Chaparral 2018-2019: 27.2 Milestones

Fatema Baldiwala (English) presented on September 21st in San Francisco at National Association of Community Colleges Entrepreneurship’s GOWEST 2018 conference. Her topic was Curriculum Entrepreneurship.

Brief outline of the presentation: the title of the presentation was Curriculum Entrepreneurship. The presentation began with asking the audience how many of them thought any curriculum, no matter what discipline, should have entrepreneurship embedded into it. 90% raised their hands.

Fatema went over the definition of entrepreneurship, then how she has embedded it in her contextualized English 101 class (Rhetoric of Entrepreneurship – and how she moved from English to Workforce training because of her passion for entrepreneurship).

Finally, she discussed how entrepreneurship concepts need to be embedded in all curriculum, not only courses that teach entrepreneurship.

Her GCC entrepreneurship partner said, “It is unique how you have embedded entrepreneurial concepts into a liberal arts education and you should OWN it.” (Rob Newman)

Another of Fatema’s milestones is that her English 101 and 104 students celebrated National Writing Day by reading “How to Write the Perfect Sentence” by Joe Moran. Orwell advised cutting as many words as possible, Woolf found energy in verbs, and Baldwin aimed for “a sentence as clean as a bone.” What can we learn from celebrated authors about the art of writing well? Following the prompt given by NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English), #WhyIWrite, Fatema asked her students to write for the sheer pleasure of writing rather than signing a prompt.

On Sunday, October 7, 2018, Sona Donayan (Nutrition) completed the Chicago Marathon running 26.2 miles down the streets of the windy city, in the rain, among 45,000 other runners and cheering spectators.

It was her first time in Chicago but her 39th marathon around the U.S. and the world. Some of her most memorable 26.2 mile runs include the marathons of Miami, New York, Seattle, Las Vegas, and Paris.

She is looking forward to completing another 11 to round off her number of marathons at 50, before she retires from the running scene.

Joanna Parypinski (English) has several recent short fiction publications to share:

Her literary horror story, “The Thing in the Trees,” was published in Nightscript Vol. 4. The story is about a transgender man who takes on a new position as forest ranger and discovers the woods to be carnivorously transformative.

Another short story, “What’s Coming to You,” was published in Nightmare Magazine, and can be read for free online here. In this story, a greedy woman is visited by a man claiming to offer her an inheritance from a deceased family member, but the longer she keeps him on her doorstep, the more unsettlingly strange the man becomes. You can also listen to an excellent podcast of this story here.

Finally, although it wasn’t selected for publication in the book, her story “We Are Turning on a Spindle” was listed as a Notable Selection for The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2018. You can read (or listen to) the story for free on Nightmare Magazine.

Four years ago, Rafael Cardona (Business) embarked on a marketing research project alongside three colleagues who are all PhDs. As is the case with most research projects, a goal in doing the work is to be published by prestigious publications.

The team worked tirelessly to gather valuable and elusive primary data and write a paper on a topic that is of most relevance to marketers today: multicultural marketing in the U.S. They were very fortunate to have been selected to present at the yearly Journal of Marketing Science in Portugal this past summer. In addition, Rafael is delighted to have had the paper published in the Journal of Cultural Marketing Strategy.

Richard Seltzer, Professor Emeritus (Credit ESL) is currently teaching as an adjunct for the last time. The retirement condo of his dreams in Palm Springs is in escrow and will be his next week. His current home in Valley Village is now on the market. He plans to move by the end of the semester. Retirement has been great. He has been to Europe three times, and his most recent journey included England, France, Hungary, Austria and Israel.  He checked off a big item on his bucket list by finally traveling between London and Paris under the Channel in 2 hours and 13 minutes! Best wishes to all.

The English division is excited to welcome the newest addition to our division family, Reid Kerr (English) and Elisha’s baby, Zephyr! Weighing in at 7lbs 2.5oz, Zephyr was born at 2:10 AM on Saturday morning. Congratulations, Reid and Elisha!