In April, Lambert was named to the Board of Directors for the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), just a month after taking over as Chairman of the Board of Directors for the National Coalition of Certification Centers (NC3).

“I’m honored and excited to join AACC in this leadership position at such a critical time for higher education,” Lambert said. He was named as a Council Representative at the AACC annual convention, April 21-24, in Orlando, Fla.

“AACC is the leading advocate and voice for community colleges at the national level,” Lambert said. “Shoreline is working hard to find innovative ways to meet the needs of our students, our communities and our industry and education partners. I’ll work to foster that spirit of innovation on a broader scale.”

In March, Lambert was chosen to lead the board at NC3.

“NC3 is a group of educational institutions and industry partners dedicated to creating strong partnerships,” Lambert said. “The core idea of the NC3 partners is to develop, implement and sustain certifications that are industry-recognized and portable for the student.”

Lambert said NC3 is focused on the transportation, energy, and aviation sectors.

“At Shoreline, we worked with aerospace companies to develop a two-quarter program that gives students the skills to get hired right away and industry the employable workers they need now,” he said.  “We also have the premier automotive technician training center in the country, a program that others from around the world come to see.”

On April 17, Lambert testified before a U.S. Senate subcommittee about Shoreline’s experiences.

“Our effort is centered on our partners and students and making it work for them,” Lambert said. “When the college can stay focused on the needs of partners and students, everybody wins.”

Gidget Terpstra, Chair of Shoreline’s Board of Trustees, applauded the appointments for Lambert.

“Lee’s leadership on campus and at the national level helps others to see Shoreline as we see it; a great place for students to learn and change their lives,” Terpstra said “We’re fortunate to have Lee working toward innovation, developing strong partnerships and stressing student success in our current evolving world market to guide the college through these difficult times of change.”

SCC/Jim Hills

Student-government elections on April 17-19 will bring familiar and new faces to the Student Leadership Center for the 2012-13 academic year, according reports from the Student Body Association.

• For President, Kanpong Thaweesuk returns to office with 171 votes (53% of the total presidential votes)
• For Minister of Government, Karina Sindunata won with 271 votes (81% of the total MOG votes)
• For Minister of Communications, Lenka Savina won with 163 votes (52% of the total MOC votes)

There were also two Constitutional changes on the ballot that was conducted online. The results are:

• Removal of Parliament committees passed 281 to 49.
• Moving the Minister of Government position from elected to hired status passed 257 to 74.

Since each of the winning candidates received more than 50 percent of the votes cast in that race, there will be no runoff elections according to election rules. The results will be reviewed and approved by the current student government in the Parliament meeting this Friday, April 27, in PUB room 9201. This meeting is open to the public and any questions or concern about the elections will be discussed during the meeting.

For more election details: http://shoreline.edu/sba/

Now, at the national 2012 Tegrity User Conference, Shoreline’s Director of eLearning, Ann Garnsey-Harter, has been recognized for her leadership with a Tegrity Faculty Champion Award.

“It was a nice surprise … to get this award,” Garnsey-Harter said.  “It’s, of course, reflective of the great work of the college, especially our faculty. We're a heavy-weight Tegrity user and have faculty doing innovative things with lecture capture.”

Prior to the user conference, Garnsey-Harter and four Shoreline faculty members hosted an online panel discussion for those who couldn’t attend the conference. “Our faculty showed how they are using Tegrity,” Garnsey-Harter said.

Tegrity Campus is a fully automated lecture capture solution used in traditional, hybrid and online courses to record lectures as well as supplementary course content. For students, its personalized learning features make study time efficient. For the college and faculty, its ability to affordably scale brings this benefit to every student on campus.

At Shoreline, Tegrity Campus is fully integrated with the Blackboard learning management system. Every class at the college has an online Blackboard version available for use which means Tegrity is also available for use in every class.

The conference was hosted by the State Board of Community & Technical Colleges at the downtown Seattle Hyatt hotel..

SCC/Jim Hills

When Cherese Smith, a Shoreline Community College student and bodybuilding champion, submitted her essay, “The Racist in the Room” to a national essay contest, she didn’t think for a moment that she would win.

In fact, the only reason Smith had entered the competition was because her English 101 instructor Sarah Zale required her students to participate. It turns out the young athlete is as good at expressing herself in written form as she is at bodybuilding competitions.

“I’m so proud of her,” said Zale of the YES Magazine essay winner. Zale had worked with her students all quarter to gain focus, technical control and critical thinking skills.  Part of the class reading was an article by Kate Sheppard about how, as an environmentalist, she found common ground with her father, a conservative farmer. Zale then assigned an essay that reflected on a similar personal experience along with submission to the magazine competition.

When Smith saw the essay question - “Has anyone close to you, a friend or family member, distanced themselves from you or severed the relationship because of what you believe?”  - she immediately knew what she would write about.

“I knew I had to write about my Grandma,” Smith said. “She doesn’t hide her feelings about Hispanics and it doesn’t feel right to me.”

“The Racist in the Room” is the outcome of an emotional phone call to her father’s mother, who Smith calls Grandma B. Before calling, Smith thought about Zale’s lesson on being a compassionate listener.

