WHCCD Risk Management Committee:

The risk management committee is continuing to develop the required State of California Occupational Safety and Health Agency (Cal OSHA) safety plans.  At the March meeting, the fall protection program plan document was reviewed and approved for submittal to the vice chancellor in business services.  With his approval the plan will then go to the executive cabinet for review and approval along with presentation to the board of trustees for their review and approval.

 

Up next for the committee is the development of the Hearing Conservation Program Plan and the Motor Vehicle Policy & Procedures. 

 

The committee along with human resources, strives to provide staff training to meet the district’s and Cal OSHA requirements. To date, the following training that has been provided:

• Golf and utility cart training-Training sessions are still available at the Farm of the Future or either of the campuses. Contact Allen Moore in Lemoore, Shaun Bailey in Coalinga and Richard Larson at the farm for more information.

• Chemical Safety in lab environment training-This training was provided as part of the Faculty Flex Day activities, thanks to Brian Abela, the district’s chemical hygiene officer.

• General Campus Safety and Emergency Training-The training was also a part of the Faculty Flex Day activities, thanks to Allen Moore, members of the risk management committee and Pam Brissel.

• Injury and Illness Prevention Program- New on-line web accessed training provided as part of the Classified Duty Day activities, a big thanks to Becky Cantu, instructor for the sessions.

• Forklift “Train-the-Trainer”-Mr. Dave Beal of Bickmore Risk Services provided the services to West Hills employees including Jay Darnell, Brandon Hicks, John Ieronimo, Jose Varquez, Jim Brixey and Richardson Larson. All men did a terrific job and they are now the district’s Cal OSHA certified forklift operators and trainers.

If you would like some special safety training or would like to attend a safety training workshop, please be sure to let us know as it may be something the district can provide onsite.

Here we grow again!

 The Coalinga CDC is under construction again. At the end of last year, the child development center was notified that the kindergarten classes in Coalinga were moving to full day kindergarten classrooms and the two portables at the Cheney Kindergarten the CDC has leased for eight years were no longer going to be available. To make up for lost space (which served 88 children ) the CDC has purchased two portable classrooms that will be placed between the current CDC and the softball field. The new portables will accommodate 96 children (48 children in the AM and 48 in the PM). The CDC staff are excited that they will be in one location.  

 

Another major change for the program this year is that we will be having separate classrooms for the three year olds and four year olds enrolled in the State Preschool program. This will allow the teachers to better focus on the needs of each age group. The three year old classrooms will focus primarily on the children's social, emotional and language development and the four year old classrooms will focus on literacy and math skills, as well as additional kindergarten transitional activities throughout the year.

 

CSEA awarded two $500 scholarships in May.  One to Ryan Simas, the grandson of Adrienne Simas who works in the DSPS lab in Lemoore.  The second to Alissa Trevino, the daughter of Thelma Trevino who works in the business office at the district office.

The f inancial aid department is busy awarding for the 2009/10 academic year.  We are also beginning to accept work study applications for the 2009/10 school year.  Work study is a federally funded program that allows students to earn money and job experience while attending school.  There are positions available both on and off campus, depending on a student’s major/career goal and available budget.  The application can be found on the West Hills' web site or at the financial aid office. Further information and applications are available on the portal or contact Karen Stieve at the Lemoore campus at 925-3311 or Hillary Davis at the Coalinga campus at 934-2301.

The 13th Annual Golf Tournament held on May 11th raised over $83,000 for the President’s Scholar's Program. We wish to thank our sponsors, players and volunteers for contributing their money, talents and time to support future West Hills’ students. A very special thanks to Monica Santino and Tina Souza for their hard work and long hours spent in preparation for our tournament.

 

The f

oundation will GO LIVE with Colleague Advancement, the new Datatel system, on July 1st. The advancement system will streamline what the foundation does and increase efficiency and our effectiveness in terms of data processing, recordkeeping, donor and alumni communications and processing of purchase orders and other financial requests. We want to thank Michelle Kozlowski, John Wright, Keith Stearns and Tammy Weatherman for their assistance and insistence.

We will be replacing all the CISCO switches in July.  The switches are nearly 10 years old and have reached their end of life.  The new switches will give our network the capacity to handle the newer, faster applications that emerge every year.  Also in the works for this summer – Advancement will go live July 1,  Web time entry will pilot with a small group of employees (entering your time cards through My Services in the portal), systems will be modified so students log into all district computers as themselves, and testing will continue with Live@EDU to determine if it is a viable email alternative for our students. 

