BCC President Dr. Angélica Garcia Selected for Aspen Institute’s New Presidents Fellowship

BCC President Dr. Angélica Garcia Selected for Aspen Institute’s New Presidents Fellowship to Advance Student Success

The Aspen Institute College Excellence Program today announced that Dr. Angélica Garcia, President of Berkeley City College, is one of 25 leaders selected for the 2021-22 class of the Aspen New Presidents Fellowship. This program supports community college presidents in the early years of their tenure as they aim to achieve higher and more equitable levels of student success. The Fellowship’s philanthropic partner is JPMorgan Chase.

“I’m honored to receive such a prestigious fellowship,” said President Garcia. “I believe pursuing higher education is an act of liberation, especially for historically minoritized communities. Berkeley City College students are part of a thriving community which mirrors the Bay Area’s ethnic, cultural and socio-economic diversity. I am energized by the prospect that this fellowship will support the advancement of student success, completion, and building an equitable and racially just community at Berkeley City College.”

The 25 Aspen Fellows, who lead colleges that collectively serve more than 280,000 students, were selected through a highly competitive process. Starting later this year, the Fellows will engage over nine months in residential sessions and virtual learning to develop strategies to meet their goals for student success and equity with data to assess challenges and progress.

“We continue to learn how the best community colleges improve outcomes for students and close persistent race- and income-based equity gaps,” said Josh Wyner, executive director of the College Excellence Program. “This year’s fellows have demonstrated their commitment to achieving excellent and equitable student outcomes, and we are eager to work with them as they join Aspen’s network of more than 100 fellows who serve as community college presidents.”

“Congratulations to Dr. Garcia for her selection to this prestigious Fellowship. Her leadership at Berkeley City College here in the Bay Area’s diverse Peralta Community College District as well as her unique lived experiences that are representative of many of the students we serve will undoubtedly contribute a great deal to the Aspen New Presidents program. We are proud of her. Her peers in the program are lucky to have her,” said interim Chancellor Dr. Jannett N. Jackson.

As community colleges grapple with the impact of COVID and enrollment declines, turnover among presidents remains high. Aspen is committed to helping prepare the next generation of exceptionally capable and highly diverse leaders through its fellowship programs for new and rising presidents. This new class of Aspen Presidential Fellows is 52 percent female, and 64 percent are people of color. Located in 17 states, their institutions too are diverse, from a tribal college with fewer than 500 students to an urban college that educates more than 35,000 each year.

“Community colleges play a critical role in helping to prepare young adults and incumbent workers for in-demand jobs of the future,” said Monique Baptiste, Vice President and Head of Jobs & Skills for Global Philanthropy at JPMorgan Chase. “Ensuring that the leaders of these institutions are equipped with the support and training they need to develop equitable student success is an integral part of building capacity over the long-run. JPMorgan Chase is proud to partner with the Aspen Institute to build the next generation of exceptional college leaders as they work to advance the prosperity of the diverse communities and students they serve.”

JPMorgan Chase’s philanthropic support for the Aspen Presidential Fellowship is part of the firm’s New Skills at Work initiative to prepare young people for the future of work and meet the growing demand for skilled workers, and the $30 billion commitment to advance racial equity and drive an inclusive economy. 

Link to full article …

“SPECIALTY IN STEM CELL BIOLOGY” GRANT AWARDED TO BERKELEY CITY COLLEGE

CIRM AWARDS BRIDGE GRANT “SPECIALTY IN STEM CELL BIOLOGY” TO BERKELEY CITY COLLEGE

Image by Leticia Luna, Managing Editor

September 4, 2021

by Ivan Chairez

Berkeley City College recently got awarded a little over 2.8 million dollars for Stem Cell Biology from CIRM. CIRM or California Institute for Regenerative Medicine is a company which was founded in 2004 after proposition 71 passed in California. Proposition 71 granted three billion dollars in stem cell research in California. CIRM mission is to fund institutions and companies that involve themselves in stem cell research in hopes to further and improve medicine for diagnosing and treating diseases more accurately.

