COMMENTS FROM JOE D. MAY

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1 TO: FROM: DCCCD BOARD MEMBERS JOE D. MAY DATE: JUNE 6, 2014 RE: WEEKEND MEMO #13 COMMENTS FROM JOE D. MAY Hello, everyone! Community and collaboration whether at our colleges or with our neighbors and partners were the focus of my activities this week. I would like to share those experiences with you: Stay cool and have a great weekend! Joe May (Note: For the best viewing experience, please use the latest version of Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, or Apple Safari.) District Office Hamaria Crockett, director of DCCCD s College Credit for Heroes (CCH), has announced the launch of its districtwide program. CCH will award college credit, workforce certifications, and workforce licenses for military experience. Regardless of a veteran s military status active duty, reservist, or veteran CCH can help him/her succeed. At all seven colleges, CCH will work to better serve the District s veteran population. For more information, view the video at Members of the DCCCD family are invited to attend the first Bessie R. Lassiter Distinguished Lecture on June 7 at the African American Museum in Fair Park. The event, which begins at 2 p.m., was established by Dr. Wright Lassiter, Jr., DCCCD chancellor emeritus, in memory of his wife, Bessie. RSVPs are requested; please call , Ext. 315 or send an to sharris@aamdallas.org. The lecture will focus on women s health care. The 2014 presenter is Wright Lassiter III, chief executive officer for the Alameda Health System in Oakland, CA.

2 Richland College Sustainable Community Building Dr. Kay Eggleston, Richland College president, Mehrdad Haroutunian, Richland College Garland Campus chief corporate and workforce development officer, and Ron Clark, Richland College vice president for business services, presented an informational update on the Garland Campus to the Garland City Council at its televised Work Session on May 19. Richland College leadership responded to questions from Mayor Douglas Athas and council members (representing Districts 1-8), informing them about Richland College Garland Campus open-enrollment courses, corporate services to businesses and government agencies, workforce training grants, and skilled labor training. Student Success On May 30, Richland Collegiate High School (RCHS) held its annual Senior Celebration at the Richardson Civic Center to honor its graduating seniors. With 209 seniors eligible for high school graduation, the ceremony provided the students, their families, and the staff an opportunity to celebrate all of the graduates noteworthy accomplishments. DCCCD Board of Trustees Chair Jerry Prater attended the celebration along with Richland College President Dr. Kay Eggleston. RCHS Superintendent Donna Walker announced that the seniors had amassed a total of $7,623,694 in scholarship awards for academic transfer to four-year colleges and universities. As a special honor, Sandra Pappas (representing U.S. Congressman Pete Sessions) and Col. John Visser, United States Air Force Academy admissions liaison officer, presented graduating senior Alicia Reese with an appointment to the Air Force Academy. RCHS valedictorian, Majid Abdel-Raziq, and salutatorian, Hannah Hobson, were also announced; they delivered inspiring speeches, reflecting on their RCHS experience and the future. Employee Success Dr. Michael Iachetta, Richland College government program coordinator, presented The Art of Teaching and Learning through Conversation in a breakout session at the 2014 National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development s International Conference on Teaching and Leadership Excellence, held in Austin, May Session participants learned how to facilitate conversations that encourage students to listen to one another, agree or disagree with other students in a productive manner, and support their own opinions with reasons and evidence. Institutional Effectiveness Fonda Vera, Richland College executive dean of planning, research, effectiveness, and development, serving on the four-member 2014 Panel of Judges of the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Program, joins fellow judges at the National Institute of Standards and Technology on June 11 to review scoring data submitted by the 2014 Baldrige examiner teams. The review will determine which of the 22 Baldrige Award applicants will receive site visits, the next phase of the process to assess each organization s performance and determine national role models. Other members of the panel include: Michael Dockery, senior manager of the Memphis World Hub of FedEx Corporation; Laura Huston, assistant vice president of business excellence for Cargill, Inc.; and Ken Schiller, co-owner of K&N Management. All three organizations are former Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipients. Brookhaven College Student Success At the Early College High School (ECHS) at Brookhaven College Senior Awards Assembly on May 21, scholarships for 29 members of the Class of 2014 were announced, which totaled $1,148,318. The largest single award $233,000 Harvard Faculty Scholarship went to Sergio Octavio Martinez to attend Harvard University. Ian Collin Villacres and Jaime Javier Cervantes were each awarded an Austin College Founders Scholarship worth $64,000. This year s senior class was a standout in the ECHS at Brookhaven College graduating classes, with 69 of the 90 graduating seniors completing either Associate in Arts or Associate in Sciences degrees. 2

