What's Happening at Cañada? Week of September 28, 2015

Cañada College Invites the Community to Participate in Citizen Science Project

Cañada College Invites the Community to Participate in Citizen Science Project

 

Public volunteers needed to assist Scientists in their research on Olive Fruit Flies

 
 

 

Who: Cañada College Science & Technology Division, led by Adjunct Biology Professor Diego Nieto is looking for Peninsula residents to assist in its Citizen Science Project.

What: The Citizen Science Project will assist Cañada College in gathering data for olive fruit fly biological control.

Olives have traditionally been a valued community resource in the Woodside-Redwood City area. The olive fruit fly is a global pest, whose larval offspring (i.e. maggots) feed exclusively on olives. Unlike the small fruit flies commonly found in our kitchen that are only capable of depositing eggs in overly ripe or rotten fruit, the olive fruit fly targets ripening fruit to deposit eggs, which makes this robust fly especially problematic for olive growers.  As a result, nearly all unmanaged olives in San Mateo County eventually become infested, which can introduce other contaminants (e.g. bacteria) that intensify fruit rot. 

One of the reasons that this pest has become so problematic in California is that insect predators or parasites that specifically target this pest were absent.   In an effort to fill this void, researchers in the field of “biological control” have collected highly co-evolved parasitoids (i.e. minute wasps) from Sub-Saharan Africa, which is thought to be this pest’s evolutionary point of origin. 

Why We Need Your Help: Psyttalia lounsburyi has begun to disperse into the community surrounding Cañada College.  As it becomes more widely established in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties, it will hopefully reduce the olive fruit fly population levels in olive trees found in hillsides and wild areas, urban landscapes, neighborhoods, gardens, and eventually, olive orchards.  

A collaborative “Citizen Science” project exploring the spreading of this insect in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties would greatly help researchers and community members to learn more about the scope and scale of this project.

How You Can Help:  Citizen Science is where public volunteers can assist Scientists in their research.  Scientists benefit from having a lot more data to analyze and a pool of volunteers willing to help. To participate in this project, simply follow the instructions below:

• Collect 50 ripe or ripening olives per olive tree
• Place olives in container immediately after collection
• Five weeks after collection, open the rearing container, place contents onto a clean flat surface, and count the insects
• Provide follow up information/data

Website: A more detailed description of the project can be found at www.canadacollege.edu/olivefruitfly  

To get involved with the project, please contact Diego Nieto at nietod@smccd.edu 

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What's Happening at Cañada? Week of September 21, 2015

District aims to rebuild Coastside adult education

Efforts underway to restore Cabrillo adult school

(Source: Julia Reis - julia@hmbreview.com; from Half Moon Bay Review)

Coastside educators are working to restore the Cabrillo Adult School thanks to renewed efforts at the state level to better carry out and fund adult education.

The recession of 2008 led to the closure of adult schools throughout the state as school districts used funds that had once been dedicated to adult education to avoid making cuts to other programs. Cabrillo Adult School, which held classes at Cunha Intermediate School and Half Moon Bay High School, was closed at the end of the 2008-09 school year.

Not long after, the Half Moon Bay branch of the College of San Mateo closed its office in response to cutbacks in the San Mateo Community College District. Since then, adult education offerings on the Coastside have largely consisted of English as a second language and computer literacy classes through Cañada College. Puente de la Costa Sur has its own slate of courses, as well.

Now, Cabrillo Unified School District is gearing up to offer beginning ESL courses that would feed into Cañada’s semester-long Half Moon Bay class. The coordination with the community college is intentional, a part of state legislation passed in 2013 in response to the spate of adult school closures.

Assembly Bill 86 required districts that still had adult programs to maintain them for two years. In doing so, it also set aside $25 million to provide two-year planning and implementation grants to regional consortia made up of community college districts and school districts. The state’s directive, as outlined in the bill, was that community college and school districts should work together to develop regional plans to better serve local adults’ educational needs and avoid the duplication of services.

