Newport Beach's Walter G. Howald Elected President of Coast Community College District Board of Trustees

Walter Howald

Longtime Newport Beach community advocate Walter G. Howald has been elected to serve as the president of the Coast Community College District Board of Trustees for 2005. Howald was unanimously elected board president by his fellow trustees at an organizational meeting in December. Trustee Paul Berger was elected vice president for 2005. First elected to the District board in 1985, Howald was re-elected in November 2002 to serve a fourth four-year term. Howald has served on the Board during the successful passage of Measure C, the $370 million general obligation bond measure that provided funds to renovate and expand classroom facilities at the District’s three colleges. He also serves on the Board’s land development committee, and was actively engaged at the Board level in helping to sell KOCE-TV, Orange County’s public television station, to the KOCE Foundation in 2004.

“It is an honor and a challenge to be elected by my colleagues to serve as president in the coming year,” Howald said. “This board will face some important challenges this year, including a growing state budget shortfall and an aggressive construction program to ensure we make the best use of our Measure C funds in this time of rising construction costs. I am confident that we can work together to meet these challenges and continue to effectively serve our students and our community.”

Howald resides in the Coast District’s Trustee Area 5, which includes portions of Costa Mesa, Newport Beach and the Newport Coast. He served as vice president of the Coast District Board last year.

He has been active in California’s educational community for many years. As early as 1966, he served as a consultant to the California State Assembly Higher Education Committee, helping to draft the Master Plan for Higher Education. Since then, he has served in various capacities as an attorney, arbitrator, Superior Court Judge Pro Tem and in local civic activities.

He is also very active with the Newport Beach Public Library, serving as vice chair of its Board of Trustees, chair of the Library Distinguished Speakers Series, and chair of the Library task force on funding. Howald has served as a director for the Harbor Area Boys and Girls Club, Friends of the Newport Coast, the Orange County Schools Boards Association, and on the boards of several local corporations. He is a tireless advocate of several joint public and private projects to provide more efficient and broader utilization of local public assets.

Howald is a graduate of the UCLA School of Law and president of his law firm, which has a primary emphasis on civil, business and trial law. He is a member of the American Bar Association, the California State Bar Association, the Orange County Bar Association and the American Trial Lawyers Association.

Father of two children and grandfather to one grandson, Howald and his family have been residents of the community for more than 40 years.

The district is the seventh largest community college district in the nation in credit enrollment, serving more than 60,000 full-time students each semester at its three colleges – Coastline Community College, Golden West College and Orange Coast College.

Vice President Paul Berger, a resident of Costa Mesa, has served on the Board since 1987.

Berger has spent 39 years of his career in education in Orange County. In 1965, he was hired as the first principal of Fountain Valley High School. He retired after a long career as an administrator for the Huntington Beach Union High School District, and has since worked as a public education consultant in Huntington Beach.

Berger, who has a doctorate in educational administration from UC Berkeley, has served on the board of directors for several community organizations, including the United Way of Orange County, Kiwanis International, Friends of KOCE, and the California Retired Teachers Association.

Bryan is Appointed Golden West College President

Wes Bryan

At their December meeting, the Coast Community College District Board of Trustees selected Wes Bryan as the new president of Golden West College in Huntington Beach. Bryan has served as the vice president of instruction at Golden West since 1999. Prior to that, he was a speech communication instructor at the college for more than 20 years. “Wes Bryan has been a part of the Golden West College community for more than two decades. He has exhibited decisive and creative leadership as vice president of instruction, and I am confident that he will continue to expertly guide Golden West through these changing times as president,” said Board President Walter Howald. “He has a thorough knowledge of the institution and how it can best serve students, and it is that orientation that will ensure his success.”

As vice president of the college, Bryan served as co-chair of the task force revising the college’s academic master plan. This committee guided the college through a review of the college mission, vision and educational philosophy.

“Bryan worked with the entire college community to come up with an ambitious and exciting plan for the future of Golden West College,” said Chancellor Ken Yglesias. “There is no one better suited than he to see that plan come to fruition. He is fully committed to the college’s mission to support students’ goals and interest in higher education, employment preparation and citizenship.”

Bryan said he is honored to have been selected for this leadership position and looks forward to serving the students, faculty and staff as the next president of Golden West College.

“Golden West has always been known for innovation – a small campus that welcomes students, challenges them to broaden their expectations, reach for their highest educational goals, and then works hard to help them achieve their dreams,” Bryan said. “We value helping students prepare for new careers, transfer to the university of their choice, or simply sharpen their technical skills.

“Our future is bright; our plans to serve the students of our community are ambitious, and I am looking forward to this opportunity!”

Bryan will take over as the seventh president of Golden West on January 1. He will succeed Dr. Kenneth D. Yglesias, the sixth president of Golden West, who took over as chancellor of the district July 1, 2004. Since then, Sharon Donoff has served as the interim president of the college.

Bryan received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in speech communication from California State University Long Beach. He holds lifetime credentials as a California community college instructor, supervisor and chief administrative officer. Along with his 22 years of experience as a faculty member at Golden West College, he has taught Azusa Pacific College, CSU Long Beach, CSU Dominguez Hills and Long Beach City College.

Golden West College was founded in 1966 as the second college in the Coast Community College District. It serves an approximate annual enrollment of 40,000 students each year seeking lower division higher education courses towards a four-year degree, as well as training in nursing, criminal justice, technology and other career-oriented programs.

