Dear SRJC Community,

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

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 find all District Monthly Updates on our News site at https://news.santarosa.edu/.

 

Office of the President 

• SRJC Voices sessions with Workforce Development, Student Financial Services, Instruction & Strategic Program Development, Marketing and Communications and Business and Finance  
• Other events included: 

• Hosted Cafecito with the President 
• COLEGAS Conference in Long Beach 
• CCLC Annual Convention with Trustees Battenfeld and Fishman 
• Foster Youth Jacket Ceremony 
• ACCJC Accreditation Follow Up Visit 
• Dr. Gina Ann Garcia’s workshops  
• Community Panel Interview – Press Democrat Executive Editor 
• CALCCTA Executive Interview 
• Games for Women’s and Men’s soccer; Women’s volleyball; Women’s and Men’s basketball 
• Theatre Arts production of A Christmas Carol
• Press Democrat Interview for “24 in 24” feature 
• VPSS Finalist selection 
• VPHR Interim selection  
• Office of Marketing & Communications 
  • We are excited to launch the Rosco Design Contest to all members of the community. You can find information about the mascot characteristics, recommendations, submission process, and more here: https://marcom.santarosa.edu/rosco-design-submissions. All design entries must be submitted electronically by completing the Mascot Design Contest form found at https://santarosajuniorcollege.formstack.com/forms/mascot by Friday, January 26th. 

 

Academic Affairs 

• Congratulations to the Men’s Soccer team who went 17-3-2 overall, Big 8 Conference Champs and made their first California Community College Athletic Association Final Four appearance in 15 years.  
• Men’s Wrestling will compete in Nor Cal Regionals in Modesto and Women’s Volleyball is sending three players to the all-conference team. 
• "A Couple Talks," a film short produced by Media Program students, was nominated for the Next Generation Indie Film Awards, with Kayla Perez-Ramsay nominated for best supporting actress. The students were the youngest filmmakers in the room! 
• Oak Leaf students took home a total of 26 awards at the Journalism Association of Community College’s NorCal Conference Oct. 14 at San Francisco State. The awards included 21 publication awards and five on-the-spot competition awards. Seven of the awards were for first places in categories such as feature story, opinion writing, feature photo, news photo and video journalism. Every one of the nine Oak Leaf students who attended the conference left with an award. 
• Oak Leaf advisor and Journalism instructor Anne Belden co-authored "Inflamed", a unique look at the Tubbs fire, using first-hand accounts to piece together that night from the perspective of residents, employees, and loved ones at two senior living facilities. 
• On November 4th the Speech, Debate and Performance Team competed in Stockton and placed 6th out of 23 schools from 4 states. On November 17-18 the team competed at DVC with 7 students. 5 of those students collectively won 13 awards, and the overall team performance earned them 4th place (out of 26 schools) in the community college division. 
• The Cub Catalyst program is wrapping up their first semester with 24 students. This social justice leadership program by Sawubona and Santa Rosa Intercultural Centers aims to develop and foster student leaders with an equity lens. For the past 8 weeks students have dedicated 5 ours each week to the program and will enroll next semester in a Community Engagement course to pioneer change in themselves, SRJC, their communities, and beyond. For more info visit https://intercultural.santarosa.edu/cubcatalyst  
• SRJC’s Associate Teacher Apprenticeship program (in Child Development) is completing its first semester with 12 students in the pipeline.  
• On November 9th, SRJC hosted Dr. Gina Garcia who presented “Creating a servingness culture at SRJC” lecture and workshop to the college community. The morning lecture had participation from students, staff, and faculty with nearly 200 people in the audience. The afternoon workshop provided an opportunity for 40 members of the college community to do an inventory of SRJC and its programs, history of servingness and to identify areas for improvement.  

