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- Written by: Yuba Community College District
Supported by Ascendium Education Group, ProjectAttain! will receive training, technical assistance, and direct financial support valued at $150,000 to develop and implement system-level strategies that create pathways to prosperity for rural, low-income learners.
Sacramento-based ProjectAttain! Joins a cohort of four other partnerships from Florida, Indiana, New Mexico, and Texas that will meet virtually and in person to share ideas, resources, and receive technical assistance.
The Yuba Community College District is participating as a Guiding Team and Advisory Member along with Shasta College, Sierra College, California State University, Sacramento, and Chico State University.
This project furthers the Degrees When Due Work that Yuba Community College District has been participating in through work with the Institute of Higher Education Policy, or IHEP, nationwide completion initiative.
“The circle of poverty and barriers to education and career advancement continue to hold back many of our friends and families in rural Northern California,” said Dr. Jim Houpis, Yuba Community College District chancellor.
“If California is to achieve the needed educational background for future employment and economic growth, greater effort needs to be directed toward achieving equity for our rural communities,” Houpis said. “I am excited about CivicLab’s support of ProjectAttain, and with our other efforts such as Degrees When Due, I see a brighter future for the counties we serve.”
“We are thrilled to be selected to participate in this national program,” said Dr. Jenni Murphy, founder of ProjectAttain! And dean of the College of Continuing Education at Sacramento State. “ProjectAttain! Exists to help adults who opted out of their education for one reason, or another get back on track with achieving their goals. Our efforts to support systems change in education and workforce development will be bolstered exponentially through our collaboration with CivicLab and by working in collaboration with the other partner programs across the country.”
More than 810,000 adults across Northern California’s 25 counties make up this initiative’s territory, possess some college, vocational training, or high school credits, but have not completed their degree, certificate, or diploma. In the six-county Sacramento region alone, more than 400,000 individuals face the same circumstances.
The Public Policy Institute of California predicts the state will have a shortfall of at least 1.5 million individuals with bachelor’s degrees by 2030. Additional data indicates the shortfall increases to over 3.3 million when factoring in certificates. ProjectAttain! Aims to learn CivicLab’s state-of-the-art processes to develop processes that will ultimately dissolve this issue in California’s north-state.
“This often overlooked and underinvested population deserves the opportunity to finish what they started,” said Evan Schmidt, Valley Vision CEO and ProjectAttain!’s executive director. “ProjectAttain! Is here to help those who have paused their education find their way back because we know that employers, economies, and communities benefit when more adults complete their education.”
CivicLab’s initiative launched in February 2022 with ProjectAttain!’s guiding team, composed of leaders in workforce and education, attending a two-day Stakeholder Engagement Process Learning Lab at CivicLab’s headquarters in Columbus, Indiana.
The ProjectAttain! Team will return in April for CivicLab’s System Building Lab to improve plans for making lasting change.
“Though many partnerships are deserving of this recognition and support, ProjectAttain! Demonstrated they had the relationships, capacity, and capability to make real change,” said Dakota Pawlicki, director of Talent Hubs at CivicLab.
ProjectAttain! Was selected through a national call for proposals. Each partnership in the cohort includes higher education institutions, nonprofit organizations, public agencies, private-sector partners, and other local stakeholders who work together to improve education and workforce outcomes.
To be selected, partnerships were required to submit plans that both improve outcomes for their residents and make lasting changes on higher education and workforce systems during the two-year grant period.
“Rural communities have largely been left out of national initiatives designed to improve postsecondary education and workforce outcomes,” said Kirstin Yeado, program officer at Ascendium. “Ascendium is pleased to help build the systems necessary to ensure more learners from low-income backgrounds earn degrees and credentials.”
ProjectAttain! Began in 2018 as a bold idea that mobilized area leaders to shed light on working-age adults with some college but no degree. ProjectAttain! Has grown into a dynamic nonprofit bringing together organizations, talent, and seed funding to serve as a catalyst for equitable social mobility and economic growth for all working-age adults returning to complete a formal education credential at the diploma, certificate, or degree level.
