ROUNDUP Los Angeles Pierce College
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A FIRST AMENDMENT PUBLICATION
Relaxing with the kids
Woodland Hills, California
Volume 128 - Issue 11
Wednesday, May 9, 2018
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Animal Culture Sciences Club hosts fitness sessions with baby goats Some profs. are unaware RICHARD ESPINOZA Reporter @espinozareport
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ownward dog, warriors’ pose and sun salutations may seem enticing for yoga fans, but when you toss in baby goats you get a different type of relaxation. Goat yoga is a new phenomena that has stormed the country, including Pierce College. The concept was started in 2016 by Muskegon, Michigan, native Lainey Morse, who said she realized the power the goats had while she was battling an illness, according to an article in the Detroit Free Press. In the article, Morse explained how the idea came about. “I hosted something last year called ‘goat happy hour,’ and that was basically people coming over
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Andrea Amaya and Mea Lane participate in Baby Goat Yoga on May 3, 2018, at Pierce College's Rocky Young Park in Woodland Hills, Calif.
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Into the Woods Football’s new head coach brings life lessons to the field JOSHUA MANES Spotlight Editor @TheManesEvent Lessons learned both on and off the field shape young athletes as they grow. For Carlos Woods, the newly named head coach of Brahmas football, each stop along his path helped mold him into the man he is, and the coach he wants to be. Woods has a professional pedigree and tutelage under legendary coaches Tony Dungy and Joe Paterno, his lessons for the game started years before ever stepping onto a field. Growing up, Woods’ stepfather, Michael Smith, was in the Navy. Smith’s lessons of discipline and
DAVID ZAYER Reporter @DavidZayer
who were stressed or sick,” Morse said. “The goats would help people forget about everything.” The Animal Culture Sciences Club hosted a Pierce baby goat yoga class on Tuesday and Thursday last week, led by Kinesiology Department Chair Shilo Nelson. Students in the class use the goat yoga method of exercise to learn how to interact with animals as a form of therapy that helps with relaxation. Co-president of the Pierce College Democrats Melody Niv said baby goat yoga offers a positive impact. “It helps bring a healthy lifestyle and moment of happiness that changes lives,” Niv said. “It helps let out your emotions and time to relax into your own world.” Anna Rull, a Veterinary Science Club member, said she volunteers so that she can see the happiness people show after the class ends. “We get a lot of positive feedback from students, and from what I have seen, it has brought smiles to peoples faces,” Rull said. “I come to volunteer to make sure everything is OK and people enjoy being here.” Sam Hodds, a student who took the yoga class, said she loved the opportunity. “It's a good time to relax so you don't become too stressed, and it is entertaining to be around the goats when you exercise,” Hodds said.
responsibility have remained with Woods all these years later. “He is the epitome of what hard work is and seeing the fruits of his labor,” Woods said. “It taught me how to be hands on.” That idea of hard work paying off showed in Woods’ start in football. In seventh grade, Woods didn’t make the team. Woods said that at that point, he made a deal with himself. He would either make the team the following year, or he would quit. Woods remembers being one of the last players to learn his fate with the team in eighth grade. According to Woods, coach Lacklin would call each player into his office and let them know. “He will look you in the eye, man to a young man say you made the
Natalie Miranda / Roundup
Shilo Nelson, department chair of Kiniselogy and Health, leads the Baby Goat Yoga class on May 3, 2018, at Pierce College's Rocky Young Park in Woodland Hills, Calif.
team or you didn't make the team,” Woods said. Woods made the team, and even though he didn’t play often that season, the lessons he learned from Lacklin have carried over just like those he learned from his stepfather. “I'm very direct. I'm as transparent as they come,” Woods said. When Woods took the head coaching job, one of the first things he did was enact an open door policy and began meeting with players oneon-one. Those meetings weren’t about football, but to find out about the players’ school and homelife. “Those things to me are essential to just getting an understanding for each player,” Woods said. “Football comes and goes, it’s just a small part of our life.” Heading into high school, it was a different part of Woods’ that life had to go to make room for football. Since elementary school, Woods had played the saxophone. Heading into the start of his ninth grade year, he met with the band director and the football coach. Woods was told that both practiced at the same time and he would have to make a decision.
