Finals As Told By GIFs

Your teacher reminds you that your class does have a final.

And you had completely forgotten.

You haven’t really being doing the assigned reading.

Actually, you haven’t been doing much school work, at all.

After all,

You have plenty of time before test day.

Then it’s Sunday.

And you haven’t studied.

At all.

Now you sit down to start, but everything is so distracting.

You’re just procrastinating.

And the worst part is, you can’t help it.

Now it’s 11 p.m. You have a final in 12 hours.

And you stop fooling around.

And kick it into gear.

And you’re in the zone.

It’s 4 a.m.

 Finals day.

 And you didn’t sleep all that much.

 You walk into class.

 And magically, you retain some of that cramming.

And it pays off. You’re all done. 

 And you haven’t learned your lesson.

By Christian Zerbel

Faculty Feature: Steven Tobias

Steven Tobias, an English instructor at EvCC for two years now, has always passionate to teach EvCC students to improve their writing skills.

Steven Tobias, an English instructor, has a passion to help students
improve their writing skills by creating a reading habit everyday.

He recieved his Ph.D in English from the University of Washington in 2007 and now Tobias teaches English 101, 102, and 103. Soon, on fall quarter, he will teach American Literature class.

“What I like teaching here is I choose the textbook for my class. I feel like having students read a complicated textbook is one of the best ways of teach on writing effectively,” Tobias said.

Tobias believes that the more you read, the better a writer you will be. Though he knows that practically, you can't teach someone to write effectively in just ten weks, but he works hard to see an improvement in his student's English skills.

"My simple advice will be just read every single

 day, read every day! It doesn't matter if you read 

Shakespeare, romace novels, science fictions, 

graphic novels, or newspapers."

"You have to make reading to be part of your life. It’s a single best thing you can do to improve your writing skills. I just told my students to read every day, it’s an exercise for your brain,"said Tobias.

Besides writing, Tobias has enjoyed cooking since he was a little. 

“I cook whenever I can because of my job and I like to make any kinds of cooking such as Italian, Mexican and Asian food. I like everything, I love trying new things," he said. "One reason I love Seattle is because there are a lot of country restaurants, and I often ask my students who came from other place about what they like to eat after that I will find the places somewhere in Seattle. I learned cook from my mom, she taught me that I should be independent, and should know how to cook and clean."

Q&A: 

Q: What are your hobbies?

A: Running, cooking, gardening and writing

Q: What’s your favorite season?

A: Summer is my favorite season since I live in Seattle. I've lived in Washington since 1999. I was born in New Jersey and all my whole family is in New York. Also, I, my wife, and our son go camping together; it’s a nice time to enjoy the beauty of nature and relax.

Q: What’s your favorite book?

A: Umm…That’s a hard question, I like a lot of different books, I think if I had to choose one. It will be “A Passage to India." I love the way the characters are drawn, it’s very complete, and complicated. This book tells a story about how human beings so often have conflicts or problems because of misunderstandings. Reading this book, taught you understanding and openness to the world. It’s a really good book and I like it a lot. Maybe someday I will go in India.

Q: What’s your favorite music?

A: I like rock and hip-hop, alternative. Recently, I listen to dance music.

Q: What’s your favorite color?

A: Green. I think because it really reminds me of home. Washington is home, to me; it’s a green place.

Q: What’s your favorite activity with family?

A: Spending time with my son. He loves to go to the zoo and we have a pass, that’s why we go to zoo a lot.

A day in the life of Steven Tobias:

"Well, I get up in the morning and take my son to school. Then I go to work. My activity on campus, I teach until the evening and then I go home to have dinner with my family, after that I put my son to bed and do my work and sleep. Also, I do some reading and writing in the meantime."

Story by Ratna Wahyuningsih

Fitness Center Heritage Wall Commemorates Influential People

EvCC's Heritage Wall memorializes people who have had great influence on the college and its growth.

Located outside the Fitness Center Building, this ‘wall of fame’ has bricks left from the old gym, which has been used to build this heritage wall on the outside of the building.

EvCC heritage wall has the bricks from the 1958 gym building.

“I just found out about the ‘Heritage Wall’ last week and I think EvCC could work more to promote this. It’s fascinating! I had never seen such college heritage wall before,” said Aline Godoi Sertori, an international student at EvCC from Brazil.

Anyone can have his or her name on the wall by donating money to the EvCC Foundation; a brick with a two-line message for $150 and three-line message for $200, a keepsake brick is $25.

Story by Sumit Karn

Liberty Hall Open House Emphasizes Community Benefits

Administrators, faculty, and students gathered on the second floor of Liberty Hall today at 1 p.m. for a ribbon cutting ceremony and open house to showcase the new building and its partnership with Providence Medical Center.