3 Employee Success The Spring 2014 edition of The Presidency, a quarterly publication of the American Council on Education, includes contributions from Dr. Thom Chesney, president of Brookhaven College. The article, Leading Beyond the Campus Gates, discusses how college presidents are finding new ways to be leaders in the community and not just by attending chamber lunches and Rotary meetings. Chesney addresses the importance of building relationships in the community and how approaching public-private partnerships in new ways has yielded results for Brookhaven College. North Lake College Our Students North Lake College art student Chuck Burton took his first ceramics class after he retired. His wife, Wanda, was already taking classes and he decided to join her. That was more than 10 years ago. Burton got hooked on pottery, started making his own glazes, and, eventually, set up a home studio. The Burtons works have been included in the North Lake College student Spotlight Show art exhibit and used in the North Lake College student magazine, Duck Soup; Chuck has won a number of art awards at the college. On June 1, he had an exhibition open at The Goodrich Gallery (at First United Methodist Church) in the Dallas Design District. The show runs through June 29. Our Community The North Lake College Police Department conducted a full-scale emergency exercise on June 1 at the central campus. The exercise included representatives from the City of Irving, Irving Police Department, Irving Fire Department, and the Office of Emergency Management (in Irving), as well as CareFlite and Baylor Medical Center at Irving. The purpose of the exercise was to evaluate and improve communications, crisis management, and response times for the groups involved. More than a hundred individuals (students and community members) volunteered as role players ; over 40 police officers participated in the training. Our Employees On May 22, three North Lake College staff members made presentations at the 5th Biennial University of North Texas Advising Conference held at Collin College - Preston Ridge Campus. The theme was Pressing Forward: Advancing Your Advising Practices. The presentation made by Anabel Romero-Juarez and Leigh Poston included the North Lake College Academic Advising Manual, an ecampus community for advisors. Kiara Smith s topic was the North Lake College Promoting Academic Student Success (P.A.S.S.) Program, which focuses on helping students improve their academic standing. North Lake College Interim President Christa Slejko visited T.J. Lee Elementary School (Irving ISD) on May 21 for Career Day. Slejko spoke with students from two third-grade classes about attending college and, also, being president of a college. Mountain View College Mountain View College is looking for sixth-, seventh-, and eighth-grade students to enroll in its Summer Prefreshman Engineering Program. The Dallas Texas Prefreshman Engineering Program (Dallas TexPREP) is an academically intense, mathematics-based, summer enrichment program. It is presented in a seven-week session over the course of three summers, each year progressively harder and building upon the previous year s work. Students are given the opportunity to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Along with classroom instruction, participants attend related field trips throughout the DFW Metroplex and are exposed to guest speakers and activities geared towards sparking further interest in STEM fields. The 2014 Dallas TexPREP begins on June 16 and concludes on July 24; the daily schedule is Monday-Thursday from 9:00 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Field trips are scheduled weekly. Applications are available online at and must be submitted by June 12. This program is free to Dallas ISD students! For more information about Dallas TexPREP, please call

