(upbeat instrumental music)
- Good morning.
My name is Marlene Drinkwine
and I am the Vice President of Business Services
for Long Beach City College.
It is my pleasure to welcome you here today
to our Liberal Arts campus to celebrate
the ribbon cutting ceremony for Building D.
I would like to introduce the members of our
Board of Trustees and other special guests.
We have from our District Board of Trustees
President Sunny Zia.
(audience clapping)
Vice President Vivian Malauulu.
(audience clapping)
I believe trustee Dr. Virginia Baxter
will be joining us shortly.
We also have the honorable Diane McNinch,
former Board of Trustees member.
(audience clapping)
We have representatives with us today
from the offices of state and local officials.
From California Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon's office.
(audience clapping)
As well as Long Beach City Council Member
Suzie Price's office.
(audience clapping)
And from our LBCC Citizen's Oversight Committee,
we have Joan Greenwood.
- [Woman] Joan's not here. (audience clapping)
Aaron Moore, (audience clapping)
and Dr. Rebecca Turrentine. (audience clapping)
And from Long Beach City College we have Dr. Kathy Scott,
Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs.
(audience clapping)
Dr. Mike Munoz, Vice President of Student Support Services.
(audience clapping)
And Gene Durand, Interim Vice President of Human Resources.
(audience clapping)
On behalf of the college, I would also like to
thank those who provided input and guidance
during the design of the building
so that it would best meet our student's needs and
improve our Allied Health and Sciences program facilities.
So thanks to LBCC's new interim Associate Vice President
of the Pacific Coast campus, Dr. Paul Creason.
(audience clapping)
And his amazing team of faculty and staff.
I would also like to thank those
who helped make today a reality
in the reconstruction of this building
and that includes our Internal Facilities team
and the members of the Bond Management Program,
specifically Terrance DeGrey,
(audience clapping)
Dennis Turner, (audience clapping)
and Nicole Soria-Velarde. (audience clapping)
This team worked long and hard
to see this project to its completion.
Now it's my privilege to introduce our
Board of Trustees President, Sunny Zia.
President Zia is serving her second term
on the Long Beach Community College District Board
having been reelected to Area 3 in April of 2014
and then reelected in 2018.
She is a first generation Iranian-American
who was raised with the guiding principles
of the American dream.
She works daily to share the importance of education
as the pathway to success and is always looking out
for the best welfare of LBCC students.
Please join me in welcoming President Zia to the podium.
(audience clapping)
- Thank you Vice President Drinkwine
and thank you for joining us today.
The classrooms behind me are now filled with
future radiologists, biologists,
(mumbles)
I can't do this.
Phlebotomists. (audience cheering)
English is my third language
for those of you who don't know.
Scientists and doctors, but to create
these impressive new classrooms and laboratories,
we had a long journey to go through.
First, this would not have happened for our students
if it weren't for the generous taxpayers
of Avalon, Lakewood, Long Beach, and Signal Hill
who supported our bond measures.
So on behalf of my fellow trustees on the board
of the Long Beach Community College District,
thank you to the residents of the communities we serve.
Now let's give those taxpayers a big round of applause.
(audience clapping) Thank you.
Then the planning started.
Keeping this building open during renovation
was planning at its best,
so I applaud our facilities team,
faculty, staff, bond management, and vendors
for their diligence and most importantly
for their efforts in making this renovation a safe project.
Today I'm pleased to announce that this Building D
modernization project is being recognized for
Safety Excellence by the Statewide Educational Wrap Up,
SEWUP, Board of Directors.
The Statewide Educational Wrap Up Program
is a comprehensive owner controlled insurance program
designed specifically for school construction projects.
What this means is that there were no
workers compensation claims on this project,
resulting in a worker's compensation loss ratio of 0.00%.
(audience clapping)
Now that's what I'm talking about.
A worker's compensation loss ratio of 50 to 60%
is considered average in the construction industry.
Now being a civil engineer, someone who's been in
construction more than 21 years,
and a numbers person myself, this is truly impressive,
I can tell you that.
And it's music to my ears.
This project also experienced no general liability
or property damage to the project while under construction.
Long Beach Community College District
is proud to receive this prestigious award
and we thank all those who were involved
in making it possible.
To that note, I would also like to invite Dr. Romali,
Vice President Drinkwine and the team to join our photo.
Let's come on up here.
You know who you are.
Let's take this photo.
All the team members.
Thank you.
Wherever you want us.
This is not my forte.
Thank you so much everyone and again,
thank you all for joining us today
at our ribbon cutting ceremony.
I hope you join me after the ceremony to tour the new labs.
Congratulations to all of you for a job well done.
And we're going to do the ribbon cutting afterwards,
shortly I'm assuming, right folks?
Alright, great.
Thank you so much.
(audience clapping)
- Thank you so much Board President Zia.
I'd also like to recognize that Nicholas Cabeza
from the office of Patrick O'Donnell,
Assembly member, just recently joined us.
(audience clapping)
Now I am honored to introduce Dr. Reagan Ferragamo Romali,
Superintendent President of
Long Beach Community College District.
