Friday, December 6, 2013

• 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., Grove Scholarship Application Workshop, Skyline College, Building 1, Room 1218

• 1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m., Test Taking Strategies Workshop, Skyline College, The Learning Center, Building 5, Room 5115

• 5:00 p.m., Men’s Basketball vs. Napa Valley College, Napa Valley College

• 7:30 p.m. – 9:30 p.m., O,Brillante Estrella Holiday Choral Music of the Americas, Mildred Owen Concert Hall, 1220 Linda Mar Boulevard, Pacifica

 

Monday, December 9, 2013

• 10:00 a.m. – 1:30 p.m., Transfer Center – The Art Institute Rep Visit, Skyline College, Building 6, Fireside Dining Room

 

Tuesday, December 10, 2013

• 10:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m., MUS 286 class – Music Performances, Skyline College, Fireside Dining Room

• 12:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m., Financial Aid Application Labs, Building 2, Room 2117B

• 5:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Grove Scholar Program Application Deadline, Skyline College, Building 1, Room 1214

• 6:00 p.m., Women’s Basketball vs. Gavilan, Skyline College

 

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

• 11:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m., FREE English Conversation/Pronunciation Workshops, Skyline College, Bldg. 1, Room 1218

• 4:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m., Financial Aid Application Labs, Skyline College, Building 2, Room 2117B

 

Thursday, December 12, 2013

• Final Examinations December 12 – 18.

• 2:00 p.m. -4:00 p.m., Financial Aid Application Labs, Skyline College, Building 2, Room 2117B

• 6:00 p.m., 8:00 p.m., Information Nights! at Canada College, Canada College, Building 2, Room 10

 

Friday, December 13, 2013

• All Day Event, Men’s Basketball, Skyline College Tournament, Skyline College

• All Day Event, Women’s Basketball, Fresno City College Tournament, Fresno City College

• 7:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m., Concert & Jazz Band Performance, Skyline College, Building 1, Theater

 

Saturday, December 14, 2013

• All Day Event, Men’s Basketball, Skyline College Tournament, Skyline College

• All Day Event, Women’s Basketball, Fresno City College Tournament, Fresno City College

 

Sunday, December 15, 2013

• All Day Event, Men’s Basketball, Skyline College Tournament, Skyline College

• All Day Event, Women’s Basketball, Fresno City College Tournament, Fresno City College

 

For the latest information on events and activities happening at Skyline College, please view our calendar at the following link:

http://www.skylinecollege.edu/events/index.php

If you would like to include your college event or activity on the calendar, please submit the event, date, time and location to Cherie M. Napier via email at colinc@smccd.edu.

 

The College Budget Committee held its last meeting for the Fall 2013 semester on Thursday, December 5, 2013, co-chaired by Leigh Anne Shaw, Academic Senate President, and Eloisa Briones, Vice President of Administrative Services.

One-Time Funding Requests

Over the past seven or eight years, the college has not been able to able to augment the Fund 1 operational budgets across divisions and programs despite the rising cost of inflation over the years. The CBC solicited requests for one-time funding to allocate $200,000 from last year’s fund 1 carryover to meet one-time needs. Division deans worked with their faculty and staff to identify needs and submitted requests that included several that were previously funded out of Measure G. The college had a carryover of Measure G funds from 2012-2013 amounting to $294,000. The CBC approved the allocation of $266,884 for Measure G requests. Fund 1 requests submitted totaled $236,565 which represents division and program needs up to June 30, 2014. CBC approved funding these requests in total, using the $200,000 and an additional $36K from last year’s fund 1 carryover.

Review of Process for Developing the 2014-15 Fund 1 Budget

CBC will review the current college budget process at the next meeting. Committee members will email suggestions to the group. Eloisa will build these into the current process for review and discussion. One of the goals is to establish a formal and streamlined budget request process to better ensure ongoing funding.

Mechanics and Implications for Merging IPC and CBC

CBC and IPC will meet separately in January. Joint meetings will begin in February. This will allow remaining business to be conducted and for membership to be adjusted in case of scheduling difficulties. Meetings starting in February will follow the CBC schedule of every 2nd and last Thursday 2-4pm. CBC-focused meetings will be chaired by the VP of Administrative Affairs and the President of the Academic Senate. IPC-focused meetings will be chaired by the Dean of PRIE. Dual focus meetings will have segments chaired by the respective leaders. The suggested name for committee is the “Budget and Planning Committee” to follow names of existing documents bearing that name.

