Kate Pluta of Bakersfield College

Bakersfield College

SLOs and Assessment: The department is working on its third-semester review of English 1a SLOs and assessment of the research paper rubric.

General Update: BC no longer uses an essay for placement. It relies on COMPASS and multiple measures. The department has revised its department final for English 50 (formerly English 1).

Gloria Dumler and David Moton co-edited their new text Navigating America: Information Competency and Research for the Twenty-First Century, published in March 2009.

The department held its first Meet & Greet for English Majors in the spring of 2009; Cindy Hubble is helping set up an English Majors Club.

Retirement: Dr. Nancy Edwards retired after forty years of service.

New hires: Wesley Sims was hired for fall of 2009 in a tenure-track position. Wes just completed his doctorate, defending his dissertation this summer. Neal Stanifer was hired on a one-year temporary position.

Cerro Coso Community College

The communications department is working to add the "learning and self-efficacy skills" recommended by the Basic Skills Committee into all of its developmental composition and reading courses. We will have these added to all course outlines by the end of this semester. We are also working on offering ESL courses in the Fall of 2010. As a department, we agree that we are behind where we need to be regarding ESL and that offering these courses is essential to our ESL community members. We have faculty attending ESL conferences and meeting with ESL departments at other institutions in order to gain information and improve our own course offerings.

Labels: Region_5

Northern California – Region 1

Butte College, Clear Lake College, College of Redwoods, College of the Siskiyous, Feather River College, Lassen College, Mendocino College, Shasta College, Woodland College, Yuba College

San Francisco Bay – Region 2

Chabot College, City College of San Francisco, College of Alameda, College of Marin/Indian Valley, College of San Mateo, Contra Costa College, Diablo Valley College, Laney College, Las Positas College, Los Medanos College, Merritt College, Napa Valley College, Ohlone College, Santa Rosa College, Skyline College, Solano College, Vista College

San Francisco South Bay & Monterey – Region 3

Cabrillo College, Canada College, DeAnza College, Evergreen College, Foothill College, Gavilan College, Hartnell College, Mission College, Monterey Peninsula College, San Jose City College, West Valley College

North Valley – Region 4

American River College, Columbia College, Cosumnes River College, Deep Springs College (private), Humphreys College (private), Lake Tahoe College, Merced College, Modesto Junior College, Sacramento City College, San Joaquin Delta College, Sierra College

South Valley – Region 5

Bakersfield College, Cerro Coso Community College, College of the Sequoias, Fresno City College, Porterville College, Reedley College, Taft College, West Hills College Coalinga, West Hills College Lemoore

Central Coast – Region 6

Allan Hancock College, Cuesta College, Moorpark College, Oxnard Community College, Santa Barbara City College, Ventura College

North Los Angeles – Region 7

Antelope Valley College, Citrus College, College of the Canyons, Don Bosco Technical Institute (private), East Los Angeles College, Glendale College, L.A. Harbor College, L.A. City College, L.A. Mission College, L.A. Pierce College, L.A. Southwest College, L.A. Trade-Technical College, L.A. Valley College, Mt. St. Mary’s, Doheny (private), Pasadena City College, Rio Hondo College, Santa Monica City College, West Los Angeles College

South Los Angeles & Orange County – Region 8

Cerritos College, Coastline College, Compton College, Cypress College, El Camino College, Fullerton College, Golden West College, Irvine Valley College, Long Beach City College, Marymount Palos Verdes (private), Orange Coast College, Sadivleback College, Santa Ana College, Santiago Canyon College

San Bernardino – Region 9

Barstow College, Chaffey College, College of the Desert, Copper Mountain College, Crafton Hills College, Mt. San Antonio College, Mt. San Jacinto College, Mt. San Jacinto College-Menifee, Palo Verde College, Riverside Community College, San Bernardino Valley College, Victor Valley College

San Diego – Region 10

Cuyamaca College, Grossmont College, Imperial Valley College, MiraCosta College, Palomar College, San Diego City College, San Diego Mesa College, San Diego Miramar College, Southwestern College

Labels: Region_1, Region_10, Region_2, Region_3, Region_4, Region_5, Region_6, Region_7, Region_8, Region_9

Region V South Valley South
By G.S. Enns, posted 22 April 2009

Building Bridges Conference: On Friday, 6 February 2009, Region V benefited from the nineteenth annual Building Bridges Conference held at the Four Point Sheraton in Bakersfield. The first retreat was held in 1990 as a retreat focused on improving articulation between Bakersfield College and CSU, Bakersfield. Through the years, the day-long conference has grown and now includes seven colleges. In addition to CSUB and BC, participants now include the English departments of Cerro Coso Community College, College of the Canyons, College of the Sequoias, Porterville College, and Taft College. This year’s breakout session topics covered important college teaching issues such as Basic Skills, Learning Communities, English as a Second Language, Technology in the Classroom, Responding to Papers, Teaching Research, Teaching Reading, Critical Thinking, Grammar/Usage, and Learning Disabilities. This year’s conference was supported by Allyn and Bacon/Longman, Bedford/St. Martin’s, Thomson, Houghton Mifflin, McGraw-Hill, and Prentice Hall. Visit the BBC website for more information.

