(inspirational piano music)
-: Welcome to Chaffey College's "Report to the Community".
I am here at the Rancho Cucamonga campus
where we have been doing some very exciting things,
and I can't wait to tell you about them!
Every year, we share with you, the community,
our points of pride, so that you know your investment in us
is really paying off.
For example, for every dollar you invest
in Chaffey College students,
they give back more than twice the amount to this community.
And Chaffey College adds more than $485 million annually
to the region's economy.
As you know, the last two years have been quite challenging
across the globe due to COVID-19.
We have had our own challenges here at Chaffey College.
Some of our students have faced job
and housing insecurity,
and some of us within the campus community
have either suffered from the virus itself
or even lost loved ones to this virus.
Despite these trying times,
we have not given up on our mission.
Our students depend on us to succeed
and we have had to take innovative approaches
to keep them on the path
toward their academic and career goals.
You see, going to college, taking classes,
and passing tests is difficult in itself.
But just imagine if you had to face all of those things
without knowing whether you could pay your light bill,
let alone pay your tuition.
And that's a familiar story for many of our students,
and their difficulties have been particularly serious
during this pandemic.
In fact, more than 60% of our students
depend on financial aid to make it
through their college journey.
This is the story for Jared Barnes,
a member of our basketball team and a kinesiology major.
Because of programs like financial aid and Panther Care,
Jared has thrived at Chaffey College
and is set to graduate next spring.
(pensive guitar music)
-: In all of our lives, we have certain points
where it's just like, before this point,
after this point, it's like a landmark.
My life before was unguided,
my mom passed away when I was 13.
Me and my dad needed money,
we needed to pay bills and stuff,
so I got the job at HomeGoods,
I remember seeing on Snapchat, Instagram, all my friends
were in college, doing, you know,
that whole college experience.
I felt like I was missing out on something
that young people should experience.
Like, every day I remember opening boxes,
all that type of stuff, like,
"I can't keep doing this, I need to get back into school,
"because I'm going to lose my head
"if I stay here any longer".
I reached out to Coach Prentice and Coach Klein,
and they helped me get into the basketball program.
They told me all the programs I didn't even know
that were a thing, like the Panther Care program,
helped me get food, helped me pay for anything
that I needed on campus.
I applied for financial aid, and it covered for 100%
of all my needs here at Chaffey.
I had never seen that much money in my bank account
at once before.
I was like, "Ooh, I'm gonna buy shoes, I'm gonna buy this,
"I'm gonna buy this", but I had to,
I didn't do any of that, I had to save it. (laughs)
I was living paycheck to paycheck, pretty much.
Me and my dad lost the place that we stay at,
and it was for about six months, I had to sleep in my car.
And I was like, couch hopping for my friend's houses,
but I would still go to work,
and I would still go to school
and go to practice.
'Cause one thing I noticed was nothing really felt constant.
The only thing that didn't move, didn't go anywhere
was coming to school.
That didn't change at all.
That was one thing I had,
I felt like I had a home here for sure.
Every time I'm here I feel like I'm on the right path
to something much bigger than myself.
A lot of people don't know their purpose
on this earth, but I know mine is to help people.
Whether it be with feeding people,
getting people off the street, rehabilitating people,
the next ten years, I want to help people
as much as possible in any way I can.
So when I look back, I can say my life before Chaffey
and then my life after Chaffey.
My mom, she would be so, oh man,
I think about this all the time,
she would be so proud of me right now.
That I'm not in the streets
or doing things people that I know are doing,
and I'm in school, and,
I'm close to getting my degree.
So she would be proud of her baby boy.
-: As I mentioned earlier, Panther Care
played a critical role in keeping Jared on track.
This program and its employees
have been on the frontlines
since the start of this pandemic.
They've handed out food during drive-thru pantry events,
helped get homeless students into temporary housing,
and provided students with emergency funding
to make it through.
And we need it more than ever.
We discovered that more than 60% of students
had experienced at least one form of basic need insecurity
during this pandemic.
Now, I'd like for you to meet Albert Rodriguez,
who directs this program and makes sure
that we support all students holistically.
-: My name is Albert Rodriguez, I'm the manager
of Panther Care here at Chaffey College.
Panther Care is a holistic program
that serves the basic needs of our students.
And when the pandemic hit, we kind of realized
that those needs were going to be amplified,
because a lot of our students that were already struggling
and working one or two jobs to stay afloat
were at the front line of the pandemic layoff.
And I think that's where we began to see the hard hit
of the pandemic on our students.
In my heart of hearts, ideally,
we wouldn't have a program like Panther Care, right?
