President Schilling’s Board Report for April 9, 2019
The following is a report to members of the North Orange County Community College District Board of Trustees.
Presented by Cypress College President JoAnna Schilling, Ph.D.
on April 9, 2019
Campus News
The Cypress College Green Zone training was featured on ABC 7 news on Sunday, March 31. ABC News was on campus several weeks ago to film the training and hear from students about what our veterans program has meant to them. Congratulations to Veterans counselor, Juan Garcia, who is featured in the news clip, and Dean Rick Rams for implementing this training across our campus. Over 50 staff, faculty, and students have been trained so far. We are #CYProud!
The Cypress College Grads to Be Program, which serves undocumented students at Cypress College, is preparing to launch enhanced support services for these students starting May 1, 2019. This program is funded through the Catalyst grant awarded to NOCCCD, and is designed to increase personal growth and development through academic, career and personal counseling, peer mentoring, legal aid assistance, and staff, faculty, and student development.
The Cypress College Dance Department attended the American College Dance Association regional conference being held on the campus of University of Southern California this past week. This conference supports and affirms dance in higher education by offering college dance students classes, observations, the opportunity to perform and be adjudicated for prepared pieces.
Congratulations to Alyssa Gorman, Cypress College’s Orange County Teacher of the Year. Alyssa is an adjunct faculty member in the English Department and was nominated by our students. She has served Cypress for almost four years and we are grateful for her thoughtful attention to our students. Clearly, her encouragement and excellent teaching is making a difference! Congratulations to Alyssa Gorman.
The college will be sponsoring a Homelessness 101 training from OC United Way on April 23 at 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. in HUM 136. This training, similar to the training previously hosted at Fullerton College, is a two-hour workshop meant to elevate awareness about the costs, challenges, myths, and misconceptions about homelessness in Orange County. If you were not able to attend the previous training, please join us for this enlightening event.
Student Brandon Davis, Cypress College’s Opening Day student speaker, and who also spoke at Americana this year, has been awarded a $2,500-$7,500 scholarship from 1 Million for Anna Foundation, for Ewings Sarcoma survivors. Brandon will be graduating this semester and transferring to Cal State Long Beach. This scholarship will provide $2,500 per year for up to three years, and assist him continue his pursuit of a bachelor’s degree in Math. We are so proud of this young scholar!
Our Cypress College Hall of Fame event was held on Saturday, March 30 from 9 a.m. to 12 noon. This year we honored 11 athletes and coaches, who achieved a high level of success at Cypress, in their transfer institution, or at the professional level. In total, Cypress HOF now includes 77 athletes, coaches, and supporters of our programs. The 2019 inductees included former wrestling coach Ray Haas, Citrus College softball coach, Jackie Cosgrove, and two former major league baseball players.
Save the Date! The Cypress College Foundation Scholarships will be held on May 8 at 4:30 p.m. We decided to change the time for this year’s celebration in order to accommodate the attendance of faculty, families, and students. We also changed our application process this year to an online application and more than doubled our applications. We are looking forward to honoring our excellent students and hope you will be able to attend!
Cypress hosted a Guided Pathways Summit on April 5, featuring keynote speaker Jessica Hurless from Skyline College. It was a great day focused on data, great discussions on how we can better serve our students, followed by table work groups of counselors and faculty working together to create course mapping for our 32 AD-Ts which will migrate into our new Program Mapper. Our hope is all our AD-T’s will have a clear pathway that students can easily follow semester by semester for a 2 and 3 year plan.
Cypress College hosted Board of Governors president, Thomas Epstein, as well as BOG trustees, Blas Villalobos and Bill Rawlings on March 28. The visit included a meeting with our Executive Team, a campus tour, and wrapped up with a luncheon to share ideas and concerns with the three BOG members. We thank our faculty, students, staff, as well as Dr. Marshall and Trustee Blount for attending.
Our Executive Team met with the City of Cypress officials to discuss important issues between the college and city. This ad hoc meeting helps to increase communication and collaboration with our city officials and find ways to support our students and keep the city informed about changes at the college. This year our focus was on housing support for our students and one idea was to explore hosting city “home stays” to help identify residents who might want to allow student to stay in their homes. We will be following up to identify residents who might be interested in participating in this program.
Dr. Schilling will be participating in the Vineyard Institute this year, a CEO leadership institute hosted by CCLC. This year’s institute will take place April 7-9; eleven CEOs will be participating this year. Thank you to Dr. Marshall and the Board for your support.
Attached to this board report are the results of a recent Guided Pathways survey we sent our students. This data will be used to inform how we develop and implement our pathways programs, but we are also heartened that the changes we are making seem to be well received by our students. We Take This Journey Together!
That’s our Board Report from Cypress College. Buen Cypress!