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EL CAMINO COLLEGE
Sept. 13, 2012
Torrance, California
Financial aid and registration Playing with light and shadow priority changes coming in 2014 Thomas Schmit
News Co-Editor
Having been in the works since 2011, the Student Success Act of 2012 was passed by the California State Senate in a 36-1 vote last Monday. Based upon the findings of the 2011 Community College Student Success Task Force, the bill aims to ensure a higher success rate among students despite increasing financial limitations. According to the Task Force’s final report in December of 2011, “Only 53.6 percent of our degreeseeking students ever achieve a certificate, degree, or transfer preparation. For African-American and Latino students, the rate is much lower (42 percent and 43 percent respectively)”. The report puts forward nine recommendations to the California Community College system, which include encouraging successful student behavior with incentives, increasing the education of basic skills students, and increasing coordination between colleges. One of the major incentives the bill utilizes is a restriction of priority registration for students, Nishime said. “(Priority) for new students are for those who’ve completed assessment, orientation and educational plans, while continu-
ing students can lose priority for going on probation, or having (attempted) over 100 units” Nishime said. However, before policies regarding priority registration can be changed, all community colleges will be left to individually implement changes to registration systems to better track students, as well as create an appeals process for students who lose priority registration, Nishime added. Other new changes brought about by the Task Force that EC students should be aware of are minimum GPA requirements to receive financial aid, a limit to course repetitions for both normal and elective courses, and eventually, the adoption of centralized English and math assessment tests, as mentioned in previous issues of the Union. Some students, like Natalie Vival, 18, Business Administration major, said she believes the changes could be a good thing. “I’m trying to get where I want to be quickly, but there are alot of students here who aren’t really focused on a goal, and I just feel like it slows me down trying to compete with them,” Vival said. Others, like President Tom Fallo, recognize that the changes could have unintended consequences. “The demand on students is to
focus, and there’s a good part of that, and a bad part of it,” Fallo said. “When I say that, what I mean is that yeah, you should be focused once you make your commitment, but many students, at any age, are still really exploring, so you have to be really careful with this focusing, because students will change.“ However, while the Student Success Act calls for many new changes and regulations, these new demands are being left to the schools to implement on increasingly dwindling budgets. “This is in Title V, so it’s a mandate, but it’s another one of these unfunded mandates, because there’s no way we can implement all of the recommendations from the Task Force without additional funding” Nishime said. While the bill still awaits Gov. Jerry Brown’s signature, it seems likely that the new regulations the bill puts forth will be in effect for California community colleges relatively soon. “We’ll be looking into how to best implement it (the Success Act) at the next enrollment management meeting, but the bill won’t go into effect until 2014,” Vice President of Student and Community Advancement Jeanie Nishime said.
both winter and spring sessions,” Gen said, “but we’re trying to be as fair as possible.” Because it is yet unknown if Proposition 30 will pass, there is no exact plan that dictates which sections will be cut. “It’s a wait-and-see situation right now,” Vice President of Student and Community Advancement Jeanie Nishime said. While students will have to wait until after the election to find out what will be cut, those relying on the winter session should be aware that “there are 80 classes in winter, and the last number I heard is that we would need to cut around 50 courses,” Gen said.
“The strategy is to try and protect the spring offerings as much as possible,” Gen said, “though it won’t be centered in one particular area.” Both Gen and Nishime mentioned the administration’s consideration that many students may be relying on certain classes to transfer or graduate. However, students should be aware of the tenuous status of both part-time classes and classes that don’t count for transferrable credits. “The cuts would be coming from part-time areas, full time faculty won’t be affected at all,” Nishime said. “Classes that don’t transfer
Philip Prins/ Union Asia Hill,18, fashion merchandising major, takes advantage of the light cast by the setting sun to get some fashion shots of Alexis Scott, 18, fashion merchandising major, outside of the Technical Arts Building.