Sale of KOCE Broadcasting License Finalized

The Coast Community College District Board of Trustees and the KOCE Foundation held a special presentation at their November board meeting to conclude the sale of Orange County’s public broadcasting station to the stations’ fundraising organization.

The Board voted last December to accept a $32 million bid for the KOCE-TV Channel 50 broadcasting license from the KOCE Foundation, a fundraising organization that has been working with the District and helping to support KOCE for decades. A final sale agreement between the Foundation and the District was approved in March which included an $8 million down payment from the Foundation, a $20 million note, as well as lease and programming agreements between the two organizations. The agreement gave the Foundation until November 1 to come up with the down payment. In October, the KOCE Foundation announced it had secured the funding for the down payment, after a seven-month campaign to gather the required cash and pledges. On Monday, November 1, the Foundation wired the required down payment to the District, effectively making the sale final.

“This is a great day for Orange County,” said District Board President George Brown at the November 3rd board meeting. “The finalization of this sale guarantees that Orange County will continue to have its own Public Broadcasting Station focused on the needs and the news unique to our county.

“I wish the KOCE Foundation continued success in maintaining and enhancing the station’s legacy as Orange County’s own educational PBS station.”

“Our Trustee Committee worked hard for many, many months to turn this sale into a reality, and I am thrilled and delighted that it has come to pass” said Trustee Jerry Patterson, who served with Brown on the Board’s KOCE committee. “It was important to our community, and to me personally, that KOCE remain an Orange County-based, educational PBS affiliate, qualified to receive Corporation for Public Broadcasting grants, now and in the future.”

“My thanks go out to many who were instrumental in making this happen, including KOCE Foundation members Bob Brown, Jerry Cwiertnia, Joel Slutzky and Ardelle St. George, along with many others. I would also give a huge thank you to our Coast District Vice Chancellor Ron Berggren and the District team including John Renley and Jeff Arthur. Truly, their tireless efforts are what kept the whole fabric of this transaction together,” Patterson said.

“The KOCE-TV Foundation Board is very excited that the lengthy license transfer process is now coming to a close,” said Bob Brown, chairman of the KOCE-TV Foundation. “We look forward to enhancing the value of this extremely important asset through expanded education, arts, culture and information for Orange County,” he added.

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Coastline Community College News

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Donna Friebertshauser Embroiders Online

Coastline’s Donna Friebertshauser can now be found on the World Wide Web. Donna, who teaches Emeritus Art 400 at the Westminster Center, is the editor and featured embroidery expert on Craftgate.com. Craftgate.com is a website dedicated to crafting. Donna’s column focuses on embroidery techniques including the selection of a proper needle, history and embroidery dos and don’ts. Donna has received several awards for her teaching and written numerous books on the fine art of needle crafting. Donna is also the co-designer and consultant for “Needlecraft”, an Emmy-winning telecourse.

Westminster Learning Center Update

John Breihan and Ding-Jo Currie check out the progress of the
new Westminster Learning Center

Construction of the new Westminster Learning Center is moving right along. The grading of the site and compaction of the soil was completed in early September and was followed by pile driving the foundation. Pile driving is an extremely loud process and Coastline took steps to ensure that our future neighbors were informed of the construction timeline to avoid any inconvenience to the surrounding neighborhoods.

The new 42,000 sq. ft. two-story Center will replace the current leased Huntington Westminster Center and will house classrooms, laboratory facilities and office space.

The state-of-the-art center is scheduled to open in the fall of 2005.

Meet BERTT

By Gary Stromlund

In October, the Huntington Westminster Center hosted the final drill in the six-part BERTT (Business Emergency Response Team Training) course which began at Coastline on September 29, 2004. The training sessions were four hours long, once per week. BERTT is hands-on emergency preparedness training with an emphasis on procedures in the work place. Course objectives include: emergency preparedness, fire education/evacuation, triage and first aid, basic search and rescue, team organization, and a final emergency simulation

drill. Previous BERTT sessions had been held at the District, Orange Coast College, and Golden West College.

The final drill consisted of an earthquake exercise in which participants could apply all of their knowledge from the previous five sessions. Although the majority of the participants were from Coastline, employees from other colleges were also in attendance, with some making up missed classes from other sessions.

For the drill, the team was organized according to State-mandated SEMS/ICS (Standardized Emergency Management System/Incident Command System) guidelines. An Incident Commander was selected, and other participants were placed into sections such as: Operations, Planning/Intelligence, and Logistics, or further subdivided into Search and Rescue, and Medical Teams. A command post was set-up in one of the classrooms and FRS radios were distributed to team members.

The drill was held in the multi-purpose room which “experienced” a major earthquake. Inside the darkened room were overturned chairs and tables, as well as students who needed medical assistance. Prior to the drill members of their RED Cross staff used make-up and prosthetic devices to simulate actual injuries on the victims, such as an abdominal wound, burns, shrapnel, broken limbs, and different degrees of bleeding. Some volunteer victims spoke only Vietnamese or Punjabi. Rescuers were required to apply light search and rescue, fire suppression, cribbing, and triage techniques. Victims who needed medical care were moved to a triage area in another classroom.

The drill was filmed by Coastline’s audio-visual staff, as were previous classes, and will be incorporated into a training video.