Cityscape - Your Employee Newsletter

October 5, 2020

Shake It, Shake It, Shake It!

We’ve just launched an amazing new career network for students and alumni!

The Los Rios Community College District has partnered with Handshake - a modern career development platform – which replaces the current Jumpstart system. Students can use Handshake to discover internships, on and off campus jobs, attend career fairs, and so much more. Please help us spread the word to your students and programs!

For on-campus employers: If you want to post on-campus jobs, reach out to Yolanda Ramirez in the Career Center for more information on the process. Thank you for your support!

Celebrate City With Us!

Join us as Celebrate City continues on virtually! This is a chance to connect with your colleagues and friends, win prizes, share some laughter, and celebrate our awesome successes. Look in your inbox for a calendar invitation from Ginny McReynolds that includes details and the Zoom link.

Celebrate City will be held on the second Thursday of each month, as follows:

10/8, 2 p.m.
11/12, 2 p.m.
12/10, 2 p.m.

Caring Campus Identifies Ways to Engage Students Daily

During the summer of 2020, the Vice President of Administration Carrie Bray and more than 50 classified professionals from SCC’s main campus, as well as its outreach centers in Davis and West Sacramento, worked together on the Caring Campus initiative to develop action-based behavioral commitments to improve student experience and engagement. This program guides student services, instruction, and operational department staff in developing strategies that can easily be implemented campus-wide by all staff members. This work will reinforce and support the college’s City Ways efforts.

The Caring Campus Leadership Team selected Classified Professionals in their area who are champions when it comes to serving our students, and who already exhibit behaviors that mirror the Caring Campus behavioral commitments, which are:

Caring Communication/Introduce Yourself
Warm Referrals
Know Other Departments
Reach Out to Students

The level of engagement and enthusiasm from the Classified Professionals who were selected was inspirational. Part of the process included discussing the behavioral commitments with their colleagues and presenting their findings to their college areas and supervisors. Hopefully many of you have already received information on their wonderful work.

Implementation, Monitoring and Communication plans were developed to ensure the work continues, to hold ourselves accountable, and to share the behavioral commitments and efforts with our college community. Because this effort is in concert with our City Ways efforts, it was a great fit for SCC. This is the end product of the hard work that occurred over the summer by Classified Professionals and illustrates how both Caring Campus and City Ways work so well together.

Learn More

Equity Partnership Resources

For years, our college has been working hard in advancing our equity and student success goals. Those of you who attended the districtwide Equity Town Hall on Friday, August 28 were introduced to our two new “critical friends” who will be assisting the college and the entire district in this critical work. Dr. Cynthia Olivo and Lasana Hotep bring a wealth of experience and have already begun helping us with the difficult discussions necessary to achieve our urgent goals.

Olivo and Hotep’s focus will be on examining policies, procedures, and practices and working with our college and the district on eliminating or mitigating any barriers that impact student success. They will be collaborating with faculty leadership, classified leadership, executive teams and equity champions at our college and throughout our district over the Fall semester to help us align our work and build our internal capacity to maintain and advance it once their contracts have ended. With limited time with us, they naturally cannot facilitate every important discussion on this topic, but we are excited to bring their expertise to bear in our efforts to support our students.

Transfer Admission Guarantee (TAG) Deadline Extended

In light of the recent flurry of wildfires across the state and the number of students who may be impacted by them, the six UC TAG campuses have agreed to extend the fall 2021 TAG submission deadline to October 15, 2020, for all TAG applicants.

As a reminder, the six TAG campuses are UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC Santa Barbara, and UC Santa Cruz. Students who submit a TAG by the October 15 deadline must also file a UC application for undergraduate admission by November 30.

Learn More

Gender Identity and Pronouns Workshop

Join us Thursday, Oct. 15, 2:30 p.m. to 4 p.m. This will be a great opportunity for us to learn and discuss language that avoids bias toward a particular sex or social gender and that breaks down the difference of gender identity and sexuality. Special guest Bucket Manyweather will provide insight on how to communicate more comfortably with all members of our community.

Domestic Violence Awareness

October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic violence does not discriminate against age, gender, sexual orientation, or economic status. Domestic violence is a pattern of abusive behavior in any intimate partner relationship that is used by one person to gain or maintain power and control over the other person. Domestic violence can be physical, emotional, financial, sexual, technological, and/or spiritual.

Here are some important statistics about domestic violence:

1 in 3 women and 1 in 4 men have been victims of some form of physical violence by an intimate partner within their lifetime.
Domestic violence is most common among women between the ages of 18-24.
57% of teens know someone who has been physically, sexually, or verbally abusive in a dating relationship.

If you or someone you know has experienced domestic violence, you are not alone. For more information — or to seek help — contact WEAVE.

Breast Cancer Awareness

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. The National Breast Cancer Foundation provides early detection screenings, including mammograms, breast health education and a supportive community. Breast cancer death rates among women declined 40% from 1989 to 2016. This progress is attributed to improvements in early detection.

Learn More

National Coming Out Day

National Coming Out Day is celebrated globally on October 11. Founded on the idea that increased visibility leads to decreased bias, this day encourages members of the LGBTQ+ community to come out and live their true identity.

We want to acknowledge that there are many reasons that people may not be “out.” Society is not always a safe and welcoming place.

Prior to the 2020 Supreme Court decision, an LGBTQ person faced possible firing or employment discrimination in multiple states.
A 2010 study found that 43% of gay, lesbian, and queer students on college campuses and 63% of transgender students tried to conceal their sexual and gender identities in order to avoid intimidation. Hiding one’s LGBTQ identity often comes with higher rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and social isolation.
Research shows that 1 in 5 hate crimes is motivated by LGBTQ bias. In California, of the hate crimes that were identified as gender based, 83% were directed at trans or gender non-conforming individuals. The murder of transgender individuals has increased year after year with the majority of the victims being trans women of color and the majority of those are black trans women.

Coming out is brave, freeing, and risky. On Oct. 11, we acknowledge all those who live their lives openly, proudly, and without shame. We celebrate the LGBTQ+ students, faculty, staff, and administrators who make our college a more inclusive and equitable place.

Connecting While Remote

Your Los Rios College Nurses would like to share five easy things you can do to bring some light-heartedness, laughter, and a sense of connectedness into our remote working environments.

Schedule watercooler or coffee breaks on Zoom or Google, with 10-30 minutes of unstructured conversation
Start meetings with an icebreaker — while this is difficult if there are fewer than 10 participants, here are some ideas:

Ask everyone to show their favorite coffee mug and explain why
Ask everyone to show their pet (or if they don’t have one, a picture of what their dream pet is)
Ask everyone to share their middle name and its significance

“Group watch” something together — text/call/FaceTime during a mutually liked TV event
Plan to have lunch together at least once a month from home on Zoom — add a twist by choosing one or two ingredients everyone must include in their meal (pasta, lettuce, soy sauce, etc.) and see what everyone comes up with!
Schedule remote drop-in happy hours/pizza parties — no work-related discussions allowed, but topics can include food, sports, pets, humor. You can even throw in themes like the '80s, Great Gatsby, superheroes, and karaoke!

President Gutierrez's Office Hour

President Gutierrez will be holding an office hour twice a month during the Fall semester. Office hours will be held on the second Friday at 8:30 a.m. and fourth Thursday at 2:30 p.m. The next upcoming office hour will be Friday, Oct. 9, 8:30 a.m. - 9:30 am., 2:30 - 3:30 p.m. Please look for an email prior to each event to sign up. Zoom info will be sent via a calendar invite on the day before the event to those who signed up.