CMC President's Board of Trustees recap and news for November 2025

Hi, folks. Daren Otten, Superintendent/President here of Copper Mountain College, with a recap of last week’s board meetings. And I say board meetings, plural, because we had the joint meeting between CMC trustees and the Morongo Unified School District School board members. And so just a couple of quick updates from that meeting.

In particular, there were updates provided by MUSD on dual enrollment, career technical education, early college, and then both on the Measure C and the CMC Coding Club. I think everybody who lives here locally knows about Measure C, and specifically, if you’ve recently paid your property taxes, you’ve seen that on there.

And it was nice to get an update specifically about many of the projects that they are doing and investing across the entire basin. And so that was a great opportunity to learn a little bit about that. But as always, Amy Woods provided an update around dual enrollment and career technical education. And I want to just really thank Morongo Unified for their continuing partnership around dual enrollment. The scale and growth that we’ve seen there and the impact that it’s had on students access to college and frankly, students transferring here to CMC and then going forward to their next steps.

Copper Mountain College provided updates on several items as well, starting with a tutoring and learning center update from David Charbonneau, specifically focusing on dual enrolled students and their access to the TASC. There was a King of the Hammers partnership update provided by Kristian Murin Nies and Evelyn Sheffield, and then the last thing that I wanted to highlight and make sure everybody was aware is that Sandy Smith shared the updates to the Greenleaf Scholarship. So, I think everybody is very familiar with the fact that one graduating high school senior from across the Morongo Basin, and technically it could be from any of the Morongo Basin high schools, homeschools or other, as long as they graduate here in the Morongo Basin, are eligible to apply for the Greenleaf Scholarship. One grand prize winner is obviously selected annually, and that person has the opportunity to get entirely a free ride here at CMC, a transfer partner, and in many cases, onto a master’s degree.

The average over the last decade has been about a quarter million dollars that that’s worth to a student. That is a lottery ticket, but we’ve always have about somewhere between four and eight finalists. And those finalists going back to the original document originally were awarded $500 for being a finalist. Tells you a little bit how old the document was that created the scholarship. Five hundred dollars doesn’t go very far these days. And so a couple of years ago, it was up to $1,000. What the Foundation board of directors chose to do is that it is now all finalists will receive $10,000. And let me be clear, it’s up to $10,000. So essentially they get $5,000 per year that they are enrolled at CMC. And so that all of a sudden becomes a very significant finalist award that will help students continue their educational journey here at CMC. And it’s really a testament to the fiscal stewardship of the Foundation that allows those additional awards to be made.

Moving on to the regular meeting that started at three, there was a closed session in advance with several items. No action came out of it. I will share that my evaluation is currently underway by the trustees, and they were provided a progress report on both goals and many of the annual items that they want to see me accomplish, and I will be providing an update to the campus here later this year. Just kind of on the progress that we’re making collectively moving into the regular items. There were several, you know, normal reports, all the kind of typical things that I’ll encourage you to go take a look at the website for. But I wanted to highlight in particular two policies and two policy updates that the board authorized. And first and foremost, the was item 9 A, which was the immigration enforcement AP, which is AP 3415. There were several updates associated with this, and specifically the latest law signing by Governor Newsom has changed how we have to notice the campus in the event of a immigration enforcement action on our campus.

So a couple of things I just want folks to be aware of, first and foremost, globally within the California community college system we are not currently aware at this time of any actions targeting California community colleges. However, we have a policy in place that if there was ever an immigration enforcement, there’s a couple of things that we ask. We don’t ask you to get involved. We don’t ask you to do anything except redirect any agents that may be serving warrants to my office. And if I happen to not be here, ultimately, my acting president will be the one who navigates whatever warrant placement happens. And so the thing that I ask is that, please, if there’s ever an immigration enforcement action that ever happens on this campus, refer them to the Superintendent/President’s Office, and we will navigate any of the paperwork and legal concerns that may come from that particular space. Security also can help with that. So, you know, if Security is easier to get a hold of or my office, whatever, we’ll make sure we get involved with addressing any of the agent needs on that particular space and following our policy, which again, is AP 3415. And I encourage folks to take a look at it.

The change, though, was really how we noticed the campus. And so that’s the big one that it just is kind of qualified when and how we notice the campus around an immigration enforcement. And so that students and employees will be made aware if there ever is a immigration enforcement action on this campus.

The second item I wanted to make sure I highlighted specifically was the AP 3900, which is the speech time, place and manner. So for most folks, I think everybody knows that down in the Student Services quad, that grass area is designated our free speech zone. Here at Copper Mountain College, we often have folks who choose to set up shop there and share whatever message they happen to be interested in sharing with our campus community. For the most part, as long as that speech activity is not obviously targeting protected classes, racist, etc. etc. etc. those free speech activities are pretty much globally allowed as long as there is an individual there with it. So for example, you can’t just set up a bunch of handouts and leave. There has to be someone there. But for the most part, there is very limited things that people can’t do or say in that in that particular area, as long as it doesn’t slide into, again, hate speech.

What has become a little bit of a question of late is that if we have designated activities happening. So for example, if we have a volleyball tournament or a student Welcome Week activities happening in there, do we have the ability? And legally we do have the ability to designate another area to be the free speech area while those events are going on. So the primary free speech area will always remain the grassy area down in the student services quad. However, the policy change associated with what the board authorized last week now is that the amphitheater, just due to the north of the north entrance of the Student Services quad, is now the secondary free speech area. So, for example, if the grass is being seeded and we have to close the grassy area, the designated area, the secondary area will be the amphitheater. If there’s an event, we can close that area specifically to support CMC students and put the free speech area outside.

This is not about limiting free speech. It’s actually about increasing the ability to ensure that we’ve got spaces for people who want to share messages. And so that’s the change associated with that one.

The last thing that I’ll highlight specifically from the meeting was that coming up in December is the annual organizational meeting. And so what that means is the Board of Trustees will once again select a board president, a board vice president, a clerk of the board, and then assign the remaining trustees to the other two open committees that we have representation on. This happens every year. There is no kind of formal process where the vice president becomes the president. The board every year seeks nominations from itself to then determine who will hold the various positions. And so, as with everything that will be determined at that particular meeting, and we look forward to seeing who the board president is starting at the December meeting and moving through all of 2026.

So that concludes my report from last week. Again. For more information, more detailed information, please see Community, which is on the direct link from the home page. If you scroll down on the right side, you’ll find that and you can see the latest agenda and take a look at all of this stuff in detail there. Other than that, folks have an amazing Thanksgiving and enjoy some time with the friends and family.