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Does it take a village, or does it take a county? Thank you Kern County Board of Supervisors!

Bakersfield College, Student Success August 4, 2015 Comments: 4

Rich McCrow, Gustavo Enrique, Jareth Regapala, Sonya Christian, Michael Turnipseed, David Teasdale, Alfonso Noyola

This morning I attended the County of Kern Board of Supervisors meeting to wait for a very special agenda item: the awarding of $400,000 to Arvin High School for a partnership with Bakersfield College that brings college courses to Arvin and helps students in the area achieve higher education completion sooner, and in fields of study relevant to immediate employability in key industries.

Bakersfield College has been focusing on improving educational attainment levels in rural Kern and the work in the Arvin/Lamont community has been critical. With the funding from the County of Kern Board of Supervisors for the new 1+1+2=Game Changer program, Bakersfield College’s relationship with Arvin High School is expanding, and the opportunities for local students are increasing tremendously.

Much of what Bakersfield College does is guided by the Educational Master Plan, which directs the college to “explore new avenues” to educate the area’s socioeconomically disadvantaged population. Within the Educational Master Plan is the Rural Communities Initiative, which focuses on the rural communities inside Bakersfield College’s service area, and outlines specific strategies and tactics for reaching these communities with higher education information and access.

Richard McCrow, who came to Bakersfield College to oversee the operations at our campus in Delano, quickly became Bakersfield College’s lead administrator for all of our rural initiatives, designing programs and partnerships to take higher education into communities like Arvin, Lamont, Delano, Shafter, Wasco, and many more. The Rural Communities Initiative guides how Bakersfield College moves among communities where unemployment and poverty are often higher than statewide averages and educational attainment levels lower.

Rich has been expanding our offerings in the Arvin area. We already offer courses in the evenings at Arvin High School, and now the plan includes components focusing on dual enrollment and educational advising. Dual enrollment allows high school students to take courses that count simultaneously for high school and college credit, and these courses help students work toward their higher education goals.

Supervisor Leticia Perez. Source: http://blog.herofinancing.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/HERO_Post_blog_a.jpg

I’m pleased that today, the County of Kern Board of Supervisors put their support behind the program by awarding Arvin High School $400,000 to make the partnership possible through more courses, a state-of-the-art interactive classroom, and technologically advanced equipment.

In brief, 1+1+2=Game Changer provides a program of study for incoming high school freshmen to take college courses at Arvin High School during the traditional school day. At the end of four years, these students will have completed their high school education and a full year of Bakersfield College classes, and will need just one more year at Bakersfield College to complete one of three educational pathways:

Transfer to California State University, Bakersfield for a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with an emphasis in Supply Chain Logistics.
Completion of an Associate of Arts in Agriculture Business Management at Bakersfield College.
Application to the Bakersfield College Bachelor of Science in Industrial Automation degree program.

Bryon Schaefer

So many people made this program possible. I thank our partners, Kern High School District Superintendent Dr. Bryon Schaefer and Arvin High School Principal Carlos Sardo for their willingness to make differentiated educational opportunities possible. I thank the team that put together the proposal for their hard work: Rich McCrow, Delano Campus Director; Gustavo Enriquez, Student Success Program Manager at the Delano Campus; Veronica Lucas, Counselor at the Delano Campus; and Jareth Regpala, Counselor at Arvin High School. The 1+1+2=Game Changer program was supported among county administrative staff, including Assistant County Administrative Officer Teresa Hitchcock and Ricardo Del Hoyo from the office of Supervisor Leticia Perez.

The original momentum to making this happen came from Michael Turnipseed, CEO of Kern Taxpayers Association and Supervisor Leticia Perez, both not only committed to workforce development for the region but also able to take action quickly and decisively. I enjoyed the remarks made by Alfonso Noyola, City Manager for Arvin, as well as David Teasdale from Kern Community College District.

Amber Chiang

Things can happen rather fast here at Bakersfield College, and I’m glad we have a team working together who are willing to step in and take care of whatever may come up. That was the case yesterday when I received a phone call asking if BC could draft a press release. I called Amber Chiang, Bakersfield College’s public information officer, and gave her little more than three hours to talk to five different people and read a 25-page proposal in order to create a draft press release that could be distributed to news media as soon as the Board of Supervisors approved the funding. Of course, as she always does, Amber took the task on with flair and gusto, and produced a release that went out at 10:32 this morning. The release is posted on Amber’s page on the Bakersfield College website if you’d like to read it.

