Chancellor for Golden West, Coastline, Orange Coast colleges resigns (OC Reg)
…In a Wednesday night email to district employees obtained by the Register, Chancellor Andrew Jones didn’t indicate exactly what prompted his resignation, but said it came with “mixed emotions.”….
. . .
     The trustees and Jones have clashed for at least 10 months. In October, the district released a report showing that four of the five trustees felt their relationship with Jones either needed improvement or was unacceptable. In the comment section of the survey, the trustees criticized Jones as disengaged....

The Washington Post pays its respects: Emigdio Vasquez

Artist Emigdio Vasquez in 2005. (Rosemary Vasquez-Tuthill/Via Associated Press)

It's not everyday that an artist whose work hangs at Irvine Valley College is noticed in the pages of the Washington Post.  It is today though.  In the nation's capital, the newspaper of record pays its respects to Emigdio Vasquez.

From "Emigdio Vasquez, pioneer in Chicano art movement, dies at 75" by John Rogers:

Emigdio Vasquez, whose bold use of color, exacting brush skills and uncanny ability to capture everyday people in dramatic moments made him one of the most influential pioneers of the Chicano art movement, died Aug. 9 at an assisted-living home in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 75....

 To read the rest, click here.

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Blast from the past: 
From the Los Angeles Times, May  1991:

Irvine Valley College will observe Cinco de Mayo with a multimedia presentation Sunday evening in the college's courtyard and Gallery Hall. An exhibition by Emigdio Vasquez, "Treinta Anos de Trabajo," covering 30 years of the artist's work, will be on display through May 17. A new issue of The Elephant-ear, the college's journal of art and writing, featuring Vasquez' work on the cover, will be distributed. Gallery events begin at 6 p.m. with music starting at 8 p.m., performed by the jazz group of Strunz and Farah. The event is free.

Wow - remember those days?  Art, literature, music, culture.




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To help Emigdio's family with the cost of his memorial, click here.

It’s crap, OK? Deal with it

Scientists are baffled by the education community and their methods

Failure to Replicate (Inside Higher Ed)

     …[P]sychologists are not the worst offenders when it comes to replication, it turns out. That distinction might belong to education researchers, according to an article published today in the journal Educational Researcher.
. . .
     Only 0.13 percent [i.e., one tenth of one percent] of education articles published in the field’s top 100 journals are replications, write Matthew Makel, a gifted-education research specialist at Duke University, and Jonathan Plucker, a professor of educational psychology and cognitive science at Indiana University….
     Makel and Plucker … found that 221 of 164,589 total articles replicated a previous study….
     What’s more, 48.2 percent of the replications were performed by the same research team that had produced the original study….

More colorful "research"

     Replications are an essential part of validating scientific knowledge. They control for sampling errors and weed out fraud. A replication might show, for instance, that an educational intervention’s effects are less pronounced than a previous study contended.

     So why do so few replications appear in education journals? The article, “Facts Are More Important Than Novelty: Replication in the Education Sciences,” argues that education journals routinely prize studies that yield novel and exciting results over studies that corroborate – or disconfirm – previous findings. Conducting replications, the researchers write, “is largely viewed in the social science research community as lacking prestige, originality, or excitement.”
. . . .
     Makel and Plucker, however, say that replication matters greatly. What’s at stake, they say, is education’s standing as a discipline. Dismissing replication, they write, “indicates a value of novelty over truth … and a serious misunderstanding of both science and creativity.”….
. . . .
     “When I talk to my friends in the natural sciences, they’re just baffled by how this is even a question or a controversy in psychology and education,” Makel said. “Replication is such a normal part of the process for them.”....

     See also EdDreck: the "experts"

The LA Times pays homage to O.C. artist Emigdio Vasquez

Emigdio Vasquez, with detail of his mural "The Legacy of Cesar Chavez" at Santa Ana College. Photo by .Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times

Rebel Girl woke up this morning is an appreciation of Emigdio Vasquez in the Los Angeles Times. In his article, "Orange County's 'Godfather of Chicano Art' dead at 75," Adolofo Flores writes,

Vasquez, known as Orange County's Godfather of Chicano Art, created more than 400 paintings and 22 murals throughout the county. The “Legacy of Cesar Chavez” at Santa Ana College is one of his most well-known murals.

“My dad liked the gritty subjects, old people’s skins and the grittiness of the city,” Vasquez-Tuthill said.

In an artist statement posted on UC Santa Barbara’s library website, Vasquez wrote that he considered his art to be part of the working-class experience that surrounded his life.

“This environment holds inspiring visions of human warmth and cultural heritage,” Vasquez wrote. “I want to convey to the viewer the intense reality which people experience. Art must be more than aesthetic or decoration. Art creates an environment which enlarges humanity.”

