College

Cal State Fullerton next month will host an interactive conference for high school students interested in leadership positions and volunteer work. The campus will host Take the Lead, an annual teen conference on March 11 for freshman to seniors at any school around the county. Teachers are also invited to attend with their students for free. The event is sponsored by OneOC, an organization that connects volunteers with nonprofits, and the Festival of Children Foundation, a Costa Mesa-based nonprofit that assists local charities that serve children.

It is heartwarming how our 6-year-old thinks she will live with us forever. And while it is moving to hear her devotion to daddy and how she wants to marry him someday, I know the time will come when her pure adoration of us will turn into something that resembles complete and utter animosity. I hope it is a fleeting hour or short phase, if we are lucky, but more than likely, she will want to fly far from the coop. When the time comes for college, I imagine she won't want to live at home with her doting parents (as she is an only child)

While most high school students settle in and delve into their back-to-school routines, senior Torie Immel is thinking about colleges and which one she will attend next fall. But, unlike other students, Immel, a Newport Beach resident, is also preparing for a national championship. If Immel's name doesn't sound familiar, that's because she isn't competing in your classic high school sport. Her locker room is a barn and her teammate is a 12-year-old gelding named Ambassador.

In the 1940s, Jim Carnett’s parents met on the dusty landscape of the Santa Ana Army Air Base, which later became home to OCC. He grew up near the college, putting the biggest playground a boy could want only a short walk away. Carnett remembered he and his brother sneaking into the gym several times to play basketball, only to get caught and sent home. After graduating high school, OCC welcomed Carnett on campus, then as a student. At 26, Carnett got his first big job and, not surprisingly, it was at OCC. He even met his wife there.

Early College High School's Parent Information Night   Where: Early College High School  2990 Mesa Verde Drive East               Costa Mesa, CA 92626   When: Thursday, March 20th, 2008              6:30 - 7:30 p.m. Are you interested in a smaller learning environment with greater academic support? Are you interested in a challenging environment? Are you mature enough to take college level courses? We are now accepting applications from current 9th and 10th grade students for next school year!

The Daily Pilot asked students at the Newport-Mesa Unified School District's new site, "What inspired you to apply for Early College High School?" "The opportunity to get an A.A. degree." Jason Costa Mesa Valdez, 14   "It was a new challenge." Pedro Cervantes, 14 Costa Mesa "To get an opportunity to take two years of college and not pay." Gabriel Urbana, 14 Costa Mesa "To have a chance to be the first in my family to complete four years of college."

I had the recent privilege, frightening though it was, of speaking to high school students about going to college. Talking in front of unfamiliar classrooms is just scary. It doesn’t matter who the kids are and I thought it didn’t matter how old they are. It mattered this time. It turns out ninth graders are much harder to please than elementary-age kids or even juniors. These were high school students at Estancia. I was invited by Tricia Edlund to speak to the Puente students there.

When Chris Moghaddam was a student at Newport Harbor High School, he and a number of teachers had written off his chances for a college education. Too insecure to write essays without a teacher’s help, he said his frustrations with schoolwork made him reclusive, insecure and terrified to assert himself and follow — or even consider — his dreams. “I was afraid of reading,” he said. “If there was an extra credit assignment, I’d never ever want to do it.” But seven years after making the national dean’s list, graduating from Chapman University with a bachelor’s degree in leadership and organizational studies — not to mention his own marketing and management company — Moghaddam returned to Newport Harbor on Friday to give some advice to other students during the school’s first “Apply Yourself” conference.

Daily Pilot columnist Steve Smith apparently fancies himself nanny to us all. I’ve just finished reading and re-reading his most recent attempt at the enlightenment of the populace (“Drake lacks faith in students,” Sept. 25). You can chalk it up to my steady march to geezerdom, but I’m having a tough time finding a point in all his verbiage. I’m guessing the point of his piece was to let UC Irvine Chancellor Michael Drake off the hook for the way he botched the hiring of Erwin Chemerinsky as dean of the new UC Irvine law school.

Biology text books and boxes lined walls in a portable while Early College High School science teacher Candace Leuthold unpacked a box containing specimens in glass jars. "It's going to be nice to have my own classroom again," said Leuthold, who was racing to get the classroom ready for Tuesday's classes. After sharing digs with the Back Bay High School campus for the last month, Early College teachers and workers were busy Monday moving into several portables behind Back Bay. "It's my space, so to speak," Leuthold said with a laugh.

She thought her artistic abilities were forever taken away, then she found a new path. In 2007 Un Joo Kang was in college and working as a makeup artist when a drunken driver crashed into her, crushing the lower half of her body. But five years later, at Orange Coast College she found Extended Opportunities, Programs and Services (EOPS), which provided her with the help she needed to go in a new direction: architecture. "I'm going to cry, but it's one of those things where I couldn't do that before and I can do that now," said Kang, a mother of two. "I shouldn't be walking, let alone be alive.

