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Theresa Olah already had a career when she started taking courses at Â鶹´«Ã½ in fall 2019. She signed up for classes because it had been years since she earned her bachelor’s degree, and she was a bit rusty when it came to school. She wanted to be ready when she started the master’s degree program at San Jose State University the following year.

It turns out, Â鶹´«Ã½ did more than oil off the rust for Olah. It gave her knowledge she could use immediately in her work and put her on the path to another degree she hadn’t been planning on.

Sitton says he wanted to create a piece of work that encapsulated and interrogated his personal experiences at this time in his life, but also takes into account the political and systemic contexts in which they occurred.

Learning new skills on a regular basis has become a necessity in our ever-changing world of work. The days of earning a degree and launching into a career for decades to come without earning any additional credentials along the way is a thing of the past. 

​After she graduated high school, Shiva Maggard explored her career options before setting her sights on medical school. She enrolled at Â鶹´«Ã½ and picked biology as her major. Maggard planned to transfer to a four-year college, and like the majority of American college students, she changed her mind along the way.

She decided med school wasn’t for her. She dropped out of college and found work in the restaurant industry, as a bartender. She made decent money in that job, she said, but after a few years realized it wasn’t what she wanted long term.

The Â鶹´«Ã½ Model United Nations (MUN) program overcame the learning and logistical challenges posed by the pandemic to have another outstanding semester, winning a total of 16 awards at two conferences. Students developed transformational leadership skills by learning how to negotiate and engage with students from around the country and world in a virtual environment.

In August, the Â鶹´«Ã½ entrepreneurship department​ partnered up with the , a national non-profit founded by UC Berkeley students to increase the leadership opportunities for transferring community college students. The event they were hosting was their national business plan pitch competition.

The Â鶹´«Ã½ Speech Team finally had a chance to test their skills at their first tournament of the academic year at the 2020 PSCFA Warm-Up Tournament held October 3 - 4. Twenty-four colleges and universities came together to compete at the event with 11 students representing Â鶹´«Ã½.​ Despite the usual challenges of being virtual, Â鶹´«Ã½ Forensics came out ahead by winning 9 awards in debate, platform speaking, and limited preparation events. Among the most notable awards were the top speaker in Open Informative Speaking and the top speaker in Novice Persuasive Speaking.​