Updates to the school’s website are still pending, but the Los Angeles Community College District plans to launch a new website in Oct. 2022 for all nine campuses.
The Pierce College Council and Interim President Ara Aguiar agreed that the website is in need of an update or complete remodel on its design.
“We really need to fix those things because it’s really hurting us,” Aguiar said. “Now the marketing team is bringing our students to our website and our website is not supporting their particular process. It’s going to backfire on us.”
Aguiar plans on using the campus’ IT team to see what internal issues need to be resolved instead of going to an outside vendor.
“Hiring an outside vendor takes months, so that is why we thought to continue working with a team that already knows our system, who can fix broken links and not shift anything big,” Aguiar said.
Student enrollment has declined over the past two years—more than 1,500 new students didn’t attend campus—and possible solutions to this problem include offering late start classes, according to Dean of Language and Fine Arts Mary Anne Gavarrah-Oh.
“I think we’ve got some departments who have just focused on the late eight start weeks, but there have also been more efforts to start more classes earlier for students who want to complete their degrees faster,” Gavarrah-Oh said.
Associated Students Organization Vice President Gabi Morris also said that Pierce needed to improve clubs and student committees.
“We are working on recruiting students and fulfilling commitment needs of different committees,” Morris said. “We’re also working to support the new and growing clubs on campus and providing seed money for them so they can begin to establish themselves more thoroughly.”
Aguiar said that the college is partnering with an environmental advocacy group, TreePeople, to plant native trees on campus.
“We can work together and increase our canopy here on campus,” Aguiar said. “The Los Angeles Zoo has funding for students, and really wants to work with all the LACCD colleges as they need students from plant science, STEM, business and more.”
Student Support Committee chair Robert Loy reported that the water fountain situation on campus was getting better. Loy also said that the Brahma Pantry provided 7,400 meals, 600 care packages and over 600 gift cards to students.
Co-Chair of the Technology Committee and Representative of the Budget Committee Ron Paquette said that Pierce has enough Higher Education Emergency Relief Funds(HEERF). But he also said that the role of student engagement and increasing revenue should still be prioritized.
Paquette also said that the Budget Committee is looking forward to working on External Community Relations to support Pierce.
“There’s a lot of filming on campus now and we’re also renting out all of the athletic facilities to the local high schools,” Paquette said.
According to Paquette, there has been progress in replacing old surveillance cameras, and that the project had a June 2022 deadline. There also are plans to add more WiFi access on campus where HEERF funds would possibly be used to evaluate where improvement is needed.
In other news, deadlines are fast approaching. Students will need to book a free COVID-19 test on campus and upload their vaccination status by Friday, Nov. 19 through their Cleared4 links found in their LACCD emails.
