Air rings with music
South Park game witty
Baseball snaps skid
LMC’s Baroque Ensemble performs concert with Deer Valley High School — page 4
Review of the newly released RPG, South Park: The Stick of Truth — page 6
The Mustangs end their three game losing streak against American River College — page 7
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F.Y.I. Important Dates March is Women’s History Month March 17-22
Spring Break, no classes
Succeed in high education Sign up for A Day of ACE, Friday March 28 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. in L109. The event offers an opportunity for a team of leaders to gain an understanding of ACE. Activities introduce participants to ACE curriculum and pedagogy and provide classroom takeaways. Register at academyforcollegeexcellence.org/ upcoming-events.
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Retreat series continues
Community meeting sheds light on LMC plan By JOSEPH DELANO
jdelano@lmcexperience.com
The second strategic planning retreat went off without a hitch last Monday. The meeting, the second in a planned series of three, introduced Los Medanos College’s external community into the process of developing an insightful 5-year plan for the college. As reported last week, LMC has been working on developing a plan for the future for some time now. With plans of accomplishing the goal by the end of this semester, the meetings are moving quickly.
In just a few short months, LMC hopes to have a final draft of the 5-year plan ratified through the three senates on campus, Faculty, Classified and Student. While there were almost 300 invitations sent out to members of the community, there were only about 30-40 members from the community present. LMC President Bob Kratochvil lamented on the smaller number of participants, saying “we would have liked to fill the room with more community members.” Nonetheless, the retreat went on, and to “fab-
ulous” success, according to the Senior Dean of Research and Planning for LMC Kiran Kamath. The purpose of this meeting was very similar to that of the previous retreat in late February, to figure out “where LMC wants to be 5 years from now,” according to Greg Stoup, Senior Dean of Research and Planning for the district. What differentiated this meeting from the previous one was that it was community oriented and encouraged members of surrounding businesses, government bodies and residents to attend and
Power in numbers
STEM hosts tutor visits
HS youths to benefit
Human Library coming soon The Human Library LMC is set for Tuesday, April 15. The Library is looking for willing patrons to sign up to become a human book who can get loaned out to students for 20 minutes and talk about a unique topic. If you would like more information, contact Christine Park at chpark@losmedanos.edu or go to humanlibrary.org. The deadline to apply is April 1.
Want to create an LMC club? Interested in creating an official LMC club? Contact the Student Life Office for more information at 439-2181 ext. 3266 or go to www.losmedanos. edu/studentservices/clubs
By BERTHA AGUILAR
baguilar@lmcexperience.com
Photo by Irvin Trigueros
A group of community college students and staff march passed Tower Bridge in Sacramento en route to the California State Capitol building during the annual March in March protest.
Students can flex brainpower LMC academic event upcoming By ALEXANDRA TAGLIAMONTE atagliamonte@lmcexperience.com
Annual LLN Conference The Conference for the Latina Leadership Network of the California Community Colleges is scheduled for March 28 and 29 at the Ohlone College Newark Center in Newark. For more info contact Maria Ramirez at (510) 742-2346 or visit www.latina-leadership-network.org
No Experience until March 28
This will be the last Issue of the Experience until 3/28. Enjoy Spring Break!
See PLAN, page 8
Los Medanos College’s 9th Annual Academic Competition will once again provide LMC students the chance to compete in an exciting one-day event on Saturday, April 12 from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. in the Library Community Room L109. The event is sponsored by LMCAS, the LMC Foundation and the Student Life Office. Former LMC student and second
place winner in last year’s competition, Manpreet Kaur, encourages others to participate in the event. “It’s always a fun experience even if you don’t win. It’s very well set up. These sorts of activities are important because they facilitate a learning environment that presents students with academic challenges.” LMC’S Academic Competition consists of four rounds of multiple-choice tests questions. Students who participate will compete in teams of four in four subject areas including math, science, social science and English. Each round is 60 minutes long and directly after wards the answers are corrected. Points are given to the correct answers and the teams with most correct
at the end of the rounds are the winners. Victors will be announced at events end. Competitors need to be present at the event as all supplies, test documents, refreshments and lunch will be provided free of charge. Participants of the Academic Competition will be given a Certificate of Participation, a $10 gift certificate to the LMC Bookstore and an event T-shirt. Winning teams will receive scholarships that will be equally divided amongst the team members. Winning scholarships range from $400 to $3000. The application deadline is April 2nd at 5:00 p.m. Students looking to register can go to www.losmedanos.edu/groups/ lmcas/act.asp.
Chefs heat up a ‘chili’ afternoon Event spices up fundraising
By STEVEN LUKE
sluke@lmcexperience.com
The 9th Annual Chili CookOff presented by the Classified Senate ended with a repeat winner as Kathy Griffin’s green chili verde, called Divine Swine, took home the top honors for the second year in a row. The classified senate has had a chili-cooking contest each of the last nine years to raise money for the scholarship fund and this year was a huge hit as all seven entrants ran out of chili in just over an hour after
the contest began. For the most part, all of the contestants had competed before with many of them having competed in all nine cook-offs. In fact, there was only one entrant who had never competed before, Tammy Smith, and she was the only student entrant representing the Reading and Education Advance Dreams (R.E.A.D.) club. “My significant other made a hot chili called Tio Lee’s Aloha Chili,” she said. She also contributed to the fundraising
Photo by Cathie Lawrence
HR Rep. Kathy Griffin serves LMCAS Advisor Demetria Lawrence her “Divine Swine” chili. by donating fudge and rice clubs second time entering. crispy treats that she made. The star of the show, While it was Smith’s first time though, was Grif fin, who entering the contest, it was the See CHILI, page 8
The Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Ambassador program is looking for students to join . This program was established as an outreach effort to promote diversity in STEM by allowing Los Medanos College students to visit high school students and inspire the next generation of STEM majors. For now, the program only visits students from Pittsburg High School but they are potentially going to be expanding this program to reach beyond PHS to other high schools. The STEM Ambassadors mission is to work with PHS students in a variety of ways. They create hands on classroom activities, student success panels and offer in-class tutoring. STEM Ambassadors are planning two visits to Pittsburg High School biology classrooms this semester. The first visit will be the week of March 31, the topic will be ecology, habitats and communities. The second visit will be during the week of April 28. The topic will be human population, natural resources, air and water quality, biodiversity and conservation. They already have a group of 25 students who have signed up. “We are very excited about this new partnership and are grateful for this wonderful oppor tunity to strengthen the pipeline between Pittsburg High School and LMC,” said biology teacher Danielle Liubicich. She continued on adding “STEM ambassadors inspire curiosity and success through contextualized learning activities that engage students in STEM by making connections and fostering a support network.” If you are interested in joining this program, you can contact Carol Hernandez at cahernandez@losmedanos. edu or Danielle Liubicich at dliubicich@losmedanos.edu to get more detailed information about this program. You can also contact the director of the STEM grant Ryan Pederson at rpederson@ losmedanos.edu for information regarding grant related initiatives.