Interior Design students – Rebeca Munoz (left) is the winner of Best of Residential Design, and Tania Albin is the winner of Best of Commercial Design. Houston Community College (HCC) is composed of 13 Centers of Excellence and numerous satellite centers that serve the diverse communities in the Greater Houston area by preparing individuals to live and work in an increasingly international and technological society.
The American Society of Interior Designers (ASID) has chosen two students from the Houston Community College (HCC) Interior Design program as winners of two categories at the Texas Gulf Coast Chapter Ruby Awards.
During the recent event at the Decorative Center of Houston, Tania Albin won Best of Commercial Design and Rebeca Munoz won the award for Best of Residential Design.
“This award is very important for me because is the first time in my life I feel that an organization and a school is supporting me in achieving my professional goals,” said a thrilled Munoz. “The HCC Interior Design program helped grow as an interior designer. Since I started the program, my design abilities have been constantly improving with the help of my experienced professors. They are constantly pushing you to do your absolute best.”
Those proud professors are Shasta Swift, associate chair, HCC Consumer Arts & Sciences Center of Excellence and Kevin Hamby, HCC Interior Design program coordinator.
“We provide a rigorous two years of intensive design classes which has produced some of the most refined and talented interior designers Houston has to offer,” said Hamby. “Shasta and I are so delighted when our students receive recognition from the professional interior design community for the hours of hard work and dedication it takes to get though the program.”
The Interior Design program is part of the HCC Consumer Arts & Sciences Center of Excellence. For more information, visit hccs.edu/interiordesign.
HCC Health Sciences Center of Excellence grand opening: A pillar of the Texas Medical Center
Committed to educational excellence in Houston’s medical industry, HCC officials and industry partners proudly support the formation of future doctors, nurses and other vital personnel in health care.
“Excellence is not a title. Excellence is an attitude, a decision to thrive and succeed.“ With those words Teddy Tovar, director of the Respiratory Therapy Program, described the atmosphere that students, faculty, and administrators breathe at the HCC Coleman College for Health Sciences, the only institution of its kind located in the heart of the Texas Medical Center. For many, the grand opening of the Houston Community College Health Sciences Center of Excellence signifies the beginning of a new era.
“The common Latin phrase ‘de novo’ means ‘anew,” said Dean of the Center of Excellence, Dr. Gary Kesling. “Today, the Coleman College for Health Sciences is the ‘de novo’ transformation into the Center of Excellence. This grand opening means that we are here to facilitate our students’ understanding of the purpose of a health science education that promotes intellectual and personal success.”
Coleman College, which opened its doors in 1999, offers twenty different disciplines in health sciences including nursing, diagnostics, therapeutic, and dental services, among others.
“This is an opportunity to remind us not only of the economic impact of our programs, but also of the personal one,” reflected HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado, Ph.D., P.E., as he shared a recent experience in which his mother underwent treatment in a hospital located in the Texas Medical Center.
“The nurses helped me communicate with my mother and with the doctors,” said Dr. Maldonado. “They took wonderful care of her. I was humbled when some of them told me they were HCC graduates.”
On an average, the 43-member institutions of the Texas Medical Center receive eight million of patients a year. In Houston, the healthcare industry accounts for one in every ten jobs.
According to Adriana Tamez, Ed.D, chair, HCC Board of Trustees, District III, these jobs are not positions suited for everyone.
“I have always considered the healthcare field as a vocation first and then a profession,” said Dr. Tamez. “Your passion and dedication continue to inspire us administrators to work harder and never loose sight that what we do, is about people.”
Nursing student Rachel Ibanez, whose father’s diabetes was treated through the help of nurses, describes the nursing program at HCC Coleman College as a stepping ladder.
HCC Chancellor Cesar Maldonado. HCC is one of the country’s largest singly-accredited, open-admission, community colleges offering associate degrees, certificates, workforce training, and lifelong learning opportunities.
She said, “I’m proud to be a student here. I hope that one day I can provide hope and bring people the help that healed my dad so many times.”
The event was attended by representatives from various health care organizations in the Houston area including Edward Hugetz, Provost at the University of Houston-Downtown.
“We are proud to have a long partnership with HCC,” said Hugetz. “Two thirds of our students are transfer and of those, 40% come from Houston Community College. We are at a moment of renewal in establishing what we need to do together for the future of the students and the community. We congratulate HCC on their vision. I am so proud to see HCC succeed like that.”