“By helping people complete their education, our work transforms lives, families, communities, and careers, and — at the same time — generates immense payback for individuals, employers, and our economy,” said Murphy.
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- Written by: Nora McDonald, University of Cincinnati and Helena M. Mentis, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Recently, the U.S. Social Security Administration sent out an email to subscribers of its official blog explaining how to access social security statements online. Most people know to be suspicious of seemingly official emails with links to websites asking for credentials.
But for older adults who are wary of the prevalence of scams targeting their demographic, such an email can be particularly alarming since they have been told that the SSA never sends emails. From our research designing cybersecurity safeguards for older adults, we believe there is legitimate cause for alarm.
This population has been schooled in a tactical approach to online safety grounded in fear and mistrust – even of themselves – and focused on specific threats rather than developing strategies that enable them to be online safely. Elders have been taught this approach by organizations they tend to trust, including nonprofits that teach older adults how to use technology.
These organizations promote a view of older adults as highly vulnerable while also encouraging them to take gratuitous risks in defending themselves. As information technology researchers, we believe it doesn’t need to be this way.
Older adults and online safety
Older adults may be at heightened risk of cybersecurity breaches and fraudulent behavior because they lack experience with internet technology and represent a financially attractive target. Older adults may also be more susceptible because they struggle with their confidence in using technology even as they recognize its benefits.
We have been developing technology tools that help aging Americans maintain their own online safety no matter what challenges they may face, including cognitive decline. To do so, we needed to understand what and how the people we study are learning about cybersecurity threats and what strategies they are being taught to reduce their vulnerabilities.
We have found that older adults attempt to draw on personal experience to develop strategies to reduce privacy violations and security threats. For the most part, they are successful at detecting threats by being on the lookout for activities they did not initiate — for example, an account they do not have. However, outside experts have an inordinate amount of influence on those with less perceived ability or experience with technology.
What ‘experts’ are telling older Americans
Unfortunately, the guidance that older adults are getting from those who presumably have authority on the matter is less than ideal.
Perhaps the loudest of those voices is the AARP, a U.S. advocacy group that has been carrying out a mission to “empower” individuals as they age for over six decades. In that time, it has established a commanding print and online presence. Its magazine reached over 38 million mailboxes in 2017, and it is an effective advocacy group.
What we found was that the AARP communiqués on cybersecurity use storytelling to create cartoonish folktales of internet deception. A regularly featured diet of sensational titles like “Grandparent Gotchas,” “Sweepstakes Swindles” and “Devilish Diagnoses” depict current and emerging threats.
These scenarios appeal to readers the way crime shows have historically appealed to TV audiences: by using narrative devices to alarm and thrill. Ultimately they also delude viewers by leaving them with the misconception that they can use what they’ve learned in those stories to defend themselves against criminal threats.
Folktales and foibles
One job of folktales is to spell out the hazards that a culture wants its members to learn in childhood. But by presenting cyber-risk as a set of ever-evolving stories that focuses on particular risks, the AARP shifts attention away from basic principles to anecdotes. This requires its members to compare their online experiences with specific stories.
Readers are implicitly encouraged to assess the plausibility of particular scenarios with questions like, Is it possible that I have any unpaid back taxes? And, Do I actually have an extended warranty? It requires people to catalogue each of these stories and then work out for themselves each time whether an unsolicited message is a real threat based on its content, rather than the person’s circumstances.
No, it’s not personal
Through this inventory of stories and characters, we also found that the AARP was personalizing what is, at root, a set of structural threats, impersonal by nature. The stories often characterize scammers as people in the reader’s very midst who use local news to manipulate older adults.
Real threats are not “sweepstake swindlers” or “Facebook unfriendlies,” with a live scam artist sensitive to the needs and foibles of each intended victim. There is rarely a human relationship between the cyber-scammer and the victim — no con artists behind the notorious “grandparents scam.” The AARP bulletins and advisories imply that there is — or, at least, implicitly foster that old-fashioned view of a direct relationship between swindler and victim.
