Excellence in Teaching: Julie Kuras with her mother Minnie, daughter Laura, and husband Gerald

Julie has been a Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) instructor for 30 years and served as department chair in the highly regarded nursing ladder program training 30-40 LVNs and RNs each year. Julie’s commitment to the training needs of the community, and her ability to recruit and mentor new faculty resulted in Allan Hancock’s CNA program eventually becoming the largest in the state, with 100% pass rates on the state clinical examination.

The rigors of the program necessitate 8-hour lectures throughout the semester to cover the required content; yet Julie finds innovative and creative ways to keep students engaged and excited, as evidenced through her exceptional teaching evaluations. Julie is regarded by her college as the model of excellence in Career Technical Education, inspiring all faculty, staff and students to work collaboratively to promote teaching and learning in educational fields that are consistently shown to have excellent job outlooks and that support the health and welfare of the community in numerous ways.

Teaching Nominees

Hal Malkin, Cerritos College

CCCAOE Excellence in Leadership (2 Awards)
Luann Swanberg, Ventura College

Excellence in Leadership: Luann Swanberg

Luann Swanberg, Performance Improvement Specialist – Ventura College
Luann wears several hats in her professional life including Coordinator for the South Central Regional Consortium. She utilizes many techniques to communicate with members in the region, including building an SCRC “island” in Second Life, a multi-user virtual environment. Visitors to the island from the consortium have access to resources and meet-ups to exchange ideas and information. As Performance Improvement Specialist, she provides leadership to the Ventura County Healthcare Action Partnership. This group, which now consists of local employers in the field of healthcare plus educators from K-14, came together from two county-wide roundtables five years ago, and the group is now focused on grant collaboration, information sharing and problem solving. This group is not funded and continues to collaborate under Luann’s leadership.

As a member of Ventura College’s Institute for Community and Professional Development, Luann brings her excellent facilitation skills to work effectively with employers from government, business, industry and education to develop results-oriented training designed to improve employee performance. Her work in this area includes the development of a Customer Service Academy used by the County of Ventura’s Health Care Agency, training hundreds of frontline staff in clinics and hospitals throughout Ventura County.

CCCAOE Excellence in Leadership
George Medina, Butte College

Excellence in Leadership: George Medina, Butte College, with American Honda Motor Company sponsors Brandon Shimizu & Steve Roberts

George Medina, Automotive Instructor – Butte College
George joined Butte College in 2000 as an instructor when the college launched a Honda PACT training program using his leadership skills to take it into the top 5 of 17 Honda Community College Partnership Training Programs across the United States. Under his leadership, the college obtained a donation of a Honda S2000 sports car from American Honda and developed a Motorsports Dynamics class. The students raced their car for three years, competing and winning many events both regionally and nationally. The Motorsports program has afforded the students many opportunities they would not otherwise have had, including one student landing her dream job working for a Ferrari Challenge race team.

One of George’s innovative approaches to leadership was to adapt the curriculum to the industry-based training modalities used by all Honda factory technicians, using hybrid online plus classroom training that the students will be using throughout their professional careers. George works with Honda dealership service managers regionally and in other states, helping to set up job interviews for his students, resulting in his students finding jobs working in Honda dealerships in states as far away as Illinois and Montana.

Excellence in Partnership: Scott Rubke, Glendale Community College; Ramon Abueg, Glendale Water and Power, Jan Swinton, Glendale College accepting for Don Nakamoto, Verdugo WIB

Glendale Water and Power (Ramon Abueg, Assistant General Manager~Electrical Services) and Verdugo Workforce Investment Board (Don Nakamoto, Executive Director) in partnership with Glendale Community College (Scott Rubke, Technology Division Chair)

When ARRA (American Reinvestment and Recovery Act) funding became available to train low-income adults and dislocated workers, three partners came together to create the Verdugo Power Academy to address the future shortage of utilities workers predicted to occur in the next five years. The whole process went from concept to reality in five months with the excellent leadership of the award winners. Three 16-week, 600-hour classes were offered through 2009 and will continue in 2010. The class covers necessary skill sets for utility workers such as electrical line mechanics, technicians, craft workers and station electricians. These funds provide tuition, fees, books, work clothes and necessary hand tools to participants. The curriculum combines classroom instruction from people working in the utility companies with hands-on, contextualized training in an electric utility operation.

The program was endorsed by a local consortium of 13 utility and power companies from Southern California, the Southern California Public Power Authority. Members of the SCPPA will also participate in job fairs to recruit graduating students.

The Lincoln Electric Company in partnership with College of the Canyons
Welding Department (Tim Baber)

Pacific Gas & Electric Company in partnership with Butte College Welding Department
CCCCIO Carter Doran Leadership Award
Barry Russell, CA Community College Chancellor’s Office