This month brought to you by Tom Robb, ed tech specialist at WHC Coalinga     

        

EduStream

West Hills College Coalinga and Lemoore are two of the first California community colleges to partner with EduStream.  EduStream is a part of the San Bernardino Community College District and was designed to help offset the costs of creating media rich learning environments for online classes.  Currently, EduStream includes access to over 3,000 captioned videos in a number of disciplines including business, economics (macro and micro), humanities, history (including criminal justice), health, nutrition, English composition (two levels), government, sociology and much more.  Sciences should be coming in the near future.  Instructors can create their own custom playlists by searching through the repository, and show the videos to their students on demand.  The video clips can even be linked in the Blackboard system with a few clicks of a button for online instructors.

The best part for West Hills is that this is being provided free of charge due to funding from the California Community Colleges System Office.  The contract signed by WHCCD with EduStream is for five years starting in May 2009.  In a cursory analysis relating to the cost of some of the digital content made available to WHCCD, the district will save in excess of $100,000 thanks to the hard work of Emily Gapuzan and her EduStream team at San Bernardino Community College.

 

Students will now be able to chat online with the WHCCD Helpdesk.  In light of budget constraints, we have opted to use a free and easy collaboration tool available on the Internet to provide this service to our students.  Many of you may have noticed the Meebo chat widget on the West Hills College Lemoore Library some time ago.  To maintain some consistency, the Helpdesk is going to use the same style widget on our website to provide another way of accessing help-on-demand.  Only when we have staff available to answer will the chat box show “online.”

The new “Click to Chat” will be available for students in the upcoming summer term on the Portal login page and soon expanding to other pages.

Graduation is always a busy time in the marketing department.  We hope you will take time to enjoy the many pictures of graduation and other activities in the district at our Kodak Gallery site.  The link is on the district home page and on the News and Events section or you can go directly to http://www.kodakgallery.com/westhillscollege.  You can order prints directly from the site or if you wish to download the “native” file, you will need to sign in to the account.  Login is francessquire@hotmail.com.  Password is falcons.  Feel free to share that information with anyone who might be interested.

 

Garnering television coverage for West Hills’ events has been difficult but we had wide-spread coverage of the WHCC graduation in which 95-year-old Vince Motte was awarded an honorary degree.  The Fresno Bee did a major story and most of the Fresno television stations used it on their news.  Channel 30 sent a reporter and photographer to the ceremony.  The others used it via a video news release that was created by the marketing department and our contract videographer, Matt Miller, who was a television news cameraman for more than 25 years.  As our budget for advertising decreases and the television stations become more receptive to VNRs because of reduced staffing, we hope to use this mechanism on a more regular basis to get out the good news on things that are happening in WHCCD.

 

Budget reductions have eliminated the summer edition of Dialogue as well as all of our radio and television advertising.  We’re completing our MySpace contract and a few other web-based advertising and outreach contracts.  Enrollment is holding so don’t look for much in the way of WHCCD paid advertising in the coming year.  Individual outreach in the communities will be more important than ever.  One such opportunity occurs each week at Hanford’s farmers’ market on Thursday nights.  If you’re able to work a shift, please contact Felicia at 2132.  She has many shifts still open.

Vocational and Technical Education Act (VTEA) survey

During the spring 2009 semester we conducted the Vocational and Technical Education Act (VTEA) survey. The survey collects information from students who are enrolled in vocational courses. By filling out and submitting the survey, our colleges receive additional funding for career and technical education. This spring we had a record of 1,022 students who completed the electronic (email) survey. We would like to thank the instructors who reminded and encouraged students to complete the survey.

 

Graduating Student Exit Survey

This survey collects feedback from graduating students and allows them to evaluate the college services, programs and resources. This year we had a record high of 253 students who completed the survey. Results are being aggregated and will be shared with both colleges during the summer. 

 

New Procedure to Request Information

Effective immediately, research reports are the responsibility of the Office of Institutional Effectiveness and operational Reports are the primary responsibility of Information Technology Services (ITS). 

 

Research reports involve answering questions related to institutional effectiveness, program review, accountability, accreditation, enrollment management, supporting the assessment of student learning (SLOs), strategic planning, performance indicators, prerequisite validation studies and grants.

 

Operational reports meet the daily needs of college and district business, such as enrollment reports, submitting MIS, and answering basic questions about students within a program. These are all operational reports.

 

All information requests must be submitted through the “Information Request Form” located under the staff section of the portal. Institutional Effectiveness and ITS offices look forward to working together to maximize research and reporting capabilities for the district and its colleges.