ASCC Vice President Rosa Castaneda will assume responsibilities of iFALCON this semester after being launched by former ASCC President Michael Barrita in Spring.
Castaneda has teamed up with English professor Stephen Clifford to innovate iFALCON as a premier program for students at Cerritos College.
“The goal is to ensure that iFALCON is institutionalized at Cerritos College and it’s not just a flash in the pan or a quick trend that goes away,” Clifford said.
Castaneda is in the process of setting up an iFALCON club that will produce fundraisers for the iFalcon scholarship.
Last year, the scholarships were able to raise approximately $1500, according to Castaneda.
With the club, Castaneda plans to raise more money this semester and is also looking to altering the criteria for the scholarship, allowing more students to qualify for it.
The front page on iFALCON’s Web site has also been modified and includes updated videos of Castaneda and ASCC President Oscar Franco speaking about the program.
Castaneda explained the importance of iFalcon for students, “These (acronyms) totally make a big difference. All of students don’t know about it though, ” Castaneda said.
“We want to make ‘Habits of Mind’ a real habit for students,” Clifford said.
Popular social networks like Twitter and Facebook are also being promoted and implemented to the program to reach the ultimate goal of spreading the iFALCON word to students, Castaneda said.
She is looking to delegate the task of updating these social networks to club members.
Castaneda and Clifford, along with other faculty members, have created a taskforce. The taskforce is open to the public, including students and faculty, and will meet twice a month, every first and third Monday.
The first meeting will be on Aug. 31 due to a conflict with Labor Day.
The task force will consist of discussions on how to develop certain features for the programs and how faculty staff is implementing iFALCON in the classroom.
The initial launch of iFALCON was a pilot test in spring which featured posters around campus along with a new Web site and bookmarks handed out in the bookstore promoting it.
Toward the end of the semester, the promotion of the campaign failed to reach the majority of students on campus.
“When (iFALCON) first started, we knew it was going to hit a small audience,” Clifford said.
