ASU Election Results
NEWS
FEATURES Robert Chavez shares musical experiences
ASU announces new officers See page 3
Volume 72, Issue 21
ARTS Casa 0101 premiers “An L.A. Journey”
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Wednesday, May 13, 2015
www.elaccampusnews.com
Hanging out Engineering students build mechanism to lift professor
Staff, faculty evaluated for accreditation process BY IVAN CAZARES Staff Writer The second draft for East Los Angeles College’s Self Evaluation summary is due Monday as part of the ongoing Accreditation process and will be reviewed during the summer. One hundred and ten faculty and staff members have completed an online workshop to help ELAC with it’s accreditation process. The workshop explained the basic accreditation process. Every seven years the schools in LACCD go through an accreditation process. ELAC did not meet accreditation requirements in 2009, however gained full accreditation in 2010. “There are different levels of sanctions. ELAC was given a warning,” Faculty Accreditation Chair Barbara A. Dunsheath said. ELAC was placed on the lowest level of sanction and had to address six issues before being accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges. ELAC had to submit a mission statement to be approved by the LACCD Board of Trustees, develop a written decision making process, augment student support services if they needed to be and evaluate them regularly. “We are playing catch up on SLOs,” Dunsheath said. Student learning outcomes are a challenge, because they are “hard to measure.” “The goal is to continually improve. We are trying get faculty
BY JESUS FIGUEROA Staff Writer Engineering and technologies students lifted their instructor to the second floor with ease outside E7 technology building on May 4. Engineering professor Artin Mejy Davidian allowed students from his General Engineering 212, intro to engineering design, class to assemble a weight and balance mechanism and lift him up to about the second floor. Davidian was so sure that the mechanism took very little energy that he had his 5-year old daughter Natalie Davidian crank the mechanism as well. “People used about three pounds of force to lift people up,” Artin Davidian said. Natalie seemed to have fun cranking the mechanism as she cranked it fast. Artin Davidian said that the class had to research simple machines and then present their findings. “After that, this project becomes a group project, for the entire class,” Davidian said. “There’s collaboration because they have to learn to collaborate together. Also, how to get calculations. They present this a couple of times and I am there questioning them, analyzing it and training them.” Multiple tests and calculations were made by the students to determine if the weight and balance mechanism was safe and if it was going to be successfully accomplished. Although instructor Davidian was able to give some instruction on the mechanism, it was one of the projects the students had to build as their projects. Davidian said he was trying to make this as much a real world experience as possible. He knows that engineers design things, like elevators and stairs, and people trust that they will work as they are intended to. The students began to assemble the mechanism on the west balcony of the E7 building at about noon. Their task was to figure out how to set everything up in a timely manner, with no help from their professor. At about 12:30 p.m. the students from his class began to crank the mechanism and lift Davidian off the ground. Diana Melendez, engineering major, was given the opportunity to help with the cranking so she too could experience how much little force it took to lift Davidian off the ground. Melendez said it was fairly easy to crank the mechanism. The students who constructed the mechanism had fun getting the chance to lift up their professor, but by the time they got Artin Davidian down, they wanted to get lifted up too. Multiple students were given the opportunity to be lifted up by the weight and balance mechanism after Davidian was brought back down. Davidian’s wife Christine was also in attendance and was lifted up as well.
Staff Writer
HANGING AROUND—Engineering major Diana Melendez, center, raises professor Artin Davidian up with a weight and balance mechanism constructed by General Engineering 212 students outside the E7 Technology Building on May 4. CN/JESUS FIGUEROA
News Briefs
Free Application for Federal Student Aid priority consideration deadline for the 2015-16 school year is May 31. For more information, visit the Financial Aid & Scholarship Office.
PROCESS Continued on page 3
Students petition for longer library hours BY BIANCA GARCIA
FASFA filing deadline
to think more about what students are taking away from class,” Dunsheath said. Many faculty members were hired based on their understanding of the subject they teach and don’t have the proper training. Dunsheath said some faculty members are concerned with academic freedom and don’t like an outside entity telling them what to do. A new quality focus essay is being put together to help meet standards. There will be three action projects to be worked on for the next seven years and will be turned in on May 18 along with the self-evaluation summary. ELAC’s Governance Policy Handbook is currently being revised. Anyone with ideas, or believe a certain program, committee, or project should be highlighted in the self evaluation is encouraged to contact Public Information Officer Alejandro Guzman. Accreditation in the United States has been conducted by private non-profit agencies for more than 100 years. The federal government uses accreditation to assure the quality of institutions and programs that it provides federal funds for. Most state governments will initially license programs and institutions without accreditation; however then require accreditation to make state funds available.
Repertoire Dance Concert
Students for Political Awareness President Christopher Cruz and Non-Traditional Student Union President Pedro Flores Jr. have partnered together to create a petition to extend the Helen Miller Bailey Library hours. Although East Los Angeles College offers many resources to students, they are not being made accessible to every student on campus. The reason for the petition is to help the non-traditional students have full access to the library even if it requires for the library to stay open late. Flores, Cruz and Claudia Blasuer, a current non-traditional student and formal AB 540 student, have shown a huge emphasis on the importance of the “non-traditional student” and how it applies to many students at ELAC. AB 540 students are students who are not non-traditional students that are allowed to attend college and pay in-state tuition fees as long as they meet certain requirements. The University of California Los Angeles has a program called Night Pal. The program’s purpose is to keep the library open 24 hours a day. Flores and Cruz have considered
The Let’s Dance Company will host the 10th Repertoire Dance Concert on Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m. at the S2 Recital Hall. General admission is $15.
Correction
a similar program that gives students more time to study. This would give students a greater chance of transferring and increase their grade point average. The library can be monitored by campus police and only registered ELAC students are allowed inside the library after 9 p.m.. Flores is also conducting an online survey about extending the library hours. This survey has about ten questions and takes about five minutes. Not only will this benefit the non-traditional student but it will benefit every student attending ELAC. Cruz and Flores have been going around campus with the petition and talking to students and faculty about the need of extending the library hours. They have also been making quick appearances before class sessions to explain what the petition is about and collect signatures. Twelve hundred signatures have been collected so far. Both faculty and students have signed the petition. Many clubs such as the Feminist Majority club, The Sociology club, the Psychology club, Students Against Substance Abuse club, the Transfer club, and the Puente club have been supportive.
LIBRARY Continued on page 3
In last issue, in the story “Architecture instructor lifted off ground” identified Engineering and Technologies Professor Artin Davidian as an Architecture professor.