Bridge to success

The Summer Bridge program helps students who tested into English 28 or lower get a head start

ENRIE AMEZCUA & MAX SULLIVAN

NEWS EDITOR

Summer Bridge is an eight-week summer session designed to help high risk incoming freshmen, who tested into English 28 or lower, successfully transition into college.

The program is a cohort of an English and personal development class. Students are given two 85-minute presentations by Clinical Psychologist Niaz Khani in their personal development class. The first presentation is on stress and anxiety. The second is on sleep hygiene.

The purpose of these presentations is to remove shame from speaking about mental illness, putting a face on mental health services and tools that students can use to manage stress and improve sleep habits, according to Director of the Student Health Center, Beth Benne. “First we wanted to destigmatize mental illness,” Benne said. “We wanted to introduce one of our very own mental health providers [Khani] and if it makes them more comfortable to ask for help everybody wins. The third thing we want to do is give the students tools that they can take home and learn, whether it be deep breathing, visualization stress relief, sleep hygiene, whatever.”

Representatives from the Student Health Center and the Summer Bridge Program will be speaking at the Advancing Student Success Conference in Sacramento on Monday, March 14. They will be on a panel presenting data that shows the program increases the chance of a student staying in college. Director of New Student Programs Zimring-Towne will be

Henderson says he has been submitting proposals to hire more staff every year for the 10 years he has been working here, but is optimistic that will change soon.

“Historically IT and media stuff has always been last, but now since we have been having all of these issues it is starting to be first,”

Henderson said. “This is the year now that we are going to hire more staff.”

Thouin says faculty is being left in the dark on much of what is being done to fix the equipment in the Center for the Sciences.

“We are never really given the whole truth,” Thouin said. “It is always like we are given enough information to make you satisfied but then you walk away saying ‘what did you just say.’”

Henderson says there are discussions in a shared governance format and groups on campus have a representative present, but he does not know how much of that information is shared back with the groups.

“It is not like we are operating in secret,” Henderson said. “We have been in deficit staffing and funding for quite some time. we have had competing priorities. That gets shared out.”

In the fall of 2015, Pierce College selected Lassen Associates Inc. to conduct an assessment of the audiovisual equipment to assist Pierce in selecting a vendor. The candidates were Creston, Utelogy and Extron.

Lassen Associates Inc. concluded that Utelogy is the best option of the three. The findings in their assessment, dated dated Nov. 7, 2015, state that Utelogy will be the most efficient to maintain and require less reliance on outside vendors than the other candidates.

As a result of the findings, Pierce College will be moving to a Utelogy platform and changing the technology in the Centers for the Sciences over the next few years, according to Schleicher.

“We recognize that our IT needs continue to grow and we are committed to fixing our infrastructure problems,” Schleicher wrote. “Pierce is on the right track and in time will have one of the best platforms for delivering our required services. We continue to make measureable progress in finally securing the funding and support we need to one of the members on the panel.

“It can really be a challenging transition,” Towne said. “Students don’t always understand the differences between high school coursework and college coursework, and sometimes it can be overwhelming.”

They also hope to learn methods from the other community colleges that will be attending as well, according to Towne.

Benne and Khani will present information advocating more mental health services in addition to providing data that shows the presentations in the summer bridge program can decrease the chances of a student deciding to dropout of college. The first 85-minute presentation students receive from Khani discusses topics including finances, personal health, breakups and loss of family or friends.

“Anything that is bringing up a lot of anxiety and stress for them and what they can do to deal with it,” Khani said.

In the sleep hygiene presentation, students learn about the sleep process and facts like anything more than a 20-minute nap during the day or two beers before bed are both detrimental to restorative sleep at night, according to Benne.

“We have discovered that sleep hygiene really interests students,” Benne said. “They need help. They don’t know how to sleep well. They don’t know how to get enough sleep, or how to monitor their sleep.” more appropriately service the campus.”

The program is open to incoming freshman with six credits or fewer and have tested into English 28 or lower. Last summer there were 12 cohorts with about 20 students each. Students are placed into cohorts based on their English assessment placement and take the english and personal development classes together.

Students who are low income, foster children or the first generation attending college can also be placed into the program when entering Pierce. Enrollment is based on a first-come firstserve basis and fills up by April, according to Towne.

Henderson hopes Utelogy will begin to be implemented in a few months but there are budgetary issues that need to be worked out first.

“The AV [Smart Classroom] Task Force has selected Utelogy as our baseline and it is going to deployed as we move forward,” Henderson said. “It is going in our newly constructed areas and then it is going to be retrofitted into the Center for the Sciences.”

Digital Arts and Media Building in jeopardy

Insufficient funds may alter future of the old library

Administration will privately discuss what to do with the proposed Media Arts building on Friday, March 10, after it was stated the project will cost $5 million more than projected by the project manager.

The proposal is to turn the old library, located at the center of the mall into the new Media Arts building. Ed Cadena, project manager, told the Pierce College Council on Feb. 25 that in order to use only the funds earmarked for the project that

Lassen Associates Inc. “As more endpoint devices become IP based, additional features can be added through advancements in the software without the need to reprogram switchers through a vendor or the purchase of new hardware.”

Henderson believes the Utelogy platform will be easier to maintain in house.

