Will ATEP be home to the "Young Americans"?

.....As you know, our college district is run by morons—arrogant, autocratic morons who have zero respect for anybody, especially instructors. They're strictly "top-down."
.....For years now, behind closed doors, Chancellor Raghu “Goo” Mathur and his lieutenants have developed (or, more accurately, negotiated) the plan for our third campus, called the Advanced Technology and Educational Park (ATEP). ATEP already exists as 68 acres (a chunk of the former Tustin Marine Helicopter Station, abandoned by the Navy in the late 90s) and as an acre or two of classrooms. It offers a few courses to maybe three or four hundred part-time students.
.....But that’s just a stopgap. It’s clear that the trustees and the Chancellor have HUGE PLANS for ATEP. HUGE.
.....So, naturally, faculty (aka “discipline experts”), who are the only folks in the district legally authorized to develop programs and curricula, have been left entirely out of the loop during the negotiation (=development) process. Whatever ATEP will be, it will boil down to buildings plus lots of instruction. Faculty are responsible for the instruction. So far, as far as ATEP is concerned, faculty have been kept clueless regarding any of that. That's just great.
.....One of these days—within a few months, I think—faculty will suddenly be “informed” that they must start developing an impressive range of programs and courses, as per the SECRET PLAN that will at long last be revealed. Naturally, everything will happen in a big rush, like the recent attempt to hire 38 new faculty (caused by the Chancellor's failure to attend to the 50% Law). Judging by the latter effort, the ATEP whatchamacallit curricular/programatic initiative will be a rush-job, a fiasco.
.....No doubt, someone will be inspired to intone, "This is no way to develop programs and curricula."
.....—True, faculty are not entirely sans clue. We do know that “Camelot Entertainment” is in the entertainment industry: lights, cameras, action. We know that a nursing program (from CSUF) could be part of the package. (But doesn't Saddleback College already have a nursing program? Whose curriculum will be taught? And by whom?)

THE YOUNG AMERICANS:

.....Have you noticed that “Young Americans” continue to be listed under the ATEP heading for the monthly “closed” board sessions? (Go to Agenda Outlines.)
.....So I figured it might be a good idea to figure out what that part of ATEP might amount to. (We reported the Young Americans' presentation more than a year ago.)
.....We know this much: The Young Americans (YA) involves a group of about 200 young people who are trained and who sing and dance around the country and around the world. After nearly fifty years, the organization is looking for a permanent home.
.....According to Wikipedia, the “Young Americans is a non-profit organization and performing group based in Southern California.” They’ve been around since the early 60s. Bing Crosby once promoted them.
.....Check out YA’s Official Website. There, one learns that

Over four decades ago, The Young Americans® musical group was founded to reflect a positive and honest image of our nation's youth through music and dance. Today, that same idea is what makes this group of talented singers and dancers so appealing to audiences young and old. Members of The Young Americans® range in age from 15 to 24 years old and tour the world to promote understanding through educational initiatives and theatrical performances.

.....The YA have a dinner theater complex in Michigan, where they perform regularly. They’re scheduled to perform later this month at Big Bear's Performing Arts Center. They’ll be performing in Japan starting in June. Then they’re off to Europe.

THE “MAGIC OF CHRISTMAS”:

.....According to the YA website, “Young Americans® is an independent organization and is not connected with any religious or political agenda. Its purpose is simply to present youth as they are.” —As opposed to what? Is somebody getting it wrong somewhere? (Think Mod Squad.)
.....Seems harmless enough. Among their “productions” (see) is something called “The Magic of Christmas,” which will play at the La Mirada Theater in December.

In this special holiday production we will take you on a ride to a magical place. Christmas in the northern mountains, snow, and a small town. We will take you ice-skating, build a snowman, cut down a Christmas Tree, make snowballs, and snuggle by the fire. See a show within a show at our own "Holiday Inn," take a sleigh ride, ski the slopes, shop on a small-town main street and hear the special sounds of Christmas at a country church.

.....Holiday Inn, of course, was a silly wartime flick, starring Bing Crosby, that introduced the song “White Christmas.” Probably, like the movie, YA's “The Magic of Christmas” is about as religious as a friggin' snowball.

