In Praise of the Year Just Ended
continued President's message
Hiring—broke another record! Two vice presidents (Harry Schade and Dan Chacón), two deans (Anna Davies and Roanna Bennie), two executive directors (Bradford Anderson and June Stephens), two directors (Karen Tacket and Patrick Schwab), two confidential assistants (Merlynn Foppiano and Julie Long-Coleman), 22 new classified support staff, nine promotions of current classified support staff and 10 full-time faculty. Nine new faculty will have been hired or will be hired when the Board of Trustees meets June 8; eight positions are funded by the College budget and one is funded by private contributions from local hospitals and the Cuesta Foundation.
Drama and Music raised the level of theater to “professional” in their production of the musical “Cabaret.” What an awesome group of faculty—bree valle, Jennifer Martin, peet cocke and Richard Jackson.
Vocé and Chamber Singers have been selected to make music in Europe and raised $9,747 to support the trip.
Faculty developed new curriculum in programs such as Culinary Arts and classes such as Women’s Studies. Faculty worked with their counterparts at Cal Poly to develop the following new A.S. degrees; Agricultural Systems Management; Bio Resources and Agricultural Engineering; and Food Science. Other new degrees include an A.A. in Legal Studies: Business Emphasis; an A.A. in Legal Studies: Social Science Emphasis; and an A.A. in Psychology. Dental Hygiene was approved for program development.
Cultural Diversity awareness was raised by an energetic array of programs, films, performances, forums, and Internet information. Hundreds of students and employees participated in the activities; the CDSE committee won the “Star Committee Award” for their outstanding year!
Automotive Tech students won regional and state competitions; Auto body got a first-of-its-kind paint booth.
Tellus, Cuesta’s creative writing journal, continued its strong edition. This year’s Student Art Show is intensely gripping.
Athletes excelled in every sport. Tennis was selected as the Scholar Athlete Team, Softball shared the Conference title; Baseball is playing in the Regionals this weekend. Swimmers were among the state’s best, five Track team members were in the state finals. In short, both in win-loss, improvement, and scholarship every athletic team did well and every athlete was well coached and learned that to be a good athlete you have to be a good student.
Library Expansion Building started underground and is now coming out of the ground, and Pete Pedroni, Terry Reece, Jay Chalfant, Grant Chesy, Juan Caranza, Justin Loncar, and Brian Fukuhara did magnificent work as the “Cutover Team” who transferred utility, data, and telephone lines to the new central plant.
NCC Allied Health, Science, Math and P.E. Building is close to completion and will house classes this summer.
EOPS/CARE/CalWORKS 2005 End of the Year Ceremony was awesome! 31 EOPS students have a 4.0 GPA, 80 have 3.0 or higher, and 40 are earning AA/AS degrees!
Public Information and Marketing won CCPRO awards for the “Annual Report of the Cuesta College Foundation,” the Spring 2005 Community Programs schedule, “Connections Spring 2004,” and their 30-second Financial Aid Television Commercial.
Institutional Advancement raised a total of $1,475,368, which includes $199,718 in our annual fund, $417,175 in temporarily restricted funds, $357,576 in scholarships, $212,614 in endowments and $266,285 in major gifts. Of the $3.4 million goal for Cuesta’s eight major projects, we have $1,038,238 pledged, which is 31 percent of our goal. We are ahead of last year’s contributions by approximately $200,000.
Grants program raised about $1,000,000 to support projects in several programs and has submitted grant proposals for many dynamic projects.
We worked through disagreements, changes, challenges and will do so again.
CHALLENGES:
• Attracting and retaining more students at all sites so we can earn growth funds and continue our comprehensive excellence.
• Saying good-bye to fine faculty like James Miley who has accepted a position at Virginia Tech University, Margaret Collier who is retiring, Margaret Heibert, and several part-time faculty who have obtained better positions at other colleges.
• Getting a budget with more equalization and instructional equipment funds.
• Trying to fund some of the classified and managerial positions needed in 2005-2006, as well as funding rising software and supply costs.
• Staying excellent in teaching and learning, in attitude and service.
We said final good-byes to colleagues, college friends, and students this year. As we reflect on 2004-2005, we recognize that once again Cuesta College and we who are privileged to work here were given a great gift—the support and trust of our students and community. And for these gifts, we sing praises for the year just ended.
