SLO Revisions: The English Department at Cerro Coso Community College covers the largest geographical service area (18,000 square miles) of any community college in California and can sometimes find it difficult to get together for anything other than a virtual email meeting. But this last September the Cerro Coso English department rallied faculty members together at the Indian Wells Valley Campus for the important task of SLO revision. Using an agreed upon set of composition course skills, the department broke up into teams of two and over the course of one morning updated its entire line of composition course offerings.

New Reading/Basic Skills Specialist: The department hired Laura Vasquez as the new Reading/Basic Skills faculty member at the IWV campus in Ridgecrest.

35th Anniversary: The college celebrated its 35th anniversary September 8. As its anniversary theme, the college chose “Educate, Innovate, Inspire, Serve … The Tradition Continues.” The celebration of the college’s success in its service area will continue through the 2008-09 school year. “For 35 years Cerro Coso Community College has brought higher education to 18,000 square miles of service area. We continue to serve all of our communities and look forward to 35 more outstanding years,” stated Dr. Mary Retterer (qtd. in “Cerro Coso”).

Basic Skills Initiative: Recent activity by the BSI Committee includes work on a first draft of an institution-wide definition of “successful developmental education.” Much discussion has been devoted to broad SLO’s turned outward toward the students. Three types of skills have emerged as key outcomes. Broadly, they are:

1. Content skills—finding and fixing major errors in writing, identifying main ideas of paragraphs in reading, and factoring in math.
2. Study skills—organizing, memorizing, time management, computer literacy.
3. Self efficacy skills—showing self-direction, self-motivation, flexibility, and resourcefulness, as well as setting educational goals. (Basic Skills)

Other BSI topics of discussion include directorship of the Basic Skills Program (now known as the “Community of Emerging Scholars”) and ongoing revision of the BSI mission and vision statements.

Works Cited

“Basic Skills Initiative Minutes.” 25 Sept. 2008, Cerro Coso Community College.

“Cerro Coso Community College Launches its 35th Anniversary.” Coyote Howler October 2008: 1.