50 class sections depend on Nov. 6 vote Sarah Bremme Staff Writer
Administrators are in the midst of preparing a contingency plan involving section cuts should Proposition 30 fail to pass this November, Board of Trustees member Ray Gen said. Proposition 30 proposes raising money for California by increasing sales taxes and taxes on high-income groups. If it does not pass, the state will instead cut spending on primarily educational programs, such as the community college system. This would mean a $7.3 million budget cut for El Camino. “Sections will be cut from
directly are going to take the brunt of it,” Gen added, “I really feel for students who want to take classes for fun.” Despite the fact that much of the decision making process has been put on hold until after the vote on Nov. 6, students do not have to resign themselves to anticipating section cuts in their spring registration or transfer plans. “As much as it doesn’t seem like your voice matters, it does,” Associated Student Organization President, Brooke Matson, said. [See Section Cuts, page 2]
Philip Prins/ Union Students in the Student Services Building cluster around computers to apply for classes.
More than $100,000 in Scholarships goes unclaimed EC’s email system could be replaced with Gmail Angela Songco Staff Writer
NEWS LINE
In the midst of budget cuts and increased number of available scholarships for the school year of 2011-2012, about $100,000 in scholarship money went un-awarded. The EC Foundation had more than $600,000 in scholarship money available last spring, but roughly one sixth of that amount went unclaimed.
By Monique Judge
Katie Gleason, executive director of the EC Foundation, said that majority of the un-awarded money was in scholarships that were intended for particular areas of studies. “We have a lot of (major-) specific scholarships in the Fine Arts Division as well as in the Career and Technical Education, but because of the specificity of these scholarships we need to have students that are study-
ing in that area to apply,” Gleason said. Gleason added that aside from the majorspecific scholarships, scholarships were also determined by merit or by financial need. Despite the scholarship opportunities, many students still fail to apply or complete the applications, Gleason said. Donna Factor, Spanish professor, said that many students do not apply because they do not know
that they are eligible for one. Factor is among the faculty who had actively informed students about scholarship availability. The eligibility requires that a student must have completed 12 graded units that are courseapplicable, a GPA of 2.0 or better, and a letter of recommendation from a faculty member. [See Scholarship, page 2]
Preliminary studies into switching the college’s current email system from elcamino.edu to Gmail may soon be underway, John Wagstaff, director of information technology services, said. Wagstaff said that although this is not actively being pursued at the present time, he is aware of other colleges pursuing this course of action. “They (the state) are cutting our budgets, so we are always looking for ways to do things more efficiently,”
Wagstaff said. “At the same time you do not want to sacrifice services.” Wagstaff noted that some area community colleges such as Santa Monica College, Santa Barbara City College and the North Orange Community College district are looking at outsourcing or have already outsourced some of their services, like email. A reason that the switch at EC is still in its preliminary stages is that the current services provided like; MyECC, MOX and the college email were systematically connected into a very mature and stable platform.
“The one thing we don’t want to disrupt or change drastically is the portal (MyECC),” Wagstaff said. Wagstaff added that any final decisions whether to go ahead would be “collaborative, systematic and data driven.” Recent graduate, Will Salazar, 26, said that he has already taken advantage of Gmail access after transferring to UCLA. “I like that it will automatically integrate existing Gmail accounts into your school Gmail,” Salazar said. “It makes it seamless to work on other Google products as well.”
UC Basics Workshop
Carl Martin
Staff Writer
Writing Center will have expanded evening hours
CSU Basics Workshop
Health Science Information Session
ASU Representative On Campus
The Writing Center will now provide tutoring until 7:40 p.m. Monday through Thursday nights, while computers will be available to students until 8 p.m. Monday through Thursday. The Writing Center is in H122 in the Humanities Building.
Students interested in transferring to the California State University system may learn more by attending the CSU Basics Workshop taking place Tuesday from 1 to 2 p.m. in Social Science 213. Interested students may contact the Transfer Services department.
The counseling department will be providing an information session on Tuesday for those interested in the programs offered by the Health Sciences Division. The session will be in the Distance Education Room from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. For more details, contact the counseling office.
A representative from Arizona State University will be on campus and available for drop in appointments on Wednesday in the Transfer Center from 9 a.m. to noon. For more information, contact the Transfer Center at 310660-3593, ext. 3408
Students interested transferring into the University of California system, there will be a UC Basics workshop on Thursday from 1 to 3 p.m. in Social Science 213. The workshop will provide general information about the UC system. For more information, contact the Transfer Services department.