De Anza College looks forward to more reporters and managers in the future, now with credentials behind their names. The district finalized two new Associate of Arts degrees at De Anza College within the last several weeks.
Journalism and management are two new additions to the 60 degree programs and 125 certificate programs the college offers. Both degree programs will begin in the fall of 2006.
A third, an Associate of Arts in Enterprise Security, which is hightech, computer security systems training, awaits approval from the Chancellor’s Office, according to its director Mark Sherby. Sherby teaches in the Computer Applications and Office Systems Department, also known as CAOS (pronounced "chaos").
For Beth Grobman, department chair for Journalism and Mass Communications, the new journalism degree marks the crowning of an already successful program. At a time when campus-wide enrollment numbers are down, in this quarter alone, enrollment in journalism classes at De Anza has increased 25 percent, according to Grobman.
In mass communications and journalism classes, one of which is this newspaper, the department enrolled 166 students this quarter, said Grobman.
The associate degree caps the success of the program that tracks Grobman’s tenure as department chair and the reinstatement of the program in 1998.
In the early 1990s, the department faced budget cuts and faculty attrition, which resulted in its elimination and a rocky period for this newspaper.
In 1987, Warren Mack, who led La Voz for 20 years, retired, which began the period of disarray for the newspaper.
Grobman plans to pursue new certificate programs and an Associate of Arts degree in Mass Communications next year.
The Associate of Arts in Management did an apprenticeship as a certificate, said Michele Fritz, the full-time instructor in the Business Department who led the effort for the degree.
One of the main goals of offering the degree is to combine career goals and education, said Fritz.
Many of the students who will end up pursuing the degree may use the endeavor for promotions or to show supervisors that they are enriching job skills, she said.
She accorded with Grobman that an associate degree can be a goal by itself or could be something to fall back on if a student falls short of a bachelor’s degree.
The new associate degrees accompanied a catalog cleanup, said Mary Clark, curriculum and catalog coordinator for the Scheduling Office.
Many courses had outdated goals, outdated materials, or had never been offered, she said.
According to Clark, a faculty committee assists the Curriculum Committee and the Vice President of Instruction Judy Miner in evaluating the courses.
The group cut about 400 courses from the general catalog, which had about 3000 total course listings, she said.
The instructional divisions were largely responsible for the brunt of the cleanup, Clark said. It was not entirely mandated from above and the trimming was not due to budget cuts, Clark said.