Don’t engage
Perhaps even more worrisome, AARP advisories appear to encourage investigation into scenarios, when engagement of any sort puts people at risk.
In one post alerting people to “8 Military-Themed Imposter Scams,” they discuss “prices too good to be true,” when the very concept of buying a car on Craigslist, or an “active-duty service member” urgently selling a car, should be a red flag discouraging any form of engagement.
Internet users of any age, but especially more vulnerable populations, should be urged to withdraw from threats, not be cast as sleuths in their own suspense stories.
Protecting older adults in the age of surveillance capitalism
In order to reduce everyone’s risk while online, we believe it’s important to provide a set of well-curated principles rather than presenting people with a set of stories to learn. Everyone exposed to threats online, but especially those most at risk, needs a checklist of cautions and strong rules against engagement whenever there is doubt.
In short, the best strategy is to simply ignore unsolicited outreach altogether, particularly from organizations you don’t do business with. People need to be reminded that their own context, behaviors and relationships are all that matter.
[Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend. Sign up for our weekly newsletter.]
Because, in the end, it’s not just about tools, it’s about worldview. Ultimately, for everyone to make effective, consistent use of security tools, people need a theory of the online world that educates them about the rudiments of surveillance capitalism.
We believe people should be taught to see their online selves as reconstructions made out of data, as unreal as bots. This is admittedly a difficult idea because people have a hard time imagining themselves as separate from the data they generate, and recognizing that their online lives are affected by algorithms that analyze and act on that data.
But it is an important concept — and one that we see older adults embracing in our research when they tell us that while they are frustrated with receiving spam, they are learning to ignore the communications that reflect “selves” they don’t identify with.
Nora McDonald, Assistant Professor of Information Technology, University of Cincinnati and Helena M. Mentis, Professor of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
Judge J. David Markham sentenced Willy Tujays Timmons, 41, to 16 years to life in state prison for the June 2017 killing of Vanessa Yvette Niko.
In November, a jury found Timmons guilty of second-degree murder for Niko’s killing. They also convicted him of torture, inflicting injury resulting in a traumatic condition and aggravated mayhem, and special allegations of use of a deadly weapon and personally inflicting bodily injury.
Timmons had a history of domestic violence before the murder, which occurred on June 30, 2017.
Niko, a member of the Habematolel Pomo tribe, has become Lake County’s prime example of a victim of the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women, also known as MMIW, which often is rooted in domestic violence.
She had six children, three of them with Timmons. At the time of the murder, she and Timmons were reportedly staying away from each other.
However, on June 30, 2017, family members said Timmons picked Niko up, along with her youngest child.
He drove her to his grandmother’s residence on Bridge Arbor Road in Upper Lake, where he was living with his grandmother and father, according to Senior Deputy District Attorney Rachel Abelson.
It was there that a deputy would respond to a report of an assault. Timmons, high on methamphetamine and in a jealous rage, struck Niko on the head with a rock as she held her little daughter in her arms. Niko died shortly after the deputy’s arrival.
Timmons was arrested on the day of the murder and has remained in custody since then, with numerous delays before the case finally went to trial in the fall. He also had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity at one point during the proceedings.
While that insanity defense did not stand, defense attorney Tom Feimer stated during the Tuesday sentencing that a doctor who had testified at trial found Timmons to have schizophrenia, and that Timmons gave testimony consistent with that.
However, Abelson replied that Timmons’ “vicious acts” were not so much an issue of mental health as of him being under the influence of methamphetamine.
‘I just want to know why’
Throughout the proceedings, Niko’s cousin Ida Morrison has been present to bear witness on behalf of her family.
It was Morrison who was a driving force in the creation of a mural in downtown Upper Lake, dedicated last year, that portrays Niko.
Over the past four years, she had often been accompanied by Niko’s mother, Coveda Miller. Attending the hearings and trial was an effort that Morrison said on Tuesday had not been easy.
Miller was able to see the conviction in November, but she died in January.
Morrison was once again present on Tuesday morning, one of three family members who gave emotional statements about the impact of Niko’s killing on their lives. Abelson said a beautiful portrait of Miller was shown during the sentencing.
