Bert's Alerts - May 8, 2015
In the Spotlight
The celebration has begun for College of Western Idaho’s (CWI) 2015 graduating class. Employees are invited to join the College on Saturday, May 9, for CWI’s annual Commencement Ceremony. Anyone unable to attend the event is encouraged to join the celebration online by sharing congratulatory messages on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook with the #cwigraduation hashtag. Messages will appear on the arena screens prior to commencement. They can also be viewed at cwi.edu/graduation. See the full graduation article below for complete Commencement details.
News Highlights
College of Western Idaho to Celebrate Graduates on May 9
On Saturday, May 9, the College of Western Idaho (CWI) will celebrate its 2015 class of graduates in a commencement ceremony hosted at Taco Bell Arena in Boise. The ceremony is scheduled for 7 p.m. and will recognize degree and certificate graduates, as well as GED completers.
For the second consecutive year, CWI will honor a record number of degree and certificate candidates as well as the most ever graduates with honors. Some of the highlights of this year’s commencement include:
- 1170 Degree and Certificate Candidates
- 328 Graduates with Honors
- 199 Graduates with Multiple Degrees
- 132 Veteran Graduates
- Average Graduate GPA 3.21
- Youngest Graduate - 17 Years Old
- Oldest Graduate - 62 Years Old
For more commencement details visit cwi.edu/graduation. Family and friends of graduates that cannot attend in person can watch a live stream of the event at cwi.edu. Community members are also encouraged to share messages with graduates using #cwigraduation on Twitter and Instagram. Messages will be streamed on screens for graduates to see while preparing for the ceremony.
2,270 Reasons to be Thankful for Idaho Gives
The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Foundation has 2,270 reasons to be thankful to donors supporting Idaho Gives on May 7. The annual, online, 24-hour fundraising blitz put $2,270 in the CWI student scholarship fund. To kick start the effort, the Bank of the Cascades provided a matching $1,500 grant.
To boost the fundraising effort, President Bert Glandon joined in the festivities by becoming a CWI student for the day. He started out at CWI's Ada County Campus—visiting Jason Herz and two of his students in the Cisco Networking and Security Technologies program. From there he moved over to Workforce Development’s Medical Assisting program where he learned from students in Donna Heathman and Dr. Sabina Omair’s classes. He learned the importance of proper hand washing, safe gloving techniques, and how to take blood pressure.
After a quick car ride west, the president made his way to the Biology lab in the Nampa Campus Academic Building. He met with Dusty Perkins and two of his students under Department Chair Nicole Frank’s watchful eye. He dissected owl pellets—which he said was fascinating. He then met with two student senators from the Associated Students of the College of Western Idaho and discussed heard about student priorities.
Dr. Glandon’s last visit of the day took him to the Micron Center for Professional Technical Education. He spent some time with Sean McConnachie in Auto Body; learning how to mix paint for a project and then painting a car hood by himself.
At the end of each activity, Dr. Glandon was graded on his classroom performance. He earned two A’s, an A-, and a C+. In a mini graduation ceremony CWI Foundation Executive Director, Mitch Minnette, congratulated Dr. Glandon on becoming an honorary CWI graduate and for graduating with honors by earning a 3.5 grade point average.
“On behalf of the CWI Foundation, we thank you—and everyone one else—who participated in Idaho Gives,” Minnette said. He also joked with Dr. Glandon, “at this rate, maybe you’ll be president someday.”
Basalt Launch and Reading Set for May 8
College of Western Idaho’s (CWI) student-run literary magazine, Basalt, is hosting a launch party for the unveiling of its third issue. The celebration event will feature students reading original fiction, nonfiction, and poetry published in this year’s magazine.
The free public event will take place:
Friday, May 8
7:00-8:30 p.m.
The Cabin
801 S. Capitol Blvd., Boise
Light refreshments will be served and copies of Basalt's third issue will be available for purchase.