Representatives from college administration, EvCC students,
and Providence Medical Center cut the ribbon together. 

The event included speeches from College President David Beyer, Chair of the Board of Trustees Betty Cobbs and Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson as well as from Providence Medical Center representatives, faculty member Elliot Stern, and nursing student James Harrigan.
Many of the speakers highlighted how the new building will influence the community because of the health resources it will provide, as well as how it will help improve the North Broadway neighborhood.

"This community college has fine memories for me," said Stephanson. "It's so wonderful to see this fine addition to Everett Community College."

Stephanson emphasized the role the new building will play in education for health care and criminal justice. Both the nursing program and the criminal justice program are held in Liberty Hall.

"Education of new first responders is so vitally important," he added, mentioning how the new building provides incredible resources and groundbreaking technology for students.

Everett Mayor Ray Stephanson spoke about how EvCC has
been such a positive influence to the city of Everett. 

The ribbon cutting ceremony also included a performance from drummers of the Tulalip tribe, who sang a blessing song while playing drums. The drum beats represented the paddling of a canoe, which was to show how we are all on spiritual canoes on a journey.

"We put a lot of emphasis on being healthy: body, mind, and spirit," said one of the performers.

After the ribbon cutting, guests were invited to take tours of Liberty Hall to explore some of the new technology and take a look at the clinical simulation lab.



Story by Lily Haight

EvCC Poised To Move to Canvas On July 1st

The first day of Summer Quarter, July 1, will mark the transition to the advanced and more user-friendly e-Learning system called Canvas that is slated to fill in the shoes of outgoing ANGEL at Everett Community College.

The new Canvas login looks has a more clean and professional look.

Canvas is more customizable for both the instructors and the students. Many instructors will set up their class pages a bit differently from ANGEL while the students would not have to log in to their Canvas accounts every now and then to check grades, announcements and notifications.

According to campus Interim Director of eLearning, Marie Rustemeyer, most of the Canvas features would be the same except the interface is more up-to-date. It would be more like what users are accustomed to on Facebook and more integration with social media services.

She said that now the students can set up a mail and notification-forwarding feature to receive messages on their email addresses or to their Facebook accounts from Canvas.

“They will receive mails and notifications when the instructors will make new announcements, set deadlines for assignments, open quizzes and online tests, grade them and things like that,” she said. “The intent is to get to users wherever they are.”

Newcomer will also support mobile apps integrated to Ipad, Iphone and Androids.
Calendar on Canvas will also be an interesting feature for students to work on. Rustemeyer said that now students don’t have to check calendars of each course separately for the due dates of assignments and tests because all the important dates of each course will be marked with different colors on the same calendar.

A look at the Canvas dashboard that students
 will be using starting summer quarter.

Lois Haight, an EvCC graduate from the Associate Arts & Science Department in 2010 and presently Library Student Worker at University of Washington School of Law, thinks that the overall layout of Canvas is more appealing as it seems less busy-looking than ANGEL.

“Instead of having several boxes or widgets of information on your home page, Canvas has a separate page for announcements, assignments, calendar, etc. All in all, Newcomer is not completely different from Angel; instead it is a cleaner, more efficient, and newer online learning system,” she said.

Students who are used to working on ANGEL may think dealing with Canvas is altogether unanticipated. Haight, who experienced both e-learning systems, thinks otherwise.

She said that transitioning to Canvas was not very challenging for her. Although it took her some time to learn all the little quirks and shortcuts, the learning process was not very demanding.

According to Haight, this online learning system is very notification friendly and alerts students as to whenever an announcement is made, when assignments are due, when assignments have been graded, and when new discussion post has been made.

“Also, the layout is cleaner and more customizable, allowing students to create their own Canvas experience. It offers students a nifty group function as well,” she said.

Students who are looking forward to working on Canvas from summer quarter can attend a three-day Canvas orientation session.

The dates and times for three sessions are following:

· Wednesday June 26, 2103 from 10:00 a.m. to 10:45 a.m. in GWH 162

· Tuesday July 2, 2013 from 2:00 to 2:45 p.m. in GWH 162

· Wednesday July 3, 2013 from 12:00 to 12:45 p.m. in GWH 162

Story by Adnan Ali

You Might Be A Trojan If...

You might be a Trojan if...

You eat alone...

And you're okay with that. 

You only go to the Fitness Center for the rock wall.

You're reluctant to rep school gear. 

Wouldn't even consider joining a club.

You think the school mascot is a condom.

You're relieved every time your car isn't stolen in the car parking lot. 

