November 10, 2025

Hi Fam,

Hope you are all doing well. I was out of town last week so my message will be shorter than usual; however, there was a lot going on in my absence and I want to thank you for keeping me apprised. You continue to embody the actions of an organization committed to the culture of participatory governance and responsibility.

I am forever grateful that you use your voice and that you expect your voice to be heard and action will follow.

Below are the message and reflection.

President's Message

CBExchange Conference

I joined a team consisting of, Dean Meneffe, Dean Hill, Interim Vice President Ortez, AgTec Faculty Juan Carlos Cervantes, Senior Program Specialist Brittany Zenz and AgTec Student Success Coordinator Jose Mundo Tapia to this national conference. I was able to meet with funders from the Gates Foundation in a leaders meeting. I also had the opportunity to meet with several people from across the country who have long term success with various CBE models. The key take aways for me were the importance of connecting K-12 partners to community colleges to higher ed and ultimately to workforce and industry. I was specially looking for best practice on CBE for financial aid and A&R for transcription and scheduling. I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are a couple of community college right here in California who have perfected these issues and are ready to help us. They have worked through issues with Canvas, Colleague and Ellucian. I will be trying to set up meetings with them to help us specifically see how they were able to make this work on their campus. Coastline College was very impressive in their approach to making CBE work for those faculty interested in attempting to implement this mode of delivery into both CTE and transfer level classes.

Achieving the Dream Capacity Café

I received my letter from our AtD leadership and data coaches. They provided me with the report from their November 6 and 7, 2025, Capacity Café meetings. I want to thank you for taking the time to give your candid input. This shows your continued desire for Clovis to continue to grow and improve.

Identified institutional strengths were noted as follows:

  • Academic and Programmatic Excellence
  • Community and Cultural Support
  • Student Services and Advising
  • Leadership and Governance

Opportunities for institutional capacity-building were noted as follows:

  • Professional Development and Talent Utilization
  • Technology and Innovation
  • Transparency and Trust Related to Communication
  • Cross-Unit and Vertical Communication

The following ideas received strong participant support, indicating shared urgency or priority:

  • Theme High-Support Ideas Institutional Strengths Strong academic programs
  • Intentional student experience planning
  • Strategic collaboration communication
  • “Need to understand the ‘why’” (repeated dozens of times)
  • Better cross-unit communication
  • Capacity building time + confidence to grow professionally
  • Prioritization of strategic plan
  • Unused talent

Finally, based on the feedback, the following three action steps are proposed:

  1. Develop and launch a strategic communications framework
  2. Prioritize and publicize a “Strategic Focus Dashboard”
  3. Launch a “Time + Confidence” Professional Growth Initiative

SCCCD Leadership Graduation

I had the opportunity and honor to be able to attend the Classified Professional Leadership Class XXIV graduation. It is always an impressive group of Classified Professionals who participate in the Leadership Academy, and I always walk away inspired by the caliber of professionals who we are fortunate enough to have working in our District. On Friday I was there to celebrate our very own, Susan Jones and Alyssa Talbot. Congratulations to you both and thank you for choosing to share your talents, passion and expertise with us here at Clovis.

The Fresno Center Giving Thanks Gala

I had the opportunity to attend the Gala with Teng Her, Kimberly Duong, Bonnie Boonthavongkham, Trustees Ikeda and Rodriguez and Dr. Holt-McDonald. This was a great event, and we were able to strengthen our community partnership with this organization as they celebrated 50 years of serving people in Fresno.

Student-lead Food Insecurity Efforts

I must say that I was proud to see our student leaders (Styler, President of the BAASE club) making an announcement at my church on Sunday morning asking for donations and assistance for our Crush Food Pantry. Students have partnered with local churches and community service organizations to help provide food for their fellow students. I am so proud of our students for stepping up to help in time of need.

Voices Heard

Enlight of the several emails and texts that I received last week with regards to the ICE training and other legal policies and procedure, I have asked for General Counsel to come to Clovis and conduct a Fireside Chat to allow everyone to have their questions and concerns addressed directly from legal counsel. She has agreed to come, in person, to answer all questions. We are working with her schedule to hold the meeting. At all times I value your voices, and if I don’t know or have the answers, I will bring those who do directly to you so that you can get answers that satisfy your concerns.

President’s Reflection

Although I was gone until Friday last week, I was made aware of all that was happening on campus and across the district while I was out of town. Thank you for exercising participatory responsibility and feeling empowered to let me know your concerns.

Please know that I hope that you will always feel empowered to speak and have your voices heard. This is my firm commitment to you. I won’t run from difficult conversations as I think it is the cornerstone of how we collectively grow and become better as an institution. What you say will never fall on deaf ears and action will be taken. I also want to take this time to reinforce what I stated when I first became your president. Presidents and leadership will come and go, but as we strengthen who we are as a college, we will become transition proof, simple because we know who we are and we stand by our mission, not to serve at a president’s whim or take on initiatives because they are the flavor of the month, but because it makes sense for who we say we are and who we strive to be.

For that, I am confident that as we go through this season, and for whatever it might bring that we will come out stronger. It is because of our common bond of student first culture that the collective Clovis Faculty and Classified Professionals are ready.

Proud to serve you.

In service,

Kim E. Armstrong, Ph.D.