 

Student Services  

• SRJC Roseland partnered with SRJC Student Financial Services to host a Cash for College event. It was targeted to students who are getting ready to transition from noncredit to credit courses. 
• SRJC and Sonoma State University once again collaborated to offer expanded International Education Week (IEW) programming for both campus communities Nov 13th through the 17th! SRJC's participation in IEW is part of the national effort to prepare American students for a global environment and attract future leaders from abroad to study, learn, and exchange experiences in the U.S.  A variety of workshops were organized by the International Student Program staff at SRJC and SSU that included a Latin Dance Class, a Faculty and Staff Reception, a Study Away Fair and many zoom and in-person workshops.  
• Admissions & Records reviewed over 5,000 student records and merged them prior to moving data into Banner. This is an ongoing project with the hopes to finish cleaning up more duplicated records by the end of the spring 2024 semester. 
• The Disability Resources Department has supported an average of 2,416 students annually for the past three years. We are supporting 2,177 and counting this semester, and we still have the spring semester to go.  We expect numbers to continue to grow through spring 2024 and are proud of the support and access we provide students through advocacy and accommodation. Additionally, our new Disability Culture Centers (DCC) on the Santa Rosa and Petaluma campuses are getting closer to being a part of SRJC culture. We are in the process of recruiting students to be involved from the ground up regarding the programming that the DCC will host and support. We are excited to have a place where disability is celebrated as a culture in and of itself.  
• 204 people have taken the GED test on the Petaluma Campus in the last year. Thank you to Marshall McGowen for all of the Tech Support!  
• 11 Petaluma Student Services staff have completed First Aid/CPR/AED training in the last two months. Thank you to Adult Education & Jordan Lankford for providing this resource.   
• Student Financial Services is seeing results from its in-reach and outreach efforts. This fall, we are already 2% above all of 2022-2023 for students submitting the FAFSA and we are seeing a 5% increase in Pell-eligible students 
• In October, Student Financial Services welcomed Jacob Kaplan, Financial Aid Program Specialist to our team. His focus is on financial wellness and responsible student borrowing. He is providing twice-weekly office hours in Polly Hall and meets with students by appointment in the Financial Aid Office. A Financial Wellness Series is being planned for the spring to assist students with their financial aid, budgeting, and planning. 
• Starting with spring 2024 registration, California community colleges shall grant priority registration to Student Parents (a student who has a child under 18 years of age who will receive more than half of their support from that student).  Admissions & Records reviewed and approved 402 affidavits from Student Parents for priority 1 registration. 

 

Finance, Administrative Services, and Capital Projects  

• The Lindley Center for STEM Education will be opening for instruction in Spring 2024! Please join us for the ribbon cutting ceremony for this beautiful and innovative new space on Friday, January 26th from 3-5 pm. Additional information on the event and building can be found here.If you would like to attend, please RSVP at https://tinyurl.com/SRJCstem.  
• The Banner Implementation Project continues to move along on schedule. We recently submitted our first round of data for conversion. The round one conversion goal is to successfully convert at least 70% of the data extract records without error, however, thanks to the hard work of Olga Petrova, Jean Brennan and the programming team, our data came in at nearly 100% success! Additional information for this initiative can always be found on the implementation webpage. A huge thank you to all that are engaged in this critical project! 

 

SRJC Foundation 

• The SRJC Foundation hosted the San Francisco Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation and Kaiser Permanente on the Roseland campus to witness the Latinx Landscaper training program. This is part of the larger Wildfire Resilience Program at SRJC. The Foundation has been the recipient of $80,000 over the past two years from the San Francisco Foundation for this equity-centered program. The program has also been supported through a $500,000 grant provided by Kaiser Permanente to the Wildfire Resilience Program in 2021.        
• The Scholarship Committee met on November 17th. A record number of Doyle scholarships have been awarded to students for FY24. 4,450 students were awarded $5.3 million in scholarships. This included 141 housing scholarships totaling $163,841 for students living in Polly Hall, and 209 international students received $243,225. 
• In recognition of the accumulated giving of the Robert & Shirley Harris Foundation to the Student Housing Endowment, we will be naming the plaza outside Polly Hall after the Harris Family. In addition, we are nominating the Harris Family for the annual Bernard Osher Philanthropy Award made by the Network for California Community College Foundations. The Harris Family has donated several million dollars to the SRJC Foundation since 2010. 
• The Foundation has hired a new Finance & Business Associate. To request future Requests for Disbursements (RFDs) from your Foundation funds, please contact Karen Brooks at kbrooks@santarosa.edu. 
• Through October 31, the Foundation has processed $3.2 million in donations to support scholarships and programs. 

 

In community,

Dr. Garcia

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