OK, let's get serious

Workplace food contests are always fun. One of the most lasting -- and disturbing -- memories I have of my time at a former employer is a hot dog eating contest held to raise money for United Way.
The "yuck" factor wasn't nearly as strong earlier this week when the Havasu campus staff held its annual Chili Cook-Off to collect food for the Community Food Bank. As organizer Sandy Webber explained to the panel of judges, "This is a chili tasting contest, not a chili eating contest." Gorging was expressly discouraged.
True to the spirit of the event, the judges approached the task of evaluating each entry for aroma, taste, texture and spiciness with the delicacy and seriousness of fine-wine connoisseurs. The three staff members who won honors for "best red," "best green," "hottest," "best of show" and "people's choice" claim bragging rights for the entire year.
More importantly, about 20 grocery bags of food were collected for the food bank.

Funky town

This is a college with serious educational objectives, and you can hardly turn around without bumping into a Ph.D. But we also aren't afraid to get silly.

That was obvious yesterday when I was asked to stop by outside the campus library to take a photo of the cast of "Staying Alive," a mystery dinner event that's being sponsored by our campus Student Government and Phi Beta Kappa.

Several faculty and staff members have agreed to throw all self-respect away and don outlandish clothing and disreputable looking wigs to portray parodies of iconic figures from the 1970s, including Andy Warthog, Bruce Leap and John Revolting.

They also weren't too shy about getting into character for a publicity shot. It was strange enough seeing English faculty Dan Pund (as Andy Warthog) with hair, but I'm still trying to get my mind around the sight of Student Services Director Tim Keith (in back, smiling) striking the famous pose from "Saturday Night Fever."

How soon can I start?

Sometimes the smallest happenings of the day, the ones that don't show up on my weekly task list, leave the biggest impression.
Today I received a phone call from a young woman who stated bluntly "Do I have to make an appointment or can I just come in and see you today?"
By all means, come in and see me.
She said she was a single mother who had recently moved to Havasu and gotten my card from someone with job services. She'd already applied for financial aid and received an award letter. She dressed up to come see me, and she was really, really, really ready to start college.
"I've never been to college and nobody I know has ever been to college," she told me.
She thinks she wants to become a pediatrician.
I spend a lot of my time talking to people about how they can get the fastest possible retraining so they can be employable again right away. (Unfortunately, it rarely works that way.) So it was a pleasure to discuss what MCC can do for an ambitious and determined young person who's plotting a course for a four-year university degree ... and beyond.

A chill in the air

It may sound silly in a place where the average daytime temperature in October is over 90 degrees, but it's really starting to feel like fall here at the Havasu campus.
It's not just the fact that early morning temps in the mid-70s have us pulling on sweaters. The real feeling of the season comes from preparations for our annual Pumpkin Festival. In fact, as event planner for the campus, I've got Halloween on the brain.
Today found me at WalMart purchasing cobwebs and $178 worth of candy (through the generosity of the MCC Foundation). That's only about 2/3 of what we'll have on hand at the event. When we throw a Halloween party at MCC, we want to be sure the little ones come away with enough sugar to rot every tooth in the Western United States. It's job security for the graduates of our dental programs.
(In fairness, our dental students hand our toothbrushes and toothpaste to the trick-or-treaters to promote responsible candy consumption.)
The greatest thing about Pumpkin Fest is that everyone gets in the act. It's really like a big Halloween party our students, faculty and staff throw for the community. So maybe we can be forgiven if it has a goofy, handmade quality. Self-expression rules!
Pumpkin Fest happens Oct. 30 from 4-6 p.m. (also on the Kingman and Bullhead City campuses). Come get a sugar rush.

It keeps me thin

I spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon observing the exertions of the hardest-working woman in Havasu. I can't prove that designation, but watching this woman push queues of shopping carts into one of our local grocery stores - one after another - that was the title that naturally came to mind.
I had set up my little table outside the store to hawk MCC's wares (education) to the people bustling in to pick up a few items on the way home from work or school. It was the first time I'd targeted a grocery store for my outreach efforts, and it was gratifying to reach a new set of prospects - people I hadn't encountered before.
I talked to one young woman about MCC's culinary arts program. She wasn't discouraged by the fact the program classes are conducted at our Bullhead City campus, about an hour's drive away. She wanted to open a restaurant some day.
"I love to cook, so I figure that's what I should do," she said.
Others, like the woman pushing the shopping carts from the parking lot, weren't sure exactly what direction they should go in, they just knew they needed to find a new career. She said she'd worked for several years in a business tied to real estate and was laid off about a year ago. She was "starting over," she said.
I think one thing is certain: When she finally moves into that new career with better pay and less physically demanding work, she can expect to put on a few pounds.

