Pictures of progress as the new buildings at the Sierra College Nevada County Campus start to go up. Our local construction team is doing a great job of sharing the progress with the community via Facebook and Twitter.

Pre-meeting documents:

• Meeting Agenda
• Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
• Warrants

As you might remember, our last meeting had to be moved to the Rocklin campus due to weather. It looks like the weather is good for next week, so we’re back in Tahoe-Truckee for this next meeting on Tuesday, November 10 at 2:00PM.

On the agenda: the finalization of the 2008-09 budget, a discussion about our academic enrichment program for young students, a discussion about dealing with e-mail communication between the public and the board as a group (we want to ensure compliance with the Brown Act at all times), and ratifying the agreements to establish a partnership with Rocklin Police Department for an armed law enforcement presence at the Rocklin campus.

Question of the Month: Are you a Sierra College student or alumni? If so, what did you like best about your experience, and what is the most important thing we need to improve?

My full name is Daniel Aaron Bell Klein on my birth certificate, yet I’ve been Aaron Klein my entire life. The Bell is after my maternal grandfather, an Air Force pilot and one of my heroes, who had no male heirs. My dad’s name is Daniel, another hero, and while he did have male heirs (obviously), the Daniel was affixed to the beginning. My parents decided to call me by my middle name because after all, no “Little Danny” should be taller than “Big Danny.”

With all due thanks to them, I have six legal aliases at the Department of Motor Vehicles as a result.

I get mail to “D KLEIN”, “DAARON KLEIN”, “D A KLEIN”, “AARON B KLEIN” and “YO KLEIN DUDE ON THE SIERRA BOARD” (although the latter are usually students upset they didn’t get the class they wanted at Sierra College).

Like an idiot, I chose “D AARON KLEIN” for my driver’s license and passport. With all due respect to my wonderful father, do you know how stupid that was? Try explaining to someone that you have a space in your first name, and do not have a middle initial. The world is not set up for first initial names. “My first name is D space AARON,” I say. “I’m sorry,” comes the reply, “the computer won’t let me put a space in. It just assumes your name is a spelling error.”

Now, the Transportation Security Administration of the US Department of Homeland Security has officially begun discriminating against those of us afflicted with CNS (”confusing name syndrome”) with their new Secure Flight program. Now they actually want your name on your ID to match the name on your ticket.

This is especially bad for those who have tickets purchased for them. I’ve had clients or corporate travel departments book me as “ARRON KLEIN”, “ARRON CLINE”, “AARON KLINE” and every other combination known to man.

In addition, many airline systems won’t take apostrophes or hyphens, which leaves a whole new category of people out in the cold (and left on the tarmac). My friend Derek D’Amour should go see his business partner in Florida, because he’ll never fly again. Anyone who is Irish should learn to enjoy train travel. Anthony Maki-Gill will not be let on an airplane (although it was questionable whether he would be in the first place).

Even those with long names are in trouble. Apparently a “Christopher” had his first name translated into French and it came out “Christophe”, and God help Fernando Enriquez de Salamanca y Celada.

Here’s from the New York Times article:

Mr. Lichtenstein is one of many people in the corporate world now working hard to ensure that come next year, when a new Transportation Security Administration program called Secure Flight is fully in effect, travelers won’t get delayed at airports because of variations in the way their names appear on boarding passes and their IDs.

Actually, as he pointed out, the program is pretty much in effect now. Most airlines and online booking sites already require that travelers fully comply with provisions of Secure Flight. Reservations must reflect the exact name as the ID to be used (John J. Smith, for instance, can’t appear on a boarding pass when the ID says John James Smith.)

…Apostrophes are another issue. “My Irish birth certificate shows that I was born Patrick O’Hare and my passport shows an identical name,” Patrick O’Hare wrote. “However, when trying to purchase an airline ticket online, the apostrophe is always rejected,” he added. A security screener — at O’Hare airport, no less — “pointed this out to me and suggested that I could be denied boarding, but he offered no solution. So what should we Irish, afflicted with apostrophes in our names, do to avoid this problem?” he asked.

