the work of the committee. 

The child development centers have been very busy as usual. We are currently finishing fall enrollment with most of our programs at capacity. This year, we are anticipating serving 733 children. We are currently collaborating with Women, Infant, and Children (WIC) to have an office located in Coalinga. Families currently participating in the program have to drive to the Huron office to receive WIC’s services. We are also looking to open a child development site, serving 48 children, in Huron. This project will be possible through working with the City of Huron, Fresno County First 5 and USDA.

Institutional Effectiveness

This summer, a group of 13 college and district administrators and faculty, along with one board member, attended the "Best Practices in Institutional Effectiveness" conference in Savannah, Georgia. The conference itinerary featured several workshops throughout the four days covering such topics as quality approaches to performance excellence, accreditation, program review, strategic planning and environmental scanning.  Those in attendance were:  Pedro Avila, David Babb, Anita Bart, Carlos Diniz, Stephanie Droker, Frank Gornick, Willard Lewallen, Jose Lopez, Sandy McGlothlin, Nina Oxborrow, David Reynolds, Rene Sanchez, Jill Stearns and Don Warkentin.  The group was treated to a great dinner at the renowned "The Lady & Sons" restaurant in Savannah.  The restaurant owner is southern cook and TV personality Paula Dean. You can read about her family and their restaurant at theladyandsons.com.  Be sure and take a look at the picture.  Paula was "standing by" to greet the group, and the chancellor even had a chance to take a picture with her at the restaurant! 

This summer, CSEA held its annual awards barbecue in Lemoore.  The following awards were given:

Classified Employee of the Year-Lemoore

2006-2007-Tiffany Hernandez

2007-2008-Francess Andrade

 

Classified Employee of the Year-Coalinga

2006-2007-Brandon Hicks

2007-2008-Linda Oman

At the end of the spring 2008 semester, WHCFA held elections. Marty Ennes remains president. Sarah Shepard and Jacqui Shehorn continue as Coalinga vice president and secretary respectively. Angela Tos replaces Neomi Daniels as Lemoore vice president, and Neomi replaces Tom Winters as treasurer. The WHCFA executive board looks forward to serving the faculty during this academic year. Focus for the year will be on the contract as the current agreement expires in 2009.

Enrollment services have been busy closing the summer 2008 intersession paperwork and busy with the opening of the fall 2008 semester paperwork.

 

Maria Lourenco has been involved with the payroll process. 

 

Enrollment is up 8% as of today.

The Farm of the Future is gearing up for another exciting year. Farm Manager Jim Brixey braves the blistering heat to ensure the highest quality of education for our future farmers.  All the while, instructor Clint Cowden is constantly traveling to surrounding communities recruiting students eager to attend our program.

             

The success of West Hills’ heavy equipment program has not dimmed over time. The class currently has twenty-two students enrolled for this semester. Students will learn first-hand a plethora of skills. Such skills will include becoming qualified to operate: crawlers, tractors, scrapers, backhoes, loaders, motor graders and laser controlled equipment.

             

Both the Farm of the Future and the heavy equipment class instructors look forward to this semester and are eager to cultivate tomorrow’s leaders.

Please join me in welcoming Sarah Taylor to our financial aid department at WHCC.  Sarah will work temporarily part-time as a financial assistant I.  Sarah recently graduated from Northwestern College in St. Paul, Minn., with a bachelor’s degree in communications. She is also a West Hills College Coalinga graduate.  She has worked in business services temporarily many times and has worked in financial aid at Northwestern College.  We are thrilled to have her working with us.

 

We are working on streamlining the financial aid loan application process that includes loan entrance counseling by the fall semester. 

 

Financial Aid is very busy and in full spring awarding and packaging financial aid eligible students for the 2008-2009 academic year.

Life-long Coalinga resident Vincent Motte is supporting West Hills College Farm of the Future with a donation to the West Hills Community College Foundation of $12,600. This gift is to cover the cost of construction and installation of a CIMIS Weather Station.  The CIMIS equipment was purchased two years ago through a grant, but the project was held up by lack of funding for the special site preparation, construction and installation of the equipment.  With Mr. Motte’s generosity, the Farm of the Future can complete the CIMIS project, which will provide accurate temperature readings vital to area farmers and to quality student learning in the Ag and geography classes at WHCC.

