Education Archives - Page 69 of 77

Thornton Media Launches Kickstarter Campaign for 3-D Video Game To Teach New Languages Including Cherokee

By Ralph Richardson, Indian Country Today Media Network

In our highly competitive global economy, learning a new language is back in vogue, whether it’s Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic—or Cherokee. There are a plethora of programs, applications and schools to help people hone their communication abilities. Now comes a new strategy: Don Thornton, founder and president of Thornton Media, Inc. and a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, has developed Talking Games, the first 3-D video game that teaches language.

“The problem is that too many language courses are sitting on shelves gathering dust,” Thornton says. “The reason is boredom. You simply can’t get the player to continue using the game for hundreds of hours because they are bored. We intend to make language learning more fun.”

Don Thornton

Thornton has utilized new technology to help preserve the language of his ancestors. “Our video game model is a true paradigm shift in the language software industry,” he claims. “It’s a disruptive technology advance that will change the way all languages are learned.”

Thornton says his grandmother, Lucinda Robbins, taught Cherokee in her home-town of Tahlequah, Oklahoma for 40 years. “While visiting her I purchased a Cherokee-English dictionary near her home, which I showed to her for her opinion,” he recalls. “She flipped through it and said she knew the professor who wrote it and commented that he used to ‘come over and ask me how to say words when I was sitting on my porch.’”

Eventually the professor didn’t even bother to sit on Robbins’ porch and “would just drop off lists of words and she would fill them out for him. He did this for three years. I flipped through the dictionary thinking at least he must have thanked her profusely for her help. But her name didn’t appear anywhere in the book. She told me about many similar projects that she had worked on. She translated books for people into Cherokee, and had a request to narrate the entire New Testament—a two-year project. At no time did she ever get paid for these major projects or even receive a copy of the work. It got me thinking how Indians don’t have control over their own cultural property and must rely on others.”

Determined to bring Cherokee back to the Cherokee, Thornton says he “started the company by adapting the world’s first ‘smart toy’ to teach an indigenous language.” He claims that development of Talking Games has created many “endangered language firsts,” including the first handheld translator, first two-way translator, first Nintendo DS language-learning apps, first language learning apps in the iTunes Store, and first language learning video game for an endangered language.

“All of the R&D for these projects was paid for out-of-pocket,” Thornton states proudly. “No grants. We have created custom language tools for more than 170 tribes and First Nations.”

All of this came from his desire to honor his grandmother, who, he says, “died in December 2012 at the age of 92. She was the best Cherokee speaker in our family.”

Earlier this month, Thornton was a speaker on the panel “Mobile Devices and Indian Country” at the National Reservation Economic Summit 2013 Conference with Jamie Richardson, senior systems engineer for Apple Inc. “The conference brings together American Indian businesses and corporations,” Thornton says. “I was the only panelist invited to speak with Apple about mobile apps.”

Despite his successes, Thornton still needs the support of Indian country to continue his work. His Kickstarter campaign launched on March 11, and his goal is to produce his game in both Cherokee and Spanish. Thornton hopes the inclusion of Spanish, which he says is the most requested second language in the country, will subsidize the inclusion of Cherokee. “If we are successful in launching this project it will benefit the revitalization of all endangered languages,” he says.

TRANS TK. e future for Talking Games looks bright, because the game Thornton has developed is engaging and fun. Users fight zombies, wrestle Bigfoot, and escape from aliens—all while learning a language. “The virtual world we create for Talking Games is not meant to simply recreate a town or community, but to create a ‘suspension of disbelief,’” Thornton says. “We want the player to sort of’ forget they are playing a game. This is the reason for the amazing addictive power of immersive video games. When you read a great book or see a great movie, you become lost in it, and part of your brain actually forgets you are playing a game. We use 3D characters that you interact with in our virtual world.”