 You have early morning classes and ALL of the spots are still full. 

You remember to register for classes on time... 

Then forget to pay, and get dropped from all your classes. 

But you then re-register and get into whatever classes are left, and you're okay with that. 

By Christian Zerbel

Photography Class Changes Student Perspective

To some, the world can start to look more appealing, more mesmerizing and more eventful overnight.

This happened to EvCC international student Aline Sertori after she took Photo 110 with Ellen Felsenthal this quarter.

Though she had already taken a short-term photography workshop in her home country, she feels this class has made her love of photography have many folds.

 This picture of Aline Sertori was taken with slow shutter speed 

of 30 sec. in a completely dark room with hands changing positions 

to show the Blur Motion technique.  

“Now I see why there are some pictures which people would normally think of just a trash or shoes. It is what the photographer’s perception of how he or she sees the world and wants the world to see,” she said.

In this class, students walk away with various aspects of shooting pictures without flash. They are made to operate professional cameras such as SLR or DSLR’s T3 and T3i models.

Through the quarter, students practise camera settings while functioning in manual mode including ISO and White Balance settings, Shutter Speed, Histogram, Aperture: normally known as f-stop among photographers, distance from the subjects, foreground and background, auto and manual focus and many others.

This photo, taken by Aline Sertorim shows the Point of View
and Frozen Motion techniques in photography.

Sertori is not the only student who is excited about the photography class.

“As long as I have my camera in my hand, I hold all the joy in the world,”wrote Xinxin Zhang on her Facebook status.

Zhang is an international student, majoring in English literature and at the same time finding unique ways to shoot the world with camera and is taking Photo 110 with Lauren Greathouse.

“Before taking this class, I had always wondered, when watching professional pictures, how those could possibly be taken with camera only,” she inquired.

She believes that learning photography changed her way of perceiving the world. 

Taken by Xinxin Zhang, this photo shows the Point of View
technique in which the photographer aims in a unique
way to capture a scene or object in a different way.

“Previously, I was more into writing to express my feelings for anything," she explained. "Now I have developed a love to shoot to express my feelings in a photographic way.”

“I have 80 percent more control over professional camera settings now than ever before,” said Sertori, adding that she has worked on five projects so far, such as Camera Control, Depth of Field: Shallow and Total, Capturing Motion, Design with Adobe Bridge, and Digital Experimentation on Adobe Photoshop.

Apart from this, students learn basic tools on a program application called Adobe Photoshop in order to change the effectiveness of their photos. This includes global and tonality corrections, retouching, sharpening, burning and dodging, compositing, blending and filters.

An international student from Indonesia, Ali Salmande Harahap considers taking Photo 110 as "good experience."

This photo, taken by Ali Salmande, shows the Shallow or
Depth of Field technique in which one object stands out
from others in the whole scene. 

“I learned how to take photo with shallow depth of field, greater depth of field, motion, and panning style,” he said.

He said that the class changed the way he would take photos.

“Before, I just took the picture with 'auto mode' with my camera, now I always try to take a photo with 'manual mode'.”

Another aspect of the class is printing pictures and dry mounting those for presentation. Dry mounting is a process by which photographers permanently secure a print to a flat surface such as mat board. This not only protects the print from rough handling, but also works to frame the image.



Story by Adnan Ali

Faculty Feature: Mike Nevins

Mike Nevins, a full-time faculty member, mathematics instructor, the Faculty Council President and the Math Center Director, has a constant energy in everything that he does, from encouraging students to do math to working on projects with faculty members.

“I don’t know what I like about math. I just love it, that’s it,” said Nevins. “I like puzzle solving, I like puzzles that I know have a solution and aren’t easy and I love Sudoku, or big ugly puzzles like with a thousand puzzle pieces – a problem solving thing.” 

As a math instructor, Mike Nevins works hard to help
students have a positive attitude and stay motivated. 

Having a bachelor degree from Western Washington University in Mathematics, and masters from Eastern Washington University in Mathematics Education, Nevins finds teaching math a challenge.

“The first challenge is the students’ perception as math students, where mostly people, whether consciously or unconsciously, don’t believe that they can do math,” said Nevins. “So that is my biggest struggle; to convince someone that they can.”

Nevins added that the next struggle is to keep students motivated. He teaches students that even if they fail the first time, they should stay motivated and keep working because it eventually pays off.

Not only is Nevins passionate about teaching math and working as the Faculty Council President, but he also finds joy in his family and always puts them first. In his downtime, he goes to soccer games with his wife, and does many outdoor activities like disc golf, hiking, and camping. 

"Never stop learning, continually

 improving, learning and trying new

 things. That's what's important."

