E-Blast June 2021
Chico Senior High School in Chico Takes Top Award at Competition, is Honored by Mayor Coolidge and City Council
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif., June 1, 2021 – Today, the City of Chico honored the high school students from Chico Senior High School who won the 2021 NorCalCyber Mayors Cup – Far North region.
On Saturday, April 17, educators, industry representatives, students and local mayors celebrated the successful conclusion of the NorCalCyber Mayors Cup 2021, an annual event bringing together nearly 200 students from middle schools, high schools, and colleges across the region to compete in a single-day event. This year’s NorCalCyber Mayors Cup was held virtually due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The NorCalCyber Mayors Cup brings awareness to cybersecurity careers and provides students an opportunity to engage in team-based learning. The Sacramento County Office of Education and the California Community Colleges North Far North Regional Consortium hosted this year’s event. The event was organized by SynED, a national non-profit organization that identifies emerging best practices for effective articulation between employers, job seekers, and education providers.
Four Mayors participated in the Awards ceremony, including Chico Mayor Andrew Coolidge. He was joined by Darrel Steinberg of Sacramento, Jill Gayaldo of Rocklin and Gloria Partida of Davis. The competition
“game” was hosted on the Cyber Skyline platform, the same platform that is used by the well-known National Cyber League (NCL).
Submitted by Wendy Porter, Regional Director, Employer Engagement, ICT-DM (Far North)-porterwe@butte.edu
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — A new school project will not only help students get real world work experience, it will also make a small dent in South Lake Tahoe’s housing problem.
Starting next year, students at South Tahoe High School who are in the construction path of career technical education will begin building tiny houses.
“We came up with this idea of adding tiny houses in upper level classes to add more diversity to classes and have a CAPstone project which will tie everything they’ve learned together in one project,” said Lake Tahoe Unified School District’s Kim Carr.
South Tahoe Career & Technical Education offers technical skills training to help students enter the workforce right from school. Construction is one of the 12 CTE pathways offered.
Students in the construction pathway learn and develop basic construction skills such as framing, electrical and plumbing. The classes are taught by professionals in the field.
Submitted by Kim Carr, K-12 SWP Pathway Coordinator-kcarr@ltusd.org
CCC TechConnect is excited to present the 2021 Online Teaching Conference (OTC) June 21-23, 2021. This year’s theme is “Empowering the Online Teaching Community” and highlights OTC’s role as a premiere event for educators to share and access the latest best practices in online learning. This year, OTC is proud to feature California Community Colleges Chancellor Eloy Ortiz Oakley as the presenter of the keynote address: “Equity-Minded Teaching Online.” more
Workshops and sessions are posted to the website.
We are excited to announce we have launched Fall 2021 Conference Registrations.
TWO CONFERENCES. We will have an IN-PERSON Conference and a VIRTUAL Conference.
In-Person is September 29 – October 1
Virtual Conference begins on October 12
Why Attend?
Both conferences will focus on sharing high-quality practices that address a full range of issues facing Career and Workforce Education educators, administrators, and other key stakeholders as you seek to prepare students with the knowledge and skills to succeed in the future of work.
Who Should Attend?
We invite educational leaders within Career and Workforce Education including faculty, K-12 career educators, employers, industry experts, or sponsors partnering with a community college.
The North/Far North Center of Excellence is sharing a semi-monthly report on job postings, unemployment, industry measures, and other current data. The COE sends out a condensed version of the economic update in the COE North/Far North email newsletter.
Download the June COE economic update here.
Find this and past economic updates at the North/Far North website.
Sign up here to receive the economic update in your email inbox.
SUMMARY
Unemployment— Unemployment rates continued to slowly decline in the North/Far North region. In April, the Far North counties’ average unemployment rate decreased by 0.6 percentage points, falling to 7.2%. The unemployment rate decreased by just 0.2 percentage points, to 6.8%, in the Greater Sacramento (North) subregion.
Labor Force— Labor force numbers dropped again in March and April in both subregions. In March and April, the Greater Sacramento (North) subregion’s labor force declined by 1.8 percentage points. In the Far North during the same period, the labor force declined by 1.1 percentage points.
Report Spotlight— Agriculture Workforce Needs Assessment – Woodland Community College Lake County Campus, June, 2021- COE Research Manager, Ebony Benzing. Ms. Benzing’s new workforce needs assessment analyzes industries, occupations, and local training programs.
Submitted by: Aaron Wilcher, Director, North/Far North Center of Excellence, WilcheA@losrios.edu
When it comes to sustaining local talent pipelines, most rural areas face a similar problem: young adults migrate away because they think there are better job opportunities elsewhere.
But in Siskiyou County, not only are there plenty of possibilities right in students’ backyard, but as district supervisors have long lamented, there is also a booming regional demand for skilled workers that, if left unfilled, will hurt local businesses.
That’s why College of the Siskiyous is working hard to turn Far-North towns into workforce development hubs, keeping talent close to home.
According to Christina Van Alfen, Program Grant Manager for Career and Technical Education at the College, “The idea came together that we needed to engage with industry partners even more and really look at the whole package of how we can start to work with our employers locally to keep our students here.”
The journey began in 2015 with the California Career Pathways Trust (CCPT) grant, awarded to COS and its high school partners to promote pathways in Career and Technical Education. When the College convened with industry partners and realized they were losing young workers, improving career pathway strategies became an immediate priority
When it comes to paving the way for crisis-proof careers, Sierra College’s new construction bootcamps are essentially unstoppable.
Beginning in Fall 2019, the College has been connecting students to a suite of three non-credit courses, allowing them to earn their OSHA 10 certifications while networking closely with potential employers… all in just seven to nine weeks.
“The attractiveness of a program like this is that it allows students to explore without losing anything but time — time that will most likely lead toward a passion in their life,” says bootcamp instructor Louie Garcia, Faculty Chair for Construction and Energy Technology at Sierra College. “All you have to do is show up and learn.”
Developed in partnership with the North State Building Industry Association (BIA), the bootcamp affords participants the standard industry requirements and 21st-century skills that businesses need.
“There is a shortage of skilled labor currently,” says Amanda Reynaud, Executive Director of the North State Building Industry Association Foundation, an organization representing over 550 members and 50 thousand industry jobs. She explains that while more than 7,000 positions will need to be filled in the region by 2022, “no one’s pushing out people to meet those numbers.” Such a labor shortage would affect home affordability, especially at a time when companies can’t build fast enough.
