President Schilling’s Board Report for September 11, 2018
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 September 11, 2018
Enrollment: The College reached our census date with a 1% projected growth. Based on our current enrollment and the anticipated enrollment of late start classes and positive attendance, we are on target to exceed last year’s fall FTES. In addition, we have increased our fill rate from 86% last year to 92% this year, and increased our efficiency across classes. Our faculty, deans, and researchers have done a great job in managing enrollment and we are grateful.
Campus News
- Hispanic Heritage Month: Cypress College hosted civil rights activist, Sylvia Mendez, on campus last Tuesday evening. She spoke about her role in the landmark case, Mendez v. Westminster School District, which led to the desegregation of schools in California. Ms. Mendez’s parents sued the school district to allow Sylvia and other Latinx children to attend “whites-only” schools in 1946. Sylvia was only 9 years old when the case was settled in 1947 and spoke of the challenges and opportunities that awaited her. Our thanks to Puente faculty member, Therese Mosqueda-Ponce, Dr. Adela Gomez, and counselor Marbelly Jairam, for bringing Ms. Mendez to our campus to share her story. Special thanks to Trustee Lopez for attending and showing his support. We will also be hosting a Latino poetry reading next week, September 11 from 6-8 pm. In CCCPLX 414. Obed Silva, former faculty member at Cypress, will be sharing his poems with our students and staff. Please join us!
- Welcome Back! Last week, to welcome Cypress students to the college, we made surprise visits across the campus to deliver granola bars and Buen Cypress cookies to classrooms. These “surprise and delight” visits were orchestrated in advance with faculty, and provided the opportunity to welcome students and let them know of various resources available across campus.
- Hunger Initiatives: Our food pantry is up and running and we are orchestrating a campus-wide initiative to ensure students understand how to access food on campus. 1) Our Buen Cypress bars detail our food pantry and other resources for students in need of food; 2) We created a video detailing the location, services, and hours of our food pantry, and sent this video to every student; 3) Our campus safety department is working on a plan to allow students in need of a safe place to sleep (in either an RV or car) to park on campus overnight; 4) For any student who is experiencing homelessness or food insecurity, we are creating a fundraising campaign to provide hot meals each day for these students, and 5) We are planning to add a feature to our new mobile app that will notify students when there is food left over from events and department functions. More on these initiatives as they develop!
- The College is in our final phases of hiring a new Executive Director of our Foundation. We hope to have a candidate to forward for approval at our next Board meeting.
College Events
- Professional Development welcomed our new full-time and adjunct faculty to the campus Thursday, September 6. Our annual Mixology event had a great turnout and was a great opportunity to meet these new members of the campus.
- Please join us on September 19 as we celebrate the opening of our new Pledge Welcome Center. This event will be held from 4- 5 p.m. and will introduce a new center to welcome and facilitate the success of students in our Pledge program. You will be receiving an invitation with agenda and details very soon.
- Our Foundation Golf Classic will be held on October 1, 2018 at the Seacliff Country Club in Huntington Beach. We invite all Board members, either as part of a golfing foursome, or to attend the late afternoon award dinner at 3:30 p.m. Purchase tickets. We look forward to seeing you!
- The first meeting of the statewide Food Insecurity and Housing Access Task Force took place last week at San Diego Mesa College. The goal of the taskforce is to find solutions and partners to address the challenges our students face on these issues. Here’s some statistics from a recent Report by the Assembly Office of Research:
- 43% of the cost of being a community college student is housing.
- 60-70% of remedial students have issues meeting their basic needs
- 56% of all college students report food insecurity at some point and 35% were experience housing insecurity
We would also like to share some Cypress College highlights from last year – completion and transfer rates. On the following pages you’ll see some charts prepared by our Institutional Research team, Phil Dysktra and Kristina Oganesian, regarding our outcomes.
That’s the Board Report from Cypress College. Buen Cypress!
Cypress College Highlights from 2017-18
- The number of total awards increased by 16%, while the numbers of associate degrees and certificates awarded increased by 21% and 10% approximately.
Transfers
- The number of ADT awards per annual year has increased by approximately 125% since 2013-14.
- Transfer rates for this group of students have remained stable at over 85% for each cohort examined.