Please join me in welcoming her.
(audience clapping)
- Hello everyone, how are you doing today?
Good, good.
I hope that you are all ready to be
completely wowed like I was.
The outside of the Building D might look the same
as it always has, but wait until you see the inside.
I'm here today to boast about a new and upgraded features
of this building that can now offer
our Long Beach City College students,
such as, and this is my favorite part,
inside you're going to find a new anatomy classroom
and a dissection room.
How cool is that?
As many of you know, a very popular science night
is held here each May for the community
and the dissection area is always
a big highlight of the evening.
So now we have a new room to wow them with.
And for our Medical Assisting program,
we have an updated lab in which you're going to find
state of the art equipment.
The Medical Assisting field plays an important role
in the medical community and our other local hospitals
and this area has long proven to be an
excellent stepping stone to other medical professions.
In addition, it's been projected that
Medical Assisting jobs will grow 29% in the next 10 years
and LBCC is so proud to provide our students
an education taught by the best faculty
with the latest technology in their field.
(audience clapping)
We know we have the best faculty, right?
Everybody knows that.
That's just a fact.
Prior to the renovation, LBCC taught radiology
off of a 30 year old x-ray machine.
Today, LBCC is now the only college around
that boasts two mobile machines,
a new diagnostic medical imaging classroom,
radiology lab, control room, a dark room,
but that's not all.
Upstairs on the second floor,
you're going to find an additional microbiology lab,
an incubation room, as well a
prep and sterilization autoclave room.
There's so much going on behind us right at the moment.
Just peeking through the doors,
you're going to be able to sense the passion
of the teaching and learning that's going on.
And I could not be more proud of all who worked so hard
to open the doors of our Allied Health
Life Science and Physical Science building.
Thank you all.
(audience clapping)
- Thank you President Romali.
Next is my privilege to introduce our
Interim Associate Vice President of the Pacific Coast campus
who also oversees the School of Health Kinesiology
Science and Mathematics, Dr. Paul Creason.
(audience clapping)
- Thank you Marlene.
Thank you President Romali.
Good morning everybody.
I'm really excited to be here today.
I want to share with you a little bit
of history about this building.
This building was built in 1972
and it was the only,
these three buildings, B, C and D, were the only
three story buildings on the campus at that time.
This newly renovated space is an amazing place
for our students as Dr. Romali
and Board President Zia have mentioned.
We have, this has been a long term project
that's been quite a domino effect.
So in all of these spaces are amazing.
The math faculty moved over to the V Building,
which opened up the bottom floor
so that we could double the capacity of our
science and science lab classes.
And in doing so, the Allied Health faculty
moved out of the nursing area
in the newly renovated C Building
so that we could add a simulation hospital room
and more academic supports for our nursing
and Allied Health students.
So it's been a great project.
This is the first time since 2016
that we've had everything happening in the D Building.
All of the classrooms open.
All of the faculty in their spaces
and everyone is just delighted.
As you may not know, our science classes are very popular.
The classrooms behind you often have 200 students
on a wait list to get into our anatomy,
our physiology, our microbiology classrooms.
So this project has enabled us to double that capacity
and really serve our students, so we're delighted.
This project endured a few delays,
but our Bond Management team and our district staff
really persevered and did a great job
and we have mentioned him before,
but I'd like to give Terrance and Dennis a shout out.
It's been a pleasure working with you guys.
(audience clapping) You do great work.
I want to thank the faculty and staff.
This space was shut down over the summer
so that we could really ramp up our construction.
And the construction, as you heard,
occurred while classes were in session,
so the faculty were patient,
they knew that there was light at the end of the tunnel
and were really, really delighted
in this new state of the art facility.
I want to thank you for being here today.
I also want to invite you, after the ribbon cutting,
to quietly check out some of the classrooms
because they're going to be full when we go through there.
But the faculty, we've talked with the faculty,
and we're able to kind of sneak in and see what happens.
You'll be able to see these amazing labs
and want to thank you for coming this morning.
(audience clapping)
- Thank you Dr. Creason.
As we prepare to close the ceremony,
I want to acknowledge several key groups.
Mainly on behalf of the college,
I would like to thank our Citizens Oversight Committee
for their oversight of our bond program.
I would also like to sincerely thank our
Bond Management Team which is comprised both of
internal staff as well as our partners with
Cordoba Corporation who graciously
has sponsored today's event.
I would also like to thank our
Office of Communications and College Advancement,
the team from Academic Computing and Multimedia Services,
facilities, operations and grounds teams
for all of their hard work leading up to today
and planning this event.
And of course, thank you all for being here today.
As Dr. Creason mentioned, you are all welcome
to take a look through some of our new labs and classrooms
after the ribbon cutting.
I think you'll be really happy to see
the excitement and the incredible facilities
we're now able to offer our students.
Now I would like to invite the members of
the Board of Trustees, President Romali
to join me for a photograph and the cutting ceremony.
Thank you all. (audience clapping)
(upbeat instrumental music)