CLEARLAKE >> Dr. Shouan Pan, chancellor of the Yuba Community College District, YCCD welcomed strong leadership in the guise of newly appointed President Lizette Navarette to Woodland College, Lake County, Friday January 12 at the Lake County campus.
“I’ve gotten to know some of the challenges and some of the achievements, and how the Learning Program has made a difference, Pan told a packed Hall. “The Board of Trustees, the Leadership Team and myself, realize how much passion this team has for this campus. And we need this partnership to re-invigorate our system. Pan reminded the audience they had an interim president last year. Yet he just hired a wonderful leader, Dr. Lizzette Navarette. She had most recently served as Executive Vice Chancler for Statewide Management for Professional Development. “I’m more and more glad the interview team decided this is the leader we want to have,” Pan said.
Navarette explained in her first 60 days, she looks forward to share space with all faculty and staff to forge aspirations and hear of faculty’s’ concerns. “My three priorities: listen, learn and collaborate; to act on, about what are the partnerships we need to put into place,” she said. “Our students come with aspirations and our primary role is cultivate that. I hope we connect regularly, and I want to know some of the key business partners to connect with, so we can re-invigorate the Lake County campus of Woodland College.”
However, a number in the audience gave testimony of the stagnation of vision in prior years. Douglas Harris is trustee of the YCCD. Harris pointed out there is a crying need to reverse a trend watching attrition take its effect on Lake County campus. “What I see as being essential is re-vitalization for career and technical education, ” he said. “But it means putting together a real strategic, thoughtful plan for how the campus and community together re-invigorate this campus’s relevance to the community. And a lot can be done through outreach, enrollment and student support services.” And he noted the campus is the pinnacle of higher education of Lake County. “It needs to be brought back to growing that importance,” he said.
Natasha Cornette, clerical assistant -EOPS staffer noted the things need to change at Woodland, by meeting the goals of a 2-year institution. “Have courses in place and not cancelled when students need to complete their degrees or certificates,” she said. “Not have classes cancelled weeks prior to the semester starting. Not have students enrolling at the last minute. Make sure we have classes on the schedule. Make sure even if low enrollment, students can attain a degree or certificate.”
Laurie Daly, Early Childhood Education faculty, initially taught videography in 1997, then switched to E.C. in 2002. “I am a firm believer that education is the key way out of poverty,” she said. “Early Childhood Ed. is a 12-Unit certificate- a wonderful, rigorous program yet we produce a lot of certificates,” she said. And I can tell which classes will fill, which should be online and which EC classes can’t do it face-to-face because not enough people are here. My point, faculty should be involved in scheduling. Still a lot of top-down decision making.”
Jennifer Hanson, professor of economics in business has worked at the college for 27 years. “What I am most concerned about is the intense inequality between what’s happening at the Woodland campus and what’s happening at Lake County. They get new faculty, they get new staff and their students get so much more than ours do,” she said. “And I want you (Dr. Pan) to address that because I have heard, time-and-time again that things are going to get better and all I see is them getting worse. And it’s hard to keep faculty around, when we remember what we were once like and where it’s gone, sad.”
Annette Lee, who attended Woodland in Lake County as a student is a business instructor. She recently completed her Ph.D. in educational administration. “What I’d like to see for the Lake County Campus to do is rebuild our campus culture,” she said. Cherished outreach programs such as Caring Campus and Early Alert, were previously the gold standard. Another conundrum is too many part-time positions Lee noted. “You can’t hire half time positions to get qualified applicants and have them stick around a long time,” Lee said. “You got to send in full time positions, so we can recruit and keep the best people.
Also, resources applied to online students do not payback dividends like other programs. “But rebuilding this campus, there’s a completely different population of students you’re going to face,” Lee said. “The ones succeeding online, they’re staying online and going down to Sacramento State and UC Berkeley. It’s the CTT people who need the basic skills. We cannot let that program die.” And City Councilman Russ Cremer discussed the importance of the college to the town., particularly the Culinary program. Chef Rob Cabreros trained a lot of cooks and chefs here in Lake County he noted. “The thing in Lake County, we need more restaurants, quite honestly,” he said. “But we need chefs trained here and understand how tourism interacts, and I think that’ll be helpful to the economy. Bottom line is; you need to invest and bring this program back to where it was.”