Talking Games video still of Cecil and Cindy meeting for the first time (Thornton Media)

No special glasses or equipment are required to play Talking Games. It is a role-playing game, or RPG, with 3D characters that exist in 3 dimensions, like Grand Theft Auto. In Talking Games, the player controls the main character, Charlie Vann, gets a head injury in a car crash and forgets how to speak Cherokee. His family and friends must help him to regain his language. The obstacles he must overcome include zombies, Bigfoot, and aliens. “The problem with most ‘serious games,’ Thornton says, “is that the motivation to play the game is external. You are ordered to play the game by your superiors, for instance. There are no internal motivators to play, making the game fun to play.”

Talking Games also differs from other language learning programs in that users must speak to play the game. In addition, Talking Games provides what Thornton calls an “immersion environment.” Virtual characters can only respond to the language the user speaks. These aspects of the Talking Games system create a richer learning environment.

Thornton says he has commissioned third party studies on 25,000 military personnel learning Arabic that show that video games that teach languages are “more effective than traditional methods” of language learning. “When you attempt to learn a new language, one of the biggest fears is that you will speak incorrectly and will be laughed at,” he explains. “There is a moment where you look the other person in the eye to see if they understood you. Some people are not bothered by making mistakes in public, but most people feel very uncomfortable if they make a mistake. Talking Games provides a safe environment to practice basic conversation. If you make a mistake in front of a video game character, it’s really not that big of a deal.”

Cecil negotiates with Coyote (Thornton Media)

This innovator in the area of language learning says he launched Thornton Media in 1995 “to create custom language tools to help indigenous communities to revitalize their languages while retaining control over their own cultural property.” Now, Thornton says, his company is still the “only language tool company in the world that retains no ownership over the cultural property of our Native communities.”

With the introduction of Talking Games, Thornton says he has expanded his goals to promote accelerated learning of all languages—but the heart and soul of his company remains with the languages of original peoples, like his grandmother. “Part of our efforts and profits,” he says, “will always be devoted to the revitalization of endangered languages.”

Support Thornton Media’s Kickstarter campagin at http://kck.st/WhweWy.

State senators pledge $300M more for higher ed

State Senate leaders pledged Tuesday to increase funding for higher education by $300 million but did not say how to pay for it.

The Associated Press and Seattle Times staff

OLYMPIA — A group of Washington state senators vowed Tuesday to increase funding for higher education by $300 million but declined to say how they would get the money at a time when lawmakers are struggling to balance the budget.

Republican Sen. Michael Baumgartner, who developed the plan supported by a GOP-dominated coalition, said it is possible to write a budget that balances state spending while increasing funding for state colleges and universities. He said it will be a matter of prioritizing where government dollars go.

“We’re going to make higher education a priority,” Baumgartner said.

Lawmakers already face a more than $1 billion shortfall in the next two-year budget cycle and are separately under court order to expand funding for K-12 education.

The senators also propose to require a 3 percent reduction in tuition for in-state students. They say this would help manage the long-term financial concerns in the state’s prepaid-tuition program, known as GET, for Guaranteed Education Tuition.

Senate Democrats said they were encouraged that the GOP-leaning majority is embracing increased funding but want to better understand the details of the proposal.

“The bottom line is, we’re open to the conversation — We’re not sure the numbers will add up,” said state Sen. David Frockt, D-Seattle.

Margaret Shepherd, director of state relations for the University of Washington, was also waiting for more specific details. However, both she and Frockt said the $300 million appears to largely include money already expected to go to the institutions for general growth.

Shepherd said the proposal adds only about $75 million in new money to the system and that gain is offset by the loss in tuition dollars. Frockt said he thought it would only add about $42 million to $58 million, after the loss of tuition dollars was factored in.

“It will not provide adequate funding for the investments that we need to make in order to provide a high-quality education for our students,” Shepherd said.

Washington’s university presidents said earlier this year that the schools would freeze tuition for two years if lawmakers would add $225 million in extra funding to the system.

The coalition’s plan would award $50 million of the new higher-education money to schools based on how well they did on certain performance metrics, such as the number of undergraduates in degrees such as science or engineering, the retention rate of first-year students, and the average time it takes to complete an undergraduate degree.

