Our Convocation activities this year was the best ever.  Kudos to our colleagues who had a hand in the planning and implementation of the event. 

It's always exciting to start a new academic year.  Those of you who were away for the summer I want to say Welcome Back.  To the classified staff, confidentials, administrators, managers and faculty who worked during the summer continuing the important work of the college, I want to say Thank You.

I think you'd agree that we accomplished a lot together last year.  Our faculty orientation and professional development programs were revitalized.  The Board of Governors approved the petition to transfer our Fort Bragg territory to Mendocino College.  We broke ground on the new science lab in Del Norte.  The Administration and the Academic Senate agreed to form a permanent ongoing Accreditation Oversight Committee (AOC), led by Dr. Angelina Hill (ALO) and Professor Dr. George Potamianos (Accreditation Writer), to ensure inclusivity among all members of the CR community in self-study process.  Connie Wolfsen (Professor of Nursing/Academic Senate Co-President), Mark Winter (Professor of Psychology), Peter Blakemore (Professor of English), Sheila Hall (Director of Counseling), and Wendy Bates (Chief Human Resources Officer) agreed to serve on the AOC.  

But as former Secretary of State Colin Powell said, "Always focus on the front windshield and not the rear view mirror."  This year we will continue getting ready for our accreditation visit in fall 2017.  We will finish revising our Education Master Plan, Equal Employment Opportunity Plan, and Strategic Hiring Plan. We will work closely with the Board of Trustees to develop an innovative long range strategic vision.  We will implement a staff and manager onboarding program.  We will also have a District-wide dialogue related to diversity and inclusion.

I am proud of all of you for your continued commitment to changing the lives of our students and transforming our college community.  As we begin this year, I want to say again that the core of who we are and what we do remains the same.  I encourage all of us to ground ourselves in our revised mission and recommit to our students and to each other. 

I have attached the full welcome back message to this blog article.

Have a terrific year!