News

CGCC Student Life had a busy year. We started by moving Student Life Center to the first floor of Building 1, with more room for activities. Open center hours are more consistent now; stay tuned for our summer and fall schedule.

Columbia Gorge Community College (CGCC) Foundation awarded full-year scholarships to 42 students attending CGCC in the 2017-18 academic year. These awards totaled $99,097. Scholarship applications will be available for Winter/Spring 2017-2018 starting July 17, 2017.

As with generations of immigrants before him, Abel Cruz Flores arrived in the United States with a dream, and little else. But that dream, combined with hard work, persistence and the generosity of local benefactors, is now firmly within reach as this graduate of Columbia Gorge Community College pursues his doctorate in linguistics from one of the nation’s leading research institutions.

Cruz Flores came to the Hood River Valley from a rural village in the State of Jalisco, Mexico, at age 17; his family still lives in Mexico. He arrived in pursuit of an education, knowing this to be the key to a better life. But he also knew it wouldn’t come easily, as he explained in his June 16 commencement address to Columbia Gorge Community College’s graduating Class of 2017, where he was guest speaker.

The Gorge Tech Alliance (GTA) is an industry association to grow the tech businesses along both sides of the Gorge. CGCC and the GTA work together regularly to address workforce and training needs for this key industry in the region.

Enrollment growth, student recruitment, improved degree and certificate completion rates, and addition of three full-time faculty are the highlights of a 2017-18 spending plan for Columbia Gorge Community College following budget adoption by college directors June 13. Members of the college’s budget committee, drawn from the community at large, approved the proposed budget April 25.

Proposed general fund expenditures total $9.4 million, a decline of $323,500 over 2016-17 expenditures. The spending plan represents recovery from a half-million dollar shortfall last fiscal year.

Below are a few of the new titles added to the library collection in the last few weeks.

Below are a few of the new titles added to the library collection in the last few weeks.

In a unanimous board decision May 9, Columbia Gorge Community College joined the State of Oregon and a growing list of colleges, universities and municipalities adopting sanctuary status over concerns regarding federal immigration policy.

Sanctuary does not change existing college policy, which already offered its students protection through state and federal laws such as the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). In enacting Resolution 031417, a “Declaration of Open Access and Protection,” the college board affirmed the institution’s compliance with those laws but also stated its intention to “oppose any change in federal law requiring it to aid the federal government in immigration law enforcement, and, if necessary, ... will seek its own legal counsel in this effort.”

Below are a few of the new titles added to the library collection in the last few weeks.