President Schilling’s Board Report for May 28, 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 May 28, 2019

Campus News

This is such a great time of the year! Thank you to all for your support of our commencement. We had a historic 600 plus graduates participate in commencement, with more than 1900 degrees awarded to over 1500 students. There are so many stories to share. Our students inspire!

We have also been celebrating many other end of year events. The following list are some, but not all, of our smaller student success celebrations. We are so proud of our graduating students.

  • May 8 – our annual Scholarship Award evening- with over $262,000 given to support students!
  • May 10 – our Associated Students banquet and ESL transfer celebration
  • May 16 – our Legacy End of the Year Celebration
  • May 17 – the Human Services certificate awards
  • May 21 – Puente Celebration and Nursing Pinning Ceremony
  • May 24 – our EOPS celebration and Veterans celebration
  • May 30 – our STEM2 celebration and Toyota T-TEN graduation

On May 13, our Business program hosted its 4th Shark Tank competition. Five teams, including dual enrollment students, were selected to present entrepreneurial ideas, a budget, and business plans to four professionals who served as our judges. The ideas generated by our teams included a non-plastic straw, an app to rate companies that contributed positively to the world and environment, a new tennis shoe with interchangeable soles, a social media scheduler, and the winning team who developed a real-time wildfire locator in conjunction with the Monrovia fire department. It was a great night to witness the business ingenuity of our students.

Our Financial Aid staff hosted their first Financial Aid Awareness event. We are all dedicated to providing a refreshed image of what a Financial Aid office can be, which is a customer-service office:  300 students participated and received 50 Chick-fil-A meal vouchers,  $700 worth of gift cards to the Cypress Bookstore, and 100+ balls of cotton candy cones were given out. Under Korey Lindley’s leadership, and supported by dean Rick Rams, our FA Team is making a positive difference.

Cypress College Film Festival: On May 17, our Media and Digital Arts (MAD) program sponsored their annual film festival, showcasing our student work. Short films, animated films, documentaries, and digital innovation was all on display. Kudos to instructor Katelin Angelov and Ian Holmes for their leadership and support of their budding filmmakers.

Athletic Update: For the first time in recent memory, every Spring sport in the Cypress College athletics program qualified teams or individuals going to their respective playoffs. To provide an update, our Golf Team came in third in the state, our women’s softball team made it to the state playoffs after eliminating Southwestern and Riverside in the first two rounds, but were eliminated by Fullerton College (!) in the semi-finals. Our women’s Beach Volleyball twosome were eliminated in the first round, and our men’s baseball team lost a heartbreaker in their second round playoff to El Camino. It was a great year for our teams and next season is looking very bright. Congratulations to our student athletes and coaches:

Anthony Hutting (Baseball), Brad Pickler (Softball) Dana Bedard (Golf) and Nancy Welliver (Volleyball).

Night with Forensics: Our national award winning Speech and Debate teams showcased their hard work and talent on May 20 at Cypress College. Featuring various debate presentations, including a dramatic reading, impromptu speaking demonstration, a speech for entertaining, and an international public debate, our students showed why they are award-winning. Thanks to instructors Josh House and Jennifer Page for encouraging their students to succeed.

People in Motion: Our spring dance concert was held May 17-19 in the Theater. Eleven new pieces and over 40 students were involved in these engaging and collaborative works. Thank you to our instructors, Maha Afra and Erin Landry, for their leadership of our dance program.

North Star Awards: We are pleased to support our two awardees for the North Star Award tonight – Phil Dykstra and Marcia Jeffredo. Both have had exemplary careers at Cypress and have contributed to the success of the college in countless ways. They both demonstrate our core values of Excellence, Integrity, Collegiality, and Inclusiveness in all they do. Thank you for acknowledging them; it is my honor to work with them.

The SANS Institute launched Cyber FastTrack in 25 states in April as the first step in a national initiative to close the US cybersecurity skills gap. More than 13,000 students participated in the Cyber Fast Track, including Cypress College students. Six of our students made the quarter finals and are now competing for $2.5 million in scholarships. In addition, Cypress College was ranked as the # 6 college in California (behind Berkeley, USC, and Cal Poly Pomona) and #70 in the nation in the 2019 Governors’ Cybersecurity Talent Competition.  Go Chargers!

The week of May 20-24 was Classified Appreciation Week. The President’s Office sponsored donuts and coffee on May 20 and a cookie break on May 21 to thank our wonderful staff.  Due to our annual commencement, we don’t have the opportunity to salute our classified staff the way we should, but will be honoring them on June 6 at our annual Classified Appreciation luncheon. All our trustees are invited to share a meal with us at 11:30 a.m. in the Theater lobby. Thank you to our staff for the many ways they serve our students, faculty and managers.

Student Selina Jaimes-Davila was featured in a profile on KPCC regarding her courageous journey from homelessness to a Cypress College STEM2 scholar. Selina is also our Presidential Scholar of Distinction for the SEM Division this year and will be transferring to Cal Poly SLO in the fall. If you missed it, here’s a link to the web story and here’s the radio version. It was a great spotlight on the critical housing issues facing our students.

YBH, the college food services vendor, will be leaving Cypress College in August. We will be discussing our options, but wanted to let our board know we will be looking for opportunities that support the campus goals to address hunger and healthy food options for our students.

Dr. Schilling is serving on the Orange County CEO Hunger and Housing Task Force along with Dr. Schulz and presidents from Santiago Canyon, Saddleback, and Golden West. Our goal is to share information and seek community partners to support our housing initiates here in Orange County. Dr. Schilling is also serving on the OC United Way Leadership Council for Homelessness.

That’s our Board Report from Cypress College. Buen Cypress!

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