In her statement, Morrison recounted both her joy at the beginning of her younger cousin’s life — recalling her as a beautiful baby — as well as the horrifying ending.
“He took my baby girl’s life in front of her baby girl,” she said, adding that her nephews will forever be changed by the killing. “You have taught them to hate.”
She said Timmons doesn’t have to sit and watch the children become sad over everyday events. “What they want is for their mom Vanessa to be with them.”
Morrison said Timmons should have let Niko go, explaining she was trying to get a better life for herself and her children, and that she had been pursuing education. “You just kept dragging her back down.”
Niko’s oldest daughter, Leannlynn Faber, also gave a victim impact statement, during which she explained having to raise her siblings and reflecting on how her mother was missing out on knowing her grandchildren.
“You have torn my life apart,” Faber told Timmons.
“The reason I want to speak today is because my mother loved you,” she said. “And you did something horrible to her. I just want to know why. And how could you do that in front of my siblings?”
Faber said Timmons had spread lies about her mother. “My mom loved you with everything she had in her and I don’t know why you took a good person away from us,” she said, calling her mother “a beautiful soul.”
“I hope you’re tortured everyday knowing what you did to my mom,” she said. “You have to live with that everyday for the rest of your life.”
Retired teacher speaks in Timmons’ defense
The defense then called retired teacher Kent Wooldridge to the stand, a move that appeared to be meant to help Timmons but resulted in an admonishment from the judge and statements which were not factually correct, including his claims that Timmons was an orphan.
Wooldridge had no part in the trial and was not a witness to anything involving it, Abelson told Lake County News. At one point in the trial he was observed attempting to talk to the jurors and possibly interfere but Abelson said there were no jurors — when questioned generically — that were impacted by his conduct.
Wooldridge said he had known Timmons since he was in junior high school and had been a teacher in the school district.
At the urging of other staff, he had tried to work with Timmons on his truancy issues. Wooldridge, who said he’d had a foster home at that time, said Timmons hadn’t had a fixed address and was living with a cousin.
Wooldridge suggested that, had he been able to get Timmons back in school, they wouldn’t be sitting there today.
He said Timmons had come to his foster home to hang out with another young man who later was murdered by his girlfriend in another jurisdiction.
Regarding that case, Wooldridge said, “There is a giant sized hole in my heart that you could drive a truck through,” he said, adding that Timmons was at that funeral.
“There is plenty of misery to go around here,” he said.
“Growing up in Lake County is tough for kids in the best of circumstances,” Wooldridge said, adding that foster children have a particular challenge.
Feimer asked if Timmons had any adult family figures growing up. Wooldridge said no. While they’d heard at trial about aunts and cousins who did the best they could when he was little, but “there was no paper” that went along with him.
“When he needed help, a lot of times it wasn’t there. Had it been there, it would have been a nice thing. So he was on his own a lot,” said Wooldridge.
Feimer asked about Timmons’ positive qualities. Wooldridge replied, “There was nothing negative about him in sobriety. In sobriety, he was a fine guy.”
Wooldridge also claimed that Timmons has been kept away from other inmates in solitary confinement for almost three years due to death threats he has received.
As the questioning drew to a close, Judge Markham began to admonish Wooldridge for not answering Feimer’s questions and for making unrelated comments.
Markham told Wooldridge that he needed to respond to the questions, that it wasn’t the opportunity for a speech.
When Wooldridge again failed to respond as directed, Markham had the clerk read a question back and said he needed to give a yes or no answer.
When Wooldridge gave a “yes” response and then added in a statement about Timmons being a good guy, Markham lost patience.
“You need to really pay attention to me,” said Markham, telling Wooldridge that he would cut off his testimony. Wooldridge then stepped down from the witness stand.
‘I took her out of this world’
After Wooldridge left the stand, Feimer announced to the court that Timmons wished to apologize.
Wearing a striped orange and white Lake County Jail jumpsuit and accompanied by a deputy, Timmons made his way to the witness stand.
