Guess what? None of us took any pictures today! We're relying on a couple from my host Jerry Schaffer.
Team infront of the Bizzini Building
We spent the morning at Madera College, a 2 year community College with about 10000 students. My host Jerry Schaffer was a Dean at this college for many years until his retirement about 11 years ago. Dr Larry Johnson showed us around. We had a quick look at:
- the automotive shop (I've learned the IT can also stand for Industrial Technology...)
- biology and maths labs with one PC per student
- a resourced centre sponsored by Sarah's hosts Dorothy and Bill Bizzini
- a new student assistance centre which is a one stop shop for enrollment, financial and academic assistance
- a very well setup computer aided design (CAD) lab
- much more...
After out tour, we managed to meet a few key people from around the college to discuss our vocations. Sarah's new friend Jim (head of Campus police) was particularly interesting.
Dr Larry Johnson explains the finer points of the college to the team
Presented at a lunchtime meeting of the Downtown Merced Rotary Club. Jerry described it as the 'old man's club' of Madera. It has many many members, including the city manager, then newspaper publisher etc. They were a nice bunch. President Clarke (who drove Will and Glen from Reno down to Merced) ran the meeting forcefully, but amusingly. We had fun presenting. A few more flags were added to the hauls we are collecting for our clubs. Sarah managed to include another description for her relationship with Bobby. We've now had boyfriend, partner, fiance, significant other and better half... She's got to run out soon. I completely failed with my challenge, which was to include certain song lyrics in my speech. I had rehearsed, but forgot while I was in front of the audience! Who says this speaking gig is easy??
Presenting Flags at Merced Rotary
After the meeting, Immediate Past President Jan Mendenhall drove us over to University of California Merced (US Merced). She is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Development. Jan oozed confidence, capability and business! After our safe delivery, Alumni Affairs Coordinator Stefani Martinez led us on a tour of the campus. I think Stefani has time to run tours because UC Merced is only in its third year and only has about 80 alumni so far! Stefani was ably assisted by freshman economics student Emily. Emily is a Rotaract member, is helping set up a student endowment fund to produce scholarships and also volunteers with a ranger program that removes black berries from Yosemite (yes, they're a problem here too!). All in all, she was an admirable UC Merced ambassador and a great advertisement for the campus.
After our general tour, Glen and his host Carol slipped back over to Merced College to spend some more time looking at CAD software. Michelle headed off to learn about the stem cell research being conducted on campus, Sarah met and toured with the campus police and I met with Deputy University Librarian Donald Barclay to learn about the library.
The library is spacious, comfortable and inviting. It has been designed to suit the 21st century. They don't subscribe to paper journals and periodicals, these are all online. The 'reserve' is also all online. And book materials that professors want placed on reserve and digitised and distributed economically! No more racing in and madly photocopying the weekly readings... In fact, I didn't notice a single photocopier or printer while I was in the building.
Rita Staur showed Sarah around. She is head of US Merced police (don't call them security, they don't like that!). They have only 200 students, but about 10 police. Either these guys commit a lot of crime and need to police, or this is the safest place in the country!
Michelle had a tour of the stem cell research program in the science department. I would have loved to have been part of that, it would have been so interesting! I haven't spoken to her enough to have enough understanding to write about it, I'll see if we can add some more information later.
Glen left UC Merced after the first part of the tour and headed back to Merced College to spend more time with the CAD drawing program. He reckons that talking to the right software user can mean that he can learn things twice as fast!
Thanks to everyone who was involved in setting up another interesting day.
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