College of Alameda Vice President of Student Services Dr. Tina Vasconcellos will receive a commendation letter and presentation for the partnership she secured with World Central Kitchen and Eat.Learn.Play. on behalf of College of Alameda and our students. To date the program at College of Alameda has distributed 67,200 hot meals, 4,680 produce boxes and raised $722,800 for members of our community.
Over 100 BCC faculty, staff, and administrators came together for a day of professional learning centered around “Building Community and Advancing Equity and Racial Justice.” The event took place on August 21, 2020 and began with community-building activities first thing in the morning, followed by a greeting from the shared governance leads. Lasana Hotep, anti-racist educator and Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging at the University of California, Berkeley, delivered a rousing and informative keynote presentation on the subject, “Antiracism is a Marathon, Not a Sprint: Core Competencies for Equity Advancing Educators.”
In an effort to have greater outreach to our student community and expand its bandwidth, the Laney Student Employment Services Center has partnered with several Community Based organizations and the City of Oakland to provide employment and career readiness services. Specifically, in partnership with the Oakland Housing Authority, the Employment Services Center is hosting a weekly hiring event spotlighting a different employer each week. As a result, approximately 17 participants have received employment! Additionally, as part of the Oakland Workforce Collaborative led by the City of Oakland, the Employment Services Center hosts a monthly hiring event for students and other Oakland residents. The first hiring event focused on Essential Worker jobs, and had 80 job seekers registered, with approximately 13 Laney Students, and 15 employers presenting their open positions.
College of Alameda has a capable new group of mental health counselors that are available and eager to provide support for CoA students. Join us in welcoming this talented new team.
Laney student Leah Vass wrote an excellent story about how she managed to combine her curiosity about what she could do in the Laney FabLab and a course in the Culinary Arts Department about confections into a new career. These, combined with training in the Graphic Arts Department led her to start a company making chocolates for social and corporate events.
We are all using Zoom and other services to video conference with coworkers and students these days. Seminars, lectures, board meetings - basically every situation in which a group of people get together in person before COVID-19 - are all finding their way into a virtual format. But with this convenience, there come some risks as the relative anonymity of participants can allow for misuse of the platform. And the switch to this sort of less-formal meeting can give rise to less than professional behaviors.
Here are some best practices for virtual meetings.
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On Tuesday, September 29, 2020, at their regular governance meeting, the Peralta Community College District (PCCD) Board of Trustees appointed Dr. Carla Stalling Walter to serve as the District’s Interim Chancellor effective October 1, 2020 and continuing through February 2021 or until a permanent chancellor is hired. The Board approved the contract including an annualized salary of $314,943. Interim Chancellor Walter previously served as the District’s Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration and started serving as Acting Chancellor for the District this past July. She brings more than 20 years of successful experience in financial administration and in higher education, including leadership posts at Chabot-Las Positas Community College District and State Center Community College District.
In 2018, the Laney College Asian Pacific American Student Success (APASS) program worked with Laney College Dean of Enrollment Mildred Lewis, Ed.D. to create a multilingual Welcome Video to introduce students to Laney College to let students know they can call Laney College their home. Featuring over a dozen of diverse students representing the cultural richness of the campus and Oakland, making the video was a labor of love for the all-volunteer cast. Shot in just one day and edited over several weeks with students speaking Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese and other languages, the welcome video has been shown at recruitment fairs, orientations and other community events. In fact, the video is the embedded in the Laney College homepage and is amongst the first impressions visitors have of Laney College.
Responding to a statewide shortage of certified nursing assistants, College of Alameda is planning to offer a no-cost Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training program starting with the Spring 2021 Semester. Demand is growing for CNAs. According to labor market information in California, the number of Nursing Assistants is expected to grow faster than the average growth rate for all occupations. Nursing assistant jobs are expected to increase by about 15 percent, or 15,800 jobs by 2026.
