California Secretary of State Alex Padilla visited the Cerritos College Burnight Theatre to talk to students and faculty about a method of education which its roots are in Florida in the State of Education and ASCC members discussed the C4 initiative address Tuesday, March 31.
Essentially, the model in affect in the Florida state education system was that the classes offered at a community college corresponded well with the requirements to transfer to a four-year school.
Padilla talked about ‘this moving target’ students had to hit every time they looked into what classes they needed.
He gave the example of a student named Tom that wanted to transfer to a four-year school to study biology.
Tom looked up the classes he needed to take at a community college to then transfer to said a four-year school.
He eventually completes the list of classes and approaches the four year school to enroll him, however, the four year school laments Tom taking unnecessary classes because the list of classes to transfer has changed.
This happens all too often Padilla said.
“There is a bottle neck or road block that doesn’t allow community college students to transfer,” he said.
According to Padilla, Cerritos College is one of the college that implements the philosophy of a “clear and consistent path” for students.
ASCC Vice President Joe Nino, Chief Justice Alejandra Lopez and Associate Justice Eduardo De La Rosa was also present to raise awareness to students and staff about the Community College Completion Corps, or C4.
Also Librarian Debra Moore spoke about the new additions to the MyCerritos dashboard in the Cerritos College website.
She said, “It’s sort of a new product, the dashboard is now going to be inside the MyCerritos so they are calling it a ‘port-let’ inside the MyCerritos.”
The website offers a bar tab for majors at Cerritos College, however, there is no clear bar tab for students with undeclared majors. It would tell students their classes need for their majors as well as general ed. classes already completed.
“Folks who have declared a message that says ‘this is for folks students who have a declared major at Cerritos College, because there is nothing that we can show them if they haven’t picked a major.”
Majors now have a general education plan connected to them, meaning that there is a preset path set for students to follow that pleases the requirements for each major.
iFalcon Coordinator Damon Cagnolatti said he wanted to rebrand the club to make it more noticeable to students.
“We want to put up new banners and new signs, because people were getting tired of seeing the same iFalcon signs for years,” he said.
According to Cagnolatti, Public Relations officer Maya Walker has worked closely with the club to update a marketing plan that has worked “in another time” and now needed updating.
