Friday, January 3, 2020

Greetings Peralta Community!  Welcome to the first issue of our new district newsletter, Peralta Gems. We hope you find it informative and useful. Once you've read it, please let me know what you think of this new format.  And please send me stories you'd like to be shared with our colleagues across the district. Thank you! Mark Johnson markjohnson@peralta.edu

Happy New Year to All!

On Friday, December 20, Chancellor Stanback Stroud hosted a delightful potluck luncheon and "Secret Santa" gift exchange for the district staff.  You can view a photo gallery of the event here on the Peralta SmugMug site. Thanks to everyone for bringing amazing food. Rumor has it the green beans were fabulous! We hope you all had a restful and joyous winter break. We are excited to be back for the Spring 2020 Semester which starts in just a few short weeks. Onward for a productive 2020 in service of students and community!

PBIM Recommends Design Principles for Organizational Service Restructuring

The PCCD Board of Trustees engaged technical support services by the Collaborative Brain Trust (CBT) to provide recommendations for improvements to strengthen the fiscal health and long-range fiscal stability of PCCD.  CBT conducted a project that lead to multiple recommendations related to improving fiscal stability, organizational efficiencies, enrollment management and executive turnover. As a result, a PBIM workgroup was formed to provide recommendations in two areas that would address CBT’s guidance:

First: Make recommendations of design principles for consideration of centralized, decentralized and shared services Second: Make recommendations on the improvement of the PBIM Structure. The PBIM Work Group membership includes Dr. Donald Moore, Dr. Tammeil Gilkerson, Fred Bourgoin, Dr. Tina Vasconcellos, Dr. Siri Brown, Amy Marshall, Jennifer Lenahan, Richard Thoele, Dr. Leigh Sata, Victoria Menzies, and Kelly Pernell.  This group came together and engaged in an exercise to address the first charge of recommending service structure design principles.  The group representing faculty, staff, administration, and all four colleges identified twenty-six important concepts that could be grouped into five guiding principles.

The executive team will measure the organizational structure up against these five guiding principles as we respond to the CBT recommendation to: "Conduct an in-depth review of the organizational structure of administrative support services at the District and the colleges; determine the mix of centralized vs. decentralized staffing and services; clarify these in writing; align staffing as appropriate.”

Areas being considered for decentralization include Admissions and Records.  Financial Aid has been identified for decentralization.  Admissions and Records will be considered and if decentralized, it will be timed to roll out when the colleges are prepared to receive it without interruption in service to students.  Other areas being considered are Technology and Facilities, Maintenance and Operations.  We will continue to have the necessary conversations and gather the necessary information to organize the services in a way that align with the guiding principles and serve the colleges best.

Social Media Snapshot: The Basic Needs Summit at Laney College

Congratulations to President Tammeil Gilkerson and the staff of Laney College for hosting the #RealCollegeCalifornia Basic Needs Summit in collaboration with the Community College League of California. Chancellor Stanback Stroud gave the welcoming address to community college educators gathered at Laney from across the state. The event tool place on Friday, December 6, 2019. 

Peralta Awarded Group Fulbright to South Africa

Peralta Community College District (PCCD) received $98,425 from the U.S. Department of Education’s 2019 Fulbright-Hays Group Projects Abroad (GPA) Program to support a five-week research and study abroad opportunity—and related curriculum development project— specifically for community college and high school educators.  Through this project, 12 college and high school faculty from PCCD and Oakland Unified School District will travel to South Africa to conduct research on the intersection between racial, economic and social justice movements, public health, and arts and culture in this rapidly changing country. The team’s mission will be to generate new interdisciplinary curriculum and materials, for classroom use and for dissemination to community colleges statewide. They will also collaborate on related dual enrollment and linked learning projects. A special thanks to the project director Professor Ruhina Najem (COA) and abroad lead Professor Danea Martinez who will lead the team. Look for updates and a presentation from the team early next fall.

Peralta Corporate Scholars Program Launches with Kaiser Permanente Interns

International Services Launches "International Conversations" Radio Show

Aldane Walters, Drew Gephart and Andrea V. Lee on the first episode of International Conversations

A new radio show/podcast called International Conversations launched this Fall, 2019 with 5 episodes about culture, travel, experiences and connections. The show features students who have studied abroad, international students studying at Peralta Colleges, and staff who have led programs. It airs live on the 2nd Thursday of each month at 4:00pm, and you can find previous episodes of the show at kgpc969.org/international

Merritt College Child Development Center

Good progress has been made on the design of the new Child Development Center at Merritt College.  The Center will provide instruction to students in two new classroom laboratories, a new outdoor play area for children, and offices and support spaces for faculty.  The project is funded by a combination of State Capital Outlay funds, leveraging local funds from Measure A.  The design work will be completed this Summer, and is expected to begin construction in early 2021.

