Welcome ACCE Members/Colleagues!

We have planned and are participating in a record number of events and activities on behalf of you, our community and continuing education colleagues this year.
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Community Education professionals are revising of the Guidelines for Community Services, a document originally written with ACCE's help in 2012.  Our Continuing Education colleagues tirelessly advocate at the policy level for our students, and are participating in a growing number of educational policy-making opportunities at the state level.

Please keep these dates on your calendar, and register today. Topics at the Drive-in workshops will reach you via the listservs and website shortly. 

Our theme this year accurately reflects who we are in support of our students: Agents of Change. ​

Upcoming workshops: 
Bond, ACCE Bond: Community of Practice in Continuing and Community Education

Northern Workshop
Monday, November 6, 2017
CCCCO
1102 Q Street
Sacramento, CA 95911
​Register online.

Southern Workshop
Thursday, November 9, 2017
Mt. San Antonio College
1100 N. Grand Ave.
Walnut, CA 91789
Register online.

And don’t forget our Annual Conference, coming up in Jack London Square, Oakland, at the Waterfront Hotel, February 7 through 9, 2018. Details will be available soon! 

We are an all-volunteer organization working in support of Community and Continuing Education statewide, and we appreciate your support. 
 
On a personal note, thank you for the opportunity to serve as president of this organization in support of our students.  I look forward to a great year of working with you as an agent of change for our students in their lives. 
 
Sincerely,
Frances DeNisco, President, ACCE

In a recent informal survey conducted by our ACCE Community Education Council Leaders, Rosie Armstrong and Frances De Nisco, members were asked the following question:

What software are you currently using to manage your student enrollment for Community Services/Education classes?

Of the 20+ respondents, over 60% were using Augusoft Lumens as their primary system to manage their community education programs and revenue.

Other known vendors include: ACEware, Ellucian, ActiveNet, RegPack, RevTrak/RegWerks, ProClass, ASAP, CampusCE, Access/Evolve

We appreciate all of those who participated in the survey. ACCE does not endorse any vendor. Should you have any questions, please let us know.

Erica LeBlanc is a treasure, not only because of her professional dedication and contributions to ACCE and our students, but also because she is the kind of person everyone wants as a friend.

Erica had been active in ACCE events long before she joined the board in 2005.  Once on the board, she served as the Journal editor (twice), Second Vice-President, First-Vice President, President, and Past-President.  Each of the leadership roles carries specific duties including membership, conference planning, leadership of the organization as a whole, and the nomination/election process.  Additionally, each member of the board chips in to help the others do whatever needs doing.  Erica has embraced each role as well as the spirit of "all for one and one for all."

In addition to the board roles, Erica has served as an ACCE representative in committees and task groups at the state level.  Two of the most significant in recent years have been the System Advisory Committee on Curriculum (SACC) and the original AB86 Work Group for the planning grant to restructure adult education in California.

As a member of SACC, Erica brings a deep understanding of both credit and noncredit curriculum to the table.  She gets us because she is us.  She sees implications of potential decisions that may harm or help our students.  She speaks up, time and again.  She builds bridges to decision makers who may not understand noncredit. 

The original AB86 work group consisted of about a dozen members, six drawn from community college noncredit programs and six from K-12 adult education.  The work schedule, particularly in the earlier months, was daunting, with twice-monthly trips to Sacramento, all-day meetings with homework in the evenings, and further assignments between trips.  In addition to the tangible work, there was a great need to build trust and relationships.  Erica, with her worker-bee spirit and her strong people skills, truly excelled in the work group, volunteering for assignments (including a lot of hands-on writing) while building sincere good will among members.

Erica is fun.  If you want a fast walk around Sacramento in the early morning, she's your gal.  If you want creative, possibly crazy ideas for a conference or a presentation, she's your gal.  If you want someone who will not only help develop a Frankenstein-themed PowerPoint on AB86 for a conference scheduled over Halloween, but will also show up for that presentation wearing a full Bride of Frankenstein costume, she's your gal. 

As Dean of Academic Affairs at Santa Monica College, Erica has carried a range of responsibilities including, but not limited to, the noncredit program.  For example, she has been the Accreditation Liaison Officer for the college, has led curriculum processes for both credit and noncredit, and was assigned at least one major musical presentation fraught with political connections and artistic drama.  Yet she has always kept noncredit as a priority in her work.  It speaks well for her work ethic and accomplishments that the college has now established a full-time noncredit dean position while asking Erica to continue fulfilling other significant full-time responsibilities for the college as a whole.

This award does not signal an ending. We know ACCE is deeply rooted in Erica's heart, and we plan to be in her schedule!  But the time is right, and the time is now, to recognize her for her ongoing, incredibly awesome contributions to ACCE and our students.

Santa Monica College’s Community Education Department has launched a new professional development catalog - SMC Extension. The catalog will serve as the main platform for promoting all workforce development focused continuing education courses and programs. An integral function of the SMC Extension catalog is to expand and promote the core concept of life-long-learning while supporting the College’s over-arching goal of creating career pathways and training opportunities for students at all levels.

The SMC Extension catalog is intended to provide a highly visible platform for disseminating information to reach the SMC Alumni community; perspective students for the College’s non-credit AEBG funded “Workforce Education and Training Programs, and Not-for-credit students seeking career training through the ETPL. This allows the catalog to functions in a very unique space, as it is the one College marketing tool that offers outreach to a full spectrum of students and speaks to a cross-section of the local community. 

SMC Extension is working to collaborate with other workforce development agencies and the catalog is providing the appropriate outreach vehicle.  The need for more collaborative activities between the College and other workforce development agencies is expected to increase as workforce development funding agencies seek to align career training with educational institutions that can provide short-term employment training with life-long-learning and career pathways opportunities.  Working towards this effort, the SMC Extension catalog is being utilized to promote several employment and pathways programs.  

The 2016 Spring/Summer SMC Extension catalog is serving as the central point for recruiting students to the BankWorks training program.  BankWorks is a JVS (Jewish Vocational Services) training program that has placed over 1,000 individuals into entry level-jobs in the banking industry.  The program attracts both experienced and inexperienced individuals seeking a network for entry into a career in banking.   Additionally the BanksWorks training history of success is built on the program’s close working relationship with employers within the banking industry.  SMC Extension collaborating in this program effectively supports the strategy to disseminate the message that Santa Monica College is interested in collaborating with local industry to develop relevant employment training programs. Also, the BankWorks program will help to bring attention to the broader offering of the College’s continuing education department, thus communicating to industry that community colleges’ continuing education departments are desirable partners.

Other programs that are currently being promoted through the SMC Extension catalog include the “Preferred Partner Program” and the Cisco Networking Academy.  Both are being viewed as opportunities for creating innovative training and outreach strategies.  SMC Extension is helping to reach the broader community and broadening the College’s potential for delivering non-credit and credit programming through partnerships and collaboration with industry, thereby removing one of higher education’s more traditional hurdles of keeping pace with industry in developing and delivering relevant and current curriculum.