Thank you to all who were able to attend my visits to the campuses this week for Take a Break with the Chancellor. As predicted, we were able to fill the hour and then some with our conversations. Thank you also to those on your campuses that helped to organize the rooms, snacks, and reminders to attend. It was all very much appreciated.
In each session I started off by highlighting two specific qualities of the Coast District that I was not able to glean from my pre-employment research but became evident once I became Chancellor. The first, I have mentioned often, our Persistent Innovation. The creation of Coastline as a college without walls, the technology endowment incorporated into Measure M, a walking bridge across Coast highway were the three examples I mentioned but there are obviously examples through out the district that exemplify this virtue. It is so built into our culture, that we don’t speak of or celebrate it as much as we should.
The second is what I call the “cross-pollination” of employees from college to college, from college to district and back again. The desire and ability to promote or transfer into positions at our various sites is something to be proud of and protected because the benefits of it are immeasurable. It builds an understanding of the pressures and workload of our colleagues, it allows knowledge sharing and can, with support, remove redundancies and streamline processes. As I said at each session, we should not take this for granted.
Much of our time in each of the sessions was spent on a question and answer section. The questions asked were thoughtful and of the moment. There was some commonality across the sites and some related to specific colleges and programs. The questions asked more than once were the possibility of a future bond measure, advice, and tools for working with a smaller workforce, and the status of the hiring freeze. Others included solutions for affordable housing, addressing fraudulent applications, thoughts on our upcoming accreditation, our future coordination with the Orange County Regional Consortium, and whether or not there will be another golden handshake. At the bottom of this message, I address some of the common questions.
At the end of each of my visits, I was able to showcase the start of what I hope to be a very robust dashboard to track our progress on closing the equity gap district wide. I am committed to making strides to eliminate the equity gap and one of the known variables is when students to see themselves reflected in the faculty, staff, and managers at their colleges. The first step is a comparison of how much our workforce matches our student population in race and ethnicity. Research shows our students do better when they see themselves represented in the people who teach and support them through their education. Please visit our Employee and Student Ethnicity Comparison Dashboard to see where we stand now.
In closing, last week, I celebrated the beginning of my third year as Chancellor and I remain honored to be in this position and look forward to our continued collaborations and celebrations.
With gratitude,
Dr. Whitney Yamamura
Chancellor