While he loved music, Woods chose football. That decision eventually resulted in him earning a scholarship to Delaware State University, where he played football and wrestled. Woods’ first coaching job came as a graduate assistant at Penn State University in 2005. Here, under the late coach Joe Paterno, Woods learned how to bring a team together. The entire team would eat dinner together Monday - Thursday, and would then be joined the families of the coaches and staff on Fridays. “It was beautiful to see. You would see linebackers and running backs, receivers with offensive linemen. It was family,” Woods said. “And I said if I ever have a program where I could do that I'd love to emulate that because I just like it brought the team so close together.” After almost two years at PSU, Woods moved on to the NFL as an assistant with the Indianapolis Colts and head coach Tony Dungy, receiving a Super Bowl ring from the 2006 victory. [see COACH on pg. 12]
One program that can help improve student success has been gaining traction, but some faculty don’t know it exists. Open Educational Resources (OER) strives to provide classes at zero cost for students. It offers books that can be downloaded and printed online as PDF files. The OER program has been improving by the semester, according to Technology Librarian Clay Gediman. “Although students can’t get a degree with just OER, we do have more materials now,” Gediman said. “And we are able to integrate Canvas now.” Gediman is working toward making a degree obtainable with just OER. “I know it is possible because I’ve seen it in other campuses,” Gediman said. “As more classes get covered by OER, it’ll be more possible.” Gediman thinks that not all classes will be able to be covered. “Sometimes there will be material that just can’t be provided for free,” Gediman said. “And it could take time and energy from faculty to transition.” There are two laws that have been implemented to mandate OER. The first was AB 798, which provides incentive to colleges to think about OER. The second is SB 1359, which requires colleges to clearly highlight which classes are OER. [see FREE on pg. 3]
Brian Caldera/ Roundup
Carlos Woods poses on the football field in Shepard Stadium, while potential football players practice behind him on May 7, 2018 at Pierce College.
Time between classes can allow more activities and socializing ROUNDUP STAFF @roundupnews The college hour may seem like a foreign thought at Pierce, but Los Angeles Valley College currently has a time slot that allows for campus activities and club events. With the implementation of a semblance of the college hour starting in the fall, Pierce may be heading in that direction. Vice President of Administrative Services Sheri Berger said that three-
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hour classes will not begin during the 2:30 p.m. block, but four, five and six hour classes can still take place. “I suppose for fall we will have a quasi, unofficial college hour because there aren’t as many classes scheduled at that time frame,” Berger said. A champion of the college hour, Vice President of Student Services Earic Dixon-Peters brought the idea to Pierce a few years ago after seeing it successfully implemented at other colleges. College hour is a block in the day when little to no classes are
scheduled. This allows students and faculty to attend club meetings and office hours. “The typical intent and purpose of it is to provide an opportunity where the campus community can come together to do a few things: to learn and engage and explore together different topics, ideas through activities and workshops,” DixonPeters said. “It also gives faculty a chance to engage with students beyond the classroom at a particular hour at a particular time to have robust learning opportunities.”
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Berger said that when she came to Pierce College in September 2014, there was a conversation to implement a college hour, but administration decided not change the scheduled class times. It wasn’t until January this year that they again began talking about the possibility of an hour block. Berger said she became aware of some issues that needed to be solved within those scheduling blocks, which were unrelated to the college hour. She presented the conflict to the department chairs’ taskforce,
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and proposed a solution that would remove three-hour classes from the 2:30 p.m. block, effectively giving more students and teachers free time. “Not everything always fits nicely into this grid,” Berger said. “The task force decided to see if they could incorporate a college hour because they were going to be relooking at the grid anyway.” Different approaches to the hour are being considered by faculty and administration to avoid a schedule block with conflicts. Professor of psychology
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and statistics Jennifer Moses said a schedule was initiated by administration, and the department chairs created a task force to respond to the suggestions. “Scheduling is a very complicated thing. Because there are different departments that have different class lengths, you want to create blocks of time so that classes don’t overlap,” Moses said. “If there’s even a minute of overlap between two classes, students can’t take those two classes.” [see HOUR on pg. 3]
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