In San Mateo County, the consortium is known as Adult-Education College and Career Educational Leadership.

Two years after AB 86’s passage, the state responded by earmarking $500 million in the 2015-16 budget specifically for adult education. This fiscal year, funds will be apportioned first to the school districts and county offices of education that were required to maintain their adult education programs the last two years. Beginning in fall 2016, the money will be appropriated directly to the planning bodies themselves, taking into account providers’ effectiveness and need in the region.

Future funding availability will dictate how Cabrillo Adult School grows. What’s currently known is that it will serve Half Moon Bay and Pescadero and will eventually be housed at Pilarcitos High School. The school’s principal, Raj Bechar, will serve as its director.

Before its closure, Cabrillo Adult School offered a range of classes, including ESL and citizenship as well as cooking and yoga. However, the passage of AB 86 mandates that districts spend grant funding toward improving five specific types of education programs. These include classes needed for a high school diploma or equivalency, courses for immigrants, programs for disabled adults, apprenticeship and career technical education programs with high employment potential.

The revived adult school will initially focus on offering free beginning ESL courses this fall, with a start date not yet determined since the school is still in need of classroom space and teachers. Helping Bechar lead the school’s restoration is Shari Deghi, whom Cabrillo hired over the summer as its new adult school coordinator. Deghi helped start ESL classes on the coast 25 years ago and has taught at the San Mateo Adult School for the last seven years. She recalls how her interest in teaching ESL was sparked when she first moved to the Coastside and witnessed a man getting arrested for shoplifting because of a misunderstanding caused by a language barrier.

“I said, ‘We have a huge problem in the community. Shouldn’t we be able to talk to each other?’” Deghi said. “Employers have a really hard time finding unskilled laborers because their level of English is so low. There is more employability with more people speaking English. That will help provide more jobs for local people.”

Deghi added that while the adult school’s focus will be on offering ESL classes initially, the goal is for the school to host classes that benefit adults with varying needs, including those who want to acquire skills to advance in their current job or profession.

For Bechar, who assisted with Cañada College’s ESL classes at Cunha when he taught there, restoring the Cabrillo Adult School means that lives will be improved throughout the community, and not just for those taking the classes.

“Many adults have children in the district,” Bechar said. “A child with an educated parent is that much more able to succeed in school, so it helps the entire community.”

"Pillar Point and Half Moon Bay" by Doc Searls from Santa Barbara, USA - 2009_04_19 - Wikipedia

PAUL BRIDENBAUGH - AN EXHIBITION OF RECENT PAINTINGS AT CAÑADA COLLEGE ART GALLERY

PAUL BRIDENBAUGH - AN EXHIBITION OF RECENT PAINTINGS

CAÑADA COLLEGE ART GALLERY

The Cañada College Art Department is pleased to present an exhibition of recent paintings by the artist Paul Bridenbaugh. This art exhibit is at the Cañada College Art Gallery in Building 9. It runs from September 14 through October 15. The gallery is open on Tuesday and Thursday, 9:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m., and on Monday and Wednesday, 10 a.m. - 1 p.m. OR by appointment.

Visual artist Paul Bridenbaugh presents a selection of recent paintings at Cañada College in Redwood City, Calif. These highly cryptic non-objective oil paintings reference a range of lolspeak idioms, video game explosion sounds, east Asian slang, emojis, and invented words taken from personal communications. Bridenbaugh works with oil paints on stretched linen canvases, wood, and aluminum panels.

Bridenbaugh received an M.F.A. in Painting from Columbia University in New York City, and a B.A. in Painting from the University of California at Santa Cruz. His work has been exhibited at numerous venues in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, and Mexico City. He is an Associate Professor of Art and Art Gallery director at Skyline College in San Bruno, California. Bridenbaugh lives and works in the San Francisco Bay area.

For more information about this show or the gallery you can contact Bill Morales at 306-3343, or moralesw@smccd.edu.

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