Baumgartner said the aim was for the money to go to programs that directly benefit students, and not to faculty salary increases. Most state college faculty have not had a raise in four years; the UW has said that raising faculty salaries this year is a priority.

Frockt also said the $50 million for improving performance is too low to provide much incentive. “I think if you spread it across the system like peanut butter, it’s not that significant,” said Frockt, who himself proposed a bill — which died — that would have created an incentive performance fund.

The proposal would also expand the State Need Grant, the state’s largest grant program for low-income students, by 7 percent, to serve an additional 4,600 students. The State Need Grant currently serves about 70,000 students, but the state has estimated that 30,000 additional students qualify but receive no money.

Associated Press writer Mike Baker and Seattle Times higher-education reporter Katherine Long contributed to this report.

University’s Native American Center to honor Cobell

KIM BRIGGEMAN, Missoulian

President Barack Obama meets with Elouise Cobell in the Oval Office, Dec. 8, 2010 - the day he signed legislation approving the Cobell settlement. — President Barack Obama meets with Elouise Cobell in the Oval Office, Dec. 8, 2010 – the day he signed legislation approving the Cobell settlement.

MISSOULA, Mont. (AP) – Elouise Cobell had a way of sorting through complex Native American land ownership tangles and combing out what’s right.

It’s part of the legacy the leader from the Blackfeet tribe left behind when she died in 2011, and one that still resounds with Terry Payne.

“Elouise had a voracious appetite for justice, and she was an inspiration to me and so many other people,” said Payne, a Missoula businessman whose family was the lead donor for construction of the Payne Family Native American Center on the University of Montana campus.

Now Payne is helping fund an effort to complete the building. He provided the launching gift for the $1.2 million Elouise Cobell Land and Culture Institute, dedicated to the passionate advocate of Native rights who was instrumental in obtaining a $3.4 billion Indian trust settlement from the federal government.

Pending approval by the Montana Board of Regents in Helena this week, the Cobell Institute is envisioned to be a complex of labs, classrooms and a small theater in the unfinished lower level of the three-year-old Native American Center on the southwest edge of the UM Oval.

University President Royce Engstrom announced creation of the institute Wednesday at a ceremony in the center’s Bonnie HeavyRunner Gathering Place.

“Her life’s work was the pursuit of justice and we here at the University of Montana are humbled that her family has permitted us to honor her,” he said.

The institute, said Engstrom, can be a place “where future leaders will meet the challenges around land and asset management as well as understand worldwide cultures of indigenous people.”

The addition in the “garden level” of the building will be “a space where students can work effectively in small and sometimes not so small groups on real-world problems, in this case all related to Native communities,” said Chris Comer, dean of UM’s College of Arts and Sciences that includes the Native American Studies Department.

Interesting Geometry

There are 6,500 square feet to work with, and on-campus charettes began Thursday (March 7) to determine how best to do it. Comer said the building’s “interesting geometry” – it’s built around a 12-sided rotunda, each side representing a Montana tribe – will make it “a real puzzle to say how we best use that space.”

The working idea is for two laboratories – a land lab filled with computers and a culture lab with digital and media resources. Another room will probably be set up as a classroom with projection capabilities for digital movies.

“Film studies have become important in a number of areas of the College (of Arts and Sciences) that really have no proper venue for that,” Comer said.

The other two rooms will likely be standard classrooms, built in a way that can accommodate meetings. Comer said the institute will be a collaborative affair, designed not just for the Native American Studies Department, but for geography, forestry and conservation, anthropology and law students as well.

The land lab will allow students to work on intensive mapping projects.

“When you think about mapping in Indian Country, it’s really complex because reservation land has all different kinds of overlapping ownership, from trust land to tribally controlled land to individual fee patent land,” said Dave Beck, who chairs the Department of Native American Studies.