I’m doomed.

Who do you know that won’t ever be allowed to set foot in an airplane? Perhaps those of us with confusing name syndrome should band together and form some kind of union. We could go on strike and refuse to fly until…well, we’ll think something.

Illustration Credit: NYT

I’ve been on the Sierra College board for five years now. Our budget is driven by the state. I’ve been here in years with very little adjustment. I’ve been here in years with big increases from the state. And now, of course, we’re dealing with reductions the likes of which the community college system has never seen.

The one thing that has been very consistent, whether in times of want or plenty, has been the complaint by all that community colleges are underfunded. It is true that between all four of our state’s educational systems (including K-12, CSU and UC), the community college system has the lowest level of funding of the four — somewhat ridiculous if you think about the effect we have on the economy.

But all that being said, let’s be realistic. The State of California is like a bankrupt and unemployed guy who has been living off his credit cards and home equity for years and is now shuffling along the sidewalk homeless in a bathrobe.

Translation: our funding levels aren’t going to improve any time soon.

But here’s the thing: I don’t think we can afford to sit around and complain about the lack of funding. Now is the time that our country needs its community colleges the most. Here’s a clip from a recent Chronicle of Higher Education article that reinforced my thinking on this…

The challenges facing college leaders were also brought home by the head of a major educational foundation, Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive of the Lumina Foundation for Education.

With the Obama administration now poised to pump $12-billion into community colleges over the next 10 years, as part of the American Graduation Initiative, the colleges are in the spotlight. “Ready or not, it’s your time,” he told the attendees.

Mr. Merisotis, whose foundation has spearheaded efforts to raise the nation’s college-going and college-graduation rates, said it was important that trustees, presidents, and other college officials ensure that their efforts in the years to come focus on serving students, particularly those who have historically not succeeded in college, and not just on building prestige.

Leaders need to ask themselves, he said, Is that new program designed to actually serve students better, or just “boost enrollment”? Will you improve developmental mathematics classes for students who come to college with inadequate preparation, “or just add another physics course”?

Mr. Merisotis, whose foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation have just awarded the association and two others a $1-million grant to develop a new system of accountabililty for community colleges, also reminded his audience that the goals of getting more students into and through college won’t mean much unless the courses and the experience have depth. “Quality is vital,” he said.

I think we need to spend the next few months dealing with our budget cuts as quickly as we can, and pivot to figuring out what this new future looks like — and figuring out how to shift our resources to invest in a different-looking future of focused access and leading edge educational delivery that lowers costs, empowers faculty and staff to think creatively, and improves student success.

We can’t afford to just complain. We’ve got to innovate.

Due to the strong chance for snow over Donner summit, the President’s Office just announced they are moving tomorrow’s board meeting to the Rocklin campus, after consultations with legal counsel. Open session will still begin at 2:00PM as planned.

If you have any questions, please contact the President’s Office at 916-660-7000.

Pre-meeting documents:

• Meeting Agenda
• Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
• Warrants

The focal point of this meeting will be three hours in closed session to “review and instruct our representatives in negotiations” with our employee groups.

While I can’t disclose the discussions that will happen in closed session, this is driven by the desire of our employee groups for the college to be proactive in developing plans to address the budget cuts we have to achieve by July 1, 2010. I’m confident the values I’ve expressed before — doing our best to protect our students and employees, who are critical to our mission as an institution — will be the foundation on which we all work together to figure out what to do.

In fact, it would be a lot easier if we could just have this conversation in open session, but state law governing collective bargaining and unionization require a more structured approach, so we’ll follow the law and work closely with those employee groups in our long-running “Omniparty” process.

The rest of the meeting will center on an update on accreditation and ratification of the accreditation follow-up report that goes back to the commission. Major kudos are due to Vice President of Instruction Rachel Rosenthal and her team for their incredible job in getting that done!

A member of the Sierra College family is grieving today over the loss of Sergeant Joshua Hardt. If you haven’t heard the story, a single unit based out of Fort Carson in Colorado suffered the loss of eight American heroes in a firefight in Afghanistan.