Coast Community College District instructors won't have to take furloughs like other district employees, the Board of Trustees said this week. "We were able to commit to no layoffs for any employees next year," said Trustee Jerry Patterson. "That's great, that's good news. " The board asked all employees in April to help combat a $3-million budget shortfall for 2012-13 by taking a 3% cut in compensation or unpaid furloughs to help save an estimated 30 to 40 classified positions.

In Newport-Mesa, the Sea Kings are, well, the kings of college-preparedness, according to the Washington Post. The newspaper has ranked Corona del Mar High School the highest in the Newport-Mesa Unified School District and placed it nearly 100 spots above the best-ranked Irvine Unified High School. "For the first time any of us can ever remember, Newport-Mesa outranked Irvine this year," Assistant Supt. Charles Hinman said during Tuesday's school board meeting to applause.

HUNTINGTON BEACH — Coast Community College District trustees have come out in support of a proposed statewide tax increase aimed at staving off cuts to classes, programs, services and staff. The Board of Trustees unanimously passed a resolution Wednesday in support of Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed tax initiative, which is expected to be placed on the November ballot. Failure of the tax increase would leave the district with a projected $13.7-million deficit in 2013-14 — after using up its reserves to get through 2012-13, Andy Dunn, vice chancellor of finance and administrative services, said during Wednesday's meeting.

BAKERSFIELD - Only seven times in 44 games this season did Orange Coast College baseball Coach John Altobelli have to address his players after a loss. But when it came time to speak from the heart after being eliminated from the California Community College Athletic Assn. State Championship on Saturday, the words he delivered to his team were as obvious as they were true. "I told them that we loved them," Altobelli said of the aftermath of a 5-4 defeat in 12 innings to Rio Hondo in the four-team, double-elimination tournament at Bakersfield Community College.

MEN'S GOLF NCAA Stanford Regional STANFORD — UC Irvine sophomore Allan Jun used a strong finish to shoot a two-under-par 68 in the first round of the NCAA Stanford Regional Thursday. Competing as an individual, Jun is in a 10-way tie for seventh place. Sang Yi of LSU and Zachary Blair of BYU are the individual leaders at four-under 66. Jun shot a one-under 34 on the front nine and after consecutive bogeys on the 12th and 13th holes, he carded three straight birdies on the par-4 15th, par-5 16th, and par-3 17th to shoot 68 on the par-70 Stanford Golf Course that measures 6,727 yards.

WOMEN'S WATER POLO UCLA 10, UC Irvine 9 SAN DIEGO — Jessy Cardey scored five goals to pace the Anteaters in the third-place game of the NCAA Championship on Sunday at San Diego State. UCI with a best-ever No. 4 national finish, completes its season with a 25-8 record. The No. 4-seeded 'Eaters lost to eventual champion Stanford, 12-3, in Saturday's semifinals. Danielle Warde, Hannah Croghan, Katie Croghan and Hillary Estrada added goals, while Jillian Yocum had five saves for UCI against the Bruins.

Off-season weight training began Monday for the UC Irvine men's volleyball team, which capped its 2012 season with the program's third national championship in three seasons. Scott Kevorken, a sophomore middle blocker in 2012, said it was different not seeing departing seniors such as Carson Clark, Dan McDonnell, Kevin Carroll, Will Montgomery and Austin D'Amore. D'Amore sat down with me following the team's on-campus celebration last week to add some perspective on his four years in the program.

WOMEN'S WATER POLO UC Irvine 8, Loyola Marymount 6 SAN DIEGO - The No. 4-seeded Anteaters advanced to Saturday's semifinal against No. 1-seeded Stanford by topping the Lions in the NCAA Championship at San Diego State on Friday. UCI (25-6) has won four straight and 13 of its last 14. Coach Dan Klatt's squad lost at Stanford, 17-5, on March 3. The teams meet Saturday at 3:30 p.m. The Cardinal (24-2) topped Pomona-Pitzer, 17-5, in a quarterfinal Friday.

The 116 members of Orange Coast College's Circle K Club invite Circle K alumni to "A Splash of Color," the service club's end-of-year banquet May 27. The event will take place at OCC's Student Center. Doors will open at 6 p.m. and dinner, catered by the Newport Rib Co., will be served at 7 p.m. Alumni are invited to reserve a seat, at the presale price of $18, by sending an email by May 20 to tinamtqnguyen@gmail.com . Tickets at the door will cost $20. The banquet theme represents the club's diversity and each club member's contributions toward community service.