On Thursday, March 25, 2021, the Peralta Colleges Foundation held a virtual event and auction March Madness: Race Toward Building Careers. The incredibly successful event raised $30,000 to be used for student scholarships.

Laney College Stands with the AAPI Community

Laney College President Rudy Besikof was invited to speak at the March 27, 2021 Rally Against Asian Hate in Oakland Chinatown by the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, along with five chambers of commerce including the African American Chamber, Vietnamese Chamber, Hispanic Chamber, Metropolitan Chamber and Shop Oakland, the Oakland A's and East Bay MUD. Addressing the more than 150 participants and major news media including NBC, KPIX and KTVU, President Besikof echoed Mayor Libby Schaaf, Councilwoman Sheng Thao and other speakers in denouncing hate and calling for unity. APASS Director Dr. David Lee spoke to Chinese-language reporters about new opportunities available to AAPI and ESOL Laney students made possible by a recent $1.5 million Department of Education CTE-focused grant. The event was part of historic Anti-Asian American hate rallies, which took place all over the United States.

Outreach, Recruitment & Enrollment representatives from Laney College, along with some of their student support groups and learning communities, met with Oakland Unified School District representatives from nine of their high schools, as well as some of their central staff on March 11. Staff from each school was a mix of counselors, work-based learning coordinators, transition specialists, and college/career specialists, as well as a few outside college access partners.

Recently, horrific stories of unacceptable hate crimes toward the Asian American Pacific Island (AAPI) community have flooded both the local and national media. As an AAPI serving institution, Laney College, and all of the Peralta colleges, remain committed to providing a welcoming learning environment that celebrates diversity and inclusivity.

Educators from peer institutions across the Western Association of Schools and Colleges conducted virtual site visits of the Peralta Community College District and the four colleges last week, March 1-4. These peer reviews were conducted on behalf of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) and were part of an accreditation process that included the Special Reports we submitted last November and the Institutional Self Evaluation Reports (ISERs) submitted in December 2020.  The visits went well. We’re writing to share with you some preliminary good news that we received during the accreditation site visits last week.  

When Laney College’s football was featured on the Netflix Series ‘Last Chance U’, it was a great opportunity to share with the world Coach John Beam's impressive program and the care the Laney coaches, faculty and staff have for students. It was the players that were the stars of the show: there were a number individual stories that couldn’t help but stand out.

To guarantee a strong start to the semester for Laney students, faculty and staff members joined together to create two virtual One-Stop Saturday Enrollment Events, January 23rd and 30th, as well as several Ask Me sessions, which took place during Welcome Week. This effort was led by Vicki Ferguson, Vice President of Student Services, and was made possible by our innovative and dedicated staff members.

The event took place via Zoom, where Laney representatives answered general questions, offered one-on-one support, and referred students out to specific Zoom rooms, hosted by each department. This event was supported with a Google ad, Facebook events, and posts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, as well as a student-wide text message, generating over 4,200 impressions.

The events received advertising support from the District marketing office, with Google ad search helping drive prospective students to the virtual events. 

Jasminh Au is a current senior student for the Gateway to College Program at Laney College and has been announced as the program’s 2021 DREAM Scholar. She is an aspiring Oceanography major and is planning to directly transfer from Gateway to the Hawaii Pacific University at Honolulu. She is a resilient, confident and great student leader in the program.

William Ochoa, Director of Gateway to College says, “to my understanding she is breaking down barriers as to what a dually enrolled student can obtain through her tenure here at our program.” Each DREAM Scholar received a Phi Theta Kappa scholarship in recognition of their success. 

Laney College faculty member Dr. Meryl Siegal co-authored alongside Betsy Gilliland (from the University of Hawai'i Mānoa) new book published by University of Michigan Press. The book, titled Empowering the Community College First-Year Composition Teacher, takes a deep dive into the issues confronting educators undergoing the challenging process of being part of a student's first experience of higher education.

Critics call it a deeply honest portrayal of lives and struggles that is “a love letter to Oakland” 

The Netflix series Last Chance U: Laney has been named the 2020 winner of the IDA Documentary Award for best episodic series. The most recent edition of the show, which originally aired in the summer, focused on the Laney College football team during its 2019 season.