Second-Annual President’s Writing Awards Presented
The College of Western Idaho (CWI) English Department is proud to present the recipients of its annual President’s Writing Awards. Thirteen students were honored for their work on Friday, May 1, with a presentation and remarks from CWI President Bert Glandon. This is the second year that Dr. Glandon has selected students to receive awards in the following five categories:
- Creative Nonfiction
- Critical Analysis
- Fiction
- Poetry
- Research Based
During the presentation, President Glandon shared with students, “the writing this time around was absolutely exceptional. You are prime examples of the quality of students coming out of CWI. You demonstrate what is right in education today.”
The annual awards were established to recognize and honor excellence in student writing at CWI.
The 2015 President’s Writing Award winners are:
Creative Nonfiction: first-person accounts that explore the writer’s experiences and observations.
- First Place - Sabine Hartmann (Faculty, Janene Thomas)
- Second Place - Alicia Mathia (Faculty, Abby Wolford)
- Third Place - Cassie Roundy (Faculty, Matt Moorman)
Critical Analysis: represents essays that critically evaluate or analyze a piece of literature, a theatrical performance, a work of visual art, a historical moment, a philosophical argument, a social movement, etc.
- First Place - Carley Baeta, “Love Poem” (Faculty, Leslie Jewkes)
- Second Place - Alicia Mathia, “The Awareness Crisis: Breast Cancer and Sexualization” (Faculty, Abby Wolford)
- Third Place - Gary Porter, “Education and the Good Human Being” (Faculty, Reggie Jayne)
Fiction: short stories limited to 20 pages.
- First Place - Jeff Boyd, “The Canyon” (Faculty, Dave Nicholas)
- Second Place - Chloe Tucker, “Red Hope” (Faculty, Dave Nicholas)
Poetry
- First Place - Casey Bosse, “Amoral World” (Faculty, Abby Wolford)
- Second Place - Salem Djembe, “Dementia” (Faculty, Leslie Jewkes)
- Third Place - Tanya Trofimuk, “Mother of Mine” (Faculty, Leslie Jewkes)
Research Based: feature a variety of topics, methodologies, and documentation styles specific to their disciplines including science, math, technology, English, Psychology, etc.
- First Place - Ty Styhl, “Irrigation Canals Represent a Bioenergetic Sink for Primary Consumers (Faculty, Steve Lysne)
- Second Place - Chelsea Chambers, “The Effects of Alcohol on the Acceptability of Casual Sex” (Faculty, Heather Schoenherr
- Third Place - Lianne Collins, “Pirates Sail the High Fidelities: How File Sharing Affects the Music Industry” (Faculty, Joel Gladd)
Results Shared from Garbology Project
The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Anthropology and Biology Clubs in partnership with the CWI Sustainability Committee hosted the second annual Garbology Day on April 23 on the East lawn of the Nampa Campus Academic Building. The objective of Garbology Day is to raise collective consciousness regarding CWI’s current campus recycling program while also promoting sustainable practices and environmental awareness through the theme “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle”. Anthropology and Biology Club members sorted through two days of trash collected from the Academic Building and determined not only what could have been recycled, but what students and faculty are consuming on campus.
Results of this work and other CWI campus waste audits are catalogued by the CWI Sustainability Committee and used to create educational materials to inform the CWI community about proper recycling practices and how the carbon footprint of CWI campus operations can be reduced.
CWI Dental Assisting Joins Mom’s Dental Care Day
The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Dental Assisting program teamed with Advantage Dental Care on Thursday, May 7, to provide free dental care for moms in honor of Mother’s Day. The program helped serve 35 women from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. for extractions, fillings, or cleanings. There were two local dentists and one from Seattle who volunteered their time for the event. The dentists commented on how competent and confident the CWI Dental Assisting students are and said that the office would not have been able to provide treatment for so many women without help from the CWI group.
