Dear SRJC Community,

I am pleased to share with you the District updates that were provided to the Board of Trustees at the October meeting.

As a reminder, you will receive these updates from me following the monthly Board of Trustees meeting to celebrate the accomplishments and successes of our colleagues across the District for the previous month. These updates are a chance for you to learn more about the excellent programs, services, initiatives, events, and work we undertake in support of our students. You will be able to find all District Monthly Updates going forward on our News site at https://news.santarosa.edu/.

President’s Office

• Welcome to Kei'Lani Fronda, the Administrative Assistant in the President’s Office.  She is a community college graduate who was a student-athlete and transferred to a four-year institution. She and her family live in Santa Rosa and she will bring an additional layer of support for the District operations. 
• Held SRJC Voices Listening sessions with Learning Resources & Educational Technology, Arts & Humanities, Health Sciences, Admissions & Records, Language Arts & Academic Foundations, and Culinary & ITT.  I will continue to meet with groups throughout October and November with a plan to share my learnings with the SRJC community.
• Attended the following events:
  • Welcome Days for SRJC Public Safety Training Center and SRJC Roseland
  • Polly O'Meara Doyle Hall Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
  • SRJC Foundation Executive Committee & General Foundation Board meeting
  • Petaluma Education Foundation event.
  • Queer Resource Center Rainbow Dinner
  • Los Cien's State of Latinx Address: The Power of Belonging, Shifting Mindsets, and Transforming Communities, hosted at Sonoma State University.
• Met with Kim Marois and the trustees of the Doyle Trust to ensure collaboration and alignment for the Doyle Scholarship Program.
• Attended the meetings for the President's Committee on the Arts & Humanities in Washington, DC, as the only Community College President and one of three who are in Higher Education.
• Met with constituency group leaders of Classified Senate, SEIU, Academic Senate, AFA, and SGA President.
• In collaboration with the Management Liaison Group, we are revising the evaluation process and forms for managers to include DEIAA components and a more comprehensive review with the 360 degree evaluations.
• Utilized College Council meetings to address shared governance and board policy and administrative procedures.
• Conducted final interviews for the Assistant Athletic Director and the Administrative Assistant for the President's Office.
• Held Guided Pathways campus forums for community input and engagement for completion of the GP Work Plan due in December.

 

Academic Affairs 

• SRJC’s application for the Child Care Access Means Parents in School Program (CCAMPIS) has been selected and approved for funding. SRJC will receive $1 million over the four-year grant cycle ($250,000 a year) and will be an investment in meaningful programming. 
• The Engineering & Applied Technology Department has been working diligently to revitalize the Architecture program. With four new courses pending curriculum approval (focused on Architectural Design Studio and Digital Models and Graphics), the plan is to bring this important program back and leverage the new facilities of the Lindley Center for STEM Education. Additionally, the department is collaborating with the Digital Media discipline to introduce students to virtual reality and how the technology can be applied for media distribution and development.
• Ashley Garcia (Year 4 – Communication Studies) was just awarded the Gerald R. Miller Outstanding Dissertation Award for her recently completed dissertation: “(Re)Scripting the Black-Activist-Athlete: Remembering the Racialized Politics of Sport in the NFL’s Protests During the National Anthem.” 
• Shone Farm Winery was awarded a Gold Medal for its Chardonnay in the Sonoma County Harvest Fair Wine Competition. This rounds out awards for all our wines, including a Double Gold for our Sauvignon Blanc and Gold for our Pinot Noir in the SF Chronicle Wine Competition.  
• SRJC Culinary Café Rose opens October 17th for lunch service on Thursdays and Fridays, by reservation only. The SRJC Culinary Alex Ling Bakery is open for walk-ins on Thursdays and Fridays from 8am-2pm.  
• Fall Athletics is in full swing. Men’s Soccer is ranked #5 in the state, Women’s Cross Country Team is ranked #4 in northern CA, and wrestler Frankie Pomilia’s (197lbs) season record is now 10-2 and Frankie claimed 2nd place in the West Hill Tournament.  
• 20 employers participated in the STEM + Healthcare Careers Employer Meetup on September 14 and met with 125 students on career opportunities in these fields.  
• The Career Education/Workforce Development department made the big move from Bailey Hall to their new permanent home in Bertolini Hall in the Career Hub.   