Sitting before the court, Timmons wept as he told Niko’s family he was sorry to everybody for her killing.
“There’s nothing that I could say that would make any difference. I took her out of this world,” he said.
He acknowledged that the impact of her death harmed others, adding that he believed her mother died of a broken heart.
“My babies have got no mom or dad now,” Timmons said.
“I feel like I dwell in hell a lot now, and I deserve it,” he said before stepping down after just a few minutes on the stand.
Judge passes sentence
Feimer had asked for Markham to strike one of the enhancements, which would have reduced the sentence by a year.
Markham declined to do so, and went forward with giving the sentence, noting Timmons’ criminal record and history of domestic violence — he was on probation for two such cases at the time of the murder — as well as the cruelty and callousness of the crime, which was committed in front of Niko’s child.
Markham pointed out that Timmons had acknowledged wrongdoing — but not until after a jury convicted him.
He went through the sentences for each of the charges, explaining that the final sentence was 16 years to life, with Timmons eligible for parole after 16 years.
However, Markham said that process would require parole hearings and the input of victims, adding he didn’t think any reasonable person would find Timmons should be released after 16 years.
Markham went on to say that he was not impressed by Wooldridge. To come into the court and tell the victims that he also had suffered, “The court frankly finds it offensive,” Markham said.
He added that neither he nor Wooldridge knew what Niko’s family had gone through.
It was noted during the sentencing that Timmons would receive credit — of more than five years on some of the counts — for time served toward that overall sentence, but that the overall calculation ultimately would be up to the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
If Timmons ever were to be released, Markham said he would face lifetime parole, unless he filed an appeal.
Markham then ordered Timmons to be remanded and delivered to state corrections to start serving his prison sentence.
Abelson said the family was strong throughout the painful process and delays. She said she was pleased the family got some justice for Niko.
“I just wish her mother was here to finally see it,” Abelson said.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
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- Written by: Elizabeth Larson
County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson announced on Thursday that she is retiring as of April 29, as Lake County News has reported.
On Tuesday, Human Resources Director Pam Samac went before the board to recommend beginning an open recruitment by Friday, leaving it open until the job is filled.
She said the first review of the recruitment would take place in 15 to 20 days, with the first round of applicants to be interviewed during the last week of April or the first week of May.
At the same time, Samac recommended having Human Resources and the County Administrative Office prepare a request for proposals for a headhunting firm, if needed.
Given the time needed to recruit for a county administrative officer, Samac recommended immediately opening a promotional — or internal — recruitment for an interim county administrative officer. That would run for five days, with interviews to take place the week of April 4.
If an internal candidate is appointed, Samac said it would allow them three weeks to work with Huchingson for a “thorough download” and some basic training.
She asked for an estimated budget of $3,500 for advertising and recruitment costs, explaining the county would advertise the position on the normal job boards and some additional sites.
Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said he liked the idea of seeking a different headhunter but he wanted to make sure to coordinate the open recruitment and the request for proposals, as he was concerned about potentially losing good candidates if the process went on too long.
Supervisor Moke Simon thanked Huchingson for her service and said it was going to be a “monumental task” for the board to find someone to fill her shoes.
Supervisor Tina Scott echoed Simon’s sentiments. “You’ve done an amazing job and it was a pleasure to work with you over the last five years,” she said to Huchingson.
“Time is of the essence here. We need to move fast,” Scott added.
Samac said she had heard from some headhunters who are saying they are too busy to take on more work, so she hoped to be able to find a company to do the work.
Huchingson said staff would agendize an agreement with a recruitment firm for the board to approve.
Sabatier moved to approve the recruitment strategy put forward by Samac, with Simon seconding and the board approving it 5-0.
Later on Tuesday, the county posted the interim county administrative officer job, which is promotional only, on its website.
The position’s salary ranges from $173,184 to $210,492 annually.
For the last several years, Human Resources has been under the direction of Huchingson’s office, raising questions about how much of a hand she ultimately will have on the selection of her successor.
Email Elizabeth Larson at
032222 Interim CAO Job — Job Bulletin by LakeCoNews on Scribd