Today is the Winter Solstice – the shortest day of the year and the official start of winter. I love the winter solstice, doesn’t everyone? My reason is because the days start getting longer and I diligently jot down the sunrise and sunset times on my calendar.
Let’s read a beautiful poem by Susan Cooper – The Shortest Day
So the shortest day came, and the year died, And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world Came people singing, dancing, To drive the dark away. They lighted candles in the winter trees; They hung their homes with evergreen, They burned beseeching fires all night long To keep the year alive. And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake They shouted, reveling. Through all the frosty ages you can hear them Echoing, behind us — listen! All the long echoes sing the same delight This shortest day As promise wakens in the sleeping land. They carol, feast, give thanks, And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace. And so do we, here, now, This year, and every year. Welcome Yule!
A few more holiday wishes from around the California Community Colleges:
Foothill-DeAnza CCD:
Chabot College:
Merritt College:
Laney College:
Victor Valley College:
Riverside City College:
Good morning California. It is December 21, 2024. Happy Winter Solstice A good day to be a Community College Champion
Continuing my look back at old blog posts – this week we’ll revisit 2017-2020.
Bakersfield College was honored as the Veteran Support Organization of the Year at the 7th Annual Military Order of the Purple Heart Dinner, held Saturday, February 19th, at the Doubletree Hotel in Bakersfield. Dr. Zav Dadabhoy accepted the award on behalf of Bakersfield College.
On Thursday, August 17th, we celebrated our Opening Day – a time where faculty and staff come together to review all we’ve accomplished and the things we look forward to accomplishing this year. This year, the indoor theater was packed and Jennifer Marden needed to organize an overflow room. And plz note that there are three reds in the planning team — Jennifer Marden, Monika Scott, and Kristin Rabe!
This year marks the 60th Homecoming celebration at 1801 Panorama Drive. I hope you’ll come out and show your unique Renegade pride in celebration of 114 years of BC transforming lives in Kern County.
On campus, we’ve been celebrating Homecoming all week. When I arrived on campus on Monday morning, I was greeted with Renegade decorations and school spirit everywhere. We kicked off with an office decoration contest hosted by The Office of Student Life. This year there was a tie between two areas: the shared area of the Marketing & Public Relations and Institutional Effectiveness departments, and the Extended Study Area. Congratulations!!
On Thursday evening, we celebrated the momentous occasion of the 100th Graduating Class of the BC Associate Degree Nursing Program.
Did you know the Nursing program at Bakersfield College is the 6th oldest RN program in the state? An article in one of the BC Archives newsletters says, “It all started in 1951 when a vocational nursing program was initiated in cooperation with Kern General Hospital (now Kern Medical Center). Its first group of nurses graduated in 1952.”
Last weekend marked the first Women’s March of Kern County and the second Women’s March across the nation. It was great to see our community and country come together, standing united. Our diverse community of all genders, races, ethnicity, and faiths came together.
Bakersfield College recently received Strong Workforce Stars Gold recognition for the Radiologic Technology program. Students who participate in this program boost their earnings by 329%; 100% of them attain the regional living wage, and 100% of students get a job in their field of study.
Woke up this morning to Bakersfield College making the front page of The Bakersfield Californian, above the fold. A good day to be a Renegade! Joseph Luiz of The Bakersfield Californian covered the launch of the implementation of Measure J with some level of detail.
Renegades are on the front lines of marching for humankindness as seen in the cover photo on this Bakersfield Californian Article, “March aims to celebrate diversity, spread kindness” by Joseph Luiz. Photographer Alex Horvath captured Mayor Karen Goh with Assembly Member Vince Fong and Robin Mangarin Scott leading the way followed by the charge of BC Renegades. The walk, held on Thursday afternoon at CSUB, celebrated diversity and what unites our community as kind and caring. Robin Mangarin emceed the short program which included speakers Raji Brar, Dr. Matab Singh, and two young girls who started a local organization called Kind Girls Make Strong Women.
