Hi folks. Daren Otten here. This is an update associated with your board meetings from…
Hi folks, this is Daren Otten, Superintendent/President at Copper Mountain College, and your report from the February 13, 2025, regular board meeting.
Coming out of closed session last week, the Board of Trustees did act to non-renew a singular management contract and then ultimately moved into our regular session with several new employee introductions, including Juan Carlos “JC” Moreno, Samantha St. Claire, and Olivia Lazarus. Super exciting to see some new exciting folks there and getting excited about joining the college.
We moved into the first ever Constellation Award. And everybody’s aware of the fact that we’ve had our Star Award for many, many years. And it’s really something that I want to give Dr. Mike Reese credit for naming this. You know, what do we want to call a group of stars when they’ve done something really above and beyond and extraordinary? And in this case, the group of stars was honored for their work around the California Virtual Campus and specifically name the Constellation Award due to that. And as some of you may have heard, there will be some additional lanyard pins coming that instead of just having a singular star, people who are part of Constellation Awards will have several stars that get grouped together for that and that’s something that’s pretty exciting as we look at honoring and recognizing the work that all of us do and especially those who go above and beyond.
As we moved into the regular reports, my report primarily focused on kind of the annual budget cycle and that’s continues to be where we’re at. I think the big takeaway from the budget cycle component is that we’ve seen Governor Newsom’s preliminary budget revision, budget release, and there’s quite a few different things that are in there when it comes to California community colleges that are outside of Prop 98.
Things like the common technology platform, the common cloud platform. And there’s an awful lot of money that’s tied up in those particular line item budgets that I will be, to be fair, a little bit surprised if they make it to May and they are priorities for the college. But I do think that the May revision will ultimately be reflective of the investment that the state’s gonna need to make to support the victims of the LA fires. I think that there’s also some changing landscape on the federal side of things that are going to prioritize probably other things for the state of California as we navigate forward.
I do want to acknowledge that Sandy Smith also highlighted our Have a Heart fundraiser that was the previous weekend. Had a great turnout for that and it was really exciting to see folks ultimately participate and win some pretty cool things that were going on there.
One of the other things that was done in the regular reports is Student Showcase brought forward by the Academic Senate. And this month, Amiel Escobal was brought forward by Chloe Letson-Wahlberg. And what folks may or may not know about Amiel is that Amiel’s a dual enrolled student and specifically at Twentynine Palms High School and is a very amazing young person who definitely has taken advantage of the dual enrolled program, but really brought forward a level of enthusiasm and really infectious personality.
Praise for the efforts that not only Morongo Unified has taken, but what we’ve taken to make this accessible to students across the basin. And I was really excited because as far as I know, this is the first time we’ve, we’ve recognized a dual enrolled student who’s somebody who is a primary high school student as our Student Showcase.
And I think that that really starts to reframe, at least for me in my mind, the Copper Mountain College student. It’s not your average 24-year-old adult. It is 14, 15, 16, 17, 18-year-olds along with 45 and 50 and 55 and 60 year-olds. And it’s just really amazing that we’re able to span that particular spectrum.
One of the other things that was shared at the board meeting last week is the update around where we’re at in the accreditation cycle. Keep an eye out. Many of you will be starting to see drafts that come through your various constituency groups. We are now to our constituency review period. Which it’s gonna be critical that everybody takes a few minutes to take a look, provide feedback, and ensure that the things that we have documented there Are very much in alignment with our practices. And I say that a little bit with a tone of caution and just a tone of you know, we do an awful lot of things that seem regular, but then when we see them written down, they may not seem quite right. And so those are the things I definitely want folks to be looking for and providing feedback through the process. The other thing I want to give folks a heads up about specifically to accreditation, and this is for those of you who’ve been through the process before, it used to be commonplace that accreditation reports, these ISER reports were several hundred pages long. And we will still have a pile of pages associated with evidence and those sort of things, but the primary report most likely will be somewhere between 50 and 70 pages, and that’s pretty amazing when we talk about the opportunity for streamlining and really creating a document that’s usable rather than this great big pile of evidence and pile of narrative that is oftentimes redundant. I say that enjoy a shorter ISER as you take a look at that.
A reminder that we’ve got our joint board meeting between Copper Mountain College trustees and the Morongo Unified Board of Education on April 22, 2025, MUSD hosts the spring meeting. Normally, as many people know, those are kind of information meetings, but we are targeting that for an action as we’re hopeful that we can get our updated CCAP agreement, which guides our dual enrollment efforts. to both boards at that time because it does require an action from both the Copper Mountain College Board and the MUSD Board.
Additionally, our auditor was here presenting the annual audit for the fiscal year ending of June 30, 2024. I want to commend Meredith, Jared, all the team in the business office, and really everybody across the campus for, again, another clean audit. And this is something that we should be very, very proud of.
The other thing that the auditor, Kyle Holtz, noted with it, we are one of the few colleges that has managed to figure out how to address our OPEB liabilities. And that OPEB liability has actually become an OPEB asset, which really helps us from the standpoint of our fiscal health and our financial health as an institution.
One of the other things I just wanted to shout out going through curriculum consent last week was the new Water Tech programs. And this is really a manifestation of partnerships and interest by the local water agencies. And these are some amazing jobs that are out there in our communities for folks who can get through some of the Water Tech programs as we move forward. So I’m super excited about that. And that’s something that ultimately I think will be not only a win for the college, but truly a win for our students, our graduates, and the local employers.
Finally, as we kind of wrapped up the meeting, there was a couple of things that’ll be coming up in March. I want everyone to be aware that I will actually not be at that particular March board meeting, which is on March 13, 2025. Vice President Jane Kwon will be actually sitting in my seat facilitating that meeting on that particular date as I will be joining all 116 college presidents across the state as we convene for conversations that really are focused primarily on kind of what the federal government is telling us to do, what the state is telling us to do, and ensuring that we have the legal way forward to ensure that we are able to serve our students. And that we are able to fulfill our missions and our obligations to our community. So I want to, first of all, thank Board President Lombardo, the rest of the board, for allowing me the opportunity to go make sure I’m at that conversation, but also the professional development opportunity for Vice President Kwon to engage in that facilitation. And then just thank Jane for all the work that she’s going to have to do, in preparation for that meeting.
So I will see you all again in April and I wish you all the best.