>> So let's call to order, if we may please, the meeting of the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees for October 19th, 2011. Ms. Thompson, will you call the roll? >> Mr. Thompson? >> I am present. >> Mr. Brown? Mr. Martin? >> Present. >> Ms. Brown? >> Present. >> Dr. Fellow? [phonetic] >> Here. >> Dr. Mann? [phonetic] >> Present. >> Ms. Waa? [phonetic] >> Present. >> Mr. Soto? [phonetic] >> Here. >> Let me, okay let us ask Dr. Mann, please, to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance. [noise] >> Oh, okay. We can't see but we'll, place your hand over your heart and join me, I Pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. [ Noise ] >> Greetings, announcements, introductions, I know that Dr., Superintendent Dr. Gundry [phonetic] from PUFC is on he's way here. I was with him at the Pasadena Educational Foundation event, which was introducing him to the public so he will be here. Is Principle Gilbert Berosena [phonetic] Jr., from Paska [phonetic] High School, here? I don't see, okay. Principle Esther Salinas? Okay would you like to come up and introduce yourself please? [noise] >> Good evening and welcome, Board of Trustees. It's an honor for me to welcome you here to our beautiful Sierra Madre Campus. We certainly take care of the first six years of education, kindergarten, actually pre-kindergarten through fifth grade, before we pass them onto our Sierra Madre Middle School onto high school and then into your capable hands. So it's my honor to welcome you to our school campus. Thank you. >> Well thank you very much. It is our pleasure to be here, too. >> Okay, is Mayor John Buchanan [phonetic] from Sierra Madre here? I don't see him, okay. Dr. Mann, Dr. Mann and trustee representing this area in our Pasadena State College district. >> Well I'm pleased to see that we do have some community members here. I think I know all of them. I could introduce them. More people are coming in. We have three people here from the Armenian National Coalition. And would you just maybe stand so we could be recognized? I met with the Chris early last week, thank you very much, and they're very concerned about making sure that their children, who are students in the Pasadena High School and the local high schools, can get into PCC and get the classes they need to pursue their education. And I told them that's one of the things we're gonna be talking about today is our programs for in district students. Mr. Tim Price is here. He has been a very loyal friend of the college, as many of you know, and one time ran for the actual City Council representing this district that the community education center is in. That concludes my remarks. >> Board of Trustees, I'd like just to welcome or to thank all of you for coming this evening. We started a practice a number of months back of having our second meeting each month be a study session and that's exactly what this one is, quite a bit more informal than typical of our meetings and we've been moving them around the district that is a part of the PCC College district and we've been in, last month we were in South Pasadena. We've been in Temple City. We've been in Sierra Madre, or not Sierra Madre, San Merino and so now we are here in Sierra Madre. So we're delighted to be here and part of our purpose in coming and moving around the district is an attempt to do a much better job of communicating to the people that we represent what PCC has to offer, what PCC is, what we're doing, the challenges we're facing and all that goes with that. So we're delighted that you're here and we look forward to the chance to have a dialogue with you as the evening progresses so. Mr. Martin, anything to say? >> No, I'm pleased to be here. >> Okay, Ms. Brown? >> Actually no, nothing tonight but I'm just happy to see each of you that are here, that you made the effort to come out and learn what we're doing at PCC. We appreciate it. >> Ms. Waa? >> Yeah, I have nothing to add but you know to welcome the community for being here and thank you for letting us use this wonderful facility. >> Dr. Fellow? >> I'm just very happy always to be in Sierra Madre. I live right down the street. Next month we will be in the beautiful city of Arcadia. >> Okay, Mr. Soto? >> Nothing, just pleased to be here. >> Okay, Mr. Soto is our student trustee and I'm concluding my fourth year on the Board of Trustees and I have to say that each year we've had a different student trustee but each has been just fantastic, very, very skilled, very articulate, good students. All have transferred on to the better or the best of the private or public universities. I don't mean to put any pressure on you, Alex, [laughter] but we're expecting no less from you come June. >> I will try. >> Okay, Dr. Rocha? [phonetic] >> Yes, thank you, President Thompson. Just a couple of things. Of course I do want to thank those of you who have come out and I want to thank especially Principle Salinas for hosting this. It's just a beautiful venue here in Sierra Madre, here in our district. A couple things, first I wanted to, since we do have perhaps the advantage of time and I see some of the staff here and often they go unrecognized. I did want to actually take the opportunity to introduce them and by introducing them, thank each one of them for the hard work that they always do and the great work that they've been doing in getting us going in this new academic year. So I'm gonna start, let's see, I see Dena [phonetic] back there, Dena, our Director of Admissions. And Juan, Juan Gutierrez, Director of Public Relations. And I see Elaine Chapman. [phonetic] Good to see you, Elaine. And is our Dean in Extended Education Extension, I'm surveying, okay, now I'm going here. We have Vice President Rick Van Pelt. [phonetic] Rick is Administrative Services and Vice President Bob Bell so our student services Vice President. And Vice President LasTomato, [phonetic] who's our, Ben LasTomato is our HR, Unit Resources Vice President. Our General Counsel, Dale Cooper. And I, oh, wait a second. I can't go to you yet, Ed. Let me go back there cause I see Dave Douglas, Dean Dave Douglas. Just wanna introduce Dave and thank him for all he does and the President of our academic senate, Ed Martinez, who represents the faculty. And last but not least Vice President Bob Miller [phonetic] of educational services. And I do want to thank Mary Thompson and all the guys who you know pack up, set it up and so on for this meeting. It's much appreciated. The last note I have is that I did bring a little bit of show and tell, members of the trustees and members of the community. These awards here are the sustainability awards that the college has won in the last year. And Vice President Van Pelt and his staff are primarily responsible for them. And in fact I think the largest one there we just picked up on Monday. Alright so I just wanted to have those out as you know often they're kind of sequestered in the office. I wanted to bring them out this evening to both thank the staff for all that they do and also thank the board for its support because we really are very proud of our sustainability program. So with that, President Thompson, I'll turn it back to you. >> Okay, we have a request for comment, public comment, the [inaudible] prohibits the board from discussing or taking action on anything that's not on the agenda but we have a request from