I love this club!

Whatever controversies may surround Columbus Day, I can say that it inconvenienced me some by forcing me to postpone my weekly visit to our local employment services office. (Undeterred, I will be there tomorrow.)
On the other hand, the unexpected extra hours in my office today did allow me to clean up the place - which periodically gets downright cluttered with program fliers, party supplies and to-do lists - before a visit from a prospect this afternoon.
I met Richard on a visit last week to a new job club hosted by Mohave County Library. The organizer was kind enough to put me on the agenda with a employment counselor from the county's "One-Stop" center.
It turned out to be one of the most rewarding recruiting junkets I've undertaken. The people I met there were on a mission to find a job, a new career, more education, all of the above.
Usually I'm the one calling prospects trying to get them to come in a see me. The folks in this group have been calling me for appointments, hungry to know where they can go from here.
Yeah, they make my job easy - and they make me want to work all the harder for them.

Thanks for coming

More than 40 Lake Havasu City community members and MCC students filled out self-assessments and spoke with licensed mental health professionals last night during MCC's first National Depression Screening Day event.
That may not sound like a lot of people, but given the misunderstanding of mental illness still prevalent in our society and the resultant stigma associated with it, the turnout felt like a great success. At one point there were eight or 10 people, both young and old, intently filling out assessment forms, elbow to elbow around the large table in our main lobby.
My primary job was to keep the coffee pot full and the cookie tray neat, but it felt good being associated with an event that clearly made people feel comfortable enough to come forward for help - and it felt good that the place they could do that was MCC.
Now it's on to Pumpkin Fest, sort of from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Fired up

I think I've probably mentioned before that my role coordinating the exhibits in the campus art gallery is one of the best parts of my job. The Gallery adds a dimension to our campus, and our lives, that is rare and beautiful, and I really enjoy being a part of that.

Right now, The Gallery is home to a show of student-created ceramics and pottery. Some of the pieces were crafted by students in Ceramics I and II and reflect the students' imaginative solutions to the artistic "problems" posed in class (see photo). Others are the very skilled creations of members of the campus' Student Art League, and they're as good as anything you'd see at a professional craft show.

What's really great is that all these pieces will be available to purchase Oct. 23 from 1-5 p.m. during our annual Student Art League Pottery Sale. The majority of these beautiful pieces - including gorgeous mugs, cups, bowls and bud vases - are real bargains. So, of course, I'm obliged to point out it's a great opportunity to shop for Christmas gifts.

The most fun you can have while sterile

I've just returned from the Surgical Technology lab, where some first-year students were practicing a few of the procedures that will one day become second nature to them: scrubbing, gowning, gloving, covering their instrument trays.
There's so much to learn and so much to remember - and this is before they ever learn when to pass what instrument in a real-life operating room.
But the students were engaged, constantly asking questions and calling out answers; they were using their newly acquired terminology and getting a lot of the answers right. It made me feel like, if I ever find myself in an operating room with one of them, I'll be in good hands.
I was there to shoot some video, which I'll turn into a mini-documentary. I'll also link to it here, so check for it in a week or two.

Self-reliance

Today I had the chance to talk to one of our success stories, Loretta H., a mother of four who was working as a waitress before earning her nursing degree at MCC. She's now an RN working in the cath lab at our local hospital.
"I look back at 10 years ago and what I was doing and what I’m doing now, and I think ‘What happened?'" Loretta says.
What really struck me about Loretta's story was how getting an education and a better-paying job changed her economic relationship to her family. She decided to go back to school to begin with because of her fear of what would become of her family if something happened to her husband, the main breadwinner in the household.
Now that she's an RN and earning a good salary of her own?
"I’m not so dependent on my husband," Loretta says. "We’re equals now as far as income coming in. If something happened, I know I could take care of my family. It's good to know I can take care of myself."
Loretta's improved economic status has also helped her husband, who recently opened his own business.
"Which he probably wouldn't have been able to do if I hadn't have gone back to school," she says.

