East County educators among those testifying

By Jordan Schaffner

December 11, 2013 (San Diego)--Assemblywoman Shirley Weber (photo, left, with staff) held a public hearing on access to San Diego higher education  on November 21st in San Diego.  Highlights from the hearing included statements from educators at both private and public institutions, identifying needs to be met for local students.

Among the issues discussed including diversity, overcrowding, and a need for a new higher education campus in our region.

November 6, 2013 (El Cajon) — Actor Saginaw Grant, a Sac and Fox Indian who has played numerous Native American roles in the movies and on television, said at a Student Veteran Organization event at Grossmont College on Monday, Nov. 4. that every combat veteran comes home with hidden wounds caused by the things they saw or did.  However, he said, it’s important that they banish negative thoughts from their minds: “You can’t change those things by thinking about them.”

Grant, who had served in the Marine Corps during the Korean Conflict, said even after separating from the military service, veterans should continue to honor the proud military traditions that have been passed down for generations.  Likewise, Grant, who appeared in the 2013 movie The Lone Ranger as the Comanche Chief Big Bear, said that his Indian people should carefully listen and then honor the lessons that have been transmitted for eons in their oral traditions.

October 17, 2013 (El Cajon) -- A Box Full of Rocks: The El Cajon Years of Lester Bangs is a new documentary film about legendary music journalist and former San Diegan Lester Bangs. Grossmont College's Creative Writing Program will sponsor a special screening of the film at its annual Lester Bangs Memorial Reading, on Tuesday October 22, 2013 in Room 220 (Building 26).  This event will be free and open to the public.

By Rebecca Jefferis Williamson

August 26, 2013 (El Cajon) – “The smell of burning bodies was 24 hours a day. Some put their hands on the electric wires and died…killed themselves,” said Rose Schindler, Holocaust survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. 

Rose and her husband Max were at Grossmont College to give a talk on their shared experiences during the Holocaust to students of the Summer Institute Program (S.I.P.) on July 22.  Their goal is to make sure that the world never forgets the horror of the Holocaust, in hopes that such a tragedy will never happen again.

August 15, 2013 (El Cajon) - The Hyde Art Gallery opens its Fall 2013 Semester with “From This Place” – a Sculpture and Installation Exhibition featuring the work of Stephanie Bedwell.

August 8, 2013 (El Cajon) – Foreign-trained doctors, nurses and medical technicians may help fill the gap between the number of health care professionals working in the United States today and the larger number expected to be needed when the federal Affordable Care Act goes into effect on January 1, 2014.

Welcome Back Centers at Grossmont College and eight other locations around the United States help to coordinate local efforts to prepare the foreign medical professionals for their American licensing examinations.

August 6, 2013 (El Cajon) – Grossmont College’s Adult Reentry Program will host “A Daring Adventure,” a free orientation for adults interested in returning to school, from 9:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. tomorrow in Griffin Gate (Building 60).  

July 1, 2013 (El Cajon) – The day before she was to meet the Grossmont College search committee that would interview her for the job as vice president for academic affairs, Dr. Katrina VanderWoude, vice provost at Rochester College in Michigan, decided to do some interviewing of her own.  Visiting the Grossmont College campus incognito, she struck up conversations with students over lunch in Griffin Center, and elsewhere on the campus, to see if she could get a feel for the place at which she later accepted the job.

By Janis Mork

June 12, 2013 (El Cajon)- Over 400 students received degrees at Grossmont Community College’s commencement ceremony on Thursday. Commencement speakers included student Derrick Torrence, a Marine Corps veteran who graduated with his daughter, as well as Reverend Eric Smith, a Navy veteran who also wrote his memoir From Crack to Clergy: Provoking Thoughts published in 2011.

Some graduates celebrate triumph over adversity; Iraq war veteran to graduate with daughter

May 30, 2013 (El Cajon) – A campaign to improve student success is paying off at Grossmont and Cuyamaca colleges, where more than 1,700 graduates will receive a record number of degrees and certificates at commencements in early June.

New programs and services helping students achieve academic goals, along with voters’ approval last fall of a tax plan tempering years of debilitating budget cuts, are credited for the strong numbers.

With many graduates earning multiple credentials, Grossmont College will award more than 2,100 degrees and certificates at its commencement ceremony June 5. The following day, Cuyamaca College will confer 830 of the hard-earned associate degrees and certificates at its commencement.

May 24, 2013 (El Cajon)--Grossmont College student Thirada Kingphuang has received from the San Diego Police Foundation a Rita Olsen Memorial scholarship of $2,500 awarded to women pursuing an education preparatory to a career in law enforcement.

Kingphuang left her family and everyone she knew in the rural, teak-forest-covered Uttaradit province of northern Thailand in 2009 to pursue a career in forensic science in California.  

Play runs May 9-10 and 16-17

May 7, 2013 (El Cajon) – A woman of a certain age contemplates suicide when the phone rings in her San Diego apartment. The caller, believing she is contacting an analyst she read about in a health magazine, launches into her own tale of woe.

So begins “An Ordinary Day,” a one-act play by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, and directed by Martin Katz, a Grossmont College theater arts instructor. The lead character, Julia, finds herself trying to help the woman on the phone, in between encounters with her neighbors, the police and two flower-delivery men. As the tragic-comedy unfolds, it illuminates the themes of zealous commercialism, relationship stress, the notion of betrayal and the exhilaration of contributing to someone else’s life.

April 2, 2013 (El Cajon) –  “The Anatomy of Hate; A Dialogue to Hope,” an award-winning documentary film directed by Michael Ramsdell and focusing on individual and collective ideologies of hate will be shown during a free screening and Q&A with the director at 3:30 p.m. April 3, in Building 26, Room 220 at Grossmont College.

The 90-minute film follows the director’s six-year journey with groups like the white supremacists and Palestinian militants, as well as U.S. embedded troops in the Middle East. It is juxtaposed with interviews from leading experts in sociology, psychology and neurology to reveal both the emotional and biological factors that make everyone susceptible to acts and ideologies of hate. At the same time, this film posits, these are the very same traits that enable people to rise above the negativity.

March 1, 2013 (El Cajon) – The Hyde Art Gallery at Grossmont College presents “Works by Berning, Burkett and Wilson” a Ceramics exhibition by Trent Berning, Richard Burkett and Lana Wilson March 11-April 11.  These ceramic works all share the concept of merging utilitarian forms with a personal vision and expression that goes beyond their utility.

Though some of their works may function to various degrees as a vase or platter or teapot, their use of additive elements, texture, image, color, theme and form take these pieces well beyond pure utility.  These works are unique and individual pieces of art that express the artists interests and visions while still honoring their connection to utility.