We wouldn't have students that are struggling,
we wouldn't have students that are going without meals.
But that's not the reality that we face,
that's not the reality of the communities that we serve.
Our program is a very unique program on campus,
we are encouraged to be innovative with the support
that we provide, so I think having the opportunity
to be there and step up for students
when they're in most need is really special to me.
There was one student who even sent Admissions and Records
an email, and it just said "The dude from Panther Care
"doesn't even know, but he saved my life
"during the pandemic".
So it's that strong of a program where it's like,
we don't always know the impact, right?
The thing I always tell students is, like, "Ask me".
The worst that I can say is "Sorry, I don't know,
"but I'm gonna find out for you".
Having the opportunity to listen to students,
listen to their stories,
I let them know
that I am a first generation college student,
I am the son of a migrant farm worker,
and a construction worker,
because I think we often stigmatize what poverty looks like,
what that income struggle looks like,
and I know firsthand that our students are striving,
our students are resilient, our students see the hope
that education can bring them.
And ultimately, that's the joy that I see
in the work that I do.
It's not just a student going through this process
of getting their degree, there's oftentimes a family
behind that person, so when I've gotten the chance
to have the child in the backseat smile
because we handed them a juice box, or a coloring book,
or a gift during our Christmas drive,
there's no price tag I can put on that, right?
Like, Chaffey College made my child smile.
That is amazing, right?
And how many colleges can say that?
-: While we're working toward helping our students
meet their basic needs,
we have another significant issue to address,
and that issue is technology.
When the pandemic forced us to close down our campuses,
we pivoted all of our classes online.
And this was no easy task.
For our students who were accustomed
to seeing their classmates in person,
they suddenly found themselves adapting
to a virtual environment.
Certainly, we found ourselves in the world of Zoom meetings.
To keep students on track,
we gave them the tools they needed.
And that meant providing them with thousands
of loaner Chromebooks, WiFi hotspots, and other equipment.
For Shuvette Marshall,
a communications major at Chaffey College,
those tools meant the difference between continuing
on her path toward graduation
and putting her dreams on hold.
-: My name is Shuvette Marshall.
I was born in San Francisco.
In 2016, my mom passed of a heart attack.
She wasn't sick, she was fine, I saw her that morning
and everything was fine.
After that, my entire life changed
because she was my world.
My dad, he told me that I would need to figure it out.
When I moved from the back house that I was in,
I had nowhere to go,
and I would always stress that being here
at Chaffey, talking to counselors,
like, "I don't know what to do", like,
"I'm stressed out, I want to graduate,
"I want to be in school, but in all honesty,
"I don't think I'm gonna make it".
I know that my life has not been the easiest.
I thought that I was going to graduate in a four year
and be married by then and so on, but, you know,
life had a different turnout, and so it's just been a lot
of like, just trying to stay on my feet.
Chaffey went the extra mile when I didn't expect it.
When I got here, it was more than just education.
It was helping you live at the end of the day.
COVID hit, I had a computer, but it kept crashing,
like, constantly.
They started talking about, like,
"Oh, we can hand you a Chromebook
"if you don't have a computer".
And I was like, "Yes, yes, yes".
The motel that I stay at, their WiFi is not the best.
And so I struggled with doing online tests and quizzes,
like, sometimes it would shut off and submit my quiz
and I did not finish.
I had one professor who I told that to this semester,
and he called my phone and was like,
"Oh, we have a hot spot".
And I was like, "Seriously?" (laughs)
'Cause that would be, like, a great help right now.
I graduate in the fall, and then I'm going to go on
to my bachelor's degree, and see what life has for me.
There's times I feel like I don't want to do this at all,
I'm like, "What am I doing?"
And I have to really think back on what I'm doing this for.
I love coming to campus and talking to my counselors
and talking to my teachers,
and I found it to be a home for me, personally.
Because I didn't feel like I had one.
-: Our faculty and staff played a critical role
in making the shift to online learning.
To all of our professors and support staff at Chaffey
who toughed it out through the last two years,
I have two words for you, thank you!
The countless hours you worked
to keep our students going has not gone unnoticed.
And I want you to know that you are deeply appreciated.
Our Academic Senate President, Professor Neil Watkins,
is here to tell you about what it took
to make the shift to a virtual learning environment.
-: My name is Neil Watkins, I teach English here,
I've been here about 18 years.
I remember it was the Friday before spring break,
we learned, you know, we had two weeks
to figure out the online teaching.
That was a big shock, a lot of people like me
had never taught online.
It was really stressful, I mean,
it's been the most stressful 18 months of my entire career.
