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- Written by: North Bay Construction Corps.
A new chapter of the NBCC will take place in Lake County in Kelseyville.
Launched in 2017, the NBCC is a partnership of the North Coast Builders Exchange, the Career Technical Foundation Sonoma County, the Sonoma County Office of Education and Santa Rosa Junior College designed to address the growing need for new construction workers.
Construction Corps members meet once a week for two hours and one Saturday a month for five hours over a 14-week period from late January through mid-May.
Basic construction skills are taught by local contractors and other construction professionals and safety is emphasized at every meeting.
Students earn industry-recognized certifications such as CPR/first aid, forklift and boom lift certification, personal protective equipment, ladder safety and more.
Successful Corps members are invited to attend a two-week boot camp in June where students work full-time on a real construction project.
Graduates who complete the NBCC program are prepared to work in an entry-level position where they can be trained further by the company that hires them.
Successful students earn three college credits for work experience from their local community college that are transferable to a California State University. They also receive a $750 stipend for their boot camp work and a letter of recommendation.
An interview event is held on the last day of boot camp and construction industry participants have the opportunity to highlight the benefits of working for their organization to these potential employees.
In its third year, NBCC is expanding. The program’s goal this year is to graduate 125 students or more in a five-county region including Sonoma, Mendocino, Lake, Napa and Marin.
Students or building industry professionals interested in getting involved in the Construction Corps should visit the NBCC Web site for more information and a student application: www.constructioncorps.org.
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- Written by: Mendocino College
The extremely emotional and heartfelt ceremony began with a traditional native blessing by prominent elder Lorraine Laiwa, a beloved spiritual leader from the Manchester-Point Arena Band of Pomo Indians.
In a powerful speech by tribal council leader Michael Hunter, chairman of the Coyote Valley Band of Pomo Indians, he acknowledged Superintendent Reyes’ unwavering commitment to work collaboratively with the native community and his effort to recognize the important role of the Pomo Nation by bestowing this noble honor.
“Mendocino College is dedicated to creating a culture that embraces and strengthens the voice of all communities,” Reyes said. “Our commitment to equity and social justice at Mendocino College is built upon the relationships we’ve built with local tribes and in serving the many diverse communities in our district. Our trustees and the college community are grateful for the participation and support of the many tribal leaders in attendance.”
The renaming of the college square to Pomo Plaza and the monument dedication recognizes the longstanding presence of native people on local land and highlights the many contributions of the Pomo tribes.
Mendocino College acknowledges the Pomo’s concerted resistance, bravery, and survival against exploitation and hostility toward their traditional cultures and respectfully honors the resilience of the native people, their language, culture and sovereignty.
The prominent stone monument reflects both the district’s deep respect for American Indians, their cultures, experiences, and knowledge and the desire to strengthen mutually beneficial relationships with our American Indian communities.
The ceremony held on Wednesday, Nov. 7, included a traditional native dance, the presentation of a joint resolution from California Sen. Mike McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood; a certificate of honor from Governor-elect Gavin Newsom; and a certificate of recognition from United States Congressman, Jared Huffman. Vice President Velasco highlighted the successes of the Pomo Pathways program. The ceremony concluded with an official ribbon cutting ceremony.
The Mendocino College Ukiah campus is located at 1000 Hensley Creek Road, Ukiah.
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- Written by: Mendocino College Foundation
It’s a new, open-ended memorial endowment fund established to provide scholarships for graduating theater department majors and to supplement the theater department’s operational budget.
They invite you to support the fund today with a tax-deductible gift.
Jim Williams devotedly established the fund and named it after his first principal role, Elwood P. Dowd, in the Mendocino College production of Harvey, directed by Ellen Weed in 1992.
Williams is a retired educator whose life has been enriched by his participation in live theater.
He invites others to join him in providing a long-term sustainable legacy that will help theater majors complete their education while also supporting the ability of the department to provide an enriched educational experience.
Contact Katie Fairbairn, executive director of the Mendocino College Foundation, 707-468-3164 to be a part of the Elwood Fund.
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- Written by: Yasmin Anwar
Today, they’ve taken a major step closer to understanding how practicing the LSAT makes students smarter. They’re watching their eyes.
Their findings, published today in the Science of Learning, a Nature Partner Journal, make the case that eye movements, such as a fixed or shifting gaze, convey more information about the split-second computations we make during cognitively challenging tasks than neuroimaging technology.
“With eye tracking, we can literally watch the learning process in action,” said study lead author Silvia Bunge, a professor of neuroscience at UC Berkeley. “When the eyes dart around, the person is scanning for relevant information, and when the gaze is fixed on a particular image or piece of text, she or he is encoding information.”
Future applications of eye tracking include using computers, phones, tablets or other digital devices to record students’ ocular movements during learning activities.
“In this way, we could monitor their understanding and mastery of the materials, and detect whether they are having difficulty learning,” Bunge said.
Bunge notes that eye movements are closer to the speed of thought than any other behavioral indicators. By comparison, neuroimaging technology such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) cannot capture such speedy brain computations in real time.
For example, in the seven or so seconds it took students in the study to solve a logical reasoning problem, researchers recorded at least 23 eye movements. Among other clues, ocular activity indicated which data students absorbed, or disregarded, to arrive at their conclusions.
The study builds on previous findings by Bunge and fellow researchers that track cognitive changes in students during mentally challenging learning tasks. For example, a 2012 study found that a three-month LSAT course strengthened the circuitry in the brain’s frontoparietal network and boosted the reasoning skills of two dozen young adults, compared to pre-law students who did not complete the course.
To follow up, a 2015 study tested young adults on a broader range of cognitive skills, including spatial problems, while inside an fMRI scanner. It showed that students activated the prefrontal cortex less strongly and performed the tasks more quickly and accurately after LSAT preparation, suggesting that they had less difficulty with the reasoning problems.
“However, knowing that a particular brain region is active isn't enough to know for sure why a task got easier,” Bunge said. “So we developed a novel way to assess the brain mechanisms underlying learning using eye gaze patterns.”
In this latest study, researchers compared students training for the logic games section of the LSAT, which requires intensive reasoning skills, with students practicing the exam’s reading comprehension section. After 33 hours of practice, the logic games group showed stronger reasoning skills.
By tracking their eye movements during these exercises, researchers developed a set of measures that indicated when students were shifting their attention or engaged in reasoning, and which particular cognitive skills improved with practice.
“We found that the biggest change associated with reasoning practice was reduced time spent encoding and integrating relevant pieces of information,” Bunge said. “Notably, we showed this boost in performance efficiency for reasoning tests that bore no resemblance to the LSAT problems.”
More broadly, she said, “These results should interest psychologists and neuroscientists who study learning mechanisms and/or higher cognitive abilities, as well as education researchers studying learning in real-world contexts.”
Belén Guerra-Carillo, a Ph.D. student in psychology at UC Berkeley, is a co-lead author on the study.
Yasmin Anwar writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.