We are BC

Good morning Bakersfield. It is Saturday December 3rd and a great day to be a Renegade!

And why would it not be when you wake up to Nick Strobel‘s article in the Californian and a video of Shannon Musser dropping the puck at the Condors game last night.

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For the full article go to http://tinyurl.com/hwdugk7.

Also, Nick will be presenting the popular holiday show “Season of Light” on December 8 from 7:30 to 8:45 p.m. Tickets for the show are still available at the BC Ticket Office and online through Vallitix.  Thank you Bill Thomas for securing the funding for The William M Thomas Planetarium.

Marketing Manager Shannon Musser dropping the ceremonial first puck!

 

On Friday night, December 2nd,  Bakersfield College was the co-sponsor with radio station 93.1 for a giveaway at the Bakersfield Condors game. The first 2,000 fans received a replica Memorial Stadium, complete with an outdoor ice rink in honor of #Winterfest.

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Winterfest will be a great event at Bakersfield College. The Bakersfield Condors will be taking over Memorial Stadium from December 21 through January 7 for ice skating, zip line, youth hockey, adult hockey, obstacle course and more – culminating in the Alumni/Celebrity game on January 6 (featuring Wayne Gretzky and Luc Robitaille as captains) and the Outdoor Classic on January 7. Come on down and check out this great event!

 

If you have not registered for Greater Bakersfield Chamber’s Vision for the Valley, you should do so immediately.  It is on December 6th from 7:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m.

agenda-dec-6-2016For your tickets click: https://www.bakersfieldchamber.org/events/vision-for-the-valley/

Latino Community Leaders Breakfast

Local leaders from the Hispanic and Latino community joined together at BC on Wednesday morning for a breakfast to share data, success rates, and current initiatives that support BC’s Hispanic/Latino students at the 4th annual Hispanic/Latino Community Leader breakfast. Thank you Lisa Kent and Lesley Bond for all the planning and attention to detail.  It was great to see old friends and connecting with new folks who were attending for the first time.

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World AIDS Day

There are an estimated 34 million people globally who are living with HIV and despite the virus only being identified in 1984, worldaidsday.org reports that “more than 35 million people have died from HIV or AIDS making it one of the most destructive pandemics in history.” Each year, December 1st is a day where people around the globe unite to raise awareness, show support for those currently living with HIV or AIDS, and remember those who have passed.

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At BC on Thursday, we had a number of booths including our BC Student Health Center, Clinica Sierra Vista which offered free rapid HIV testing, and Dignity Health providing Covered California enrollments. To learn more about World AIDS Day, visit https://www.worldaidsday.org/.

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Congratulations Dr. Gerhold!

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Dr. John Gerhold

BC’s Performing Arts Department Chair, John Gerhold, received the MACCC Distinguished Service Award on Saturday, November 19. John has been on the MACCC Executive Board since 2000 and has served as Curriculum Representative, President-Elect/President/Past-President (6 year term), and Treasurer.

The award recognizes John’s contributions to community college music instruction in California which include: a major role in the writing and passage of SCR 36 which established in perpetuity May 11 as “California Community College Music Educators Day;” leadership in the development of the Transfer Model Curriculum (TMC) for Music as well as the existing C-ID descriptors for music; leadership in halting the CCCCO plan to completely eliminate course repetition in CCC performing arts courses; service as the Faculty Discipline Review Group (FDRG) leader for music for the ASCCC; and service as the initial Faculty Discipline Review Group (FDRG) leader for commercial music for the ASCCC; as well as John’s service to the MACCC organization itself.

 

Generations of support for BC athletics!

I had a chance to stop by the Men’s Basketball game on Sunday at 4:00 PM in the Thanksgiving Tournament in the Gil Bishop Sports Center last weekend. It’s always great sight to see so many wonderful friends, family members, and supporters of our BC athletes.  I was delighted to meet John Kirkeby, a community members who is an ardent supporter of Basketball.  He was passionate in wanting to see more community members out at the Gil Bishop Sports Center to support our student athletes.  Let’s watch Kirkeby in this 42-second clip.

So proud of our students.  Notice #15, Jamar Hammonds on the right.  Athletic Director Sandi Taylor asked him why he had 3-18-2016 on his wrist band. Jamar responded, that is the day my mother passed away.  wow.

 

And here is Coach Rich Hughes’ family at the game supporting Coach Hughes and the students – his wife Pilar, son Jackson, and Rich’s mom.

 

 

Women’s Basketball

On Thursday night, December 1st, the  Bakersfield College Women’s Basketball Team won a 75-60 victory over San Bernardino.

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Let’s hear about the event from Francis Mayer:

Angie Kroeger delivered 23 points in just 21 minutes off the bench to give BC all it needed against a scrappy San Berdoo squad that took a two point lead into halftime, only to see BC explode in the second half.