Talon Minosian, [phonetic] if I've pronounced that correctly to speak. It says student comment. Welcome and come up and use the microphone, if you would please. >> Thank you for having me. I would like to address a very serious issue for everyone that has been affected. Dr. Mann, you obviously don't remember me but I vividly remember you. As you know, my name is Talon Minosian. I'm a student at PCC and several years ago you treated myself and associated student body president, very badly. With the Pasadena Community College district board of trustee's election several weeks away, it is time that we stop ignoring some of our problems. I know that Dr. Janette Mann has been on the board longer than I've been alive. And whether a student, staff member or a member of the public challenging her, she doesn't want to have it. In fact, most people don't even challenge her because she's so unpleasant. Staff and managers are afraid of her and afraid of what she will do to them. On the other hand, if no one stands up to her then we are all part of this problem. I found out from one of the history professors on campus that Dr. Mann has been sending her campaign pleas to her managers, faculty and staff on campus, in direct opposition what she is legally supposed to do. Why doesn't our new general council investigate this outrage? She has gone to groups on campus such as the classified senate and union to not only get their support but to also get their money. Where is the outrage? Who holds her to account? She has leaked confidential memos she received to people she had no business communicating with, much less providing with information of highly confidential nature. In the case that I learned about on July 21, 2009, she provided the faculty association with the districts negotiating position on the eve of actual negotiations, completely undermining the district that she's supposed to serve. Where the outrage? And let's not forget that it was Dr. Mann who interviewed the college's presidential hiring process to hire Dr. Performal. [phonetic] Had it not been for her actions during the hiring process, Dr. Performal would not have been hired. Dr. Mann worked behind the scenes to apply pressure to the hiring committee and to the board of trustees to get a person who the committee didn't even recommend moved forward, only to become the president of this college. She knew that she was not supposed to get involved or put pressure on people but she did. In the end the college not only wasted two full years of its development but also a million dollars on Dr. Mann's experiment. Where is the outrage? Who holds her to account? So I guess the question is how do we expect this college to improve when its oldest board member is not being held accountable for all the things that she has done to undermine us? How do we hold anyone responsible for anything when the person who is supposed to decide these sorts of things is so corrupt and inept herself? Let's be honest with ourselves. Dr. Mann wants to be on this board because it's good for her. She wants to be the president of the trustees association and likes having medical insurance paid by the district. She likes the free travel. She likes to have everyone fear her. Those aren't good enough reasons for her to be on the board. She is hot tempered, ill informed, nasty and unpleasant and just plain corrupt. Dr. Mann treats students and student leaders with the same contempt as she treats everyone else, despite her words of contrary. Just ask former associated student body president, Christina Jaybear, [phonetic] who was treated so shabbily by Dr. Mann that she left the board of trustees meeting in tears. Rather than even stand for reelection, Dr. Mann should just resign. It is really time for a change. It was years ago but I couldn't do anything about it then so let's wake up people and find someone else. Thank you for your time. >> Is there anybody else who would like to address the, first of all, let me introduce the person who just came in. That's Brian Fuller who is in the audience and who is actually seeking a seat on the Pasadena City College Board of Trustees. I think we just had other requests for public comment brought in. >> I didn't know there were steps there. [laughter] >> There are indeed. Okay we have, I believe the first is from Anto Zesterian. [phonetic] I apologize if I pronounced that >> Keeper of the button, I think. >> Yeah, [inaudible]. >> Okay, my apologies. >> That's fine. [background inaudible talking] My daughter attended PCC and graduated from PCC with AA in 2006 and it was a very good school and she worked in the financial aid department for a while, as a student and she left the school when she graduated. Now I do have a question, while she was there, the Armenian representation was very small percentage to the body of the school employees. And being having quiet a share of students, Armenians, in the school, we don't have Armenia representation in the PCC system. What is the decision of the board in the future to bring Armenians to more positions that have been excluded all this time? >> That's an excellent question and we'll, let us comment on that briefly now and then we'll make it a point to take it in more detail and get back to you on it. But we have recognized that we at PCC need to do a better job of reaching out to the community and informing prospective students, high school seniors and juniors, what we have to offer. For example, a couple of years ago we began on a series of Sunday mornings, I believe it was the month of February, if I remember accurately, going to different African American churches in the Pasadena Community College area district and being a part of their service to present to them briefly what PCC has to offer. I would certainly be open to doing the same type of thing to Armenian churches. There are certainly a number of those in our area. We do the same types of things there. But we can do a better job, we should do a better job. We have to do a better job. And so I would love to talk with you and get your ideas on how we can be more effective in reaching out to Armenian population. >> I'd be happy to do that. >> Anybody else? >> I just want to say that, and Mr. Thompson as you know, we cannot discuss anything which is not on our agenda. We can give information, which Mr. Thompson just did so we can put this on the future agenda and have a full discussion but I don't think we can go much beyond just what he said tonight. >> So we're definitely open to the idea to recognize the need to be more effective and so we'd be delighted to work with you on that. >> I appreciate that. Thank you. I'm sure Ms. Cooper will correct me if I misstate something or step out of bounds. She'll get up here and drag me off the stage. [laughter] The next request we have is from Cavork Cushcarian. [phonetic] Again, my apologies for probably butchering your name. >> You did a good job. >> Thank you. [laughter] >> It's a similar concern of giving you some data, I think PCC has 1800 employees, staff teaching. Out of those only 36 are Armenians and we feel that the Armenian representation is not fair. We're not targeting PCC. I'm a member of Armenian Coalition, community coalition. We're also targeting the city hall, the fire department, the police department because wherever we turn we see that our representation is not fair. It's not as it should