I look forward to telling you more about 1+1+2=Game Changer in coming blog posts. With this program, we are truly changing the game of education for current, and future, students in the Arvin and Lamont area of Kern County. We are BC!

Delano: Outreach to high school counselors

Uncategorized November 4, 2014 Comments: 2

Staying in touch with the counselors from local high schools is an important part of Bakersfield College’s outreach to our local community. Counselors in the high schools know their students better than just about any other educational professional, and can provide valuable information and insight into student needs. Ultimately, counselors are an important link to establishing a college-going culture in the communities served by Bakersfield College’s Delano Campus.

To support the ongoing communication with local feeder high schools, Delano Campus faculty and staff held their North Kern Counselor Community of Practice recently. Supported by the Delano College Center Foundation, the event was attended by 30 high school and college counselors. The group engaged in valuable dialogue and information-sharing that helps with the sharing of common problems across all grade levels of education, from area demographics and poverty rates to educational program needs in the northern areas of Kern County.

In turn, the counselors were able to communicate with Bakersfield College’s team about ways the college could help them, from assessment testing and new student workshops on the high school campuses, to discussion of student fees for students attending high school and college simultaneously.

High School Students enjoying engineering at BC

Uncategorized April 13, 2013 Leave a comment

We had about 60 kids from Tehachapi High School, Bakersfield High School, Centennial High School, Ridgeview High School and Shafter High School attend the BC Engineering Open House on April 5, 2013. Thank you to all the STEM folks who made this happen, particularly Liz Rozell and Darren Willis.

Pam Gomez, CTE Advisor, talked about reasons for choosing BC and matriculation; Cynthia Quintanilla, STEM Counselor, and the STEM Transfer Mentors (Kevin Galloway, Travis Burns, Jennifer Head, and Corey Ferdinand) discussed majoring in STEM at BC; the three NASA-Spectrometer teams talked about their projects they will be presenting to NASA in Montana next month; and Rageshwar Goldberg talked about the A+ Scholar program.

There were 5 hands-on project activities that were fun to do but also had a serious side.

1. Materials Science Engineering – Designing an edible scale

What a neat idea! This session was led by Liz Rozell, Dean of STEM, and Jason Dixon, Manufacturing faculty, and involved students using edible materials to create a balance. In Materials Science projects the students got to learn the properties (mechanical, electrical, thermal, magnetic, and optical) of the materials they were working with. For example, the edible scale students had to consider the mechanical properties of ductility, which is the ability of a material to elongate a considerable extent before rupture, and plasticity, which is the ability of a material to remain permanently deformed after release of stress.

Engineering Day April 5 2013–Sonya Christian at the Material Science Lab

Engineering Day April 5 2013 –Liz Rozell and Jason Dixon

2. Projectile Launch

This session was led by Binal Mathew, president of the Engineers Club, and involved having students use a Styrofoam block, ping pong ball, clips, fasteners, rubber bands, and 3 feet of duct tape to design from scratch a projectile to launch a ping pong ball 4’ 6”.

Here in the picture you can see Liz Rozell, Binal Mathew, and a student from Centennial High School.

Engineering Day April 5 2013 –Lizz Rozell and Binal Mathew

3. Structural Design

Participants were challenged to design the tallest possible structure which would support a load. However, the structure had to be built from wooden skewers and soft Jolly Ranchers. Many of the structures collapsed once loaded, but a stellar structure did prevail!

Engineering Day April 5 2013 — Structural Design Project

4. CAD – Solidworks

Darren Willis, Industrial Drawing faculty, challenged students to develop a three dimensional object in Solidworks, a commonly used drafting software in engineering. The students who participated are in Project Lead the Way (PLTW) at the high schools and have been exposed to Solidworks, but it was quite the challenge using the simulation features.

Engineering Day April 5 2013 — Solidworks with Darren Willis

5. Pneumatic / Automation

Students, working in groups, assembled and programmed an automated process with integrated pneumatics. Manny Fernandez, Electronics faculty, provided each group with state-of-the-art equipment that accurately represents assembly processes used in industry. Because of the students’ background in robotics, they were quick studies and met the design challenge Manny set before them. Don Wilmot, Bakersfield High School PLTW instructor, was just blown away by the entire design!