The CIRM Bridges to Stem Cell Research Award for Berkeley City College will help minority students who are underrepresented in health sciences, enrolled in biotechnology by funding hands-on research, hands-on training in laboratories and internships programs at BCC. In an interview with Berkeley City College President Dr. Angélica Garcia said “From now on moving forward the deans, the instructional leadership team, and the faculty know that my focus is that the students who are getting access to these high quality programs are representative of the students that are in the community.” This grant award also includes training at the UCSF shared laboratory, as well as a nine month research internship in stem cell laboratories around the Bay Area. CIRM hopes that this grant will encourage students to pursue their occupation in stem cell research. Some students will have the opportunity to work with scientists and bio technicians in the field. Students will also have the opportunity to involve themselves in industry seminars and workshops. 

Dr. Angélica Garcia explained that Berkeley City’s College’s new building will focus on expanding their science lab floor, with plans to make space for a STEM center. Garcia says  “We’re looking at expanding the possibility of taking almost an entire floor and getting a significant chunk of it to extend to biotechnology and broader sciences, such as programs like computer science, computer Information Systems, and also mathematics”

Companies such as CIRM are teaming up with Colleges such as BCC to help diversify and attract more students into STEM programs in hopes of improving medicine. Dr. Angélica Garcia goes on to say “Our communities have been our best teachers, often diverse communities have higher rates of medical conditions because the system doesn’t give us access to the preventative health care, and the preventative medicine, and the preventative medical studies to become informed to be better about it I would tell students who are interested in something like biotechnology to look at yourself, observe yourself, study yourself and then ask yourself what are the stories that need to be told what is the research that needs to be done, what are the social problems that need to be solved here.

Berkeley City College continues to pave the way for its students to pursue their dream careers.

Read the complete article here.

BCC 2021 SUMMER SESSION Writing Center Drop-In Tutoring

Drop-in Tutoring for essay writing in all disciplines will be
available for the 2021 Summer Session semester held virtually through Zoom. Please use the following link information to receive one-on-one support with your writing.

Drop-In Tutoring Sessions will begin Wed. 6/16

Monday through Thursday 12-2pm:
https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/93958564671

Monday Evening 5-7pm:
https://cccconfer.zoom.us/j/93958564671

Need Legal Immigration Help? Make an appointment

Need Legal help? Make an appointment:

Click here to schedule an appointment

This service is made available to Community College students to provide Legal Service help to Immigrant and Undocumented students. 

Immigration Services

Free immigration legal services are available to students, staff and faculty affiliated with the Community Colleges. Priority for services is given to undocumented students, staff and faculty. The immigration legal service providers offering services at the 65 campuses have developed scheduling, intake, and reporting processes that ensure student information remains confidential and protected. While all legal providers offer legal consultations and basic immigration benefit application assistance, some providers may offer additional services.

Basic immigration legal assistance includes:

  • Legal Consultations to Screen for Immigration Relief
  • Deferred Action fro Childhood Arrivals (DACA) Renewals
  • Family-based petitions
  • Naturalization/Citizenship applications

Education and Outreach activities (e.g. webinars) cover topics such as:

  • Avoiding fraudulent legal services
  • Know Your Rights Presentations (KYR)
  • Family Preparedness/Childcare Safety Plans
  • Public Charge information

Services not currently funded (referrals may be provided):

  • Removal Defense
  • Asylum Applications

Please refer to the website for a list of Immigration Legal Service Providers

 

 

Berkeley City College: Removing Barriers on the Transfer Pathway

Dr. Angélica Garcia, president of Berkeley City College, said the beauty of the ADT is that it focused on organization systems doing the work so that students didn’t have to continue to navigate the transfer maze.

“We have to be student-ready,” said Garcia. “ADT took the institutional and the organizational responsibility for us to get our stuff together so students could focus on being students. … AB 928 is going to further support that by additional streamlining.”