Tech Talk: One Drive for Business
The College of Western Idaho (CWI) Information Technology Department is presenting a series of articles that will highlight and provide tips for applications within Office365. CWI utilizes Office 365, which offers several applications along with online Email.
Employees may already be familiar with OneDrive, which is a free offering from Microsoft to store personal documents and other content in the cloud. This service is different from OneDrive for Business. OneDrive for Business is one of the applications available to CWI employees as part of the Office365 service and is online storage intended for business purposes. With this application, files can be updated and shared from anywhere. Office documents can also be worked on, simultaneously with colleagues, with enterprise grade security and compliance built in. Each user gets 1TB of space in the cloud with OneDrive for Business.
All files stored in OneDrive for Business are private unless they are shared. Files can easily be shared with everyone in the organization by placing it in the Shared with Everyone folder, for example. Please remember that sensitive or confidential information should not be included in a file that is placed in the Shared with Everyone folder.
Files and/or folders can also be shared with specified co-workers to collaborate on projects;
- Go to OneDrive for Business online at Office365 and find the document or folder being shared.
- Select the file or folder and select Share from the option list.
- In the Share dialog box on the Invite People tab, type names or email addresses of people you want to share the document or folder with.
- Select a permission setting, such as Can Edit or Can View.
- A message can be included with an email that's sent to all invitees, if desired. The email includes a link to the shared document.
- To skip sending an email, click Show Options and then uncheck Send an email invitation.
TIP: When an email is sent from the Outlook Web App in Office365, an OneDrive for Business file can be attached as a link instead of sending an attachment. When a file is attached as a link, the recipient is automatically granted permission to edit the file. This saves space in everyone's mailbox, while also encouraging people to edit the same copy in OneDrive for Business.
Blackboard Upgrade Scheduled
College of Western Idaho (CWI) will be conducting an annual update to Blackboard on Saturday, May 16, following its protocol of completing upgrades between the spring and summer semesters. Employees should be aware of the following impacts as a result of the upgrade:
- Blackboard will be offline May 16. Starting May 17, CWI will be running the October 2014 edition of Blackboard.
- All courses from the Summer 2014, Fall 2014, and Spring 2015 semesters will be moved to the Blackboard Archive Site (bbarchive.cwidaho.cc).
- All content prior to Summer 2014 will be moved to an external hard drive as an archived course after July 31 to support Blackboard functionality. After July 31, accessing this course information will require submitting a Helpdesk ticket.
- Additional details have been provided to all faculty.
If you have any questions or concerns please feel free to contact Courtney Bond, director of CWI’s Center for Teaching and Learning, at 208.562.3084 or courtneybond@cwi.edu.
CWI Hosts Second Employee Night at Wahooz
For the second consecutive year, College of Western Idaho (CWI) is thrilled to present CWI Employee Night at Wahooz in Meridian. This year’s event will take place Thursday, May 14, from 7-10 p.m. The night is for all CWI employees and their families to enjoy some time with colleagues outside work. Guests can include any person living in an employee’s household. Employees who are single are allowed to take one (1) guest.
Attendees will enjoy unlimited access to Laser Tag, Go-Karts, Bumper Boats, and the Kiddie Cove. They can also ride the new XD Dark Ride for just $5 per person. Passes can be purchased at any open register in Wahooz or at the Pinz control desk at the event. Attendees will also receive a $5 game card to play in the arcade and access to bowling in Pinz. Teams of at least four people for bowling and ten people for laser tag are encouraged. While food will not be provided this year, there will be unlimited soda. Alcohol is prohibited. Anyone interested in purchasing additional tickets for other guests can do so at a discounted price of $15.99 at the door (normally $29.99).
Anyone planning to attend must RSVP by Tuesday, May 12, and print confirmation tickets. Tickets are required to attend the event. Please click here to RSVP. Please contact Human Resources at hr@cwi.edu or 208.562.3287 with any questions.