To read the rest, click here.

Rebel Girl has learned that there is an effort to raise money to help pay the family pay for the expenses of a memorial.  To contribute (and to learn more about Vasquez), click here.

One of Vasquez's murals hangs in the B-100 building at Irvine Valley College where it has been creating an environment which enlarges our humanity for some years now. It would be a nice gesture for the college (faculty, staff, administration - the district!) to make a contribution in his memory to help his family defray their costs.  Think about it as we finish up our meetings this week. Rebel Girl is happy to facilitate such a donation.

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This afternoon: Teddy, cat

Fifteen pounds of feline fur, fury, and felicity.
From an hour ago:
Teddy enjoys exploring his hill. He does that most days.

He sniffs stuff. It's a cat thing.

He enjoys rolling around on the coarse surface of the driveway.

He's Mr. Personality, he is.

My latest "portrait" of the boy

The Chancellor's Opening Session: live and direct! (Plus: guerrilla action, co-opted)

brochure

     8:45 - It's just started. The student trustee has come up to lead us in The Pledge. We stand and deliver. (Well, I'm standing, anyway.)

     BOT Prez TJ Prendergast now speaks. He is introducing other trustees: Marcia Milchiker, James Wright.
     Prendergast pours forth the usual bromides and such. "Student Success, blah blah blah." Sheesh. "Your work is inspiring and valuable." "Have an exciting year." Applause.
     Chancellor Gary Poertner comes up and gives formal recognition to Dr. Brice Harris, State Chancellor. Applause. Then he introduces his "executive team," et al. Introduces his most trusted "critic," his wife.
     Next: Saddleback Prez Tod Burnett (applause); IVC Prez Glenn Roquemore (applause). Trustee Tim Jemal just arrived (more idiotic applause). (I do think we should think about applauding our applause. Why the hell not?)
     Now Gary introduces VC Bob Brammuci, VC David Bugay, SC Ac. Sen Prez Dan Walsh, IVC Ac. Sen Prez, Kathy Schmeidler, and so on. The usual suspects.
     The room (in IVC's disfigured barn, the Performing Arts Building) is pretty full, I'd say. There are a few scattered seats left.
     Burnett comes up to introduce new faculty at SC. Applause, applause. Blah blah.
     The little brochure that goes with this shindig is slicker than ever before. Nice pics, professionally done, I guess. I inspect it. (See above.)
     ...Burnett is still going. Sheesh! Lots of hires, I guess. Applause, applause.
     Now Roquemore. Introduces IVC's new faculty. Same deal. Lots of applause. Congrats to all.
     Poertner: introduces new administrators and managers. (And some who have changed their responsibilities.) "Don Busche, never goes away." Laughter, applause. On he goes with this stuff.

Harris

     Poertner: introducing presentations. "Our number 1 priority, student success," he says, utterly predictably. Student success and completion, blah blah blah. Goes through goals: blah blah blah. Discusses a new software, Workday. (This is dry, man.) Much better than what we had before, he says. (Gosh, we've heard this all before. Let's hope it's true this time.) He's really doing a sales job on Workday. Good grief, does he own stock in the company? Gosh, Georgetown uses it, too. It must be good!
     Economic and workplace development, blah, blah, blah. Program development for courses at ATEP. We've got approval for IVC's building at ATEP. "We continue to seek funding and partnerships...." Yeah, ATEP's goin' great guns.
     "I'm very pleased with the state of our district." "Our work is great, but our mission is greater." No small job, man.
     Now (he says), let's take a break from this: some music. Two kids are gonna do "Wien, du Stadt Meiner Träume." It's the "Eyes Wide Shut" tune. Suddenly, we're in Edwardian Vienna, and yet it doesn't seem at all like Edwardian Vienna. These kids sound pretty good, though. Applause.
     Introduces State Chancellor Brice Harris. Blah blah blah. Oh good, he got his Ed.D. from Nova Southeastern. Kind of a mail order degree, isn't it? Big applause.