be. And mind you, Armenians have been in Pasadena just two years after Pasadena was founded so it's our 123 year. And Pashekan [phonetic] is building [inaudible] across from the [inaudible] Pasadena. So and we have so many churches, so many schools, so many community centers, we would like to see more Armenians employed by PCC. Thank you. >> I'm well aware of the extent of the Armenian population in Pasadena and certainly in the Glendale area as well. And I used to be on the city council in Pasadena and during that time we set out and actually established a sister city in Armenia and so we're very pleased to have accomplished that. So again, we're very opened, very much want to work with you on these items. Anyone else to address the board on non agenda items? Okay, then let's move into the Pasadena City College educational master plan and subtopics with that are high school or PCC pathways project and the honors track and fast track project so Dr. Rocha. >> Okay, thank you President Thompson. I'm going to introduce Vice President Miller. And here with the next few brief presentations we're going to talk about what we are doing to connect the college to the community and make sure that the students in our district are moving through and have a pathway into the college and into the courses that they need. So I'll turn it over to Bob. >> Thank you, President Rocha and the board members. It's my pleasure tonight on behalf of many, many colleagues at Pasadena City College to present this brief report to you about our pathways activities. We call it PCC Pathways, success starts here. And it is based on our new educational master plan and out in the foyer there are copies of our educational master plan summary so if some of you have not had a chance to pick that up. I would encourage you to do so. Basically, in relation to that plan, what you'll notice is we call it project 90. And project 90 refers to the 90th anniversary of our college, which will occur in 2014, 15 year. And our signature goals in relation to that are goals of our board of trustees in our college in relation to some very significant achievements that we're going to work towards. For example, guaranteed enrollment for in district high school students. Presently PCC does not have guaranteed enrollment for our in district 12 public high schools as well as a number of our other private and charter schools that are inside of our district. We are now working towards a very aggressive goal of achieving that in the near future. We want to be the premiere transfer community college in the state. We presently rank around 7th. We want to continue to go beyond that. We want to increase degree and certificate programs that address very specific market needs within our community. We say market needs, we mean the needs of the employers within the Pasadena Area Community College district. We want to make sure that we are known for cutting edge, pedagogically sound learning applications. And we want to be technology advanced in that regard. We want to continue to have, to the extent that our funding allows, a dedication of lifelong learning for all of the people that are within our service area. And we want to make sure that we are a sustainable community college from an environmental point of view and under the leadership of Vice President Van Pelt and so many others, we are well on our way to that goal. With this in mind, our educational master plan speaks about very specific goals, very specific targets. We want to increase our transfers to four year institutions, both public and private. We want to increase the number of associated degrees, associate of arts and science degrees that we offer. We want to increase the number of science, technology, engineering and math awards, STEM degrees that we provide and we want to increase the number of certificates in our vocational education, what we call our career and technical education area. And finally we want to increase what we call the basic skills sequence completion rate. As you know, many of the students that come to PCC are not yet college ready in the area of English and mathematics. We want to improve those and we have very specific targets over the next five years that we are aiming towards to do that. Along the way we are also starting and are very dedicated to the notion of the 2 plus 2 plus 2 college commitment. And in that regard we want to guarantee that upon graduation from a participating Pasadena area community college district school that these students would be able to either go directly to PCC cause they're college ready, come to PCC and become college ready within a short period of time or go directly to Cal State LA from PCC or even out of the public high school. So in that regard we are working very closely with our K12 school districts, our secondary school districts, and with Cal State LA in order to achieve that and they'll be much more on that going forward. Without getting into or spending a lot of time on this right now, one of the, the research has shown us and our own experience has shown us, that if we can put together a very viable, very successful first year experience program for our incoming high school 12th graders, their chances of their success and the chances of them being able to progress and complete in a much more timely and effective manner is quite significant. So our college, for the past many years now, has been engaged in a number of first year programs and working with Dr. Bell and his student services staff and working with Dr. Jacobs and the instructional people and our various Deans and faculty, we are working towards building out our first year experience program. In that regard we know that these programs develop these things, early connections, high expectations and aspirations, clear academic plans and paths for these students, affective track to college readiness, in other words we help them in their preparation for that. This engages them from a learning point of view and we provide academic and social support network. If we can do all of these things, the chances of students success are greater and we are engaged in that right now in many ways. So in this regard we have been able to make a lot of progress in a relatively short period of time in terms of our first year experience opportunities for a number of students within our district. So we have various programs, for example we have a first year pathway program funded by Title 5 that has, which is a funding source for the federal government, that has 289 students within it. Two hundred and eighteen of those students are in general pathways, very specific pathways where they come in and get their English. They get their Math. They get at least one other general education course, roughly 13,14 units worth of credit and they move forward. Then we have pathways for some of our athletes. Then you can see some of the other pathways programs we have going. So basically we have 565 students that we've got in this pathway right now. This shows some of the breakdown of it right now but what I wanted to say is we have somewhere in the neighborhood of approximately roughly just under 1,000 students within our district, high school graduating students within our district right now, who are in these pathway programs right now. We are in the process of developing ways to grow that out even further and to guarantee