Fire Watch Update

As many of you know, both Laney College and Merritt College are currently on Fire Watch status with the Oakland Fire Department. We have some good news in that a number of fire alarm panels at Laney College have been replaced as required by the Oakland Fire Marshall, and these new alarm panels have passed a preliminary inspection by OFD. Before we can get off Fire Watch, some work remains involving the fiber optic network that connects Laney, Merritt, and the other PCCD fire systems. This work will continue in the new year, where we hope to be off Fire Watch by the end of the first quarter, if not sooner. Thanks to all at DGS and IT who are working to resolve these remaining network issues. 

Human Resources Grants and Reimbursements

The Peralta Employee Relations and Benefits departments have some big news concerning funding.  First, Employee Relations received $45,000 from the State Chancellor’s Office for timely completion of its Equal Employment Opportunity Multiple Methods Allocation Model.  Kudos to everyone who worked on this project.  Next, the Benefits Office received more than $600,000 in reimbursements, due to the successful management of our medical claims.  Congratulations Benefits team!

Congratulations to Recently Promoted Staff Members

Congratulations are in order for Harizon Odembo, who was promoted from Human Resources Generalist to Benefits Manager. Harizon has been an employee at PCCD for over four years and has spent time at College of Alameda and Laney College before joining the District office.

Alejandra Rodriguez was promoted from HR Generalist to Human Resources Analyst (Leaves & Benefits).  Congratulations Alejandra!

Welcome New Staff Member

Please give a warm Peralta welcome to Che Ly, who was hired as a Human Resources Generalist. We're glad to have you on our team!

Risk Management Training Sessions

Hopefully everyone was able to attend all the great trainings Risk Management has been hosting lately.  First there was the Handling Stress and Finding Focus training that was presented by MHN – a Health Net Company – which was held on Nov. 5^th in the Board Room.  Folks came away from that workshop with lots of great tips.  Then there was the Harassment Awareness and Diversity Training, which took place on Nov. 20^th.  It, too, was an educational and informative training session that included an in-depth discussion of both topics. It was the second time this year this training was held, because, at the first one this past March, attendees had no idea of the impact it would have on their lives.

Steven Crow To Help While Search For Vice Chancellor Continues

While Peralta continues the recruitment for the Vice Chancellor of Finance and Administration position, Chancellor Stanback Stroud has invited Dr. Steven Crow to represent the Finance department on the Chancellor's Cabinet team. Dr. Crow is a familiar face here in the district, where he has been a member of the Collaborative Brain Trust team working at Peralta since January 2019. Steve has been the Chief Business Officer for over 15 years at a few different colleges and brings a tremendous wealth of experience on financial matters to Peralta. Welcome Dr. Crow!

Parcel Tax Oversight Committee Meets

Many thanks to Adil Ahmed and Richard Ferreira, who along with Mark Johnson, hosted a successful Parcel Tax Oversight Committee Meeting on December 12, 2019. Adil presented the history of spending to date on the Parcel Tax revenue received by the district for spending on educational programs. The Agenda for that meeting is available at https://web.peralta.edu/bond-reports/c-o-c-meeting-agendas-and-minutes/ with the minutes going up soon.  The Bond Measures Oversight Committee also met on December 12, 2019 hosted by Vice Chancellor Leigh Sata and Mark Johnson, with VC Sata providing the committee with a report on Bond measure A spending and preliminary plans for Measure G spending. The Agenda and draft minutes for that meeting are also posted at the URL above. 

The Process for ePAF Approval Has Changed

Please be advised that beginning Friday, December 6, 2019 access to the Intranet/ePAF will be through a new link:

http://epaf.ad.peralta.edu/Peralta/Login.aspx

Access to this new link is restricted to the Peralta admin network and the Peralta secure wireless network.  If you need to connect to the site remotely while

off-campus or away from your office, please place a request for VPN access through the Helpdesk at helpdesk@peralta.edu

The old link, https://access.peralta.edu, will be discontinued.

If you have any questions, please contact Peralta Help Desk at helpdesk@peralta.edu or (510) 587- 7800.

Scheduled Maintenance Coming in January

Please be advise that District IT will be performing critical patch updates to the enterprise systems.  During the maintenance window, applications will be unavailable.

Scheduled maintenance

Impacted Systems

Affected Departments

We apologize for any inconvenience and thank you for your continuous support. For any questions, please contact Peralta Help Desk at helpdesk@peralta.edu or (510) 587- 7800.

Changing the Department Name

We're pleased to announce that the department formerly known as "Public Information, Communication and Media" will now be known as "Marketing, Communication, and Public Relations."  The Collaborative Brain Trust (CBT) identified marketing as an area where Peralta can improve. Since joining PCCD at the end of July, Mark Johnson (Interim Executive Director) has conducted an audit of marketing and communication resources at Peralta. The Marketing team has started tracking tasks using a tool called Asana, which helps us make sure that requests are getting appropriate attention. In the short term we have several promotional campaigns in progress for the Spring 2020 semester including email direct marketing to students who have applied but not yet enrolled; Facebook ads, Instagram ads, Twitter boosted posts, Google AdWords, and AC Transit ads (see below), all intended to help drive enrollment. Stay tuned for more information from your MCPR team. 

Ads Coming to a Bus Near You

Over the next several weeks the artwork above will be appearing on AC Transit buses all over Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda, and surrounding areas.