President's Office

From the desk of Bernadine Chuck Fong

 

To: Foothill College

From: Bernadine Chuck Fong

Re: Invitation to our Dec. 3rd Celebration and Holiday Party at the Campus Center!

Date: November 19, 2021

 

Dear Foothill Family, You should have received the Chancellor’s calendar invitation to attend the District’s Town Hall to be held on Dec. 3rd from 10:00 AM to 12 PM at De Anza’s Hinson Campus Center. This is an invitation for the Foothill event to follow, on the Foothill campus, and you will be getting a calendar invitation, as well. We are so appreciative of the nearly 200 Foothill faculty, staff, student employees, and administrators who continued to work on campus after March 16th 2020, and to those colleagues who have returned to campus since March 2021. The college is greatly indebted to this group of dedicated people and before the year’s end, we want to take the opportunity to show our appreciation and thank them. Please join us for a celebratory luncheon (catered by Tacos Papo) at 12:30 PM, in the Cesar Chavez Plaza at Foothill, immediately following the District meeting at De Anza. This lunch and the associated festivities will also serve as our Holiday Party to end the quarter, and to signal a rebirth of our college after two very difficult years. Please join us and support our colleagues. It will be fun, I promise! And current county Covid guidelines will be followed: masking in indoor settings only.

If you are hesitant about coming to campus because of Covid, let me share some data with you. We have approximately 3,100 students taking classes in person this Fall and 98% are fully vaccinated and the balance are COVID tested every week. Foothill is much safer than going to your local grocery store, restaurant, or Costco! I had the opportunity to attend a Native American Heritage Month celebration yesterday in the Campus Center dining room, which was filled with students and colleagues, all properly masked and vaccinated. This celebration was significant because we came together in community to honor the Ohlone, whose land our campus occupies, and we returned to our own roots to understand why the Foothill campus was built and the purpose it serves.

As more colleagues return to campus, Winter quarter will be a “transition” quarter and we will use the ‘New Student’ as our metaphor and guide in determining the sequence for reintroducing in‐person services. What questions does a new student need answered? Which services will a new student need most? We have already updated our public phone voicemail responses to assure students and our community that there is a presence on campus and that calls will be returned in a timely manner. This ethic of service and support will be at the heart of our return to campus.

Please join us and I look forward to seeing/meeting you on December 3rd! A calendar invitation will be sent and please RSVP with the “Accept Maybe Decline” button.

 

Best regards,

Bernadine

Bernadine Chuck Fong, Ph.D.
Interim President, Foothill College
Senior Scholar and Director of Leadership Initatves, Stanford University