these opportunities going forward. This is some of the demographics associated with that, 42% of these students are in district right now, 50% are males, 50% are females. You can see the ethnic breakdown that we have at the moment in this program. This, the hallmark of this program has been something called the math jam, which has been kind of a boot camp opportunity where students come in the summer and they are engaged in a very intense program which prepares them for a successful mathematics experience going forward. This has been very successful. The data tied to this basically tells us that because of the success of this program we've had more than 2 1/2 times faster success and matriculation into other math programs as a result of our math jam activity and you can see that we've actually been able to move these students twice as fast through other programs such as our intermediate algebra and our English 1A, then certain comparison groups that we've had. As we go forward and as we grow we have a number of what we call post first year career pathways in a number of our career and technical educational or vocational education areas. I'm going to share some of those with you right now. Basically we have several options for these students. The first option is what we call an occupational skills certificate. This is designed to develop the job skills in special needs areas for different employers. We have a certificate of achievements. These are typically 18 units or greater programs which will lead directly to certificates which will lead directly to employment. We have a third option which is multiple levels of certificates or degree completion options that prepare students for a variety of careers in a variety of different areas and also lead to AS or AA degrees. And then option four is the opportunity for the certificate, the associate degrees and also prepares them for transfer into a four year. So our CTE career pathways, which many of them are starting in the middle schools, take students all the way through career preparation to a degree opportunity to transfer opportunity. And many of our students, sometimes more than we'd like, actually leave their career in technical education studies because in effect what happens is that they get jobs. So it leads to gainful employment even before they finish their certificates and we're actually trying to work on ways to able to counsel those students better. I'm not gonna read all these to you but there are over 50 or more certificate of achievement programs that we have at PCC in a variety of areas such as speech and language and computer support and medical assisting and nursing and paralegal studies and just a whole wealth of things that we are continuously in the process of doing program reviews on and improving and doing surveys within our community to make certain that the programs that we're offering are actually in support of the employment needs of our area. This I'm just gonna share briefly and say we are now creating, through the web, a variety of ways to communicate with our students. We have something that we've gotta pile it on right now with our Title 5 students called my PCC. It's a student portal where any and all information that students need regarding PCC they will be able to get, everything from enrolling and scheduling as well as a variety of communication means by communicating with social media, etcetera. We've got a team working on that so we can continue to be very relevant to the students that we serve. Through a variety of other things that we're doing right now to support our pathways, our educational master plan activities, we've got a whole variety of professional learning things that are occurring for our faculty. An engaged, an informed and educated faculty and support staff is an absolute necessity in order to maintain an employment base, if you will, that is prepared for the students that we serve every day. So we have a very active professional learning activity taking place right now. Again, because time is short I'm not gonna get into this too much but this is the intersegmental collaboration that we have that is focused on our K-12 districts, the Cal State system and the college in the three areas of outreach, curriculum and professional learning. And this is an effort to make certain that our curriculum is aligned from the secondary schools through the community college through the four year. That the outreach efforts, as we go out and we outreach to students, that it's a coordinated effort, particularly with our secondary schools, that we are in sync with what it is that Cal State requires of our students so that when they get there, they're prepared. And that from a professional learning point of view we are working on ways to have our high school faculty, our community college faculty and our four year faculty get together on a regular basis for a variety of purposes including making certain that we are in sync with each other's missions. What's ahead for PCC? There's a number of initiatives and pathways activities, college ready pathway, athlete pathway growth, our campus wide portal roll out that we call version 2.0 that will go wide to the whole campus, the creation of outreach materials and strategies that are much better integrated between our campus and the schools that we work with and the leveraging of all of our resources. We are doing a good job and we need to do a better job in reaching out and bringing in monies from outside of our district, outside of our state. We all know that money is difficult these days so we're actively engaged in a number of what we call revenue enhancement projects. So there's many things going on right now. All of this is about the notion of one initiative, one mission, our educational master plan, a variety of project 90 resources that we bring to the table, the Title 5 federal funding, student access and success initiative funding that our board was kind enough to provide to us which basically is a sum of money that we use for a number of projects that promote student access, promote student success, promotes professional learning among our campus. Something called BSI which is the basic skills initiative funded by the state of California and then a variety of academic affairs, student services and educational services resources. What's significant about that pie chart is that these are all different sources of money that we are doing a good job and we're going to work to do a much better job of leveraging to the total good of progressing students more readily through their PCC experience and having them complete. Complete is defined as a degree, as a transfer, as a vocational certificate, as gainful employment and certainly to have a very successful first year experience program so that these students can get to their college activity as quickly as possible. So there's many, many things going on. I was asked to keep this short. For those of you who know me, it's very difficult for me to keep things short. [laughter] But in any case this is the presentation. This is just a list of people and I'll just read it, among the many faculty, staff and administrators who continue to work hard to create pathways. This is just a small sample of our faculty, our staff and our administrators and our managers who are actively engaged on a daily basis in doing all that we can