Article by Eloisa Briones.

 

The SparkPoint Center at Skyline College is currently accepting applications for the Spring 2014 Grove Scholars Program. To obtain an application, students may go to the SparkPoint website at www.skylinecollege.edu/sparkpoint. For more information or questions, please contact us at grovescholar@smccd.edu or visit the SparkPoint Center in Building One, Room 1214. The deadline to apply is TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2013 by 5 p.m.

Article by Andrea Anyanwu.

The SMCCD Bookstores’ rental program began in 2005 with just 35 titles in total at all 3 bookstores and has since grown to include over 1800 titles and saved SMCCD students over $5 million since. These rental books were funded by vendor partners, donors, and the bookstores.

Recognizing students’ need for access to course materials, President Regina Stanback Stroud allocated $100,000 to the expansion of the rental program at Skyline College Bookstore.

From June 2011 through May 2012, $80,000 of the $100,000 allocated by President Stroud was used to expand Skyline College Bookstore’s inventory of rental books. Over the course of this time period, 1065 rental copies over 84 different titles for over 120 different sections were added. Titles varied from courses with high enrollments (such as algebra, chemistry, biology, and anatomy/physiology) to courses with varying titles (such as English and history).

The majority of the titles were chosen based on the frequency of its usage or the projected lifecycle of the edition. The rest were requested for by faculty committing to that particular title/edition or a student approaching asking for it to be made a rental.

Many deans encouraged their faculty not currently using a common title to begin using a common title that was similar to their colleagues teaching the same course. Not only would this create commonality to allow students who need to retake the course to use the same book regardless of the professor but this would increase the amount of used books available for students to purchase and allow for the title to be made a rental so that more students could rent the book. Examples of this were numerous ENGL 110 faculty using Barnet, Little Literature and numerous ENGL 846 faculty using Wiener, Writing Papers in College.

These 1065 rental copies were rented for $55,000 and saved Skyline College students over $145,000 during that 12 month period! If Skyline College’s students had to purchase these same books in that same 12 month period, they would have had to spend almost $200,000.

Combining the savings from these added rental titles to existing rental titles Skyline College students saved a total of over $245,000 over a total 2,739 rental books.

Year	Rented Quantity	Retail New	Rental Net	Savings
Su2010-Sp2011	1979	$234,115.10	$62,625.05	$171,490.05
Su2011-SP2012	2739	$335,252.22	$89,359.00	$245,893.22
	760	$101,137.12	$26,733.95	$74,403.17
	38%	43%	43%	43%

In Summer 2012, the remaining $20,000 helped create rental inventory of i>Clickers2, add additional rental copies of various math and science books, and begin the transition to the new editions of existing titles that have been rented for several years. Students who rented an i>Clicker2 saved $11,000 collectively from Summer 2012 – Fall 2012. There were 6 rental clickers left as we entered the 8th week of Fall 2012.

i>Clicker2
New Price:	$48.00
Rental Price:	$16.00
Semester	Available for Rent	Actual Rentals	New Extended	Rental Extended	Savings to Students
Summer 2012	251	133	$6,384.00	$2,128.00	$4,256.00
Fall 2012	251	227	$10,896.00	$3,632.00	$7,264.00
Spring 2013	246	143	$6,864.00	$2,288.00	$4,576.00
			$24,144.00	$8,048.00	$16,096.00

Recognizing that students needed more than just books to succeed in college, President Stroud allocated additional funding to expand the rentals of TI83 calculators. The allocation of $25,000 in late Spring 2012 aided in expanding our TI83 rental inventory from 12 rental calculators to 262 rental calculators. Through the end of Fall 2012, this expanded inventory has saved Skyline College students $17,000!

TI-83 Plus Graphing Calculator
New Price:	$109.00
Rental Price:	$20.00
Semester	Available for Rent	Actual Rentals	New Extended	Rental Extended	Savings to Students
Summer 2012	262	37	$4,033.00	$740.00	$3,293.00
Fall 2012	243	190	$20,710.00	$3,800.00	$16,910.00
Spring 2013	238	212	$23,108.00	$4,240.00	$18,868.00
			$47,851.00	$8,780.00	$39,071.00

Starting in Fall 2012, we took the expansion of our rental inventory from a different angle by focusing on our partnership with our system/used book vendor partner Missouri Book Services (MBS). Since the $100,000 in 2011/12 focused on professors with titles that were consistently used; focusing on our partnership with MBS in Fall 2012 and Spring 2013 allowed us to offer rentals of titles that are not consistently used by professors (since we could send them back to MBS if we were not using the title in the upcoming semester) and keep the rental inventory as fresh as possible.