The stress takes a toll, but we kind of fight through that.
Luckily, we had a lot of good support
from the Distance Ed team.
Because of some of the work
that Alisha Serrano and Adriana Arce
and Angela Cardinale had done,
pre-pandemic, we had robust Canvas sites,
we had an online support system for students already,
we couldn't have asked for a smoother transition
thanks to them.
At Chaffey, we have a strong culture of innovation
and supporting students, and I think the pandemic
has been a good example of that for the faculty,
like, the willingness to change
and do whatever it takes to help students.
We're only just getting a glimpse
of what the students are going through.
But their lives were hard before,
and are just immeasurably challenging the last few months.
They are amazingly resilient.
They do not give up, they face innumerable challenges,
and they are willing to keep going
and get the education they need.
But now, as we're reopening
and we're seeing students on campus again
and seeing our colleagues on campus,
that's what makes a college thrive
is not just the book learning and the taking exams,
but it's the interactions that we have with each other
as colleagues or with our students.
I think that's what's getting a lot of us excited
for the spring and thinking about being further open
and connecting with each other again.
Chaffey makes this whole area better.
It's providing not only the job training
for our students or the education or pathway to transfer,
it's a force for positive change in this area.
-: Many students we supported during the last two years
were just starting their college journeys.
But what is it like for a student
to graduate during a pandemic?
In May, we awarded nearly 3,900 degrees to students,
the most in Chaffey College's history.
We also awarded more than 1,600 certificates.
Many of these students were able to continue their journeys
with the help of the Chaffey College Transfer Center.
Natalya "Wynter" Muro, a 2021 graduate,
got accepted to six of the seven universities
for which she applied.
And now, she's attending the University of California Irvine
and hopes to one day become a lawyer.
We are so proud of her.
-: I'm Natalya "Wynter" Muro,
and I'm from Fontana, California.
My mom, she's a single mother.
She wasn't able to finish her academic journey,
and ever since I was little,
she would always emphasize to us how important it was
to continue our education,
because she never had the opportunity to do so.
My major is administration of justice,
the reason why I picked that kind of stems back
to my sophomore year of high school.
I remember that there was a specific case,
it was an incident of a student at Stanford,
his name is Brock Turner,
the way that the court handled that situation,
I was just really upset
that the victim didn't get the justice that she deserved.
I was really intimidated by the amount of years
that come into law school.
Everybody was like, "It's gonna be so hard,
"it's so difficult".
I feel like being here has given me
the time to grow that I needed.
I kind of just refuse to be blindsided by anything else,
whether it was a negative remark, or whether it was a test
or a midterm or a class that I'm scared of, like,
I just kind of kept my eyes on the prize,
I guess you could say.
It's important to kind of equip yourself
with the mindset that you can do it.
It does not matter if you started at a two year,
it does not matter if you went to adult school
and then decided to come to a two year
and then built off of that,
all that matters is that you have that determination in you,
and that strive to do better and to end up where you are,
and you'll just be set.
A big goal of mine is just to make my mom proud.
I know how hard she's worked for us
and how hard she works to be able to help us out
with school and how important it is for us to continue it.
Latina women kind of make up a small amount of lawyers,
so knowing that I would eventually be a part
of that small number,
I just feel gratitude and satisfaction
knowing that I completed something so big,
and once I do attend law school,
being able to say that I'm inspiring my little cousins
who are going through schooling right now,
and just being able to set that example for them
is something that's really important to me.
I'm very happy that I have made my family proud,
I hope to continue to do so.
-: For months now, we have waited for brighter days
in our state and our nation.
And while we do not know what the future holds,
we are hopeful that with the decrease of COVID-19 cases,
we will see more of our students return to their campuses
to continue on their academic and career paths.
Chaffey College has been a part of this community
for more than 100 years.
We've survived through many, many challenges.
We lived through the pandemic of 1918,
and we have emerged from this pandemic stronger and wiser.
I am confident that the lessons we have learned
have prepared us to take on the next 100 years or more.
Chaffey College is what I consider
the "Jewel of the Inland Empire".
That's because we play an important role
in the health of the economy.
Our graduates work in all sectors of the workforce,
from healthcare, to logistics, to business,
to manufacturing, education, and the arts, among others.
We are proud to play a role of helping
to fulfill our workforce needs and improve the lives
of our students and their families.
Economic recovery is more important than ever here in 2021.
Thank you, thank you for supporting Chaffey College!
Go Panthers!
Girl: Chaffey on three!
Team: One, two, three, Chaffey!
(inspiring pop music)