Cerro Coso Community College: The Cerro Coso Community College English Department is considering moving to WriterPlacer, AccuPlacer’s writing assessment tool in order to place students. Currently, CC faculty score student placement essays holistically. The benefits of WriterPlacer are obvious: results are immediate, and much time is saved. However, some drawbacks exist: the prompts in WriterPlacer are not text-based and therefore do not test how well students can work with outside sources, which is a key distinguisher between placing students in Cerro Cos’s English 70 and placing them in 101.

Some CC English faculty attended TechEd 2009 in Ontario to learn about cutting edge education technology. Faculty found the following sessions particularly engaging: Camtasia Studio: Best Practices in Education; Snagit: What You Need to Know About Screen Capture and Editing; Jing: Simple, Quick and Free Visual Classroom Communications; PowerCounterPoint: How Working Memory and PowerPoint Can Work Together; Focused Discussion Groups That Engage the Online Learner (till next session); Authentic Learning in a Second Life; Beyond the Music: Educational Uses for iTunes U; Practices to Foster Informal Learning

Labels: Region_5

Construction and Renovation: Taft College is still undergoing construction and renovation. The administration building and library are now complete with only library landscaping to be finished. The math/science building is also nearing completion. After it is completed, the renovation project will then focus on the tech arts building. The construction has been hard on staff, faculty, and students, but results are now being seen.

New Co-Chair: The Liberal Arts Division has a new co-chair—Dr. Chris Chung-wee. He will be overseeing all things English. The division also has a new full-time English instructor—Jessica Grimes. She replaces an instructor who has taken on other duties.

Comp Exchange: TC English faculty has been invited to the Fall Comp Exchange, which includes Bakersfield College and California State University Bakerfield. The event will be held October 24 at CSUB. The Liberal Arts Division is sponsoring a visit by author Lu Chi Fa. He will be on campus October 22. His book, Double Luck, is autobiographical and tells of his life in China, how he came to America, and what his life has been like since. The Taft College Book Club is co-sponsoring “In the Shadow of the Raven,” a “live, interactive dramatization of the life and work of Edgar Allan Poe by Broadway and film veteran Duffy Hudson.”

SLO’s: The college is hammering out its Student Learning Outcomes, spearheaded by English instructor Geoffrey Dyer. The institution is also preparing for its six-year accreditation.





Work Reprinted

Graupman, Gary. “Re: taft updates?” Email to the director. 13 Oct 2008.

Labels: Region_5

SLO Revisions: The English Department at Cerro Coso Community College covers the largest geographical service area (18,000 square miles) of any community college in California and can sometimes find it difficult to get together for anything other than a virtual email meeting. But this last September the Cerro Coso English department rallied faculty members together at the Indian Wells Valley Campus for the important task of SLO revision. Using an agreed upon set of composition course skills, the department broke up into teams of two and over the course of one morning updated its entire line of composition course offerings.

New Reading/Basic Skills Specialist: The department hired Laura Vasquez as the new Reading/Basic Skills faculty member at the IWV campus in Ridgecrest.

35th Anniversary: The college celebrated its 35th anniversary September 8. As its anniversary theme, the college chose “Educate, Innovate, Inspire, Serve … The Tradition Continues.” The celebration of the college’s success in its service area will continue through the 2008-09 school year. “For 35 years Cerro Coso Community College has brought higher education to 18,000 square miles of service area. We continue to serve all of our communities and look forward to 35 more outstanding years,” stated Dr. Mary Retterer (qtd. in “Cerro Coso”).

Basic Skills Initiative: Recent activity by the BSI Committee includes work on a first draft of an institution-wide definition of “successful developmental education.” Much discussion has been devoted to broad SLO’s turned outward toward the students. Three types of skills have emerged as key outcomes. Broadly, they are:

Content skills—finding and fixing major errors in writing, identifying main ideas of paragraphs in reading, and factoring in math.
Study skills—organizing, memorizing, time management, computer literacy.
Self efficacy skills—showing self-direction, self-motivation, flexibility, and resourcefulness, as well as setting educational goals. (Basic Skills)
Other BSI topics of discussion include directorship of the Basic Skills Program (now known as the “Community of Emerging Scholars”) and ongoing revision of the BSI mission and vision statements.





Works Cited

“Basic Skills Initiative Minutes.” 25 Sept. 2008, Cerro Coso Community College.

“Cerro Coso Community College Launches its 35th Anniversary.” Coyote Howler October 2008: 1.