This also allowed us to create rental titles for students who approached us regarding their extreme financial needs and needing a rental badly because we were out of an existing rental title. After creating them a rental copy so that they can continue their education; some of these students have been so moved that they have brought me lunch and bought me coffee to show their deep appreciation in the bookstore’s work to help them further their education with minimal impact to their finances.

This new funding method not only helped cash strapped students, but also categorically funded programs, such as Early Childhood Education and Workforce Development, serve as many students as possible with their limited resources.

Using this method, it saved these 2 programs over $7,500. Otherwise the programs would have paid over $9,800 for these 75 copies of books. This helped the two grants control costs and give the most help to students. Credit in ensuring this would be possible goes to Rita Gulli, Aaron Wilcher, and Prof. Kate Browne.

During the 2012/13 academic year, Skyline College student savings from the rental items that were added from the $100,000 allocation in the 2011/12 academic year was $166,767.21. The combined savings for Skyline College students renting their books & course materials was over $307,000.

Year	Rented Quantity	Retail New	Rental Net	Savings
Su2011-SP2012	2739	$335,252.22	$89,359.00	$245,893.22
Su2012-SP2013	3687	$424,271.11	$116,979.30	$307,291.81
	948	$89,018.89	$27,620.30	$61,398.59
	35%	27%	31%	25%

Going into fiscal & academic year 2013/14, many of the titles that have been consistently rented for the last 3 years will need to be replaced since faculty using them will be transitioning to the forthcoming new edition to keep students up to date on changing information. At this time, courses with books that fit into this category are Biol 250/260 (approximately 50 copies for approximately 11 sections), Biol 110 (approximately 50 copies for approximately 6 sections), Biol 130 (approximately 50 copies for approximately 5 sections), Biol 215 (approximately 20 copies for approximately 3 sections), various BCM courses (if the computer labs are upgraded from Office 2010 to Office 2013/Office 365), and HSCI 130 (approximately 20 copies for 2 sections). This will be done with our continued partnership with MBS and with the $100,000 of lottery funds.

The lottery funds will not only help expand and/or replace existing rental items but will be the seed money in introducing a new item for rent, Chromebooks. This was an idea conceived in partnership with Jim Petromilli, Ricardo Flores, the CTTL, and Skyline College Bookstore. Chromebooks are an “internet device” that helps bring technology and access to people who need something a “little more” than a tablet but “less than” a netbook/laptop. Chromebooks retail for approximately $250 – $300. Approximately $30,000 of the $100,000 will be used to introduce approximately 100 Chromebooks for rent at approximately $30 – $50 per semester. The CTTL has surveyed Skyline College students and many feel that the suggested rental price range per semester is very fair.

The 2013/14 academic year will be an innovative year for rentals.

The SMCCD Bookstore’s course materials rental program has been featured in the San Mateo Daily Journal (http://www.smdailyjournal.com/articles/lnews/2005-09-05/college-textbook-woes-answered/48295.html), San Francisco Chronicle/SF Gate (http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Easing-textbook-sticker-shock-Book-loan-2562153.php), and was the winner of the 2007 NACS Foundation – Martin D. Levine Innovation Achievement Award (http://www.nacsfoundation.org/Awards/InnovationAchievementAward/Recipients.aspx).

Article by Kevin Chak.

 

 

The fall 2013 semester Science in Action Lecture Series wrapped up on Wednesday, November 20th with another interesting lecture, this time from scientists Doug Van Campen and Apurva Mehta, both of whom work at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), a National Accelerator Laboratory. They visited Skyline College to provide more detailed information on paid summer internships available at Stanford University.

The internships are funded by the United States government, in an effort to promote technical skills in community college students interested in pursuing careers within the US Department of Energy, or related areas. They last for eight to nine weeks throughout the summer, and range in scientific area, including physics, biology, and chemistry. It is open to any community college student who is interested in working on science-related projects to further their course of study. Dr.’s Van Campen and Mehta were promoting the program, and encouraging students to apply.

The Fall 2013 Series

Skyline College Chemistry Assistant Professor Dr. Carmen Velez, in collaboration with Dr. Steve Weinstein, the Director of Bridges to the Baccalaureate at SFSU, took over organizing the lecture series in spring 2013. They endeavored to bring in guest lecturers with varied backgrounds and topics, in an effort to attract students in all areas of study. Each speaker brought their own educational experience and advice to the table, with guidance ranging from community college through graduate school. Past lecturers have included former Skyline College students, current PhD scholars, and Postdoctoral Fellows.