     Harris (who avoids the podium and stalks the stage, evidently planning to use the screen):
     Harris is obviously a good speaker. Talks about his elementary school teacher wife. Tells story of some kid at wife's school who stands next to him and says, "I know who you are and I know who you're here to get." Funny stuff, man. Even a vomit joke. Cool.
     Says will talk about "Tremendous history," "Big challenges," and something else. (He moves fast.)
     Our system here in CA goes all the way back to 1907, based on state statute. We added Voc Ed in 1917. In 1976, community services were included. Etc. He's running through additions and subtractions to our "mission." Nowadays, community services has been marginalized. Hopes that that mission strand comes back.
     Our system is different from the other two (CSU, UC), he says. We're a "confederation." There are 70 districts. Above them is a Board of Governors and the Office of the Chancellor (Harris). (Not much holds it together, I guess.)
     Some say: do away with locally elected boards. But that would be difficult. Cal is a very diverse state, lots of colleges, and they serve very different populations, needs. Our present structure works well for us.
     We get counsel, advice, and influence from many. It's a "very dynamic environment." A daunting challenge (his job). When I took on this job, two opportunities arose: restoring access, enhancing success. He's decided to focus on those.

The "dirty girls" at today's groundbreaking

     We're 14th in the world with regard to the educational attainment of the group just coming out of college. So we're slipping on that score. We're stagnant (while other countries are not). The next generation will be less educated than the one before. That's not good.
     Must increase success. California is important in this regard. One in five community college students in the country are in Cal. 1 in 10 higher ed students are Californians. So "we have to get this right." Improve access, success. We need that to be globally competitive.
     Our high water mark was 2008-9 in access. We've suffered quite a loss since then. Denial of access has to stop.
     Prop 30 helped. Last year's (CA) budget helped. We'll likely have two or three good years out of Prop 30.
     What about student success? We're all very frustrated. If a student comes prepared, then there's a 70% chance of success, which is pretty dang good. But the situation is very different for less prepared students. 74% come to us unprepared for college. There's more troubling news with regard to some ethnic and age groups. We must close performance "gaps" so that we don't leave people behind.
     If you focus on "outcome," as legislators have tended to do, we'll leave people behind, serving only the ones that tend to succeed.
     Remedial course completion rate is improving dramatically, and that's great.
     He discusses the "student success initiative." Increasing college readiness. Often a mismatch between what goes on at High Schools and what is demanded of students at college. English, Math. (For instance, high school students often finish their college math early and don't get back to math until they start college, eighteen months later. No wonder they need a refresher.)

Brown: love 'im or hate
him, he's the Decider

     We need to strengthen support for entering students. But we've taken away some of the support first provided in the 60s. We need to explain financial aid to students so they know what's really in their interests. We need to align course offerings to students' needs. Improve basic skills education. Professional development needs to be improved to help us accomplish all this. Need better leadership in the system (that's for dang sure).
    We have a window of opportunity between now and 2018—because we have stability. Jerry Brown is likely to get reelected (like him or no). The Democratic majority in legislature will likely continue. We'll see financial stability as well (Prop 30). Legislature previously told us how to succeed. Now we're on the same page, and they just want us to succeed, leaving the how to us. Restoration of access, improvement of student success. We all share these goals in the system.
     There remain other big challenges. But now: restore access, improve success.
     We need to stay focused! Harris seems to mean business.
     We can and will succeed, he says.
   
     It was a very good presentaton, I think. Big applause. Harris does inspire some confidence, in my opinion. He doesn't speak in acronyms and buzz words. He speaks in plain English and he seems to know the lay of the land, politically. So I take back that nasty crack about Nova Southeastern.
     Poertner: he thanks Harris. Gives Harris T-shirts (one from each college).

     Next: Student Success Summit Overview, with Jane Horling and Roopa Mathur.
     Mathur: had a great summit. Shared best practices.
     What is student support? 10 things you can do.
     Success factors: directed, focused, nurtured, engaged, connected, valued. [I'm sorry, but this sounds like bullshit.] Write "great job" on student essays, etc. Learn student names. Etc. (Well, those ideas seem sensible.)
     Horling: sharing best practices. Idea exchanges. We don't do this enough! It worked well: putting people in the same physical space, exchanging ideas. Networking, collaboration. Please consider coming to this thang, presenting at next summit.

     Poertner: next, Innovations in Student Success

IVC:

     Roquemore, Beck, and Wilson (the latter two: ESL instrutors).
     Wilson: who are in our classes? Our population is diverse. Race, age, English background, Educational goals. Many Asian students. Persian students constitute second largest group. Our ESL population is older than the general population. Increasingly, we have "international" students, drawn by our reputation (transfer rate) and "the beach." Natch.
     Shows a picture of many different cats. Diversity. "All this diversity is like herding cats," said someone, viewing the situation. So how do we make this work? We focus on the largest group: those who seek to transfer, etc.
     Beck: two major changes. New course sequence (pathway to Writing 1). Before, students had to go backwards (moving to Wr 301) to go forward. New sequence. Can get to Wr. 1 straight from ESL. Discusses the notion of "Academic English," a language in itself. We focus on Academic English.
     Wilson: second change: ESL program acceleration. Students immersed in English environment. Language is a skill, not a subject. One can accelerate by getting a girl or boyfriend (who speaks English), join a club, etc. Immersion. But wear protection. (OK, I added the last part.)
     Beck: some ESL students really are not exposed to English much in their lives, beyond the classroom. Will have to progress step by step through the classes. But there are students who have a job or have a girl/boyfriend who speaks English. They move along faster. Can skip steps.
     The most realistic scenario: Step by step, but also skipping steps. Traditional sequence, or accelerated progression. Can switch from one to the other.
     Wilson: we want to work with our English colleagues--see if our ESL students are prepared for Writing 1, etc. Focus on data. Investing in faculty. Etc.

