Happy New Year! I hope your 2024 is off to a beautiful start.

Mine certainly has – winter has arrived!

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The past few years, I’ve shared the books I read the past year. Today I’m sharing a few of the books I read in 2023:

The Covenant of Water
By: Abraham Verghese

“Spanning the years 1900 to 1977, The Covenant of Water is set in Kerala, on South India’s Malabar Coast, and follows three generations of a family that suffers a peculiar affliction: in every generation, at least one person dies by drowning—and in Kerala, water is everywhere. At the turn of the century, a twelve-year-old girl from Kerala’s long-existing Christian community, grieving the death of her father, is sent by boat to her wedding, where she will meet her forty-year-old husband for the first time. From this unforgettable new beginning, the young girl—and future matriarch, known as Big Ammachi—will witness unthinkable changes over the span of her extraordinary life, full of joy and triumph as well as hardship and loss, her faith and love the only constants.“

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The Last Animal
By: Ramona Ausubel

“The Last Animal takes readers on a wild, entertaining, and refreshingly different kind of journey, one that explores the possibilities and perils of the human imagination on a changing planet, what it’s like to be a woman in a field dominated by men, and how a wondrous discovery can best be enjoyed with family. Even teenagers.“

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One Hundred Years of Solitude
By: Gabriel García Márquez

“One Hundred Years of Solitude tells the story of the rise and fall, birth and death of the mythical town of Macondo through the history of the Buendiá family. Inventive, amusing, magnetic, sad and alive with unforgettable men and women—brimming with truth, compassion, and a lyrical magic that strikes the soul—this novel is a masterpiece in the art of fiction“

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I Love Learning; I Hate School
By: Susan D. Blum

“In “I Love Learning; I Hate School,” Blum tells two intertwined but inseparable stories: the results of her research into how students learn contrasted with the way conventional education works, and the personal narrative of how she herself was transformed by this understanding. Blum concludes that the dominant forms of higher education do not match the myriad forms of learning that help students―people in general―master meaningful and worthwhile skills and knowledge.“

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Superintelligence
By: Nick Bostrom

“If machine brains one day come to surpass human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become very powerful. As the fate of the gorillas now depends more on us humans than on the gorillas themselves, so the fate of our species then would come to depend on the actions of the machine superintelligence.

But we have one advantage: we get to make the first move. Will it be possible to construct a seed AI or otherwise to engineer initial conditions so as to make an intelligence explosion survivable? How could one achieve a controlled detonation?“

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How to Know a Person
By: David Brooks

“Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to human connection. How to Know a Person helps readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception.“

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And from previous years –

2022 Books
» Read my January 8, 2023 post – Rain Bathing CA in Glee

• Cry of the Kalahari by Mark and Delia Owens
• The Mighty and the Almighty: Reflections on America, God, and World Affairs 
  by Madeleine Albright
• The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human 
  by Siddhartha Mukherjee
• The Distance Between Us: A Memoir by Reyna Grande
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa Yoko Ogawa
• The Loneliest Americans by Jay Caspian Kang
• The Art of Living: Peace and Freedom in the Here and Now by Thich Nhat Hanh
• Deadliest Enemy: Our War Against Killer Germs 
  by Michael T. Osterholm and Mark Olshaker

2021 Books
» Read my January 8, 2022 post – KCCD CEOs welcome you to the new semester

• The Code Breaker by Walter Isaacson
• Count the Ways by Joyce Maynard
• The Midnight Library by Matt Haig
• Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer
• Post Corona by Scott Galloway
• The Truths We Hold by Kamala Harris
• Divided we Fall by David French
• Notorious RBG by Irin Carmon
• Untamed by Glennon Doyle
• The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett
• The Guest List by Lucy Foley
• Deadliest Enemy by Michael Osterholm
• Grace and Grit by Lilly Ledbetter

Good morning California.
It is January 6, 2024.
A good day to be a Community College Champion

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From California Community Colleges.
Our Time is Now!

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Yale University Honors WLAC’s Center for Climate Change Education

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West Hills College Lemoore Awards Nearly $200,000
in NSF S-STEM CORES Scholarships to STEM Students

West Hills College Lemoore recently awarded National Science Foundation (NSF) S-STEM CORES Scholarships to 20 STEM students studying Biology, Engineering, Physics, and Math. The scholarships, valued up to $10,000 annually per student ($5,000 per semester) for a maximum of four semesters, are part of WHCL’s commitment to developing future STEM leaders.

» Read more!

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MiraCosta College Receives Prestigious Department of Energy Grant to Bolster Clean Energy Workforce Training

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In Case You Missed It

Workforce and Economic Mobility
Ready – or Not: Will California Close its Skills Gap?

George Boggs and I co-wrote a blog post this week for the Workforce and Economic Mobility blog.

The United States—including California—must accelerate educational attainment to meet the need for more advanced employment skills. By 2031, 72 percent of the jobs in the US will require postsecondary education and/or training, and 42 percent will require a bachelor’s degree. The fastest-growing industries, according to the recent report from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, require workers with disproportionately higher education levels compared to industries with slower growth.”

» Read more!

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Diverse: Report – Adult Community College Students Make Strides

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Fun Photos & Spotted on Social Media

From Fresno City College:

All smiles We are ready to welcome thousands of students to campus on Monday

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From Oxnard College:

Our Associated Student Government wrapped up the semester by taking students on a guided tour of SoFi stadium! Students checked out team locker rooms and facilities while also learning about various career paths in sports. They even tested their throwing skills on the field!

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And check this out – the College of Alameda Dance Department performing at the SF International New Concept Film Festival last November:

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Blast from the Past

As colleges across California celebrate their opening days, I remembered the Bakersfield College Opening Day back in 2016 –

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And From the Home of the Renegades

Bakersfield College – IDA Endowment Fund Recipient

Three years ago, automotive professors Andrew Haney, CD-SV, and Rick Range, CD-SV, ASE Master | L1 and California State Smog Technicians and state license certified instructors, embarked on a mission to enhance the Automotive Technology training program at Bakersfield College (Bakersfield, California, United States) by introducing automotive detailing. Their combined expertise and extensive experience in the automotive repair industry set the stage for a transformative addition to the curriculum.

The crowning moment for the program came in 2023 when Andrew applied for and received the IDA Founder’s Endowment Fund Grant, a $2500 boost that propelled the initiative to new heights. With unwavering support from Bakersfield College’s administration, the grant was strategically invested in upgrading the automotive training program’s wash bay.

» Read more!

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Remember – our greatest challenges enable us to do our greatest work.

That’s all for today.

See you next Saturday!

With much hope and joy, 

Your Chancellor,

-sonya

#OurTimeisNow
#NuestroTiempoEsAhora

Tagged: #CACCsOurTimeisNow, #NuestroTiempoEsAhora, #OurTimeisNow, Bakersfield College, California Community College Chancellor, College of Alameda, Fresno City College, MiraCosta College, Nuestro Tiempo Es Ahora, Our time is now, Oxnard College, Sonya Christian, West Hills College Lemoore, West Los Angeles College