Former Skyline College student Rebecca Belloso kicked off the series on September 18, 2013. She spoke to a packed lecture hall regarding her research into chemical Bisphenol A (BPA) exposure during pregnancy, and it’s adverse effects on infant birth weight. She shared insight into transferring to a 4-year college and continuing your studies in your chosen field.

Current PhD scholar Karmela Ramos visited the campus on October 2nd, and discussed not only her studies in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology at UCSF, but also her experience as a student. She shared a lot of tips and resources with the attendees, and particularly encouraged them to find a mentor to work with and learn from during their time in college.

On October 23rd, postdoctoral Fellow Gilmer Valdes, PhD., told his story of being born in Cuba and attending the University of Havana, only to have to escape and seek political asylum in Mexico. Ultimately, he moved to the Unites States and pursued his PhD at UCLA. He now works in the Radiation Oncology Department at UCSF researching gene therapy and radiation. His lecture was particularly energetic, and the attending students were grateful for the information and encouragement he shared.

Although this semester’s series has ended, please be on the lookout for more information in the spring. The lectures will take place every Wednesday at 4:30 p.m. in Building 7. The lectures are always free and open to the public.

Students from every background and area of study are encouraged to attend, as the topic is often focused on advice and lessons of experience from these educationally successful speakers. If you would like more information, you can contact Dr. Carmen Velez at velezcarmen@smccd.edu. We look forward to seeing you at next semester’s Science in Action Lecture Series!

Article by Alana Utsumi, Photo by Carmen Velez.

 

On Thursday, November 14, Dr. Tricia Rose, author of Black Noise and The Hip Hop Wars, provided an engaging guest lecture on her book, The Hip Hop Wars. She discussed the impact of corporate consolidation of black popular culture and the importance of popular culture of our youth and community. She provided a historical perspective of why Hip Hop exists. In the midst of the social and economic inequities that occurred in New York in the 1970s, Hip Hop was born to create spaces of creativity and affirmation. Through her guest lecture and Q&A session, she was able to convey the message that Hip Hop can be utilized as a tool to engage in critical thought and guided conversations about race, politics, and culture.

Over 350 people were in attendance, which consisted of our Skyline College campus community but most importantly, middle school and high school students from our local feeder schools. A special thanks to Soledad McCarthy, Alina Varona, Florentino Ubungen, and Jeremy Evangelista for working with the local schools in bringing their students to Dr. Tricia Rose’s guest lecture as part of their CTE Day.

Dr. Rose’s guest lecture is the first of a series of guest lectures presented by the newly developed Center for Innovative Practices through Hip Hop Education and Research also known as the CIPHER. CIPHER aims to serve students, faculty, and the community in a variety of ways. Some of the goals include:

• Providing youth and students direct linkages to many excellent programs such as the Youth Entrepreneurship Program (YEP), Career Advancement Academies (CAA), Urban Music Academy, Sparkpoint Center, Rock The School Bells, and Urban Youth Society

• Providing educational and professional development opportunities such as learning about current Hip Hop pedagogies and best practices

• Providing the campus community with educational and cultural events such as guest lecture series, film screenings, and live performances

This event was funded by the President’s Innovation Fund and was generously co-sponsored by the Center of Transformational Teaching and Learning (CTTL), Honors Transfer Program, ASTEP, Kababayan Learning Community, Puente, First Year Experience (FYE), Associated Students of Skyline College (ASSC), Urban Youth Society, Black Student Union, Rock The School Bells, and the Center of Student Life and Leadership Development.

For those who did not get a chance to see her guest lecture, you can view it here on Ustream.

Special thanks to all of the faculty and staff who helped with the successful coordination of this event.

For more information of the CIPHER, you can contact Nate Nevado at nevadon@smccd.edu or visit our website.

Article by Nate Nevado, Photos by Raul Guerra.

 

Skyline College is flying the flag at half-mast in recognition of the passing of Mr. Nelson Mandela. Indeed, South Africa and the world has lost a great man. In an eulogy address, President Obama acknowledged him as a man who “belongs to the ages…from whom that countless millions drew inspiration.” May we all take a moment to reflect on Mr. Mandela’s greatness, appreciate his grace and honor his memory. May he rest in peace as the world is forever changed the life he lived.

Article by Regina Stanback Stroud.