YA HAS CONTROVERSIAL IDEAS ABOUT EDUCATION?

.....Under “publishing,” the website features a book entitled Choices, written by Bill Brawley & Milton Anderson (the latter is YA’s founder). Choices is described as a “special publication outlining teaching methods of The Young Americans®. [The books presents] Our overall view of the teaching profession and educational techniques, many times controversial in content.”
.....I wonder what that’s all about? I Googled the title and got bupkis. The book is privately printed.

CALIFORNIA PACIFIC COLLEGE OF THE PERFORMING ARTS: proposed?

.....The website has a section called “campus,” where we are told about the “proposed campus and master plan”:

.....California Pacific College of the Performing Arts was [?] founded in 2002 by The Young Americans® as a 4-year degree-granting educational institution. California Pacific presents a refreshing, innovative approach to higher education. The college is designed to develop an individual's talent and ability enabling students to tour, teach and perform as a Young American.
.....Three proposed major courses of study:

• Bachelor of Fine Arts, Music
• Bachelor of Fine Arts, Dance
• Performance Diploma (2-year Program)
• A fourth major is being developed in the technical aspects of theater, radio, recording and television

.....The proposed campus will be developed as a safe-haven for our students. Registration is limited to 250 students.
.....Each year, the majority of states from our country are represented. In addition, many students come from countries abroad.

.....—OK, this is a bit confusing, at least to me. Something called the "California Pacific College of the Performing Arts" now operates in Corona (at 1128 Olympic Drive, Corona, CA 92881). That must be what is referred to above. So is the “proposed campus” already built?


.....Don’t think so. I came across an old (2002) Cypress Chronicle article that sheds a little light on the YA operation:

The five-year relationship between the Young Americans and Cypress College has ended…. ¶ Approximately 200 students will no longer be attending Cypress College classes taught by adjunct faculty…. ¶ According to Milton Anderson, founder of the Young Americans, a one-unit course to be taken at Cypress College was required of each Young American member by the Young Americans' organization…. ¶ Anderson has decided that after 40 years it was time that the Young Americans build their own school called the "California Pacific College of the Performing Arts." ¶ Anderson is currently looking to build in the area of inland Oceanside, or Escondido. They will be renting a building until they can build in a couple of years. Until then, he will stay in the area of Cypress, Yorba Linda, or Anaheim. Construction is tentatively scheduled for some time in 2005. ¶ Anderson said, "it was time for us to find a place of our own, and (we) would like to be more independent." ¶ According to [Cypress Dean Larry] Mercadante, the Young Americans operated independently, but needed to follow the California Rules and Regulations. ¶ According to Kat Leard, Young American's office manager, "instructors for the Young Americans were paid through the college." ¶ Mercadante said because instructors were adjunct faculty, "they must adhere to the same rules as other instructors."….According to Mercadante, "Corporate rules are different than educational rules." He said that the Young Americans will "be a loss to the college.”….

—It seems likely that YA is still wandering in the wilderness, looking for the promised land. Meanwhile, they've got some stopgap operation going on in Carona. It's hot there.


THE PROPOSAL FOR PARTNERSHIP:

.....I also came across a pdf document entitled SOCCCD: REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL FOR PARTNERSHIP AT THE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY & EDUCATION PARK.
.....I perused the document and came across this: “Incorporated in 2005 as a sister corporation, California Pacific College of the Performing Arts has been conducting classes for Young American members for seven years. Although accreditation is still a work in process, full time classes continue to be given and credits are earned which have been accepted for transfer by other universities.” I bet.

* * * * *

.....Well, that’s all of I’ve got so far. It appears that YA is associated with some half-assed and unaccredited “college” in Corona, about which little can be found on the web. It seems that they want to move that stuff out to Tustin and then upgrade. The Chronicle article might raise red flags. Does YA have its own instructors?
.....And what’s that stuff about YA’s view of the “teaching profession and educational techniques” being “controversial in content”? YA seems to think it's "innovative." That usually means "incompetent."
.....Probably much ado about nothing. For all we know (and we don't know much, do we?), YA will have no role at ATEP.
.....But we’ll keep investigating, just in case.