Sergeant Hardt was the son-in-law of this college leader. Because I haven’t spoken directly with this person, I’ll refrain from publishing that leader’s name, but our hearts are heavy today for this wonderful colleague and the extraordinary grief the family is experiencing.

Here’s a quote from the story:

The Pentagon announcement Wednesday confirmed their worst fears — the eight American soldiers killed in a bloody weekend attack in Afghanistan were all from a single Fort Carson unit.

One of them was Sgt. Joshua M. Hardt, 24, of Applegate, which is along Interstate 80 in Placer County between Auburn and Colfax.

Hardt was a graduate of Placer High School in Auburn and played football there, according to the Auburn Journal.

“They were attacked, the unit fought bravely, and in the end, they won the day,” said Maj. Daniel Chandler, the rear detachment commander for the 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division. “The brave soldiers that we lost and all of the comrades that were left there, there were a lot of heroes on that day,” he said.

Hundreds of insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades attacked the soldiers at two U.S. outposts in Nuristan province Saturday, causing one of the highest U.S. death tolls in Afghanistan in a single battle in more than a year.

We owe a great deal of gratitude to these brave American heroes who are fighting to protect our country and preserve our freedoms. Our hearts go out to Sergeant Hardt’s family — we are all immensely proud of this local hero’s service and sacrifice.

» Read the News Story

In all the talk about the economy, one term that comes up more and more frequently is something called “the new normal.” I like this phrase because it speaks to the fact that economic reality has undergone a fundamental shift over the course of the past 12 months.

So what is the nature of this shift? After years of economic expansion fueled by unrealistic rates of consumption and unsustainable levels of private debt, the global economy has reset at a lower baseline level of activity. Today, people borrow less, save more, and spend with much greater caution.

Ballmer goes on to explain how technology can allow people to do more with less, and of course he’s right, but the underlying point is clear: organizations need to adjust their thinking and figure out how to thrive, not just survive, in the new normal.

The ones who do will be the big winners when things get back to the old normal many years down the road. Sierra College needs to be one of them.

Another great article about the coming Internet-driven change in education. Sierra College definitely occupies the high-convenience end of the spectrum described in this article, but new technology is going to force dramatic change in educational delivery that will sweep over us as well.

Over an omelet and fruit, McNealy made it clear that possibilities in open-source education go far beyond textbooks. Before long, he claimed, the whole bloated, expensive, lecture-based higher education system will face the first challenge to its very existence: open-source, online higher education that costs a fraction of four years at Harvard—but is good enough for employers who want a college graduate. “Universities will be forced to decide what they are. You know, are they going to be football teams with libraries attached?” McNealy asked. “That’s what a lot of them are now.”

“The economics of traditional schooling are so out of whack that there is an opening for new players,” says Fred Fransen, executive director of the Center for Excellence in Higher Education, which helps donors more effectively give money to universities. From that perch, Fransen sees the typical university business model as prone to attack.

Here’s the big question: will we lead this shift and ensure that this new approach can sustain the level of educational excellence we strive for? Or we will go the route of today’s newspapers and ignore the Internet?

I hope we decide to take charge and help lead, but it’s going to take a long term focus beyond one or two years that we haven’t developed yet.

» Read the Entire Article

The Sacramento Business Journal carried a story on Drexel University’s new efforts to ease transferring from Sierra College (and other community colleges) to its programs.

Drexel University is tightening its link to Northern California by simplifying the transfer process for prospective students from the region.

Drexel, which has a Sacramento graduate center, announced Monday that it has added six Northern California community colleges to its transfer partnership that allows prospective students to view which courses are transferable to Drexel’s undergraduate campus in Philadelphia.

Drexel has a partnership with AcademyOne Inc., a Web-based services provider for transfer students and the institutions that serve them. Through AcademyOne’s CollegeTransfer.net service, students can view which courses from their current college are transferable.

The long term vision is for Drexel to locate a four year university in South Placer County. At Sierra College, we view this possibility not as competition, but as the chance to develop a great strategic partnership that can give our students greater opportunities for higher education.

» Read the Entire Story