Spring to Success at BCC: Enrollment and Persistence Update

Berkeley City College’s Spring to Success program is building upon the success of Fall is Free with added benefits for students and a focus on persistence from semester to semester. BCC’s planned goals for the Spring semester are to increase persistence by 10% through outreach to Black, Latino/a/x, and AAPI populations, increase FTES through marketing campaigns designed with new and continuing students, and increase FAFSA completion for 2023-24.

Classes are back in full swing as Peralta celebrates Black History Month with a host of programming old and new highlighting African & African-American history and culture.

January 23, 2023

Dear Peralta Community,

Welcome to the Spring 2023 semester. Today should be a day of celebration for students returning to our colleges’ to continue their educational goals and to avail themselves of our outstanding instruction and support services. Today should also be an opportunity for us to celebrate the Lunar New Year – the Year of the Rabbit. And we do celebrate these events!

But this week, we also fly our flags at half-staff at the campuses in solidarity with US President Joe Biden and our federal government, in memory of the lives lost and people injured at the tragic shooting yesterday at Monterey Park in southern California.

In September 2022, Mark Johnson (Executive Director of Marketing, Communication & Public Relations at Peralta Community College District) had the great pleasure to interview Sheng Thao, soon to be elected Mayor of Oakland,  about her experiences as a graduate of Merritt College. We are proud to have a Merritt Valedictorian as the new mayor of Oakland. Congratulations Sheng Thao!

Congratulations to Richard Nguyen, who was awarded the Ozzie Day Scholarship for Fall 2022 at an award ceremony on December 7^th, 2022. Richard grew up in East Oakland and his dad, Duc Nguyen, took classes from the College of Alameda Automotive Technology (ATECH) program when Duc first immigrated to the USA thirty years ago. Richard decided to follow in his dad's footsteps after graduating from high school in Oakland. Ever since his first ATECH class, he's been a straight-A student in the COA ATECH program. He expects to graduate from the Auto program next June and get a job as a technician at a local dealership.

Welcome back and happy New Year! We hope you all enjoyed spending the holidays with your loved ones, and just as we're ringing in 2023 Peralta TV is ringing in a new month of programming for you to enjoy.

New Appointments to Merritt Administrative Team

Merritt College is happy to announce two recent appointments to the administrative team. Marie Amboy has agreed to step in as the Acting Vice President of Administrative Services, and Nghiem Thai has committed to serve as the Acting Dean of Allied Health and Public Safety.

Laney Puente, Latinx Students/Colleagues Celebrate with Dia de Gracias, End of Semester Events

Tuesday, November 22 was a great day at Laney College, as the Puente Program gathered to have its own Dia de Gracias as an advance celebration of the coming holiday. The event was attended by around 30 students, alumni, family members, and Laney colleagues, giving it the richness of true Puente events. Special thanks to Counseling Faculty Member Laura Gomez-Contreras and Professor Maya Chinchilla, under the leadership of Associate Dean Gary Albury, for a great event and energizing this critical program. Thanks to their efforts, what was once a cohort with barely 5 students a few years ago is now becoming a program full of students.