4 Last week, Mountain View College reported that Jereamy Riggs was the second-place winner of the Mountain View College Outstanding Student of the Year Award. The college would also like to congratulate its third-place winner, Taylor Souryachak. She is an ambitious and driven individual and is a servant leader and an inspiration to her peers. Souryachak is a recipient of the Mountain View College Amidon/Beauchamp Student Leader of the Year award, Texas Region Phi Theta Kappa Members Hall of Honor award, and numerous distinguished awards and honors; she is a Mountain View College Honors Scholar. The Outstanding Student of the Year Award is a celebration of Mountain View College s student achievements. Those nominated for the award stand out from the crowd as a result of academic success and service to the college and community. Nominations are extensive and demonstrate the college s commitment to celebrating student success. Eastfield College Meet Community Educational Needs Eastfield College is one of four Texas community colleges that will receive state funding to launch new career and technical educational early college high school (CTE ECHS) programs. In an unprecedented partnership, the Texas Education Agency, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and Texas Workforce Commission have each committed funding to help the institutions offer new opportunities for students to simultaneously earn a high school diploma and a postsecondary credential, preparing them to enter high-skill, high-demand fields in the workforce. After 21 schools submitted proposals, the agencies decided to award the first round of grants to Eastfield College, Houston Community College Coleman (College), Odessa College, and South Texas College. Eastfield College will partner with the Dallas ISD to develop the Eastfield College Career and Technical Early College High School, which will enroll 60 ninth-grade students in fall 2015 and scale up one grade each year. Proposed programs of study include: machinist; CNC machine operator; HVAC and refrigeration technology; digital media technology in graphic design/graphic artist; computer aided drafting and design; and advanced manufacturing/mechatronics technology. The goal of the CTE ECHS programs is to enable students to be immediately employable by providing them with job skills and the opportunity to earn stackable credentials that include Level II certificates at least 60 credit hours toward an Associate in Sciences degree or an Associate in Applied Sciences degree. On June 4, the Eastfield College Criminal Justice Programs teamed with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, North Texas Crime Commission, and InfraGuard to host Active Shooter and Media Response training. InfraGuard is a partnership between law enforcement agencies, local businesses, educational institutions, and major corporations with the main purpose of sharing intelligence and preventing hostile acts against the United States in areas such as cyber crime, contamination of water supplies, and disruption of the electrical grid. Seventy attendees representing educational institutions, hospitals, airlines, financial institutions as well as local, national, and international corporations participated in the training. Advance Student Success Seven Eastfield College students will participate in the 2014 NASA Reduced Gravity Education Flight Program this summer at the Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center in Houston. The eight-member DCCCD team (named El Harve-Stars) will conduct a complex experiment on the crystallization of sodium acetate in a microgravity environment something that has never been performed before during a week-long visit tentatively scheduled for July The results of the experiment will be compared to results of the same experiment conducted in a laboratory. The team expects to find a higher quality of crystallization in its experiment, which will pave the way for further research into the crystallization of salts in a microgravity environment. The El Harve-Stars team is led by electrical engineering major Eduardo Aguirre and includes fellow Eastfield College students Salvador de Leon, Clara Oliva, Samuel Rodriguez, Stephen Todd Stovall, Jasmine Chavez, Valeria Lujan, and Eric Edwards, and El Centro College student Maureen Tucker. Eastfield College s Kendra Wallis, physics professor, and Rik Post, biology professor, serve as advisors of the group. 4

5 Congratulations to Eastfield College Harvesters freshman outfielder, Jason Serchay, who was a first-team selection to the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III All-America Baseball Team, and sophomore pitcher, Matias Terrones, who was a third-team selection. Serchay led the Harvesters with a.403 batting average and also hit a team-high 9 home runs and 25 doubles. Terrones posted a 7-1 record with 59 strikeouts and only 14 walks. The Harvesters finished their season with an overall record of and won the 2014 Metro Athletic Conference regular-season championship. El Centro College El Centro College will be making its presence at the Jack FM s Jack s Throwback music festival at Gexa Energy Pavilion on June 14. El Centro College is the sole sponsor of the VIP tent area and is a VIP lanyard sponsor. Jack FM is providing a photo booth and game booth, which are sure to be crowd