“They had a player who scored 16 in the first half,” Coach Paula Dahl said, “But then we had women like Kennedy Nielsen step up and play serious defense in the second half.”

But Dahl wasn’t coy about saying who made a huge difference Thursday night.

“Without Angie Kroeger, well…there’s a huge hole in our game. Angie stepped up and made things happen, and that’s what a team does. It takes a village to raise a child, and it takes a team to pick up a win.”

Renegade Wrestling:

BC Wrestling is headed into the Southern California Regional Tournament today at Cuesta College led by Coach Brett Clark, Coach Austin and Coach Espejo.  The team has had a couple of weeks to prepare and is poised to make their move to qualify for the CCCAA State Championships on Dec. 9th and 10th at Victor Valley College.  To hear Coach Clark’s comments click here for a 6-minute video.

http://www.gogades.com/sports/wrest/2016-17/videos/MVI_9603

BC is a family and Renegade support is timeless throughout generations.  To stay up to date on Men’s Basketball and all Renegade Athletics, check out http://gogades.com/.

 

Measure J Balloons

When Mary Jo Pasek was driving back to BC with a car packed full with red Measure J balloons, she knew just what she wanted to do with them. She told me in an email, “I couldn’t just pitch the balloons. All kids love balloons so I’m glad they made it into a learning event.”

Here are a few of the darling pictures from the BC Child Development Center, where they turned these ordinary balloons into extra special and fun learning activities, like dancing, and counting!

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Dual Enrollment Faculty Colloquium

KHSD, DJUHSD, BC faculty and administrators joined together on Friday for a dual enrollment faculty colloquium. BC and KHSD faculty and staff gave joint presentations on a variety of topics – including Admissions & Records (Michelle Pena, Jackie Lau and Crystal Quinn) and Human Resources and equivalency update (Kathy Howarth and Mike Ivey), evaluation process (Corny Rodriguez and Ben Sherley), syllabus construction (Klint Rigby), teaching a college course (Kathleen Bruce and Joe Saldivar), and textbook utilization (Corny Rodriguez).

Breakout sessions with faculty were designed to facilitate faculty dialogue and ended with Q&A. Marissa Jeffers and Beth Hoffman were our coordinators extraordinaire – we couldn’t have done it without them!

Thank you faculty and staff leadership for making this happen.

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Outreach to High Schools

Bakersfield College has expanded our outreach into the high schools extensively over the last three years.  The Outreach Office which was an initiative in 2013-2014 under the leadership of Steve Watkin has BC in all high schools.  In addition our academic departments do the same.  Here are a few emails that were circulating among a large group of folks on campus.  I was on the distribution list and just loved reading each of them.  I am sure you will enjoy them as much as I do

Dr. Nick Strobel:

Other outreach to the high schools includes the Physics Olympics held in the spring that brings oodles of possible STEM majors from all the high schools and there’s some sort of physics or engineering design challenge going on this Saturday at BC that’ll bring a bunch of high school students to campus (including my daughter). I reach down to the younger kids with the planetarium field trips every Tuesday and Thursday morning.

That’s one thing I like about BC: we’re a community college with the emphasis on “community”. We reach out to the community and the community reaches out to us. A win-win!

Jen Garrett:

I visit nearly every high school and offer a variety of services to them. I offer to clinic the choir, work with accompanists, pull students out to work on solos or small groups, take an entire section (such as sopranos) and work intensely with them, discuss the choir and Applied Music program and BC in general, or any combination.  I also bring a student that previously attended that high school that is in the programs to give a personal testimonial.  I also have a drawing for some kind of BC memorabilia.  We also offer a High School Chamber Festival in October where the choirs come and perform for one another and work with a guest conductor and also myself.  We are also going to do another festival in the spring.  We also hand deliver a poster and flier for all of our concerts to each high school choir. These are a sampling of the things I do for outreach and there is more!  I love to recruit for BC!

Now to all our community members, do you see what makes Bakersfield College special?  The people….their commitment, their talent, and their love for our students and the community.  

#WeAreBC and this is what we do!

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That’s all for now.  

Until next week.

With much Renegade Pride and Collegiality.  

sonya — the luckiest and happiest college president ever.

 

 

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One thought on “We are BC

  1. Nick Strobel December 3, 2016 at 4:05 pm Reply

    This blog is great for finding out all the various things happening at BC. The use of the Measure J balloons to teach language skills, numbering, and dancing at the BC Child Development Center was especially creative. Congrats to John Gerhold for the recognition by his peers across the state. We already know what a great leader he is here at BC but it’s nice to receive accolades from other leaders in one’s own discipline.

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