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District News

Alamo Colleges Kerrville Center at Full Capacity

The Kerrville Alamo College Center is at full capacity. All seats in the classroom for fall (and have added additional seats); flex classes are being planned to provide seats for those who were unable to register in classes of their choice due to full classes. Kerrville staff have scheduled workforce training to begin over the next month to include Network+, A+, Cabling, Microsoft Office Suite. Enrollment year to date: Kerrville Fall 09 enrollments are at 195 academic students to date: The CTTC has enrolled 605 academic students for Fall 09 enrollment to date.

Alamo Colleges Open Welcome Back Center

At a press conference August 12, the Alamo Colleges announced the opening of the Alamo Colleges’ Alamo Area Welcome Back Center. The new center, located within the Alamo Colleges’ Westside Workforce Education and Training Center at 563 SW 40th Street, provides specialized employment and training services for internationally-trained health professionals living in the San Antonio area. The center’s goal is to assist in the integration of these workers into a career in the health professions. To date, 26 clients are receiving services at the center.

“This initiative will benefit our community by increasing the number of trained professionals in the healthcare field, where critical shortages exist,” said Alamo Colleges’ Chancellor Dr. Bruce H. Leslie. “At the same time, the clients served by the center will benefit from being able to use the skills and training they possess rather than being relegated to low-wage jobs, where their talents are lost to the community,” he added.

The Alamo Area Welcome Back Center is modeled on similar projects in place in San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Rhode Island and Washington State.

Alamo Colleges Host Workforce Literary Summit

The Alamo Colleges hosted the second annual Workforce Literacy Summit (VESL) Vocational English as a Second Language on August 10-12, 2009. A total of 120 participants attended the session. Major conference highlights included the formal certification and announcement of the San Antonio Texas Welcome Back Center with remarks by Dr. Bruce Leslie and Dr. Jose Ramon Fernandez National Director for the Welcome Back Centers. Conference key notes were provided by Ms. Joanie Rethlake, State Director for Adult Literacy; Judy Taylor, Jobs for the Future; and Teresita Wisell, Director of the Community College Consortium on Immigration. Ms. Belkiss Rodriguez, Anson Green, and Dr. Federico Zaragoza served as moderators.

New Building at NVC Wins Five Awards

Live Oak Academic Hall at Northwest Vista College won five awards from the Texas Association of School Administrators and American Institute of Architects. O’Neill Conrad Oppelt (OCO) was the design firm for the building. The award was presented by the Texas Association of School Administrators as part of an annual Exhibit of School Architecture Competition. Live Oak received awards in five categories--Process of Planning, Design, Educational Appropriateness, Innovation and Sustainability.

Alamo Colleges' Bond Ratings Upgraded

Alamo Colleges received notice that Standard and Poors (S&P) and Moody's both upgraded the bond ratings on Alamo Colleges’ general obligation bonds.  S&P moved their rating up one notch from AA to AA+.  Moody's moved their rating up one notch from Aa2 to Aa1.  These ratings are just below the highest achievable rating of AAA.  Both ratings signal continued confidence in the management and credit worthiness of Alamo Colleges.  The benefit of these new ratings will be lower interest expense for Alamo Colleges’ borrowing, which translates into savings to the local taxpayer. 

College Connection Retreat Held

The Associate Vice Chancellor for Student and Program Development hosted a College Connection Retreat at SPC Heritage Room for over 50 College Connection staff and leads from the areas of recruitment, admissions, assessment, advising and financial aid. The Student Leadership Institute staff also participated and obtained opportunities to assist in recruitment and advisement of high school graduates.

District IT Takes Banner Finance Live, Moves to New Servers, Tests Disaster Recovery Plan

Banner Finance (reengineered Chart of Accounts) went live! To prepare for this, the District IT Department: created new old chart to new chart crosswalk from supplied spreadsheets; created new SIS/HRS accounts to Banner accounts crosswalk from the old chart to new chart crosswalk; ran test of HRS interface using new crosswalk; had planning meeting and identified needed modifications to interfaces, Appworx processes, and intellicheck layouts to support use of new bank codes as part of the change to the chart of accounts; tested SIS and HRS accounting interfaces using the new interm Banner chart of accounts crosswalk; completed modifications to several additional SQL reports to support the new Banner chart of accounts; and added an additional query option to the Old to New Chart of Account inquiry web application to allow searches by organization-program.

The IT Department also completed physical installation of the (2) IBM P-570 servers for Banner/Disaster recovery and fully migrated Banner to the new P-570 server. All Banner/non-Banner servers have seen a 75% reduction CPU utilization after movement to the new hardware. Setup tape backup system on the new Power 570 system. Revised documentation and maintenance procedures to reflect the new Power 570 environment. Migrated the Banner production environment to the new P-570 servers and disk devices purchased as part of the IT CIP Disaster Recovery Center project. The department conducted a comprehensive disaster recovery test exercise for AC mission critical systems, successfully conducted and tested a Disaster Recovery Communication Plan and collected notes for lessons learned and prepared final documentation pertaining to the ITS Disaster Recovery Exercise.

SAC, PAC Students Travel to China for Study

This summer , 12 San Antonio College and Palo Alto College students spent 16 days traveling around China, following classroom instruction at their “home” colleges. The study tour was organized and chaperoned by SAC Chinese Foreign Language Instructor Len McClure and PAC Economics Professor Joan Osborne. Alamo Colleges Coordinator of International Programs Mark Hagen provided $800 scholarships for students who enrolled in both Economic Geography and Beginning Chinese.

After three intensive weeks of Chinese and Economic Geography, the group headed for Beijing, the ancient capital of Xi-an, the rugged countryside around Guilin, and the modern metropolis of Shanghai.  Students were encouraged to observe China off the beaten track, to wander the street markets, to check out local restaurants, and to interact with the Chinese people – in Chinese.   

Each student will write two papers: one on a topic related to how geography impacts China’s economy, and the other a journal – written in Chinese – about their experiences in China.

The Alamo Colleges on Cable TV

We have an increasing number of events and activities district-wide and are taking the opportunity to showcase such events on Time Warner Cable channel 98 and Grande Cable channel 21. This section of the Chancellor’s Weekly Report provides a schedule of the programming for our regularly scheduled times of 12 – 2 pm on Saturday and 9 – 11 am on Sunday. Programming varies due to the timing of Board and committee meetings, groundbreaking ceremonies, etc. The programming for the coming weekend is as follows:

Saturday 8/29, 12:00 – 2:00 p.m.
The second part of the Audit, Budget and Finance Committee meeting of August 11

Sunday 8/30, 7, 9:00 – 11:00 a.m.
The second part of the Audit, Budget and Finance Committee meeting of August 11