Annual student art show opening

8:00 p.m. in the Art Garden and the show runs through May 29.

LA college district seeks new chancellor

Students and faculty to be asked what they want in a new college leader

Michaia Hernandez/Roundup mhernandez.roundupnews@gmail.com

Tim Toton/Roundup oton.roundupnews@gmail.com

A team from a national search firm assisting the Los Angeles Community College District with its search for the next chancellor is hosting an open forum on Monday, May 13 from 1 to 2 p.m. in Business Education room 3200.

The event, put on by the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT), is aimed at helping the team gather feedback from students, faculty and staff to create a profile for its ideal candidate for chancellor.

“We expect to hear as much information as we can from everyone. The collective voice of the district will determine what the profile will include,” said ACCT Executive Vice President of Research, Education and Board Leadership Services Narcisa Polonio, who will lead the national search. “We need to know what you need.”

Similar forums will be taking place in the other eight schools in the LACCD.

The meetings mark early efforts of the district to move forward with finding a replacement for current chancellor Daniel LaVista.

In line with the search, the board will be providing regular reports on the search process through the district website, which will be updated within the next couple of weeks, according to an email circulated by the LACCD Board of Trustees President Steve Veres.

According to an email “The Board is committed to conducting an open, transparent, and equitable national search as we seek the next leader for our District.”

In addition to the ACCT, the Board of Trustees is working with a new 11-member committee that will serve as a candidate clearinghouse of prospects brought in from the search firm contracted by the board, trustee Scott Svonkin said during a May 1 LACCD meeting.

“[ACCT] does the publicity to the possible pool of applicants,” Svonkin said. “Working with our human resources, they screen the applicants to make sure they meet our basic qualifications. All of those applicants that qualify will be given to the committee. The committee evaluates them and then sends their recommendations to the Board of Trustees.”

A sticking point was member No. 1: board president, and whether or not he was mandated to attend every meeting and interview conducted by the new committee and whether he would have a double vote on a candidate given his double role.

“I would like us to amend this formally,” Field said.

The “board president,” as a member of the committee and the language of “moderator” as the role of board president was removed from the resolution and passed by a unanimous role call vote, except for trustee Park who was absent.

“We have a really aggressive goal of trying to have a new Chancellor on at the beginning of the academic year,” Veres said. “We’re doing focus groups at each of the campuses, from Pierce to Mission to Valley to all across the district, people will have a chance to give input on what they feel what they want to see in a new Chancellor.”

The board will meet again on May 15 to further define the selection of the committee chair.

LaVista began his term on Aug. 1, 2010.

On one of the highest plateaus on campus a small group talks about the textures, colors and lines of dozens of pieces of student art before anyone thwacks a nail into a chalk white wall.

Art Gallery Director Monika Del Bosque, also an associate professor of art, leads the loose democracy of gallery assistants and art students through the space switching pieces and taking votes.

The gallery has been here since the 60s and the idea behind the annual student art show is to highlight the efforts of students who have taken courses at Pierce over the year, Del Bosque said.

The opening and award ceremony of The Annual Student Show is May 9 from 6:00 to

Even though the show hasn’t opened, the winners have been chosen and will be announced on opening night.

Guest juror Karen Rapp, director of the Vincent Price Art Museum at East Los Angeles College was already out to view the entries and make her decision, Del Bosque said.

“She looks at everything - it takes a few hours – she looks at all the video pieces – looks at all the 2D, 3D art and then makes her decision,” Del Bosque said.

In the student show, there are a lot of different types of art to think about and to relate to, though not everybody is able to appreciate it, Del Bosque said. “That makes it a more challenging and exciting show to install,” she said.

Blayn Barbosa currently attends Student Art Center in Pasadena as a graphic design major but returned to Pierce just to take the exhibition design class with Del Bosque, he said.

“There have been 100 entries and we’ve been setting up for about a week,” Barbosa, 31, said. “Students are allowed to show their material from this last year in the previous spring. It’s a mix of ceramics, graphic design, prints, painting and sculpture.” Del Bosque knows many museum curators personally so students have gotten jobs working as docents at museums after taking this class, he said. “This class – could not find it anywhere else. It has been invaluable.“

Last year, 23-year-old illustrator Nicole Ellsworth was in the design installation class [See ART, page 3]

umbs up & umbs down

Pierce helps horses escape danger

A fire in Newbury Park put local horses into danger, and they had to be evacuated.

Pierce College opened its doors (or barn) to more than 25 displaced horses to give them a safe place to stay until the fire fizzled out.

Thank you to all the volunteers who stepped up and worked to accommodate the influx of horses.

SIS stops students from dropping

The deadline to drop classes at Pierce was Sunday, May 5, but some students had trouble dropping.

The Student Information System had a malfunction and some students were unable to drop their classes at the deadline. They even took to the Pierce Facebook page to voice their grievances. The drop deadline should be extended due to the problem with the SIS.