Currently, construction is under way for a 10-story building across the street, which will more than double the size of Coleman College. The facility, which will offer 248,000 additional square feet of classrooms, is projected to open Summer 2017.
To learn more about the programs offered at the HCC Health Sciences Center of Excellence, visit: hccs.edu/centers.
Nigeria: Northeast Children Robbed of Education
“In its brutal crusade against western-style education, Boko Haram is robbing an entire generation of children in northeast Nigeria of their education,” said Mausi Segun, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch.
(Abuja) – Boko Haram’s attacks on schools, students, and teachers in northeast Nigeria have had a devastating impact on education. The conflict has left nearly 1 million children with little or no access to school, and Nigeria’s security forces have contributed to the problem by using schools as military bases, putting children at further risk of attack from the Islamist armed group. The 86-page report, “‘They Set the Classrooms on Fire’: Attacks on Education in Northeast Nigeria,” documents Boko Haram’s increasingly brutal assaults on schools, students, and teachers since 2009 in Borno, Yobe, and Kano states. Between 2009 and 2015, Boko Haram’s attacks destroyed more than 910 schools and forced at least 1,500 more to close. At least 611 teachers have been deliberately killed and another 19,000 forced to flee. The group has abducted more than 2,000 civilians, many of them women and girls, including large groups of students.
“In its brutal crusade against western-style education, Boko Haram is robbing an entire generation of children in northeast Nigeria of their education,” said Mausi Segun, Nigeria researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The government should urgently provide appropriate schooling for all children affected by the conflict.”
Boko Haram’s initial tactics of threats and intimidation to interfere with what it sees as Western education became more severe by early 2012, Human Rights Watch found. The insurgents began to destroy, burn, and pillage school buildings and property, claiming the attacks were in response to government forces’ attacks on Quranic schools.
In late 2012 and early 2013, as Nigerian security forces expanded military operations against Boko Haram, the insurgents became more brutal, deliberately targeting and killing teachers, school administrators, and education officials. The group also attacked students to keep them out of school and forcibly recruited students into Boko Haram’s ranks. Its fighters abducted female students as “wives,” effectively for sexual slavery. As security tightened, Boko Haram adopted suicide bombings as a tactic at schools and other locations, killing increasing numbers of children and school staff.Boko Haram’s attack on Chibok Government Secondary School has become emblematic of the group’s tactics against education. On the night of April 14, 2014, it abducted 276 girls from their dormitories, with 219 remaining captives two years later. Many have been forced to convert and marry their captors, witnesses have said. In a video released in May 2014, the Boko Haram leader, Abubakar Shekau, said women and girls would continue to be abducted to “turn them to the path of true Islam” and to ensure they did not attend school
On November 24, 2014, Boko Haram attacked Damasak, a trading town near the border with Niger, taking more than 300 elementary school students captive. They used the school as a military base, then escaped with the captives as soldiers from neighboring Chad and Niger advanced on Damasak in March 2015, as part of a cross-border military operation against the insurgents.
Nigerian security forces have also been implicated in crimes in its operations against Boko Haram, including the killing, harassing, and intimidation of Quranic school teachers and students. Government forces have also used schools for military purposes, which is contrary to the Safe Schools Declaration that Nigeria endorsed in 2015 and may place schools at risk of attack.
An estimated 2.2 million people, including about 1.4 million children, have fled the fighting in the northeast, according to UNICEF, which says that 952,029 of the displaced are children of school age. Only about 10 percent of the children are in government-recognized displacement camps, where some educational services are provided by volunteer teachers. The remaining 90 percent are with friends and family members, with little or no access to schooling.
In his election campaign, President Muhammadu Buhari pledged to tackle the Boko Haram insurgency and to develop Nigeria’s northeast, but at least 1,000 civilians have died in the conflict since Buhari took office in May 2015. Although the government said in December that Boko Haram had been “technically defeated,” attacks continue.
In April 2016, the government said that the reconstruction of the damaged northeast will cost $9 billion. Nigerian authorities should improve security at schools in the northeast, ensure that displaced children are promptly given access to alternative schooling, and consistent with its commitments under the Safe Schools Declaration, ban the use of schools for military purposes, Human Rights Watch said. Those responsible for these attacks should be investigated for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
“Boko Haram’s attacks and the government’s neglect and misuse of schools have contributed to the dismal state of education in the northeast,” Segun said. “It is up to both sides to immediately stop the attacks on education and end the cycle of poverty and underachievement to which far too many children in the region are being sentenced.”
