Palomar College, San Marcos, Calif. Monday april 12, 2010 Vol. 63, No. 19
the-telescope.com
O p inion
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Rewriting history with convenient omissions
E n t e r ta in m en t
Small-time venues give students big breaks page
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Focus Many options for green volunteers page
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Sports Swimmers given top honors in several strokes
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Report scare brings staff together
F I R E F I G H T E R A C A D E M Y
maggie avants the telescope
Firefighter hopefuls overcome tough odds to live their dreams sara burbidge the telescope
For 60 hours a week, recruits in the Palomar College Fire Academy carry around 50 pounds of equipment including turnout gear, a hood, a helmet and, at times, a breathing apparatus. They are exposed to fierce heat that can reach up to 700 degrees during live burn training and must climb ladders to dizzying heights. They learn how to stabilize a vehicle and extract human bodies from cars; they learn about wild land fires, temperature and climate -- all during three months of training. “What they teach you here is as close to real life as possible. The turn to academy page
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Eric Shiroishi is one of the recruits at the academy (above). Recruits watch a demo (right).
Quick facts on the academy:
• There were 147 applicants, out of whom 43 were recruited. • Classes are held in both the spring and fall, including a presemester preparation course. • Training often lasts from 5:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Photos by Melinda finn | courtesy photos
INSIDE
College participates in the forty-year tradition belinda callin the telescope
Flowers are blooming and the birds are singing, that can mean only one thing; spring is here. April 22 of every year since 1970 brings Earth Day, a day for a worldwide spring cleaning if you will. “It’s during times like spring and celebrations like earth day that we get an opportunity to engage in those conversations because we’re outside and looking to protect what we love and enjoy,” said second semester Palomar philosophy stuillustration by Michael Hogue | mct campus dent Holly Romine, 30.
On April 22, 1970, 20 million Americans rallied, demonstrated and protested against the reckless polluting of the environment. This was a time of densely polluted air and lakes that caught fire due to chemical waste dumping. Forty years ago, U.S. Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed a day of action on which the American people would stand up for environmental awareness. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his role as Earth Day founder, according to earthday.net That same year, because of the widespread support of this movement, President Richard Nixon started the Environmental Protection Agency and congress amended the Clean Air Act. Since then, each Earth Day has grown every year. The ’90s brought turn to earth page
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April 5 was a long-awaited day for Palomar College administrators, faculty and staff. Since last March, when the college was placed on warning status by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges, the college has been busy responding to problem areas that the commission said the college needed to address. Now, a little more than a year later, representatives from ACCJC were back for a one-day visit to the college, to evaluate how the college had progressed in the recommended areas. According to ACCJC, accreditation is the process for evaluating and assuring the quality of education used by the American higher education community. While being accredited by ACCJC is voluntary, it ensures students that the college they are attending meets certain standards and that their credits are valid and transferable. To maintain accreditation, colleges must go through peer-based evaluations, which are conducted regularly. Steven Kinsella is the president of Gavilan College in Gilroy, Calif. He and Joseph Keeler, vice president of administrative services at Gavilan, were part of a three-person peer team back to visit the Palomar on April 5. During an open forum held between assessment meetings, college representatives from several different departments and accreditation committees got the chance to express to Kinsella and Keeler what they had achieved in the last year. Wilma Owens, dean of the Career, Technical and Extended Education Division at Palomar, served on the strategic planning committee. According to ACCJC, the college needed to integrate its planning, evaluation and resource allocation to its decision making. “In reviewing integrated planning, we realized we were already doing all these things, but there were gaps,” Owens said. “We’ve spent the last few months covering those gaps.” Another area Palomar worked on was defining student learning outcomes. Norma Miyamoto, dean of arts, media, business and computer science at the college, was chair of the (student learning outcome) instructional planning council. “It has been a very engaging process that has gotten us all out of our individual silos,” Miyamoto said. Steve McDonald, dean of literature, said that through the process he “watched a large group of faculty and staff pull together.” Linda Locklear is the chairperson of the American Indian Studies Department. She sat on the distance education committee. According to ACCJC, Palomar needed to ensure that students taking online courses were getting the same quality of educaturn to report page
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