It was a bright, bright, sunshiny day

SC:

     Six or seven people come up, sheesh. Is it a convention?
     Burnett: K-12 partnership. Student success initiative demands this. A call to action. Burnett puts up quotations, organizes his presentation around them. Ridiculous.
     Hey, SC has been all about these parnterships, going back to 2008. Blah.
     A dean comes up and yammers (reads). Pretty boring. I'm starting to fall into a coma.
     O'Connor: speaks, doesn't read. Good. Blah, blah, blah. I'm back on the coma trail and O put me there. The guy actually uses "WAC" for writing across curriculum. He thinks in buzzwords and horseshit. Good grief.
     Blah, he says.
     "Common core," WAC, "contextualized teaching," etc. OK, I'm dying.
     --OK, that's it for me, I can take no more. After all this, there will be the traditional "pinning the tail on the donkey" (service pins)--an activity a more ridiculous than which cannot be imagined.
     I'm outa here. (It's not yet 10:30.)

The "real" groundbreaking came last (Guerrilla faculty)

A half hour later:

Groundbreaking for the new A400 Building
(future home of the School of Humanities, among others)

A400 groundbreaking: piled higher and deeper

     While I sat with some colleagues waiting for the show to begin, we commented on the hard hats (white), the golden shovels (freshly sprayed!), and other accoutrements of Dog und Pony.
     An old friend and colleague, Miss B, came out of hibernation (sabbatical) and attended the ceremony just to see the great day arrive. She told us that, earlier, she had spoken with John Edwards, Director of Facilities, and she reminded Charm Boy that, when she first arrived at IVC in 1991, she and others had been promised a "Humanities Building," to be completed by 1997.
     "So it's gonna be eighteen years late," said someone.
     Silence.
     The ceremony finally started, and it was sorta brief. Dean Karima Feldhus got the biggest applause by far. I'm sure that embarrassed her, but we don't care. We do that to her all the time.
     Some of us (not me; certainly not Karima) hatched a plan: we'd wait for the ceremony to finish, then we'd run up there and grab those shovels 'n' hard hats and do our own goddam groundbreaking. I was to take the pics.
     "OK," I said. But all I had was this laptop. Low Rez, baby.
     As it turns out, when the ceremony (including the State Chancellor and two or three trustees) was over and our Humanistic (and Languagistic) guerrillas commenced stalking and circling the long pile of dirt, the ever-observant Brandye D'Lena (district building maven) noticed this insurgency. She immediately took over the incursion and arranged for that photo and then some more--with the professional photographer on hand.
     Sheesh. It's tough tryin' to be a guerrilla these days.

Glenn said he'd keep it short, but, for a while there, we had our doubts

Emidgio Vasquez, descansa en paz

Emigdio Vasquez in 2009. Photo by Keith May.

Over at the OC Weekly, Gustavo Arellano reports that OC artist Emigdio Vasquez has passed away.

Denizens of IVC may recognize the artist as the one whose artwork, a large mural, distinguishes the B-100 building.  In the 1990s, Vasquez was also a frequent visitor to campus, appearing at various events and participating in the annual Kinder Caminata. One year his work graced the cover of college literary journal, the Ear. 

Arellano writes:

"Emigidio Vasquez, a legendary Chicano artist most famous for his epic murals that continue to dot Orange County, passed away yesterday after a long illness. He was 74.

Born in the mining town of Jerome, Arizona, Vasquez moved to Orange's Cypress Street barrio in the 1940s and eventually gravitated toward painting. In his heyday, he achieved the almost-impossible: mainstream, underground AND governmental success, as his works became famous nationwide among art lovers and lionized among Chicano activists. He even scored contracts to do public murals for the county of Orange (the sprawling epic of OC history off the old OCTA bus terminal near the Civic Center in SanTana) and the city of Anaheim (in a mural located in the lobby of Anaheim City Hall) during the 1980s....

Here's a link to the rest of the article: 
Emigdio Vasquez, Legendary Chicano Artist, Passes Away