Community College Librarian

Some community colleges moved quickly and started offering programs and discounts for people effected by the economic downturn.

Warren Community College is offering free job training in retail sales and customer service: http://www.nj.com/warrenreporter/index.ssf/2009/05/warren_county_community_colleg_27.html

Northampton CC in New Jersey is offering free tuition to the unemployed: http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/bethlehem/index.ssf/2008/12/ncc_to_aid_the_unemployed.html

So is Normandale CC in Minnesota, Mott CC in Flint, MI, Klamath CC in Oregon and all of the Kentucky CC’s and all of the Maine CC’s have programs for the unemployed too. Some colleges offer free tuition for the recently unemployed such as Luzerne CC in PA under their New Choices-New Options Program. In my home state, Oakton CC is offering free retraining for displaced workers, as is South Suburban CC in South Holland.

What is my college doing for displaced workers? We raised (nearly doubled) tuition for Nursing and Dental Hygiene students because these students will make a decent salary when they graduate. (If they can afford to finish and if they can find work afterward). We also raise tuition for all other students nearly every year! Oh, but we are generous with our President who has only been with us for 4 traumatic months. I’m just SO proud.

The winners of the Linden Prize were announced today. I’m very happy for the people at Studio Wikitecture and Virtual Ability. I know some of the hardworking and tremendously creative people in both of these groups–they richly deserve this award and need the cash infusion. In my heart was really hoping that the Alliance Library would get the award. They were the pioneers of education in Second Life and its quite the bummer that people aren’t just simply burying them in money.

Ok, its a self-publishing archive. I get it. They call it “democratized publishing.” I get that. Even our President has a Scribd page with 100 friends. We can use it to embed documents into websites. Like that. Check!

Please do not say that this is the future of the book or I will totally lose it. Archive, fine, but some writing shouldn’t be “published.” Some of it sucks, ok? Most of it needs editing, alright? This is why we have blogs! And this isn’t really publishing, is it? This is a repository of stuff. Some of it is good and some of it…well, I’m no critic.

Oh, yes indeed! Glenn Cummings from S. Maine CC has been appointed Asst. Secr. of Education for vocational and adult education. Yes we can!

The Chancellor of Foothill-DeAnza CC district has been appointed the Under Secretary of Education. Martha Kanter, you are my girl! I’m sure Foothill is crying at the loss though. Good leaders are tough to find and hold on to. This is great for CC’s. I know she won’t let us down so here are my requests:

1.) Increase Federal funding to Community Colleges. Give incentives for innovative projects aimed at increasing retention. Brookings says 50% of community colleges students drop-out. I can’t find the report they cite right now but even if its less than that we need to fix this. To do that we need…
2.) Funding. CC’s only get like 30% of Fed support that four-year schools get. We do get state and county money but since the economy has tanked, so have our budgets. And our communities need us to be great right now, not limping along and cutting every non-essential service in response to budget cuts. (These “non-essential” services usually turn out to be student support services, FYI. Can anyone say “retention?” At-risk students, anyone? God!)
2.) Help us figure out how to help displaced workers coming back to school for retraining and career changes. No, I mean really help them not just send them to registration. CC counselors and advisers need specific training for this purpose. “What Color is Your Parachute” just doesn’t get it for professional adults who really don’t know how to deal with unemployment and getting back out there in the workforce.
3.) Help CC’s improve their IT infrastructure and services to students. I bet dollars to donuts that part of CC’s retention problems are related to access to broadband and having no money for decent technology in some of our CC’s. Make somebody take care of that, Martha! Its shameful that so many citizens of the U.S. don’t have decent Internet access.
4.) Maintain the NSF/ATE‘s recent windfall. The ATE offers a special program for applicants new to the NSF with looser guidelines but why can’t they also fund smaller programs even if the College has received a grant in the past? Sometimes you just need 50-75K to get something going. Then accountability can kick in if the funds are drawn from the Govt.
5.) One last thing. Please don’t let them wear you down! I don’t need to tell Martha Kanter that CC’s train this nation’s workers. We should be great. We can be great. We need to build MORE community colleges, not strip them down.

I’m very excited. This is such great news. You Go Martha!

In this installment of I’m Learning Photoshop, I took on the Working with Masks and Layers chapter from PS CS4 Classroom in a Book. Ok, masks are not easy. This lesson took me two hours. Masks are like taping off things you want to retain like taping off the trim when you paint a room. There’s lots of different ways to mask, most of them nerve-wracking. The quick mask is easiest but it doesn’t stay once you deselect it. I did really like the clipping mask. You can put a texture layer over some text or a layer with a selection in it then apply a clipping mask to make the text or selection fill with the texture. And if you really care, masks are stored in channels with the rest of our saved selection information because they are just color information as opposed to being an image/object. These channels do not show in our images unless we show them purposely. Masks in channels are edited by painting in black to add to it, white to reveal what is beneath and shades of gray to partially reveal. There. I just answered all the review questions in one paragraph.
Here’s the results of my lesson:

Ok, I had to bring this topic back because I have found that I cannot, or should not, change the name of my blog to be less representative of my work as a librarian. I like being a librarian. I worked really hard to become a librarian. Like many people who are entering the mid-stage of their careers, I’ve had some frustrations and painful disappointments. And suffered from intense boredom. Lately, I’ve been questioning whether I chose well for myself ten years ago. I was overflowing with possibilities and ideas and ambition back then. And so happy to have a job at one of the best community colleges in the country.

The College has changed so much in the last ten years, people have come and gone, the focus has gone from the students to the money and we are in a very dark period of our College’s history. In short, work has been difficult. But that doesn’t mean I’ve chosen the wrong career. There are still students there. Many of whom are just like me when I started at Henry Ford CC in 1993–scared and unsure. I can still be a librarian who works for CC students even though the place where I do this work is completely messed up. The students need the support of the Library now more than ever! I’m a community college librarian. I cannot imagine doing anything else. So, I’m not going to change the name of my blog. And I’m going to remember who I am every single day when I go to work.

This is a great use of virtual worlds. Its experimental now but the work is fabulous. Here’s an SURL if you want to visit: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Imperial%20College%20London/150/86/27

Tom Werner is the god of workplace/virtual world info. He did a free webinar on the topic just recently which I kick myself hard for missing. The phrase “3-D:In it, not looking at it” has to be at the top of my list for believing so strongly in virtual worlds in community college education. I’ll spare you the soapbox and give you Werner’s presentation. I will get on that soapbox as soon as I get some more coffee down my gullet.

“Success is peace of mind attained only through self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the effort to do the best of which you are capable.” I really like this. Mr. Wooden also makes a distinction between reputation and character that is such a healthy approach to way we think about ourselves. TED talks rock.