Q&A:

Q: What’s your hobby?

A: My biggest hobby is playing disc golf. Actually, I’m building a disc course. I like it, it’s easier and free. During the winter, I love skiing, and in summer, I love hiking and camping. Besides that I also play others sports such as ping-pong, Basketball, Football, Softball, and Pool.

I am huge soccer fan; my wife and I have had season tickets for the Sounders for a few years. Every Saturday and Sunday morning I watch the soccer game at home.

Q: What’s your favorite soccer team?

A: Sounders and Manchester United

Q: What’s your favorite TV Show?

A: Arrested Development, I like it a lot, and obviously Sport center on ESPN.

Q: What’s your favorite book?

A: Moonwalking with Einstein.

Q: What’s your favorite band?

A: Radiohead and Pink Floyd

Q: Where do you see yourself in 10 years?

A: Probably teaching here, and trying to deal with growing kids and family life. It’s just in the same place with one or two more kids. For me, family has to come first, people always say either you work to live or you live to work, and I work to live.

I do this and I love this and family is always my first thought. That’s the beautiful thing of working as a teacher, you can put your family first, but at other careers you can’t. I get free time, I make enough money and I can hang out with my family a lot. Family is number one.

Q: What’s your motto of your life?

A: My personal motto is a quote by Charles Dubois: “The important thing is this: to be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become.”


A day in life of Mike Nevins: 

“I drive really fast by an hour to commute from Bellingham to the office. Then there’s answering the emails until I get a lot of work for my position as the Faculty Council President and Math Learning Center. After that, I continue to teach my classes. In the afternoon, I’m usually busy working for advising students or improving curriculum and lots of meetings, then I go home.”

Story by Ratna Wahyuningsih

Obama Statue In Jakarta Causes Controversy

“Pulang Kampung nih (I am back to my hometown).”

That was the first sentence of President Barack Obama’s speech when he visited Jakarta, Indonesia, after so many years.

President Barack Obama has a good connection and memory with Indonesia, especially Jakarta (the capital city), the place where he spent his childhood for four years in the city in 1967. He started his new life with his mother and his step-dad Lolo Soetoro, an Indonesian man.

The city of central Jakarta announced the statue of little Obama, which was initiated by Jakarta-based Friends of Obama Foundation, in 2009.

According to the Jakarta Post, the statue stands two meters tall. One of its sides is adorned with an adapted quote by former U.S. first lady Eleanor Roosevelt: “The future belongs to those who believe in the power of their dreams”

“This statue is designed to inspired Indonesia’s children, to tell them they can be anyone they want to be,” said Ron Mullers, chairman of the Jakarta-based Friends of Obama Foundation, which raised the money for the statute, to the Post.

The controversy has been raised about the establishment of the statue. Some people said the statue should not be placed in public area. They suggest it’s more appropriate to build a local hero at the park in Jakarta.This controversy led to the court after several people filed a class-action lawsuit to the against the Jakarta governor, the Central Jakarta mayor and the Jakarta Parks and Cemeteries Agency.

To avoid the controversy, in February 2010, the Foundation removed the statue to Menteng Park to the state elementary school SDN 01 Menteng, where Obama was once the student.

Although the statue had caused controversy, not all Indonesian people know about it. EvCC Students from Indonesia Abizar Furqoni and Alvin Haryanto, who lived in the border of Jakarta, said both of them never heard anything about the statue.

Markay Omar, EvCC student who lived in Jakarta, said he wasn’t aware with the statue until the Clipper told him about it. He said he knows that President Obama spent his childhood in Jakarta, Indonesia, but he doesn’t know anything about it. However, he thinks to build Obama’s statue in the park in Jakarta is not a good way.

International students at EvCC Saravine Naitingale, Markay Omar,
Alvin Haryanto, and Abizar Furqoni weigh in on the controversy
of the Obama statue located in Jakarta.

“He was not our (Indonesian) president,” he said, “I don’t think it’s appropriate to have his statue in Jakarta.”

Saravine Naitingale, an EvCC running start student, said she knows about the statue because it is located in Menteng Park, an elite neighborhood in Jakarta, which is behind her high school.

“The statue is quite famous around the park,” she said. “And people often go to see the statue or just hang out in the park.”

Naitingale said it is good for Indonesia to have some reward for the President Obama, but she thinks it’s not necessary to have the statue in public space, like Menteng Park. She pointed out the security reason, because sometimes there are vandalism activities in the park.

“I think it will be great if they place the statue in museum,” she said. “I would like to recommend them to move it to safer place.”

See this collection of pictures of the Obama statue.

Story by Ali Salmande