“My heart was really beating fast at first because (Grandma) gets really irate when I talk about Hispanic people,” Smith said. Drawing on her compassionate listening skills, Smith asked about her grandmother’s feelings. “It really helped me listen to my grandmother’s story rather than just feeling disappointment and anger.”

During the hour-long conversation, Smith listened to her grandmother’s story of living in the Las Vegas suburbs, growing up in a working-class family.  Her grandmother had witnessed the effect of hard labor on her relatives and respected them for never giving up. Her grandmother built a successful window cleaning company and prospered. A booming construction industry drew a growing and increasingly diverse population looking for work. It wasn’t too long before the business felt the pressures of competition.

“Grandma B said she lost bid after bid because she was not willing to work for such minimal pay,” Smith said of the conversation. At one point, her grandmother feared the company would fail, jeopardizing her children and jobs for many family members. 

Smith said her grandmother spoke of resenting the changes that were coming to the neighborhood, too. It was the first time Smith recalls hearing her grandmother cry.  

Her grandmother said she and her and siblings were teased and sometimes beat up. The experience shaped her grandmother’s later behavior toward Smith, following the children in her van while they rode their bikes to school.  “If kids came to hurt us, Grandma would jump out of the van and chase them away,” Smith said.

Smith said she began to see what was behind her grandmother’s anger, fear and stubbornness.

It wasn’t until she had hung up, that Smith realized that she had also given her grandmother a precious gift.  “None of my family has ever taken the time to listen to Grandma.  I was the first.  It touched me.”

YES Magazine editor Jing Fong wrote in a letter to Smith: “As you can imagine and appreciate, it is a challenge to make a final selection when each essay has its own unique merits and qualities. Yours stood head and shoulders above the crowd because you brought beautiful imagery to a difficult situation and conversation … I want to acknowledge the importance of your writing this essay.  I appreciate that you not only shared your opinion and experience, but also opened yourself up to having your essay judged for this competition. That’s what good writers do.”

Cherese Smith is a freshman at Shoreline Community College.  She is interested in health and fitness and loves helping people, but when it comes to talking about her career goals she says that she is leaning to teaching but has a long way to go before deciding where to put her energy and compassion. You can read her essay on the college’s FACES blog at http://www.shoreline.edu/Faces/blog/.  It will be published on the YES Magazine web site later this month and in an education outreach newsletter (sent to over 24,000 teachers across the country).

Sarah Zale teaches English literature, poetry, and composition at Shoreline Community College. She holds an MFA in creative writing from Goddard College and master’s degrees in literature (University of Colorado), education (Michigan State University), and rhetoric and the teaching of writing (University of Colorado). She believes that good listening is critical to understanding conflict and for becoming a more compassionate citizen of the world, and she has incorporated listening tools into the curricula of her classes. Her involvement with The Compassionate Listening Project (TCLP) began when she traveled to Israel and Palestine with a peace delegation from the organization in 2006. Her collection of poems, The Art of Folding, was inspired by her travels. She is also a facilitator of Theatre of the Oppressed, a form of theatre for non-actors that allows individuals to practice ways to resolve conflict situations.

Please enjoy SCC student Cherese Smith's winning 2011 ( university / college division) Yes! Magazine essay at http://www.yesmagazine.org/for-teachers/essay-bank/fall-2011/the-racist-in-the-room

Shoreline Community College student and DECA member Jason Hwang learned recently that he is the winner of the Second Annual Collegiate DECA ICDC (International Career DECA Conference) T-shirt Design Contest. 
 
The freshman at Shoreline is excited about his win, but is very low key about it. Hwang said he wasn’t asked by his instructor or DECA advisor David Starr to participate in the t-shirt design contest. “I just did it,” he said, not really thinking about the possibility of winning a national contest.
 
This wasn’t his first go at a t-shirt competition. When Hwang was a DECA member at Shorewood High School he submitted designs for the high school t-shirt design contests. “I used to design a lot of t-shirts and sweatshirts for our chapter (Shorewood),” he said. Hwang said he was frustrated that the DECA t-shirts his high school team wore were not very attractive so he entered the competition as a college student. 
 
The winning T-shirt is simple in design Hwang says. It’s red, cursive lettering with a white outline on a dark t-shirt. Hwang’s design will be printed on t-shirts and other marketing items to be sold at the national conference in Salt Lake City April 28-May 1, 2012. 

Hwang put his skills to work last year designing a t-shirt with SCC Prime Minister Luke Tchao to support Japan relief efforts. They found sponsors and raised over $30,000 with their help. 

"After being successful with this, it made it a lot easier for me to enter competitions or just design for fun," Hwang said. 

Hwang won a $250 honorarium and 12 t-shirts, which he plans on sharing with Shoreline’s DECA team members.
 
 The DECA International Career Development Conference (ICDC) is the highlight of the DECA year. Thousands of students, advisors, businesspersons and alumni gather for several days. Participants compete in one of several competitive events. The top competitors in each event are recognized for their outstanding achievements. In addition to the competitive events, many students and advisors participate in a variety of leadership and career advancing academies.