Gadget crazy

I have a notoriously short attention span, so I try to keep myself interested by tinkering. The latest object of my fussing around is this blog, to which I have added a nice picture of our marquee (at right) and a slide show (also at right, underneath me).
I've been in my position a couple of months now and taken pictures of just about everything that's happened around here, so I've accumulated some terrific photos - if I say so myself - of our campus life.
I'll continue to add images as the school year progresses, and given how jammed-packed our schedule is, the show should get pretty long.
I was asked to take the photo of the marquee by my boss, Recruitment Manager Jason Hembree, who wanted a distinctly Havasu view for a commercial he was producing. I wound up taking the photo on what had to be the only overcast day we'd seen in months, so the sky behind the marquee came out gray rather than the typical crystalline blue. It almost seems like false advertising.

Recipe for the future

What do you get when you take about 500 high school seniors, add 30 or so college and military recruiters and shake with some really loud music? The answer might be a college fair such as the one Anne and I attended today at Lake Havasu High School.
After introductions, the purple-and-gold hoard was let loose to visit 20 tables and collect as much information (and as many freebies) as they could in 30 minutes. Meanwhile, a very hip Navy recruiter was acting as DJ at the end of the gym nearest our table. I could only presume break dancing or the modern equivalent was taking place inside a circle of at least 100 enraptured, clapping students gathered by the booming speakers.
Anyway it was quick but fun, and we saw a lot of hopeful young faces with serious aspirations that we hope will include Mohave Community College, even it if is along the way to a four-year degree or farther.

Too much of a good thing?

In many ways Mohave Community College is a microcosm of the communities it serves.
Here in Lake Havasu City, when the weather gets cool, the social calendar gets ridiculous as community groups and our city fathers try to cram as much fun as they can into the beautiful weeks of autumn.
MCC's Havasu campus isn't immune from event mania, largely because we're part of the community and want to participate as much as we can. Determined to be overachievers, we're planning a blow-out month, including the college-wide Depression Screening Day Oct. 8, a Coffee at the College about Havasu history Oct. 10, the London Bridge Days Parade Oct. 17, another Coffee at the College Oct. 20, the annual Art Club pottery show and sale Oct. 23 and - gasp!- Pumpkin Fest Oct. 30.
The craziness begins Oct.3 when I'll be representing MCC at the annual Community Health Fair inside Relics & Rods Hall at the Aquatic Center. (At the same time, a few thousand walkers clad in pink will be just outside enacting the also-annual Breast Cancer Walk, meaning more than a few socially active community members are challenged to literally be two places at the same time.)
Hey, if you're reading this, come down from 8 a.m. to noon, grab a free lip balm, grab a free pen, grab a good education, grab a cool, new career!

¡Viva Mexico!

It's said travel is broadening, but oftentimes so is sitting in a chair in a classroom on a college campus.
Today minds were broadened by a little party we threw on campus in observance of Mexican Independence Day.
We didn't fire pistols in the air, just watched a PowerPoint presentation, listened to a couple talks, examined brightly colored handicrafts and sampled traditional Mexican refreshments.
The event was attended by several prominent members of Lake Havasu City's Hispanic community and hosted by beloved local icon Bertha Nyboer. MCC instructor Angelina Ortiz contributed a Mexican punch flavored with jamaica, or hibiscus blossoms, and displayed some beautiful traditional costumes she had made herself.
Far from dry, the history lessons about Father Hidalgo, "El Grito" and Colonel Augustin de Ituribe, first emperor of Mexico, were fascinating. It does us good to be reminded other countries have compelling histories, too, particularly our close neighbor to the south.

It starts here

One of the duties of my job that stretches me the most is my monthly appearance on KNTR radio's talk show "Speak Out." Though I worked in print media for four years and have blogged here and elsewhere, I've never experienced the peculiarly vulnerable feeling of speaking live over the air waves. It's a new world.
The good thing is, the shows are never about me. I'm just there to plug campus happenings and provide a pleasant segue to the real guest, one of our own MCC personalities.
Today it was Chemical Dependency Studies faculty Lori Howell who went on-air to promote the National Depression Screening Day event the college will host Oct. 8 from 3-7 p.m. Lori's famous around campus for being a dynamic speaker and I was pretty sure she'd represent the college well - and take the pressure off me to fill dead air.
Lori was really articulate when talking about mental illness and its relationship to substance abuse and dependency. I imagine she reached a lot of people when she talked about how the screening day is a "grand opportunity" for people who are struggling with even low-level depression and other disorders to make their first hopeful step toward diagnosis and treatment.
You can hear the Sept. 15 Speak Out at www.kntram.com/kntr-am-speak-out. Click on the files marked "hour 1, part 2" and "hour 1, part 3" to hear Lori.

