Update

Well, we survived the big California Shakeout, a statewide earthquake drill that we participated in this morning. I, of course, did the "drop, cover and hold" routine. Though I was under my desk, I did manage to keep on typing some report I was working on. It was a lovely day to do an earthquake drill, nice and cloudy and cool. We just had a rather large (for Los Angeles) storm pass through, dumping some rain around town, screwing up traffic. But in true L.A. style, we are going to have a 95-degree weekend.

The photo (right) was taken at the "safety station" where we were served a nice hot cup of tea and some cookies. The Buddhist nun in the bottom-left corner is Ven. Jue Ji, a scholar from Hong Kong, who is now our Student Life Coordinator. What's good about her is that she has some modern ideas and it's fairly easy to relate to her as a Westerner.

Anyway, here is what is new or coming up:

• Meditation Camp: November 13-15. This camp is put on by University of the West. We've brought Ven. Upasaka Culadasa, a professor neuroscience and a Buddhist monk, to teach the art of meditation to beginners and advanced students. Ven. Culadasa is one of the best meditation teachers out there. He also brings a unique scientific perspective to meditation.
• Also on Nov. 13 UWest will have an Open House for all programs. More to come on that.
• The UWest newsletter will come out this week. It will probably be our last printed newsletter. We are going to switch to an E-newsletter next month.
• UWSA officer nominations are happening this week. It looks like we will appoint a Student Association governing council to get us through to the end of the semester, then we'll have a proper election at the start of spring semester.

That's about all I can think of right now. I'm too hungry to really use my brain. Off to lunch with Ven. Jue Ji! I'm taking her to the restaurant at the Double Tree Hotel down the street. Hopefully I don't make an idiot of myself, but I probably will. I always forget not to use swear words around the nuns.

Updates and Tidbits

It's been a painful week for your ol' Enrollment Counselor here at UWest. My back is in massive pain (old back injury plus all those times I fell of my skateboard when I was trying to go pro!). So I'm all doped up on painkillers. Needless to say, work is like a warm fuzzy dream! But I would prefer to not have any pain at all. So, if you have noticed that I've been away from my office quite a bit it's because I'm laid up at home. Sorry if I inconvenienced anyone.

So, with that personal update out of the way, here's what has been going on around UWest lately:

• The first update comes from the University of the West Student Success Center: On Thursday, October 8 at 4 p.m., we’ll be helping those of you in the business sector with our "Giving Good News and Bad News in Business Workshop," part of The Business World workshop series. Learn how to compose messages that give your customers good news that is effective and avoid losing customers when you have to deliver bad news about a service or product. This workshop will be from 4pm until 5pm in ED309.
• Then, on Friday, October 9, the Friday Workshop Series will continue with a workshop on "Chicago Citation Style Basics." You’ll learn about the key points of citing your references using Chicago (CMS) style and we’ll give you some resources you can access when you have questions about a reference. This workshop will be held in ED309 from 1pm until 2pm.
• Seminar on Small Business Financing presented by the University of the West Department of Business Administration at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 17, 2009. This seminar, which is free and open to the public, is offered by Howard Sun. Mr. Sun is the Credit Analyst at Pacific Asian Consortium in Employment (PACE), a professional business consulting and management training organization, focusing on helping local small business owners improve their operations and management and become better credit consumers.

Also, I just finished reading this cool book called "Ancient Iraq" by Georges Roux. The book covers the establishment of the Sumerian culture in what is now called Iraq, through to end of the Syro-Babylonian civilization. It was pretty interesting. UWest has it in the Library. I still have it checked out, but I'll return it this week.

Well, that's about all that's going on right now that I have time to blog about. Hasta!

Free Public Lectures at UWest

One of the cool things about working for University of the West is the number of guest speakers who come through our campus. Here's one that I am very much looking foward to:

ROSEMEAD – (9/25/09) University of the West, Los Angeles County’s only accredited Buddhist founded campus, will host at 7 p.m. on Monday, Sept. 28th, the American Book Award-winning author and Zen teacher Gary Gach for a free lecture to the public.

Gach will speak on the topic of “Free Nirvana: Buddhist Wisdom in Uncertain Times,” followed by a book signing and question and answer period.

The event is sponsored by UWest’s Buddhist Chaplaincy Program, one of only three accredited Buddhist chaplaincy training programs in the United States.