 

Student Services 

• Over 650 students attended the annual SRJC Transfer Day on September 6th. 45 university representatives were in attendance and were pleased to talk with so many SRJC students about admission requirements, housing, financial aid and support services.  
• The Rising Scholars Program received an award notification from the Chancellor’s Office on September 29. Under the Rising Scholars Network framework, Santa Rosa Junior College is among the first colleges to receive a Juvenile Justice Impacted Students Grant. The grant will provide more than $1.5 million over the next five years to support this student cohort, starting January 2024. 
• We hosted our second all Student Services retreat of the semester on September 29 at SRJC Petaluma. Our focus once again was on cultural humility training with a special emphasis on normalizing the “calling in” culture.  
• The new EOPS, CalWORKs & Foster Youth Programs Office at the Petaluma campus is Open! We have moved to Jacobs Hall 109 and share the space with the Undocu Immigrant Dream Center (UIDC). They had a successful Petaluma Counselor Meet & Greet event on September 21st. This was the first event of the semester in our new space, and it was great seeing it filled with students.  
• SRJC Roseland had a successful Welcome Day on Saturday, September 16; 176 students and 130 non-SRJC students participated in this event.  
• A collaboration with IT and other Student Services Departments led to removing the assessment step so noncredit students could be fully matriculated. Coordinated efforts are taking place to ensure continuing noncredit students have priority registration for Spring 2024. 
• Counseling continues to be busy as students are able to access services in a wide variety of ways including drop-ins and in-person appointments, by phone, and by Zoom. About 7,000 counseling sessions have been conducted since the two weeks before the fall semester began till the end of September. 

 

Finance and Administrative Services 

• A huge thank you to our Facilities and Grounds employees for helping with the last-minute landscaping and exterior clean-up for Polly Hall prior to the Ribbon Cutting event in September. The team was able to ensure the event space was welcoming for guests and represented SRJC well with our attendees.  
• The SIS/Banner implementation continues to move along on schedule. Over the next two months we will focus on Ethos Design and Architecture Work Sessions. Ethos is the cloud ecosystem that allows multiple platforms to connect with Banner avoiding on premises integrations.  We will also design and configure Argos Reporting Solution with a training set to kick off at the end of September. The first pass of data migration has been submitted, and once complete, will allow for testing and improvement, as well as more in-depth training and simulation.  
• We also completed the first week of the audit and I look forward to providing more information at the December board meeting.  

 

Human Resources 

• The final phases of the Classification/Salary study, including job description review, appeals and external salary comparison is planned for completion in Fall 2023. Recommendations for implementation will be negotiated in Spring 2024.
• The Cultivating an Ecosystem of Belonging (CEB) Program is under development with implementation planned for Spring 2024. The primary goal of the CEB program is to increase retention of newly hired BIPOC faculty at SRJC. The October Board includes a consent item to award a contract to external vendor, Rooted in Love, to work with District representatives on completion of this project. 
• District representatives have developed a draft of the EEO Plan for 2023 – 2026. The draft plan is under review for feedback from the Chancellor’s Office EEO Advisory Committee. Feedback from the Chancellor’s Office will be vetted prior to requesting Board approval for the updated plan. 
• Plans are underway with the Professional Development Committee to implement Spring 2024 Professional Development Activities (PDA) Day on February 15, 2024. The Tauzer Lecture will be presented by Dr. Araceli Osorio on “The Transformation of the Spanish Language: A Virtual Trip Around the World.” Call for workshop proposals to be announced later this month. 

 

Office of Marketing and Communications 

• We are continuing to evaluate and revise our emergency communications plans and have adopted template language, worked on process mapping for various tabletop exercises, and are refining the way we communicate with our community during emergencies.  
• In support of the Strategic Enrollment Management Plan, MarCom met with various stakeholders about Dual Enrollment and has designed and built a revised Dual Enrollment website for clarity and marketing purposes.  
• MarCom is pleased to be supporting a redesign of Rosco, SRJC’s mascot. A workgroup of stakeholders convened in September to identify a plan and process for soliciting input from the community and launching a design challenge to the community. You can learn more about the project here: https://marcom.santarosa.edu/rosco-redesign   

 

SRJC Foundation 

• The SRJC Foundation received a $25,000 grant from the Robert & Shirley Harris Family Foundation to complete the $1 million endowment established to help subsidize rents for students living in Polly Hall. 
• The Foundation partnered with the football team to honor the memory of Jorgen Sarganis who was killed in a car accident in 2021. Jorgen’s family attended the September 16th football game to meet Issac Torres, the first recipient of the Jorgen Sarganis Memorial Scholarship. 
• The Foundation supported the Friends of Petaluma in raising $122,000 for the new Construction Training Center at the September 23rd Building Futures fundraiser on the Petaluma campus. 
• The Foundation is focused on securing sponsorships and tickets sales for the October 20th evening event at Shone Farm to celebrate the investiture of Dr. Angélica Garcia. We received a $10,000 lead sponsorship from the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria to honor the occasion. Tickets may be purchased at https://give.santarosa.edu/investiture  
• The Foundation will soon have a student Philanthropy Intern working with the Team. We are excited to inspire SRJC students to pursue careers in philanthropy and look forward to providing them with the skills they will need to acquire future jobs. 

 

In community,

Dr. Garcia

Angélica Garcia, Ed.D.
Superintendent/President
707-527-4431, angelicagarcia@santarosa.edu