What is a CIMIS Weather Station?

The California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) is a program of the Office of Water Use Efficiency (OWUE), California Department of Water Resources (DWR) that manages a network of over 120 automated weather stations in the State of California. CIMIS was developed in 1982 by DWR and the University of California, Davis to assist irrigators in managing their water resources efficiently. Efficient use of water resources benefits Californians by saving water, energy and money.

For the 2008-2009 school year, the grants department is supporting 34 grants and six contracts totaling $7.5 million in services to the colleges and westside communities.

A special thanks to Marleen Smart and all other staff members who were involved in making the WHCL RN program possible.

Westside Institute of Technology Director David Castillo and Farm of the Future Director Richard Larson are working together on new trade classes that will be available to students soon. The classes include maintenance mechanics, electricity and welding. These skills are in high job demand from local employers and requested by students. The classes will be offered in a different community each session to allow local residents to train near home. Skill set development is the wave of the future.

The grants office would like to extend another special thanks to all WHC staff who have assisted in the securing of grants with their creativity, expertise and hard work.

And one more last special thanks to David Castillo, Joy Cowden, Marlene Smart, Robert Pimentel, James Preston, Anna Silvestre, Riley Talford, Raquel Rodriguez, Susan Whitener and Pedro Avila for providing valuable statistics and also to Carole Goldsmith for editing and enhancing our proposals.

The month of August was a very busy month for the human resources department.  Aside from getting all the new hires situated for the beginning of a new school year, the payroll implementation and the classification study, we have also been visiting each campus conducting insurance open enrollment.  We visited all locations throughout the month of August.  Representatives from our third-party administrators also visited the sites. Our SISC rep and CVT rep were in Coalinga the morning of August 18 and in Lemoore that afternoon.  Many employees took advantage of these opportunities and made changes to their health and life insurance plans. 

 

Also, do not miss the opportunity to meet with our retirement specialists.  Ralph Lockwood, CalSTRS representative will be visiting both campuses on September 18 and 25.  Please contact HR for more information.

ITS spent the entire summer implementing our new My West Hills portal.  We began the project the weekend immediately following the close of the spring semester and the project is still in progress.  The portal was launched on August 4 with a base level of functionality.  New functionality will continue to be added, probably until portal end-of-life.

 

The Portal project forced the ITS Department to engage in a number of related projects that needed to be completed prior to the delivery of the Portal.  Some of the related projects were:

 

• Domain renaming (to whccd.edu)
• Email address change
• Blackboard upgrade
• Student E-Mail upgrade
• Microsoft Office Upgrade
• Install SharePoint
• Install Datatel Portal
• Add 120,000 students to active directory
• Install password manager
• Customize portal for WHCCD
• Keep all other systems functional

One of the biggest issues that ITS had to address, is how systems interrelate with each other.   With the introduction of all the new systems and/or upgrades of systems, some systems needed to be "forced" to play nice with others. Some of them are still not cooperating.  We will continue to address and correct these issues, as well as all the others that will pop up.

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Thanks to all who have volunteered to represent West Hills at the Kings Fair and at Hanford and Coalinga farmers' markets.  These are a great way for us to share information about what's happening at West Hills with members of our communities.  We have ordered and received four new pop-up district canopies. 

Marketing and Duplicating Services wrapped up Dialogue and the Lemoore catalog. Dialogue has been delivered to homes and is available around campus. The Lemoore catalog is also available. 

A MySpace advertising campaign started July 1.  In the first three days of the campaign, 100 new students enrolled.  Half of those students enrolled in face-to-face classes. 

Our fall radio campaign began on July 28 and ran for two weeks.  Our ad agency has prepared a buy focused on reaching 19-35 year olds with a secondary market targeting those that are a few years older.  Based on focus groups we did around the district, we are including country music stations in the buy.  About one-third of the high school students that were in our groups said they listen to country stations (this held true in Hanford, Lemoore, Firebaugh, Mendota, Coalinga and Avenal).

A fall registration postcard went out highlighting Xtreme Registration and first-week-of-classes activities.