Gach is an American author, editor and teacher. A student of Dainin Katagiri Roshi, he was later ordained as a Buddhist minister by the Very Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh.

He leads mindfulness meditation at the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples in San Francisco, and serves on the International Advisory Panel of The Buddhist Channel.

Gach also writes the blog “Where Buddha Meets Freud” for Psychology Today, and leads the Haiku Corner for the Tricycle Community’s Poetry Club. In addition, Gary is a prolific author, translator, and editor.

His many books include the American Book Award-winning What Book!?: Buddha Poems from Beat to Hip-hop (Parallax Press, 1998); translations of Ko Un’s Ten Thousand Lives (Green Integer, 2005), Songs for Tomorrow: A Collection of Poems 1960-2002 (Green Integer, 2009), and Flowers of a Moment (Green Integer, 2006), for which he won the Northern California Book Award; and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Buddhism (Alpha Press, 2009), the bestselling guidebook which just last month went into his third printing.

Gary and his work have been featured at The Huffington Post, Fora.TV, The Internet Writing Journal, and elsewhere.

Fall Semester Updates

These are exciting days for the University of the West Student Association (UWSA), which will have its Constitutional Convention on Saturday 9/19. We have a great group of energetic students looking to get the UWSA started again.

I have been named UWSA advisor by our former president, Dr. Allen Huang. At first I was reluctant, but I quickly saw that the UWSA badly needed help. So, we're building it back up. As this campus matures and gains in experience, our ability to work with the UWSA becomes much stronger. I'm really looking forward to working with whomever gets elected to the UWSA council.

In other news, fall enrollment topped our goal. We were going for 230 students and ended up with a final count of 254. A new, sizeable cohort in psychology has me really excited. It's great to see that program finally in full swing. The students will learn a lot from Dr. Demyan, and just as importantly they will have fun. Dr. Demyan is probably one of the most fun characters on campus, but I'll always have a special place in my heart for the weird, off kilter humor of Dr. Locke in Religious Studies.

Went over to visit our friends at Mt. Sierra College in Monrovia. We will sign an MOU with MSC next week that should make it easier for their graduates to transition into UWest's MBA program.

The BudaWest Club had their elections last week (operating outside of the UWSA bylaws, I know, but at the same time we don't want to stop people from having fun and getting active). Congrats to my buddy Goh for his election to president of the club. BudaWest gets up to tons of activities on campus.

Well, off to my morning meeting. Peace out!

Cal State Fullerton Cuts More Classes

Cal State Fullerton, like all Cal State school, has again over-enrolled, by a massive number, students into its campus for fall, only to then make major cuts to the courses on offer in the Humanities Department.

UWest's former president, Dr. Allen Huang, explained to me how this works (he did the same as VP of a public college in Colorado). Public colleges play a game every year with legislators. The colleges over-enroll students, then go to the legislature and use those numbers as justification for more public dollars. Now, we know there is strong demand for education in the public university system and that these schools are not charged with being "exclusive" or "selective," but rather to admit as many qualified applicants as possible. That's fine. But should they admit more applicants than is really possible for the schools to handle, which is what I believe they do now? Well, no, they shouldn't and this time they got caught, they lost their own game. Problem is, the students were the ones to really get burned.

Out and About: Coming to a campus near you

As we approach the start of the fall semester, University of the West will be visiting several local campuses on order to create awareness about the fact that ALL of University of the West General Education courses are open!

In the coming 8 weeks we will be at East Los Angeles College, Rio Hondo College, Pasadena City College and Mt. San Antonio College. We'll also be making appearances at Cal State Los Angeles and Cal Poly Pomona. (You can contact the Admissions Office at 626.677.3311 to find out when and where we will be exactly.)

Students who cannot get into courses due to state budget cuts should definitely check out University of the West.

Don't say you 'Kant'

Short notice, very short notice actually, but guest speaker Justin Whitaker (Goldsmiths College, London/University of Montana) will stop by the UWest campus today at 3:30 p.m. (Room AD 207) for a talk on "A Buddhist Reading of Kant, A Kantian Reading of Buddha." Justin is a Ph.D. candidate in religious studies at Goldsmiths. His dissertation title is "Buddhist and Kantian Ethics: A Comparative Analysis."

I won't put Justin's whole bio up here, but you can follow his blog at http://www.americanbuddhist.blogspot.com/.

I will post video of his talk later, should I be able to get some.