All College Day brought back memories from Contra Costa College’s past events and established high expectations for the campus’ future.

The faculty-mandated event was held on Jan. 24 in GE-225 and introduced newly hired staff members.

Service recognitions of five, 10 and 15 years were honored, as well as honorable mention to Journalism department Chairperson Paul DeBolt for his 40 years of work at CCC.

The meeting was led by Interim President Damon Bell, who gave an update of his first three months leading CCC.

“The best part of my work here has been getting out and meeting all the people on campus and listening to what they have to say about how they feel about the campus, how they feel about our students and the work that they are doing to help students be successful,” Dr. Bell said.

He was selected to serve as interim president in November and will hold the position through June 2021.

Bell shared some of the difficulties he has faced trying to soothe the turmoil that brought him to CCC.

“The challenge has been hearing some of the difficult times that they’ve gone through over the last couple years and trying to come up with a plan to help people move through that, so that we can all be on the same page to help students,” he said.

The interim president announced to the audience what will be in store in the coming months, such as the Millennial MAGIC project.

MAGIC stands from the Millennial Advisory Group to Innovate the College.

The purpose of it is to gather a group of young people who can bring innovative ideas to campus.

“I want them to advise me as a president as to how we might look at our current policies and norms of the institution and how we might change or adjust those policies,” he said. “This is an opportunity for me to do some professional development with them. This group is going to bring the next generation of college leaders.”

The planning committee also introduced the development of the Strategic Plan, another project that would help CCC move forward to successful accreditation.

Classified Senate President Brandy Gibson said they have been working on the Strategic Plan for a month before the start of the semester.

“We got together and discussed what we needed to present the plan, what kind of information we wanted to get back from the campus community, and the best forums to do that,” Gibson said. “In the beginning, we were talking about presenting the plan in GE or Fireside Hall. In the end, we decided to use the Library for logistical reasons.”

Academic Senate President Katherine Krolikowski said the Strategic Plan is the guidance document for the work at the college.

The district has a strategic plan that guides all the sister colleges, and the state Chancellor’s Office has a vision for success that is like the overarching strategic plan.

“One structure proposed for our new Strategic Plan is a pyramid, with a functional college at the bottom, having support and tools to do our work in the middle, with both of these supporting student successes on the top,” Krolikowski said.

“This is important to students because it directs the college’s work, which is, after all, educating students.”

After the presentation of the plan at All College Day, the crowd was asked to move to the Library where everyone had the opportunity to share their opinions and concerns on paper taped on the walls of the Library.

All College Day was concluded with a group picture that consisted of over 200 members of faculty, administrators and classified staff.