possible do to help our students in every way possible and to communicate on a regular basis and to make student success, their progression and their completion our number one goal. And there are many, many, many people at PCC that are passionate about that mission. Thank you. >> Thank you, Bob. Again, you know the key is that every student in our district has a place at PCC and once they get to PCC will get the classes they need to get on to the goals that they've set for themselves educationally, either transfer or workforce. So we're moving. You know we've made a great deal of progress this year on that. So let's >> Before we move on, let me ask one question. >> Sure. >> We've implemented this fall with the Pasadena Unified school district and we've said that we intend to use this with other in district high schools as well. Where do we stand on the progress on that goal? >> I'd be happy to speak to that or maybe Dr. Bell, if you'd like to speak to it. There's a joint project that is happening right now and Dr. Bell as our student services Vice President can address that pretty succinctly, I think. [noise] >> Thank you Vice President Miller, Mr. Thompson, Dr. Rocha and members of the board, what we're doing in a collaborative effort between PCC and the high schools are, and I'll give you a brief introduction of what we've done. This past fall we've worked considerably with our in district high school seniors to make sure that as they came to PCC in the fall we met with them, we went specifically and targeted our high school seniors who graduated this past fall, this past spring, excuse me, and have applied to college and taken the assessment test. And what we did was work strategically with them, bring them to the campus and worked with them to make sure that we placed them in the specific math and English class, of which they were eligible based on their assessment test scores. And as any of our students will tell you, one of the most difficult things to do at PCC is to navigate through our class cases to get into a math or English course because competition to get those are so high. What we're doing now is we're going extrapolate out this coming spring. We're gonna be meeting with all of our high school seniors in all of our high school campuses. We're going to look to get them assessed early into their final semester as high school seniors. We're going to get them applied to the college, admitted to the college. We're gonna sit with them and develop an educational plan, which in essence will be a two year plus blueprint which will tell them specifically what classes they'll need to take from one semester to the next when they come to us as freshman. And then we're gonna work to make sure they get placed in those classes specifically if there's a need in math and English because those are sequential to make sure they get to degree level work. So we're gonna work to make sure that they not only get to PCC, they get the classes they need to come in their first year and we're gonna expand next year to make sure that along those pathways that Vice President Miller mentioned that they are guaranteed those courses and we'll begin to use that data from the classes that they say they need to inform how we begin to build our class schedule so we'll have a better opportunity to ensure that the class they need will be there when they need it. >> Which is, is there a district that you can identify that we're working with and which we anticipate will be the next one that we will implement the pathways project with? >> Well we work closely with the Pasadena Unified School district. >> Right. >> At this point, President Thompson, we haven't identified a district but the goal is to make sure we do it as broad based as possible. We're gonna begin with the high school that identified what the need is within a high school and begin to work with all high school seniors. We haven't targeted a specific district as yet but those discussions are still in process. My individual goal, as your vice president, is to make it as broad based across our entire service district as we possibly can. >> Yeah, and I would add that we are gearing up that way. When Vice President Bell arrived and we started talking about this, and you might recall the pledge that we made to the board is that in the 1213 academic year we would take this thing as wide as we possibly could and Dr. Bell and his staff were very supportive of that notion. And that's our mission right now, to guarantee every incoming 12th grader, you know, in our district in the public high schools, a seat and more readily of late we realize we had to make that same guarantee to the private as well as other high schools so that's our goal and that's what we're gonna work very hard to accomplish. Dr. Mann? >> I have a question. I am familiar with this and I think this is excellent. I think this is probably the best thing we've done in a very long time. But the pathways program goes further and we have our faculty working with high school faculty and making sure that the curriculum aligns. Are there any other high schools that we are taking this part of the pathways program too? >> On the curriculum alignment the answer at the moment, Dr. Mann, is no, only because we are just finishing that project with our mathematics faculty and English faculty right now and as soon as we have that completed with the USC we're gonna use that as a model. So with that done we will be going out to the other districts and showing them that the work that was completed and using that as a way to hopefully fast track what might happen with the other districts. We have had some conversations with some of the districts like the Armenian High School folks, for example and others but that is our plan. In addition at a later date, later time, we will be reporting out on our 2 plus 2 plus 2 project with Cal State LA. And right now that group is talking about a two phase. The first phase being a very specific curriculum alignment project in English and Math across all of our districts with PCC and with Cal State LA. And then from there that becomes the bedrock of a fully articulated 2 plus 2 plus 2 for all of our theatre high schools and all the way through Cal State LA. So I haven't yet shared that with Dr. Rocha cause that's relatively new news but this is what we're, this is kind of where that group is at the moment. They're looking at a two phase approach. And this is a working group between Cal State LA, PCC and some high school folks but primarily PSP people at the moment. >> Thank you. >> Dr. Rocha? >> Yeah, we'll do a brief presentation on the honors and scholars tract and then we'll open it up. [ Noise ] >> Good evening. I'm gonna share with you some of the programs we have for >> Why don't you introduce yourself a little bit? [laughter] Tell us who you are beyond your name. What do you do at PCC? >> Well my name is Dena Chase. [phonetic] I'm the interim associate dean of admissions and records and the director of outreach degree and transfer services. It's been my privilege to share this information with several of our potential students and their families and I'm privileged to be here tonight to share it with you. One of the first programs I want to share with you is our Fast Track program. That's designed for our high school students who are thinking about starting their college career early and