Bert's Alerts - March 13, 2015

The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Speech and Debate team has added another achievement to its storied history, winning the top two-year college award at the Pi Kappa Delta (PKD) National Comprehensive Tournament for the fourth time in five years. The 49th annual PKD championship was held at Ohio University in Athens, March 4-8.

The trophy adds to the College’s incredible run of first-place finishes at nationals in 2011, 2012, and 2013, along with a runner-up finish in 2014. CWI has only been competing in Speech and Debate since 2009.

“Success like this is unheard of for such a young college,” notes CWI President Bert Glandon. “Not only is the CWI Speech and Debate team bringing the top recognition home to Idaho, but they have done it four times in just five years. We are now nationally recognized as the college to beat, and I couldn’t be more proud of this team and our coaches.”

This year’s tournament featured 79 schools from across the nation, including both two-year and four-year schools. Of the 14 students representing CWI, seven were first-year competitors and 13 were competing in their first national tournament. 

"As a leader on this team, it has been an honor to not only watch my teammates grow, but to also learn from them," says Justin Fields, president of the CWI Pi Kappa Delta chapter. "I'm proud that we rallied together to bring the national championship back to CWI."

Individually, CWI students earned awards in both speech and debate events. In speech events, Natalie Streight received a silver award in Broadcast Journalism, while Streight and Mallory Clark took second in Duo Interpretation. In debate events, Roger Johnston received gold for his performance in IPDA debate.

The CWI Speech and Debate team will now turn its attention to another national competition – the International Public Debate Association (IPDA) National Tournament – hosted by Boise State University, March 27-29.

The College of Western Idaho (CWI) will send seven students to the Business Professionals of America (BPA) National Leadership Conference this spring following an impressive showing at the BPA state competition, March 6, at Broadview University in Boise. CWI students qualified for nationals in 12 total events; capturing seven first-place awards, five silver medals, and four third-place honors.

Kaj Forney led the way for CWI with first-place finishes in three events: Network Administration using Microsoft, PC Servicing and Troubleshooting, and Systems Administration using Cisco. Joining Forney with gold medal honors were Katia Peralta Arroyo (Advanced Word Processing), Jaime Duke (Basic Office Systems and Procedures, Keyboarding Production), and Drew Powell (Computer Network Technology).

The seven students will now turn their attention to the BPA national conference, which will be held May 5-9 in Anaheim, Calif.

View Individual Results

Data Center Move

This week, an email notification was sent to all College of Western Idaho (CWI) employees and students regarding an upcoming Information Technology (IT) services outage required for the move of CWI’s data center equipment to a new facility. IT will be sending additional communication leading up to the move.  As a reminder, the outage window for the move is scheduled to begin on March 21 at 5 p.m. and is expected to continue for at least 24 hours.  

The CWI systems that will be unavailable during the outage include:

• Help Desk (phones, website, and email)
• Phones
• Colleague
• Blackboard
• myCWI
• CWI Website
• Email (incoming email will be delivered when service is restored)
• File Shares
• VPN

The important work that IT is doing will allow the College to:

• reduce overall and long term costs;
• implement multiple Internet service providers to increase reliability;
• implement a fiber optic network between sites to significantly increase network speed and reliability;
• and prepare the network for implementation of a second data center for increased reliability and disaster recovery.

Once all services are restored and tested on Sunday, March 22, an email notification will be distributed.

Office 365 Migration

All migrations of Office 365 are complete. IT would like to thank everyone for their patience during this migration and although there were a few issues, overall the migration went very well. Anyone experiencing an issue with their email should report it to Helpdesk at helpdesk@cwi.edu or 208.562.3444.

College of Western Idaho (CWI) is helping future students take the first step in starting college this fall with Free Application Week, March 23-30. Anyone who applies to CWI during Free Application Week will have the $25 application fee waived.

Free Application Week is intended to encourage future students to apply now so they are ready to register for the fall semester when class registration opens in April. Students who register early have a greater opportunity to get classes before they are full as well as complete other important steps like applying for financial aid and scholarships.

Anyone interested in applying to CWI can fill out the online application at cwi.edu/apply. For more information on becoming a student at CWI, visit cwi.edu/go.

The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Horticulture Club is introducing a new fundraiser this spring, as the club will sell Mother's Day Gift Baskets. The sale will offer a variety of annual color options in 10 or 12 inch hanging baskets. Baskets cost $30 or $35 and will be ready for delivery starting May 5; just in time for Mother's Day. The deadline for orders is April 3. For more information on selection and pricing or to place an order, view the gift basket order form.

All orders must be prepaid by cash or check made payable to the CWI Horticulture Club. Sale proceeds will help support Horticulture Club students attending the annual National Collegiate Landscape Competition, PLANET Student Career Days.

Greg Norton has been selected as College of Western Idaho’s (CWI) Faculty of Distinction for the month of March.

Norton, a faculty member in the CWI Education Department, has been working with a new adjunct faculty this year to help her get up to speed with CWI’s publisher software and to generally share content and ideas for teaching the curriculum. They have started to meet together each Saturday and he even invited her to dinner with his family over the holidays. His commitment to helping others demonstrates CWI’s core values of caring and legacy of learning. 

CWI is happy to congratulate Greg for his Faculty of Distinction honor.

The College of Western Idaho (CWI) is once again supporting the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure in Boise, May 9, and CWI is seeking volunteers to join the cause. For the third consecutive year CWI is coordinating a group of volunteers for the event. Each year Race for the Cure requires over 600 volunteers to help make the event a success and CWI is proud to help. There are various categories that need volunteers including distributing packets, helping with traffic control, course maintenance, and shuttle directing.

Volunteer registration is currently open. Anyone interested in helping should contact Morriah Marks at morriahmarks@cwi.edu for the registration link and more information.

College of Western Idaho’s (CWI) Staff Senate is hosting the third edition of its Brown Bag Lunches on Tuesday, March 17. The lunches will be held from 11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m. at various campus locations. Staff members are invited to attend all or part of the following sessions:

• Canyon County Center, Room 112 A/B, with Victor Villanueva and Tony Tinè
• Micron Center for Professional Technical Education, Room 1701 A/B, with Andrea Schumaker and Brittney Trimmer
• Nampa Campus Multipurpose Building, Room 210, with Morriah Marks, Robin DeBuhr, and Linda Hyde
• Ada County Campus Pintail Center, Room 1313, with Connor McComas and Christine Ward

There were great discussions during the previous Brown Bag Lunches hosted in December and updates have been prepared for the following topics:

• Food Services
• Safety
• Weapons on Campus
• Hiring Practices
• Holiday Hours
• Employee Recognition
• Employee Onboarding

Staff Senate is looking forward to talking with colleagues about these important topics and will continue to host more Brown Bag Lunches in the future. Any staff member unable to attend the Brown Bag Lunch can get an update by attending the next monthly Staff Senate meeting on Thursday, April 9, from 8:30-10:00 a.m., at the Micron Center for Professional Technical Education in Room 1117.