“I’m looking forward to that” the creston to Utelogy switch,” Henderson said. “We should be able to handle a lot of it internally along with getting the additional staff that is really specific to supporting smart classrooms and AV equipment.” the new project will need to be reduced in size. Cadena also said that no official decisions have been made on the demolition of the old library. the Media Arts Department have outdated technology equipment and limited space. The Media Arts classrooms and offices are strewed across campus, which is inconvenient for faculty and students according to assistant professor of Journalism, Tracie Savage, “The current digital lab of the Media Arts Department over in the village is bursting at it's seams,” Savage, said. “There just isn't the space there for the kind of projects that we are teaching our students to work on.”

Lyn Clark, chair of Pierce College Council and first vice president of the Academic Senate, says the college is working hard to improve the situation.

The Digital Arts and Media Building project is currently planning a budget of $32,950,719 and is set to be completed in 2020, according to data from Nov. 2015, on “Buildlaccd.org.” Current facilities used by

The general policy of the Student Health Center is to not follow chronic conditions because they do not have the resources to follow through with treatment.

“The problem with the $11 dollar health fee is that it is not nearly enough money to do everything we need and certainly not enough money to pay for a physician to be on call,” Benne said. “If somebody is on an antipsychotic medication or an antidepressant they must have access to their physician 24/7.” right now. One is on ‘stress and anxiety’ and the other is on ‘stress and communication’.

Benne believes that being able to help people is what makes her feel great as a health professional and that they already do a lot with the $11, but could do much more with $19, which the state allows.

The multimedia building would house Media Arts classrooms and potentially an art gallery.

“It would be an enormous asset for Pierce College to have this new, state-of-the-art building and would help lure students to Pierce College,” Savage said.

Onur Tasci, 22, Computer Science major, thinks the Student Health Center has been helpful.

" It’s really reliable and they charge zero to nothing."

- Onur Tasci Computer Science major

#PierceNews

College Coastal Tour

On Friday March 11 from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. sign up at the Transfer Center for a free tour of Cal Lutheran, Channel Islands, UCSB.

Mental Health and Wellness Expo

Lassen Associates met on Oct 7, 2015 with members of the Pierce College Smart Classroom Task Force who identified several issues with the current setup of the audiovisual equipment. These included the need for the audiovisual equipment to be standardized across all rooms and that instructions are not provided in most rooms, according to the Lassen Associates Inc. assessment.

Pierce IT also identified nonstandardized rooms as a critical problem, which makes maintaining the rooms more challenging to Lassen Associates Inc. The Lassen Associates Inc. assessment says that Utelogy will best meet the demands Pierce College rated as important.

“Features that were requested by IT support staff such as remote control of a room, setting up custom interfaces for specialized rooms and installing software upgrades are much easier to manage using Utelogy as compared to the other options,” wrote Lassen Associates Inc.

In addition to being the most efficient to maintain, the Lassen Associates Inc. assessment says that Utelogy is the best system to keep up with advancements as well.

“Finally, as the most scalable and flexible solution, Utelogy is the most likely system to support A/V trends in the future,” wrote

“It is a continuing problem right now and everybody is aware of it. We are trying to do the best we can,” Clark said. “I’ve suggested we do some stop gap measures and they’re looking into doing things. They are already on it, they are aware of it.”

“We continue to make measureable progress in finally securing the funding and support we need to more appropriately service the campus,” Schleicher wrote.

Henderson is optimistic about the future since the college is beginning to address the issues and give higher priority to the technology on campus.

“I understand everybody is frustrated, nobody is more frustrated than I am because historically I have been requesting a lot of the same support services for our two departments,” Henderson said. Recently we have started to put greater investment in Information Technology and the Media Center. Going forward, we are looking good, but right now, this is where we are.”

The issue is problematic because it is not isolated to only one department. The sciences likely rely on technology more than any other discipline on campus. Scientists are problem solvers by nature and it is frustrating to not be able to fix the equipment, according to Fields.

“Folks just don’t know the sheer extent of the problems we have been having,” Fields said. “All of the things that have been going on and this is what we have been dealing with the past several years.”

“We can provide such thorough care but we know our limits,” said Benne. “We can really do a lot for the $11. We can do a lot more with $19. Our district has only been charging $11 and $8 dollars since 1998, so it’s been tough.”

Everything is kept confidential and an effort is made to make the students feel safe when coming to the Student Health Center, according to Khani.

“We spend a lot of time going over the privacy and confidentiality form before an appointment is set up,” Khani said. “We’ll say something like ‘yellow bird is calling’, there are different ways. If someone is really scared for whatever reason to come here, we work with them.”

The student health center also has two group sessions meeting

“If you disregard the wait time which is a little over the standard of regular health centers, it’s really reliable and they charge zero to nothing, which is really good,” Tasci said.

Jason Garvin, one of the peer nutrition counselors in the Health Center recommends students to take advantage of the services they provide.

“I would definitely recomend students to make an appointment and come here,” Garvin said. They can get free counseling service, whenever they need to. As far as changing their diet, weight gain, weight loss, muscle gain. We are trying to guide them, not necessarily dieting, we analyze their diet, whether they need to lose weight, we tailor their diet to fit that.”

The Human Resource is hosting a Health and Wellness Expo for employees on March 14 in the Great Hall. Need help choosing a college?

Get help from an advisor at the Transfer Center on Tuesday March 15 from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Cal Lutheran University

On March 16 at the Transfer center is open to all students interested in transfering to CLU from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. No appointment needed.