the fast track program allows them to begin their general ed. courses for their college course work as early as their sophomore year. A student can take two classes per year, starting their sophomore year, and by the time they finish high school, come to PCC for one full time year and graduate from PCC and transfer to a university as a junior standing. The difference between the fast track program for concurrent students, concurrently enrolled high school students and students who take high school and college classes simultaneously, is that the fast track program gives our students a counselor who actually works with them and works in conjunction with their high school counselor so that they're ensured to take the type of classes that are going to count towards their general ed. for their university level degree. Once the student makes the transition from high school to PCC there are several programs that will continue to help them reach their academic goal. One of them is the scholars program. UCLA is a very popular destination for our PCC students, in fact it's the number one UC destination for our students. However UCLA doesn't guarantee transfer admission to anybody. The closest that they offer is priority consideration and students can reach that goal through the scholars program. The transfer admission guarantee program, TAG's, as we call them, do guarantee admission to a university for a specific term. These are extremely popular and extremely beneficial. Now in the times of enrollment capacity where students find it very difficult to get admitted to the colleges that they want to attend, the TAG is somewhat of a guarantee. They can put it in their pocket, still apply to other colleges and universities, if they get accepted elsewhere and they choose not to use the TAG, they can just ignore it. If they don't get accepted any place else, they have someplace to go. SP1440 is a TAG of sorts for the CAL State system that will ensure students will be admitted to the CAL state in their service area. Our service area is Cal State LA. Talking about all this transfer I had to share with you some of the transfer numbers. In the last 21 years, PCC has transferred over 36,000 students nationwide. As you can see from the table, PCC transfers students to public and private universities in and out of state. Our community and school relations office is the primary community outreach office for the college. And you can see from the several visits to Marshal and PHS this fall, the staff is quite busy. They meet with students, they meet with faculty and staff, attend information fairs, as well as had a college fair at PCC this fall or at the Pasadena Unified School District. Our schedule for the spring is posted on the website, www.pasadena/outreach and we invite you to visit us on the web and at Pasadena City College. Thank you very much. >> Are there questions of Ms. Chase? >> Don't be shy. [laughter] Thank you. >> Thanks so much, Dena. Dr. Rocha, I think we're now, well let me before we move to community dialogue, let me introduce Superintendent Dr. John Gundry [phonetic] from the Pasadena Unified School District who has been able to make his way through traffic and get here from the Pasadena Educational Foundation event over at the Asia Pacific Museum in Pasadena. So Dr. Gundy, welcome. Please come and [applause] >> Should I say something? >> Absolutely. [laughter] As you wish. >> Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. Actually there was no traffic. I just had a hard time getting out of the room at the last event. The Pasadena Educational Foundation had a reception tonight down at the Asian Pacific Museum so it was a wonderful event but I'm glad to be here. This is a wonderful partnership. You know I'm just beginning, I've been here for three months. I've been superintendent for three months. I'm still learning a lot about the district and about the city. But one of the things I have learned is that this district has a wonderful partnership with the college and with many other community organizations that I'm hoping to nurture and to grow because I believe it's in the best interest of the students of this district and also of the community in general, to strengthen those partnerships. And we certainly, you know nationwide we're talking about a P21 initiative where we're all working together as a community to make it possible for children to have the successful schooling experience, not just in K-12 but also to be successful in higher Ed. and so we need, those partnerships with our higher ed. colleagues are extremely important in making sure that kids have a successful transition from high school to college and so that's a very important objective of the school district, I know it is of this board as well and I'm looking forward to a long and close and profitable partnership with the college. Thank you. >> And in the length of time you've been here, the three months, which I'm sure probably seem like a year and three months, given the challenges that you've had to face in that period of time, do you have any observations about the PUSD, the students you're receiving, the transfers >> Yes, I do. >> Or whatever that you can share with us or would like to share with us? >> Yeah, one of the things I've been saying consistently is you know as I've visited the schools, I have been in all of the schools in the three months I've been here so I have somewhat of an idea of what's going on in the schools in the district and one of my general comments is this school district is better than its reputation. I know that the school district suffers from somewhat of a negative reputation, not just in the district but in the county. I came here from the county office of education where I was privy to a lot of information about every school district in the county and I knew the reality of this school district but I'd heard a lot of things about the district that I knew were inaccurate. The district certainly has some significant challenges that it's facing and there are areas where improvement is certainly needed but there are also pockets of excellence in this district and we're on an upward trajectory. All of the secondary, all but one of the secondary schools made improvements last year in their API. The elementary schools were a little less consistent last year, although over time the elementary schools have made tremendous progress. As you know the school you're sitting in has an API of over 900 and I don't think this is the last school in the district that's going to reach that goal. We have several really outstanding elementary schools in this district. And our challenge is to make sure that all of them are excellent options for parents in the community and to continue that excellence into our secondary schools, which is a much bigger challenge. I just hired last week or this week, Monday was his first day, Chief Academic Officer who is going to help me make that happen and he is a specialist in middle school education, which was a selling point for me because I think that that's a critical time, you know, in kids education and one where we lose a lot of kids. And if we can have that successful transition to middle school and then high school, I think it will go a long way in improving the district. But his name is Dr. Bryan McDonald and he is coming here from the Houston School District in Houston, Texas. And