pleasers. The projected attendance for the festival is ten thousand. The college will receive sponsor recognition on radio stations Jack FM, The Fan, KLUV, KRLD AM, and KVIL. Sponsorship of this event is part of the continuous effort to make El Centro College s presence within our community. The Health Professions Pathways (H2P) National Core Curriculum Summit was held May in Minneapolis, MN. Seventeen community colleges, in addition to the nine H2P grant colleges, committed to the national health care core curriculum roll out. Each college submitted a strategic plan and will be working with a mentor college in moving towards a health careers core curriculum. The El Centro College model has served as the national model for the grant. Dr. Paul McCarthy, president of El Centro College, serves on the National Advisory Committee with 10 major players from foundations, health provider organizations, and health professions organizations. The model curriculum has been presented nationally by El Centro College s Sondra Flemming (vice president) and Dr. LaCheeta McPherson (executive dean of health and legal studies), and is being validated by employers and workforce organizations as a competency model for health careers education. Representatives from numerous high schools were in attendance at the Summit, as well as the Los Angeles Trade Technical College, which is involved in another U.S. Department of Labor grant moving toward a core curriculum in health programming. Cedar Valley College Our Student Success On June 3, the DCCCD Board of Trustees recognized Cedar Valley College student athlete, Benquan Petty, for being 1 of 15 players in the country selected to the National Junior College Athletic Association Division III All-America Basketball Team for the season. He was also recognized for his off-court achievements in volunteer work mentoring future student athletes at the DeSoto Recreation Center and for representing Cedar Valley College as an outstanding student athlete in the community. Petty graduated this spring with a 3.0 grade point average and will continue his academics and playing basketball at Lamar University in Beaumont. Our College On May 29, Cedar Valley College representatives Dr. Jennifer Wimbish (president), Patricia Davis (executive dean, community and resource development), and Huan Luong (vice president, business services), along with Altrusa International, Inc. representatives Versie Lusk (president), Elnora Robins (chairman), and Lucile Dade accepted a scholarship agreement check on behalf of Altrusa International, Inc. of Southwest Dallas County Foundation and the DCCCD Foundation to establish the Mary Musgrave Scholarship for Cedar Valley College students. The initial donation was in the amount of $760. Altrusa International, Inc. of Southwest Dallas County is one of 33 clubs located in the state of Texas, which makes up District Nine of the organization. Altrusa is an international association of professional women and men who volunteer their energies to community betterment. It is also a community service organization that espouses volunteerism and service, and fights for literacy, drug prevention, and AIDS awareness. 5

6 Our Resource Development Cedar Valley College Executive Dean of Community and Resource Development Patricia Davis participated in the Mayor s Southern Dallas Advisory Board meeting at Methodist Dallas Medical Center on June 4. The meeting was hosted by Dr. Stephen Mansfield, president and chief executive officer of Methodist Health System; the advisory group was provided an update on Mayor Rawlings GrowSouth plan. Representatives from several Best Southwest partners were in attendance as well as DeSoto Economic Development Corporation and Cedar Hill Economic Development Corporation, to learn how Best Southwest can benefit from this southern sector economic development project. LeCroy Center Pam Quinn, LeCroy Center provost, was awarded the 2014 Ray Williams Outstanding Leadership Award by the Texas Community College Instructional Administrators at the awards program held during its summer conference in Galveston on May 26. The Ray Williams Outstanding Leadership Award is given annually to recognize instructional administrators who exemplify leadership by making a substantial impact in an institution s effectiveness, demonstrating innovation in professional responsibilities, commitment to instructional issues, and influence with a statewide initiative or project. Quinn stated that she was truly honored to receive such recognition from the organization that represents instructional leaders in Texas. In attendance at the awards program was Audra Barrett, vice president of student and instructional services for Dallas Colleges Online (LeCroy Center). Keynote speakers were Noah Brown, president of the Association of Community College Trustees, and Rex Peebles of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. 6