Jason Stratton, Department Chair
I was collecting blurbs to showcase leadership and engagement of our faculty and staff for opening day and I received a fabulous zip file from Jason Stratton via Paul Beckworth on the happenings in Social Science.
Let’s sit back and enjoy our faculty colleagues in the Social Science department.
The Social Science Department has been, is currently, and will continue to work diligently to make Bakersfield College and the community around it a place for student growth. This growth is fostered through individual faculty members’ publication of academic works, by contribution in the shared governance process, by support of student activities as an advisor/mentor/or chaperone, through involvement in social outreach to the communities we serve, through developing cultural activities/experiences and either bringing them to campus or leading field trips that allow the students to participate in this type of growth.
Randy Beeman
Faculty members take leadership roles and are engaged with work on committees to make the college a stronger institution, they work on committees to recruit the ‘right’ candidate to join our family, they work on committees to improve instruction on campus, and they participate in regional or statewide initiatives to improve education for all students in higher education. They work with the media to help explain current developments and their works serve as source materials in documentaries.
Here is a sample of our achievements and activities in Social Science. It is not a comprehensive list:
Prof. Randy Beeman has spent considerable time in composing a series of articles and books within agricultural history, with such a strong focus on the Agricultural Labor Movement that Carlos Santana’s daughter (and himself) used some of the data in a film project they are working on that is centered on Dolores Huerta.
In addition, discussions have begun either to digitize his collected works for UC Merced, or to house them as the Beeman Agricultural Labor Collection within CSUB’s special collections area.
Prof. Oliver Rosales has been similarly busy in his time here at Bakersfield College. At this October’s Western History Association Annual Meeting in Portland, Oregon, he is participating as a panelist on Borderlands History. Earlier this month, he organized a panel presentation on the historical legacies of the Latino Civil Rights Movement, which was held at the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association’s Annual Meeting in Sacramento.
Bakersfield College was awarded a Cal Humanities: Community Stories grant for $10,000.00. This grant will help record & distribute untold stories of Bakersfield multiracial civil rights past. The grant partners with CSU Bakersfield Public History Institute and Oral History program.
Bakersfield College was awarded a Latino Americans: 500 years of History! grant for $10,000.00. This grant is funded by the American Library Association & National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant funds the screening of the new PBS Latino Americans documentary and a host of public programming events associated with film screenings. Bakersfield College will host as a first event a “Delano Grape Strike symposium” event on Thursday, Sept. 24 in partnership with CSU Bakersfield.
Erin Miller
Prof. Erin Miller has been very engaged on campus through her contributions in the Women’s History events and in bringing recipient of the AIBS Emerging Public Policy Leadership Award and Chico State University graduate student Ms. Taylor Herren to BC last March to serve as the final speaker in the Women’s History Month activities. Ms. Herren was instrumental in the CSU system adopting a sustainability policy, and she gave a presentation that focused upon female leadership in academia and the sciences.
Prof. Miller’s contributions to our college via her participation in the Habits of the Mind program have had a significant impact in improving our students’ abilities. Prof. Miller has many other activities as well, and they tend to be similarly focused upon enhancing our students’ lives and opportunities.
Prof. Matthew Garrett (the FIRST Professor Garrett on campus!) has worked well with other constituents of our college to enhance our student’s lives, both intellectually and culturally.
Matthew Garrett
Prof. Garrett represented and was point person for the History Department as he collaborated with SGA and the Performing Arts Department to help organize the Frederick Douglass event in the Spring 2015 semester, a cultural event that brought history to life for our students. Thank you to ALL parties involved!
He assisted (amongst many others) with Dept. Chair Kimberly Bligh’s Summer Bridge program. As if his commitment to enabling student growth was not enough, his book manuscript earned the Juanita Brooks Prize this summer.
In addition to his consistent work to enhance student understanding and abilities, Prof. Christian Parker took the time this summer to try to contextualize national events for a local television station. You can see the story, which includes clips from his interview, here.
Whether it be traveling the length of the state as part of their role as Academic Senate President like Prof. Steven Holmes, traveling to various conferences for the final stages of the ‘Give a Student a Compass’ program with the CSU system and the new 3CSN movement focused on Threshold Concepts and Wicked Problems, leading students on field trips to cultural sites such as the Getty Museum like Prof. Daymon Johnson, working with the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society on campus like Prof. Charles Kim, or other student organizations, the Bakersfield College Social Science Department has consistently demonstrated a willingness to go that extra step to make education better for our college.
Our Social Science faculty colleagues rock! We ARE… B.C.!
