Merritt College Career Fair
Kudos to the individuals responsible for putting on the Merritt College Career Center and Job Development Fair on April 8, 2022. Merritt had about fifty students in attendance, and the event featured presentations from several East Bay employers, including the YMCA of the East Bay, ChildCare Careers, the Unity Council, Duck’s Nest Preschool, Kidango, Oakland Unified School District, and City of Oakland Head Start.
Merritt College Open House
As part of the ongoing efforts to establish Merritt as the “Community’s College,” we are excited to host a Career Education Open House on Friday, April 29, 2022. In partnership with Oakland Unified School District and our other K-12 feeder Districts, we expect to welcome over 150 prospective Merritt students (high school juniors and seniors) to tour our campus throughout the day.
The following article is written by Brock Drazen, Athletic Director at Merritt College and Head Coach of the Merritt College Track & Field team, and is use by permission from an announcement sent to all Peralta employees on March 29, 2022.
Even while on spring break, our students continue training and competing with a meet last Friday at Santa Rosa Junior College and upcoming meets at Stanford, Sac State, and Mt San Antonio College the next three weekends before our Big 8 Conference championships.
Merritt College awarded California Apprenticeship Initiative Grant
Merritt College is proud to announce that we have been awarded the California Apprenticeship Initiative Grant: New and Innovative Programs from the Workforce and Economic Development Division of the State Chancellor's Office. The grant award is for $416,509 and will be used to strengthen our Cybersecurity Apprenticeships and increase access to digital literacy for underserved and underrepresented communities.
On Wednesday, February 15, Merritt convened a joint Strategic Enrollment Management/Educational Master Planning Task Force meeting to examine and address some of the prevailing and persistent challenges we face in terms of the recruitment and retention of students. We recognize that COVID-19 has had an obvious impact on our enrollment numbers and the way our institution will need to function going forward (including devoting more attention and resources to support the mental health of our students). But we also concede that some of the challenges were endemic even before the pandemic. It is important for us to acknowledge troubling issues if we ever hope to surmount them… we cannot skip that critical step. With that said, a few of the areas that we will address are:
Recognition of Faculty & Staff
I would like to begin by acknowledging the collective efforts of the faculty, classified professional staff, and administrators to make the first few weeks of the semester (particularly the on-campus instruction and delivery of in-person student services) more successful than many had anticipated.
February is Black History Month, and the Peralta Colleges will be celebrating all month long. Merritt College President David M. Johnson, in an email to the Merritt Community, described the history of this month of remembrance:
Image: 2020 lunar new year celebration at Laney College
February 1st marks the start of the year of the Tiger and we at Peralta are excited to celebrate the Lunar New Year. The Peralta community is made up of students, faculty, and staff with connections around the world.