Hard act to follow

I see several of my fellow MCC bloggers are talking about the college's appearance this past weekend to the Mohave County Fair, so I might as well not buck the trend.
Mohave Community College had a prime spot in the exhibit hall that gave everyone wandering through the perfect opportunity to grab a free pen or a big horn tattoo - a favorite with the 10-and-under crowd.
I was there to talk to fair goers about how careers start at MCC, but I had some tough competition in the form of a robotic dog driving a miniature fire truck, complete with flashing lights and a siren. The thing eerily knew what color a child was wearing and spouted "Nice hat!" to every kid wearing a straw cowboy hat.
Actually, it wasn't so eerie, because most of us - including the more clever children - knew the dog was being controlled by a group of good-looking young firefighters at the nearby booth of the Northern Arizona Consolidated Fire District.
I couldn't really begrudge the robotic fire dog the eager attention it was getting from kids and parents. I'd rather watch it than listen to me, too!

Art for art's sake

The campus hosted its first art gallery reception of the season last night, and it unexpectedly offered a lesson in contrasts that was kind of delightful.

Several very dignified members of the Lake Havasu City Art Guild, of which our guest artist Janet McIntyre is a member, mingled in the gallery with a couple dozen clay-smeared - and very hungry - students from instructor Alan Hall's ceramics class.

The best part was that it appear everyone had a pretty good time. Janet herself seemed to enjoy talking about her installation, "Wall Jewelry, with her art guild friends, who said they hadn't seen anything like it come out of Janet's studio before.

She also seemed fascinated by watching the reactions of the art students, who appeared to range in age from 18 to 60, and was pleased to chat one-on-one with those who sought her insights.

Part of the mission of the campus' gallery is to offer cultural enrichment to the community at large. Still, there's no doubt the gallery is really for students like Alan's to expand, twist and stimulate their developing artistic muscles.

I'm really looking forward to the next exhibit, a show of the ceramics created by these very students. That's coming in October.

No excuses

Today we locked our front doors so faculty and staff could spend a few hours talking about what kind of college we want to be.
A couple of themes were repeated. One was that we needed to keep working at helping our students learn what it means to be in college. The other was that we need to hold them responsible for their own education.
While on the surface these two objectives seem contradictory, one really leads into the other, because, of course, part of what it means to be a college student is to be a responsible adult.
There will undoubtedly be an ongoing discussion about how to bring about the second objective, but Mohave Community College has already made strides toward realizing the first through initiatives like mandatory pre-registration orientation, "Introduction to College" classes and extra help provided through supplemental instruction and tutoring.
It may sound like a platitude, but the people here really are committed to helping students succeed and stay the course once they're on the college rolls. The main things the students needs to provide (and they're not insignificant) are courage and perseverance.

The reward for our labors

As we head into the long Labor Day weekend, it's hard to relax. Next week seems like a big week and I feel a buzz of excitement that I expect to linger.
Part of the jitters comes from knowing I'll have to squeeze a week's worth of work into three days because the college is not only closed Monday but also Tuesday for the annual all-staff, in-service day.
Wednesday the Lake Havasu campus, along with those in Bullhead City and Kingman, will host two orientation sessions to tell people about a program that will use federal stimulus money to pay for students to complete five high-demand vocational certificate programs. (See my previous post.)
Organizers from the Mohave County Workforce Development office admit they have no idea how many people to expect at the sessions. I made several calls this week to people I've talked to who expressed interest in these particular certificates and all said they'd come.
While not everyone who shows up will make it through the process of assessments and applications to become part of the five planned cohorts, the program still feels like a life-ring being thrown to people who have found themselves with the rug pulled out from under them by our country's changing economy.
Those who don't enter the fast-tracked cohorts will have made significant progress toward entering MCC as regular students. Any way you look at it, it's a great opportunity for everyone involved.

Now we're getting somewhere

For anyone who's been wondering where all that enomic stimulus money is going, I have a delightful example. A few drops from that $700 billion bucket are splashing down on Mohave County to train residents - many of them dislocated, unemployed or underemployed - to work in high-demand jobs that pay a decent wage.
During my weekly visit to the Department of Economic Security's employment services office today, I was excited to be able to tell the people who stopped by my table about the program, in which MCC is joining with the Mohave County One-Stop Career Center to fast-track cohorts of students in the county's three largest cities through five of the college's most popular certificate programs: certified nursing assistant, medical assistant, medical billing, electrical and HVAC.
Ads about the program are due to appear in local papers in the coming week leading up to a pair of orientation sessions scheduled for Sept. 9 on MCC's southern campuses. I'll also keep you updated in this space as plans for the program progress.