he just started on Monday and he's already been in all of the secondary schools and has brought back a preliminary assessment to me of what he sees. And one of the things we both believe is extremely important is that we need strong leadership in every single school. I think that that's really the key to making progress in all of our schools is making sure we have a strong principle in every building. And so we're going to work on ensuring that we have that, how we're going to build capacity where it's needed, we're going to build on excellence where we already have it. And to try to take some of our success stories cause we do have some very successful and skilled principles in this district but we don't have them in every school right now and that's the goal over the next few years, is to build that capacity in every building in the district. >> Are there questions of Dr. Gundy? Are we gonna let him off that easily? My goodness gracious. [laughter] Well thank you very much for coming and sharing with us this evening. We really appreciate that. We do believe we have a very good partnership with PUSD and we have it with other school districts as well that we serve and it's our goal, our intention, to make sure that we have equally good relationships with every school system within the district that we represent so we look forward to working with you. We're delighted to have you on board and we will see a lot of each other I'm sure. Thank you very much. Okay, we're now at the point of opening up for community dialogue. Don't be bashful. Come and ask questions, make comments that you'd like us to hear or listen to and react to or we can if you don't come and ask us questions, we just might ask some of you questions. [laughter] >> Or ask each other questions. >> We can do that as well so any comment from the board members or anyone in the audience? Yes sir, come on up again, please. Just reintroduce yourself, if you don't mind. >> Yeah, Cavork Cushcarian. I am a retired middle school administrator from Los Angeles Unified School District. I was gonna say, my mother graduated from Marshall High School and she went directly to UCLA and it was a mess. At UCLA she graduated with a biology degree but the classes were 400 people and everybody was vying for a higher grade because everybody wanted to be in the premed program. What I heard is maybe the PCC should go to the high schools and tell the students to choose a 2 year college before going to a 4 year university because at the university they are lost. There are so many students, everybody, there's a huge competition whereas at a 2 year college, like PCC, they will feel more at ease, they will do better in preparing for a four year college so that's what I, that's my take. I'm talking from experience. >> Thank you. I think, I'm grateful for the input. I think, Bob, in our FYE, the first year experience courses, what are the normal class sizes for those courses? >> The normal class sizes for those courses are anywhere from 25 to 35 students, depending on the subject area but beyond that we have what we call case managers or student mentors and other support opportunities that we provide students, as you're mentioning, sir, to make certain that they feel cared for at home, that they get the service they need, they get the attention that they need. That if they begin to slide or even if they have some issues adapting to the environment, we find ways to help them. We also make certain that our faculty are well trained, if you will, to work with first year students. This is all part of that professional learning piece that I was talking about earlier. We have a number of faculty and a number of administrators who are actively engaged in this process right now. >> Mr. Thompson, it's my understanding, I'm glad Ms. Chase is here, don't our ambassadors go out into the schools? Could you talk a little bit about our ambassadors, who they are and what they do as far as reaching out to high school students and the information they give them? >> I'd be happy to. Actually seven of our ambassadors this year are from Marshall and Pasadena High School. And what they do is they actually go out into the community, high schools and different activities in the community, and talk about Pasadena city college and the value of coming to a two year school prior to transferring directly from high school to a four year. And in fact in several years past we have a program called university partners where we actually take universities like UCLA, Cal State LA, Long Beach Pomona, out to the high schools with us and the university reps talk our praises to the students. I think what we find at times is that there is pressure, if you will, from the high schools to want to transfer their students directly to the universities from high school, exactly and so there's a little bit of a balancing act. You know what is in the best interest of the student? And if we can work together to find out what the best interest of the student is, I think then we will really know the value of coming to Pasadena City College and then transferring from there. >> That's a good point. >> Another thing maybe I'd like to point this out to Dr. Gundry, like Marshall High School, they did not have a college career advisor. They had a college advisor, which is a disservice to the students because my daughter said had I known that I would not find a job after bachelors in Biology, I wouldn't have chosen Biology. But she was so passionate about biology and there was no college career counselor, Dr. Gundry, maybe just a counselor or maybe the number of students per counselor is huge, 600? So maybe that should be also, at the PUSD level, being corrected, for the good of the students. >> Very good point and we've certainly focused on the need to supplement our counseling capacity here at PCC as well for the very same reasons. Ms. Waa? >> President Thompson and I had an opportunity to attend the trustee's conference over in Dallas and there was a lot of emphasis placed on technology but one of the workshops I attended, among the workshops that they had a lot of emphasis on, was workforce development. And they talked about making college as sort of a job center hub. And so one of the workshops I attended I thought was kind of interesting was a technology that they're using for career counseling but it's sort of a decision making software. And so I think Miami Dade has been using it for like a year and a half now and they've been able to increase their completion by about 5% just in one year. And what it does is it, the decision making software helps the college not only align where the labor workforce opportunities are in the community and then align their curriculum to meet that but it also helps the students identify what are they interested in? And then what are the possibilities in the workforce that they can possibly look at that they may not have thought of? And you can extend it as broadly as possible over the nation or as locally as possible, whatever their need is. So I thought it was really interesting software and I was going to give Dr. Rocha a copy of the handout. >> Other comments or questions? Dr. Mann? >> Yes, I'd like to comment just briefly. There was a statewide student success taskforce was established by the legislature and appointed by the board of governors of the California community colleges. It