Labels: Region_5

Region V's Cerro Coso Community College, covering one of the largest service areas in California (with campuses in Mammoth, Bishop, Ridgecrest, Lake Isabella, Edwards Air Force Base, and online) is set to release its 2006 issue of Metamorphoses: A Journal of Literature and Art in August 2006.

This year's issue marks improvements on several fronts: in years past, Met has featured only student work and has been printed in-house with a simple stapled binding; Met 2006 now features student and community members' work, an improved perfect binding, gloss pages, and a fine color cover.

Met 2006 is scheduled for release in late August and will be available at all Cerro Coso campuses, online through Metamorphoses Online, and at select local bookstores.

Met 2006 features:

Poetry by
Kevin S. Howe, Melinda Carroll, Valyrie Ice, Joan Desmond, Angela Rose

Fiction by
N.L. Belardes, Melinda Carroll, Janet Thorning, Jennifer K. Ellis, Angela M. Bell

Art by
Joan Desmond, N. L. Belardes, R. D. Hermansen, J. Hermansen, Karen L. Mitchell

Essays and Other Non-Fiction by
Melinda Sue Hutchings, Melinda Carroll, Dan Tuttle

Contributing editors for 2006 included students Jennifer Afflerbaugh, Angela Rose, Karen McCormick, Rebecca Parker, and Joshua Simpkins; Cerro Coso alum Kevin S. Howe; and English faculty members Gary Enns and Chris Doyen. Layout was created by student designer Frank Boisvert. Layout consultant was media arts faculty member Suzanne Ama.

For more information, visit Met Online and Ruined by Books.

Labels: Creative_Writing, Region_5

Bakersfield College helped plan and host the 16th annual Building Bridges Retreat. The English Department is also having a BC/CSUB composition exchange set for later this semester—it’s a chance for both schools’ comp instructors to spend a day together, have lunch, and share teaching strategies and pedagogies on comp instruction. The college is also hiring two new faculty in the English Department at Delano that will many years down the line be its own independent college. Some members of the department also attended the Great Teacher’s Seminar at Lake Arrowhead.

Cerro Coso Community College, Porterville College, and Taft College participated and helped plan the 16th annual Building Bridges Retreat started by BC and CSUB.

Taft is also hiring one new English faculty who will begin the fall of 2006. The school is also working on a new ESL program funded by a Title V Grant which includes a trial cohort group this semester. T. C. is also preparing itself for construction which will include the renovation of several buildings. The dean of instruction is also working on a new summer schedule that will be more student-friendly.

Reedley College hosted the San Joaquin Valley Learning Communities Consortium spring workshop in March. Sally Wood from CSUEB spoke. Attendees also heard from students participating in learning communities.

College of the Sequoias has interviewed for a tenure-track English position. COS is also planning to include online courses in the fall.

West Hills College Coalinga has a temporary English position that will be filled permanently for the fall. West Hills College Lemoore just completed a visited from the accrediting commission with the goal of becoming a separate college from WHC Coalinga. One of the issues the visiting team commented on was the lack of a schedule for SLO assessments. WHC Lemoore continues to build its new campus which has been occupied for about three years.

Labels: Region_5

It’s time again for the Building Bridges Retreat in Bakersfield Friday, February 3, 2006 at Four Points Sheraton in Bakersfield from 8:00-3:30 PM. Join colleagues from

Antelope Valley
CSUB
Bakersfield College
CSUB/AV
College of the Canyons
Porterville College
College of the Sequoias
Taft College
Cerro Coso

For more information and history on this annual retreat, visit the Building Bridges Homepage.

Labels: Region_5

Bakersfield College: BC has a new English chair. David Moton started his duties this fall. BC is also offering classes including English at satellite locations to better serve the community. CSUB and BC are continuing their spirit of collaboration as evidenced by an upcoming social for the English departments of both institutions which will include full-time and part-time faculty.

Taft College: TC is the recipient of a federal Department of Education Hispanic Serving Institutions Title V grant. Also, a Title V grant with TC partnered with Victor Valley has been funded. TC’s plans for the grants include the development of a language lab and a cohorts program. Taft has also hired a full-time ESL instructor and a full-time reading instructor.

Labels: Region_5

Gary asked for a Region V update. I cover the north end. It was good to see people from my area who I don't get to see very often attending the conference in Long Beach. I'm going to work hard to get the two schools who were not represented there next time. I have been talking to ESL instructors at two of the colleges, and they're open to being more involved with ECCTYC. I presented with one of them at an ECCTYC conference in Costa Mesa some years ago. I can't get one college in my part of the region to respond at all, which is very frustrating. I even tried tapping an old classmate who teaches there to no avail. On my campus, West Hills College Lemoore, we're wading through the accreditation process to become separate from West Hills College Coalinga. It's a long time coming. We're also revamping our textbook process, which is also a long time coming!

Labels: Region_5