Berkeley City College accounts for over 55% of all transfers from the Peralta Community College district (East Bay) to four-year institutions. The college is recognized among the top producers in CSU transfers. There is intentionality behind this success, said Garcia, which also includes students transferring to UC Berkeley and UC Davis.

“We work very hard to recognize students who identify transfer as their goal regardless of their prior academic preparation,” Garcia said. “We now think how we provide comprehensive intervention with academic and student support.”

Read full article

Chancellor Announcement: PeopleSoft Upgrade Phase One Complete

Dear Peralta Community,
Earlier this week, the Peralta Community College District completed Phase One of our technology upgrade of Oracle’s PeopleSoft system. This has been an all consuming project. Together, we did it.

With Phase One complete, we have successfully moved our enterprise system for finance, human resources, and student data management to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure. Moving to the Oracle Cloud improves our cyber security and provides increased protection of student and employee personal information. It also provides for enhanced disaster recovery (let us hope that aspect is not needed).

Also included in Phase One was the upgrade of our tools Passport, PROMT, and ONE Peralta to PeopleSoft version 9.2. The names of the tools and the URLs have changed, while the functions and workflows remain the same for now.

Passport is now known as Campus Solutions. We’ve created a landing page for students at https://web.peralta.edu/admissions/student-campus-solutions/. Employees can navigate to Campus Solutions here: https://sa.peralta.edu/
PROMT has been replaced by Campus Solutions and Human Capital Management. We’ve created a landing page for Employees here to help guide you to the right place: https://web.peralta.edu/faculty-staff-center/
The URL for Campus Solutions is https://sa.peralta.edu/ – Faculty should use this site for accessing the Faculty Center, schedule search, rosters, grades and other tasks about classes or students.
The URL for Human Capital Management is https://hcm.peralta.edu – Faculty and other employees should use this site to view checks, benefits, W-2, update personal information and other HR related functions.
ONE Peralta has been replaced with Finance Management, now located at https://fm.peralta.edu/

PeopleSoft code freeze & migration coming up on February 10

The Peralta Community College District has been working for many months toward an update of PeopleSoft software from Oracle. We are nearing the next step in the upgrade process, which is to cut over from our current version to 9.2. This cut over process will last several days, beginning on February 10 and concluding on February 16. This cutover is timed during a long holiday weekend so as to minimize disruption to work and study. The Peralta Colleges are closed Friday February 12 in observance of Lincoln’s birthday and Monday February 15 in observance of Washington’s birthday.

Here is what will happen:

On Wednesday February 10 at 10pm Pacific Time we will shut down access to PeopleSoft 9.0. This means you will no longer be able to access Passport, PROMT, ePAF, reports from PowerBI, or ONE Peralta.
From February 10-15 we will copy over all the data from the old system into the new system.
Beginning on Tuesday, February 16 at 6am Pacific Time, we will be allowed back into PeopleSoft accessing the new 9.2 system with our data intact.
During that window of downtime from late Feb 10 until early Feb 16, students and employees will not be able to access PeopleSoft powered tools including Passport, PROMT, ePAF, ONE Peralta, or PowerBI reports using student data.

During that window of PeopleSoft planned downtime, faculty, staff and students will still be able to access CANVAS, SARS for scheduling, and the Peralta Portal for access to your email and Microsoft tools.

As part of the upgrade to PeopleSoft version 9.2 when we have access again on February 16, PROMT, ONE Peralta, and Passport will cease to exist and will be replaced by new, mobile-friendly tools that provide the same functions:
PROMT (https://pr.peralta.edu/) will become the Peralta Human Capital Management (HCM) System and will be available at https://hcm.peralta.edu.
ONE Peralta (https://one.peralta.edu) will become the Peralta Financial & Supply Chain Management (FSCM) System and will be available at https://fm.peralta.edu.
Passport (https://pa.peralta.edu) will become the Peralta Campus Solutions (CS) System and will be available at https://sa.peralta.edu.
The good news is that most of the PeopleSoft 9.2 workflows are the same as we have now so much of the new system will be very familiar.