There are lots of "Young Americans" videos to be found on YouTube. Here's one:

"In the Basement of the Ivory Tower"

.....Just in time for the end of the semester, the Atlantic Monthly publishes "In the Basement of the Ivory Tower," by one Professor X. The writer is a self-described adjunct instructor who teaches composition and literature in the evenings at a small private college and a community college.
.....His students? Remarkably like many of ours, or at least, remarkably like the ones about whom Rebel Girl spends a lot of time worrying:

....."For many of my students, college was not a goal they spent years preparing for, but a place they landed in. Those I teach don’t come up in the debates about adolescent overachievers and cutthroat college admissions. Mine are the students whose applications show indifferent grades and have blank spaces where the extracurricular activities would go. They chose their college based not on the U.S. News & World Report rankings but on MapQuest; in their ideal academic geometry, college is located at a convenient spot between work and home. I can relate, for it was exactly this line of thinking that dictated where I sent my teaching résumé.
.....Some of their high-school transcripts are newly minted, others decades old. Many of my students have returned to college after some manner of life interregnum: a year or two of post-high-school dissolution, or a large swath of simple middle-class existence, 20 years of the demands of home and family. They work during the day and come to class in the evenings. I teach young men who must amass a certain number of credits before they can become police officers or state troopers, lower-echelon health-care workers who need credits to qualify for raises, and municipal employees who require college-level certification to advance at work.
.....My students take English 101 and English 102 not because they want to but because they must. Both colleges I teach at require that all students, no matter what their majors or career objectives, pass these two courses. For many of my students, this is difficult."

.....The trouble? Professor X writes: Remarkably few of my students can do well in these classes. Students routinely fail; some fail multiple times, and some will never pass, because they cannot write a coherent sentence.

.....He fears that the institution will condemn him but what happens is this:

....."What actually happens is that nothing happens. I feel no pressure from the colleges in either direction. My department chairpersons, on those rare occasions when I see them, are friendly, even warm. They don’t mention all those students who have failed my courses, and I don’t bring them up. There seems, as is often the case in colleges, to be a huge gulf between academia and reality. No one is thinking about the larger implications, let alone the morality, of admitting so many students to classes they cannot possibly pass. The colleges and the students and I are bobbing up and down in a great wave of societal forces—social optimism on a large scale, the sense of college as both a universal right and a need, financial necessity on the part of the colleges and the students alike, the desire to maintain high academic standards while admitting marginal students—that have coalesced into a mini-tsunami of difficulty. No one has drawn up the flowchart and seen that, although more-widespread college admission is a bonanza for the colleges and nice for the students and makes the entire United States of America feel rather pleased with itself, there is one point of irreconcilable conflict in the system, and that is the moment when the adjunct instructor, who by the nature of his job teaches the worst students, must ink the F on that first writing assignment."

And later:

....."America, ever-idealistic, seems wary of the vocational-education track. We are not comfortable limiting anyone’s options. Telling someone that college is not for him seems harsh and classist and British, as though we were sentencing him to a life in the coal mines. I sympathize with this stance; I subscribe to the American ideal. Unfortunately, it is with me and my red pen that that ideal crashes and burns.
.....Sending everyone under the sun to college is a noble initiative. Academia is all for it, naturally. Industry is all for it; some companies even help with tuition costs. Government is all for it; the truly needy have lots of opportunities for financial aid. The media applauds it—try to imagine someone speaking out against the idea. To oppose such a scheme of inclusion would be positively churlish. But one piece of the puzzle hasn’t been figured into the equation, to use the sort of phrase I encounter in the papers submitted by my English 101 students. The zeitgeist of academic possibility is a great inverted pyramid, and its rather sharp point is poking, uncomfortably, a spot just about midway between my shoulder blades. "

.....While Rebel Girl doesn't agree with all his points or conclusions, and has serious reservations about the curriculum as described, Professor X brings up enough good points that she recommends the piece in its entirety. It's available online by clicking here.

.....Hat tip to IVC's own Professor Z for pointing this one out.