has 20 people on it and I was very privilege to be able to serve on this taskforce and they have come up with, I think now it's 22 recommendations on ways to increase student completion. And the whole plan really rests on two things, number one is educational, student educational plans. And I know Mr. Miller commented on those but the idea is that each student, when they are admitted, will develop an educational plan. And then the second part is technology. The system office will develop the technology so that there can be a monitoring of the student if they are following their educational plan. One of the reasons we recommended that this be done system wide is because there is a phenomena, which the name of it has, spinning, I think it's called, that is in progress, which maybe some of the adults don't know, but many, many of the community college students that go to PCC also take a class at Citrus and they take a class at Glendale and they may take a class at Mount [inaudible] because if you can't get an English class here, you can get an English class there. So if a student is supposed to be following a master plan but they're taking classes at four different colleges, and they might even be taking something at one of the Cal States and then picking up courses here, it's extremely difficult for any one college to keep track of this. This central technology, the central computer system, would also be able to do graduation analysis for all the students courses and curriculum and credits together. So this is something that is being recommended. It's going through the, it will go to the legislature in March, to the board of governors in January and I think in a way at Pasadena we're very much ahead of this in our emphasis that we're putting on the educational master plans, which is really one of the keys. We know, for example, that there are students in all the community colleges who have many, many, many units. It takes 60 units to get an AA degree, 120 units to get a Bachelor's degree, 154 units to get a Master's degree, approximately. And there are many community college students with 160, 180, 190 units. And part of that may be because of the programs they're in, part of it may be because they like college and they aren't ready to move on but a lot of it is because they don't have clear direction and guidance. And one of the things this student master plan would do would be to try to put systems in place which the students can, much can access through technology so that they, since they may not be able to see a counselor, they can at least have this counseling through the, you know, through the internet. And I think that's critical. The other thing I'd like to comment on, because I find that if you aren't deeply involved in this that you may not really understand part of the problem, and this is also a recommendation coming out of the student success taskforce, for a student to graduate from high school in California, they need to pass the CAHSEE exam, right, our superintendent will, right. The CAHSEE exam certifies that the student is proficient in math at the 8th grade level and in English at the 10th grade level. When a student comes into college they need to be proficient in math at the 12th grade level and in English at the 12th grade level. That is what is so important about the pathways and why we're asking if we can extend it because what we will be doing will be working with the high schools to make sure that when a student has completed 12th grade math, 12th grade English, they are college proficient. This is one of the reasons why so many students come in and they are assessed as not being at college level math and English and then are required to take what we call basic skills classes. I heard a very interesting research report on this several years ago where they had interviewed students across the state and many, many students are very surprised when they come and take the college placement test, not only the community college but with Cal State and UC, to find out that they don't have the English and math proficiencies because they didn't understand that taking the exam did not really prepare them. So I think these programs working together are extremely important and it's extremely important for parents to understand exactly what the CAHSEE exam certifies and that it's really important that their students take 11th and 12th grade English and that they continue taking math so that when they come to college they are ready for college. And that's one of the reasons I am so pleased that we are having these community forums so that we can get this word out. >> Other comments or questions or a word or audience? If not then I think we're at the point where we can thank everyone once again for being here. Our next meeting is on Wednesday, November 2. It's a regular business meeting. Closed session starts at 6:00 pm, open session 7:00 pm, Creveling Lounge on the PCC campus. The next meeting thereafter is on Wednesday, November 16 of this year. Study session starting at 6:00, Arcadia Unified School District at 234 Campus Drive in Arcadia. >> Mr. Thompson, can I mention, just to the trustees, that we wanted to hold it at the new rebuilt high school but some other things were going on but any trustee who would like to come earlier, they would like to give a tour of the campus. It is a magnificent campus and they have their own television studios. Their laboratories for science are equal to any university I've seen so it would be a treat if you can come a little earlier and tour the campus. >> What time would you recommend? >> I think I said 5:30 or so, yeah. >> Okay, any closing comments by anyone? If not let me just say that we really want to be able to reach out on behalf of PCC to the communities that we serve and to do as good a job as we possibly can to address the serious educational needs that we're all faced with. And it's not something limited to the Pasadena/Los Angeles area or southern California or the state of California. It's across the country. A number of us heard a presentation by Representative of the Lumina foundation earlier this year pointing out that in terms of international education completion that we rank about 10th or 11th in that lineup, Korea, Canada and Japan are 1, 2, and 3 and they did not include either China or India. So things are not in great shape in this country from the standpoint of public education and so we want to do all we possibly can in working with all of you to improve things. And one thing we can do together is to get the word out as to what PCC has to offer and what we're doing. We're happy to serve your students. At the least we want people to know what we're doing, what the challenges are and obviously in this state one of the huge challenges is money because the great state of California's economy is not doing too well these days so we have a great foundation. It's geared up for the fact that they realize they've gotta start looking out and reaching out and raising much more significant amounts of money and so if any of you are interested in helping in any of that, let us know. We'd be glad to put you to work. So again, thanks very, very much for being with us and please help us get the word out as to the good things that we're doing at PCC and things that we're trying to do to face the challenges of education. So thank you very, very much.