As I wrote in last week’s blog, BC was out in the vineyards of Kern County this week. In partnership with the Central Valley Farm workers Foundation, Bakersfield College Rural Initiatives team and outreach advisors visited 20 farmworker crews at local vineyards throughout North and South Kern to promote higher education. The team was able to reach over 1200 farmworkers, planting a seed of hope for higher education. Over 150 workers have requested follow-up services to begin their matriculation.
Bakersfield College and McFarland High School are making education history with the Early College program, and we decided to celebrate the first chapter of that history with a launch event in the McFarland High gym last week on Wednesday night.
On Thursday, April 4, Rolling Stone journalist and New York Times bestselling author Eric Schlosser gave a series of presentations at BC about the development of “Fast Food Nation” and his other books.
Schlosser was the person most recently featured in BC’s Distinguished Speakers series for the 2018-19 academic year, which has brought other notable speakers such as Temple Grandin, Clementine Wamariya, and Christina Sommers to campus.
Bakersfield College had a phenomenal week of celebrating the diligent, committed, and focused work of BC faculty, staff, and students. The talent at BC is truly exceptional and the work ethic one of a kind. We are BC!
On Monday morning we started with a crowd of approximately 200 packing the Wylie and May Louise Jones Gallery on the Panorama Campus for a press event where Assembly Member Rudy Salas presented Bakersfield College with a check for $1 million from the state legislature for the second consecutive year.
The Launchpad is Bakersfield College’s new entrepreneurship center developed to provide a system of connected resources and support for local entrepreneurs to help increase the number of new businesses in our community and to assist small businesses to grow.
The Office of Student Life (OSL) and the Bakersfield College Student Government Association (BCSGA) are kicking off the Spring 2020 semester in spectacular fashion as part of Welcome Week, which actually stretches across two weeks, January 22-31.
To make sure that our Renegades’ first day of classes runs smoothly, they’ve been hosting Welcome Tents at the Administration Building, Outdoor Theater and the Gym Huddle to pass out maps, help students find their classes, and provide information about what is going on during the first two weeks of school.
Our third-semester students joined the battle last week and began working as COVID-19 screeners at Bakersfield Heart Hospital. Thank you to all our nursing students who are working on the front lines of the pandemic to protect us all.
Another big thank you to our classified staff and their families, who have been making Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) in the form of cloth face masks and caps. Thank you to BC staff Venessa Reyes and Robin Patterson, and their mothers Corrine Reyes and Vivian Patterson, for working hard to meet the national shortage of PPE. Over 170 masks have been distributed to students and faculty to keep them safe as they provide patient care.
This week, 354 students from Kern High School District attended their first course from our new KHSD Early College Pathways program. About one third of these students are incoming 9th grade students who are beginning a pathway that will lead to the completion of one of the following associate degrees: Industrial Automation AS, Psychology AA-T, Administration of Justice AS-T, and Public Health AS-T. The rest of the students are 10th, 11th and 12th grade students who are getting a head start on their college education and will graduate from high school with between 9 and 45 college credits.
The second week of our ACCJC conference featuring leaders in education, civics and policy wrapped up on Dec. 7 and 8, with hundreds of participants from across the state tuning in to #OccupyLearning. The conference was spread out over four days, with two one-hour sessions each day.
For the first session on Day 3, December 7, we had Deb Bushway, President and CEO of Northwestern Health Sciences University, to talk about competency-based education with Vice Chancellor Aisha Lowe and our BC facilitator Erica Menchaca. For the second session of Day 3, Concentric Sky CEO Wayne Skipper engaged in a discussion with Bill Moseley about Badgr, micro-credentialing, and its implementation within guided pathways.
The Workforce & Economic Mobility Blog blog shares approaches to workforce and economic development, with a goal of supporting economic mobility for our community while staying committed to the health of our people and the health of our environment.
In the Bhambi & Christian blog, Dr. Brijesh Bhambi join together joined together with the goal of facilitating healing and conversation in our community.
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