President Schilling’s Board Report for May 9, 2023

by JoAnna Schilling on May 10, 2023

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 9, 2023

This board report is dedicated to the many end-of-the-year celebrations occurring in the next few weeks on the Cypress College campus. Our staff, faculty, and administration are all focused on celebrating the many accomplishments of our students. We applaud their efforts, their courage, their resilience, and most of all, we applaud each of the graduating students who have reached their academic goals at our college. We salute our students and hope our Board of Trustees will be able to attend as many of the following events as your schedule allows. Congratulations, Chargers!

To accommodate the many year-end events while also minimizing the impact on our M&O staff, we have rented an event tent which fits 150-200 guests on round tables, and up to 350 guests for classroom-style seating. Thank you to our VPSS Dr. Paul De Dios for organizing to have this lovely space on campus. The tent is located by our pond and provides a supportive and inclusive environment for our students and staff in cool, warm, and/or hot weather. Below are some highlights of the events taking place on our campus:

• EOPS/CalWorks: We are so thrilled to be hosting our Success Celebration this year catered by the Habit Burger Food Truck. I hope that you will be able to join us for an evening of great company, great food, and community. The event will be held in the event tent just outside of the VRC on May 25 from 6-8 p.m.
• Commit2Cypress: Our annual Commit2Cypress welcome event was held for over 1000 high school students on May 4 from 5-8 p.m. Our theme was Star Wars (May the Fourth Be With You) and it was a great evening to welcome our students, AUHSD leadership, and the passing of the baton from high school to college. Dr. Schilling appeared as a Princess Leia hologram to express the urgency of attending college. Thank you to Brittany Hamer, Paul De Dios, our Charger Experience, Dual Enrollment, and affinity groups, as well as the deans and faculty of specific disciplines who attended, promoted, and welcomed new students to our campus.
• The Transfer Center is hosting its 17^th Annual Transfer Celebration to honor students who will be transferring to universities in the fall on Tuesday, May 9 from 1-3 p.m. in CCCPLX-414.
• Our End of Year Luncheon will be held on May 11 from 11:30-1 p.m. in the Theater Lobby. This all-staff luncheon is sponsored by our Professional Development committee and supported by the President’s Office. We will be honoring all our Service Awardees who have achieved 5-40 years of service, as well as playing games, raffling gift baskets prepared by our divisions and departments, and enjoying the company of our campus community. Please join us on May 11!
• There’s still time to attend the Athletics Hall of Fame celebration, where twelve new inductees will be admitted into our Charger Hall of Fame. This event will be held on May 11 at 5 p.m. in our campus gym. There is still time to donate, attend, or sponsor this important event which salutes the contributions of Cypress College athletes of distinction. All proceeds go to support our athletic programs.
• Our People in Motion Student Dance Concert will be sharing their work in our Campus Theater on May 12-13 at 7 p.m. and May 14 at 4 p.m. Please come and support our students with special guest Dr. Schilling who will be leading our students on a journey through world dance and culture! Thanks to faculty member Maha Afra for directing the program and to our talented dance and technical faculty who choreographed and will be presenting the many pieces being performed.
• Save the Date for our Cypress College Foundation Scholarship Awards Ceremony on Friday, May 12 at 3:30 p.m. Last year the Foundation gave over $400,000 in scholarships, and we hope to provide at least this amount again. This year we had another record number of applicants. Please join us as we celebrate our students!

For an event list of the many other end of year celebrations, please see below:

The Chargers women’s softball team captured our 25^th conference title, naming six players to the All-OEC Team with pitcher Emily Rush named as OEC Most Valuable Player and Coach Brad Pickler was named Coach of the Year. The Chargers began the playoffs at home against Pasadena on May 5 at 1:45 p.m. and May 6 at 12 p.m. The Baseball Team also made the playoffs as the No 5 seed and will host Cerro Coso beginning May 5 at 2 p.m. and May 6 at 11 a.m. Our Beach Volleyball Team qualified for the playoffs, earning 2^nd place in the conference and began their playoffs on May 2. We are proud of their winning records and look forward to going deep into the playoffs. Go Chargers!

Cypress College hosted our annual Counseling Breakfast, welcoming over 80 high school counselors to our campus for breakfast, presentations on Dual Enrollment, STEM(2), the Charger Experience, and tours of our campus. Thank you to Dr. Paul de Dios, Dr. Troy Davis, our entire counseling and planning team, and our deans for participating in a great morning and sharing the good things happening at Cypress College!

Cypress College is featured in a new research brief authored by UC Davis on creating a sense of belonging among our students. Cypress was one of two community colleges who participated in the pilot of ASCEND – a faculty-driven tool to help assess and strategize on how to support student needs and an engaged sense of community in the classroom. The results are fascinating. We appreciate the leadership of our ASCEND co-coordinators Kathy Wada and Nora Simoes and the participation of our faculty in language arts and across the curriculum, who have continued to expand this program at Cypress College. Read the full report and findings.

At the most recent Leadership Team meeting on April 7, we invited CSUF’s Provost Amir Dabrinian to speak on how CSUF is addressing the many changes coming because of Artificial Intelligence ((AI) and Chat GPT. It was a fascinating discussion and one that made us all aware we should be having more conversations on this topic. Our Academic Senate will be forming an AI Taskforce in fall 2023, and our students, led by the Philosophy Club, are hosting an upcoming event to highlight not just the ways we need to monitor AI, but also the many ways we need to embrace utilization of this new technology. The Philosophy Club hosted AI Revolution: Facing Humanity’s Greatest Challenge on May 4 from 2-3 p.m. for a discussion on how this new technology will be changing our lives going forward.

Save the Date for our 56th Commencement and Pre-Commencement Presidential Reception, both on May 19. The reception begins at 2 p.m. and we will be honoring our faculty retirees, Faculty of the Year awardees, our Presidential Scholars of Distinction, our Outstanding Graduate of the Year, and our Alumnus of the Year, followed by our Cypress College Commencement at 4 p.m. We hope you will all be in attendance!

Buen Cypress! We Take This Journey Together!