A sophisticated GIS-centered lab will allow the overlay of historic maps to map landownership patterns with natural and cultural resources. An upstairs room in the Native American Center is dedicated to the Indian Land Tenure Foundation, which does similar work.

The Minnesota-based foundation has been very encouraging of the Cobell Institute project.

“They’ve basically said if you build this we’ll work with you to help students identify and get into real-world projects for Native communities,” said Comer. “We’re really excited by the prospect of working with groups like that.

“We don’t want busywork exercise. That’s really Royce’s vision: When they’re working on classroom projects, those projects will produce something that’s helping a community and making a real difference.”

Beck said the culture lab will probably provide access to such resources as creative language materials from tribes and communities, as well as distance learning capabilities that allow faculty from across the campus to have face-to-face interaction with indigenous communities in New Zealand, Australia and Norway.

While the Payne family provided the lion’s share of the $1.2 million toward construction, and other funding sources have been tapped, Comer said some money still needs to be raised. He hopes Wednesday’s announcement spurs those efforts.

Construction will begin as early as next month, and officials said the Cobell Institute could be ready for students by the end of the year.

Idle No More Brings Native Voices, Tribal Education to the Forefront

Opinion, By Dr. Cheryl Crazy Bull, Indian Country Today Media Network

Like many Natives and our allies across our Grandmother Earth, Unci Maka, I have joined the Idle No More movement, attending round dance gatherings, praying for Chief Theresa Spence and her supporters, sharing the stories I hear and read and perusing news and opinion pieces. Like many indigenous people, I am acutely aware that our voices in the mainstream of American, Canadian and Central and South American societies are often unheard, and that we appear silent when in fact our voices are singing out with stories of our lives. Defining this movement is our responsibility. Each of us should learn about this movement and find our own place in it. We can add our voices to songs of our relatives and allies across the earth.

The new calendar year can be a time of renewal and recommitment for many – but for most Native people, our annual calendar is seasonal or ceremonial, related to the changes of our Grandmother Earth or the rituals of our people. For me the year goes from summer to summer, from the time of sun dances to the next sun dances. Measuring time in this manner comes from my identity. We may adopt the calendar year and New Year celebrations, but we find our renewal as tribal people in the seasons and rituals of our people.

As the Idle No More movement has gained strength, like many, I have pondered its meaning. For me, it is our voices, singing out from the place inside of us where our identities as “the people” live, it is the rhythm of our shared heartbeat and the movements of our bodies as we dance a shared dance – a social dance of hope and friendship and affirmation, in a circle, around the drums and the voices that are singing out who we are.

Each tribal people have a unique identity given us by our Creator and our understanding of Creation. Our identity emerges out of our knowledge of how we came to be as a people. Our oral knowledge is intact and the stories of our creation remain essentially untainted by western influences. Often we are viewed by mainstream America in the context of what educators call the three F’s – food, fun, and fashion. We are the celebration of Thanksgiving, the Indians in popular movies, feathered headdresses, geometric designed pottery, and lilting flute music. A deeper understanding of who we are, philosophically, spiritually, and socially is elusive to most of mainstream America. I often think this elusiveness is exacerbated by the fact that it would require a painful acknowledgement that we, as the First Peoples of this hemisphere, are really human beings subjected to devastating military and political policies of the very governments that still lead our countries.

Tribal people have their own teachings about their Creation, their family relationships, and how they came to be on this earth. Native people have teachings about plants and animals, about gathering in celebration, and about the meaning of each item of decoration or clothing that they wear at their ceremonies.

Our stories reflect the richness of our heritages which are such an important part of today’s democracy. Although the experiences of Native people with the arrival of Europeans on our shores are filled with tragedy, we have not lost our identity or cultural ways. Idle No More is the story of our shared identity. Like all social movements, it has roots in history and connections with the social actions of other movements, including the Occupy movement and environmental actions.

Tribally controlled education is a vital part of the foundation of tribal knowledge that underpins the Idle No More movement. In today’s society the education of our people is essential to our prosperity, our identity, and our activism. The tribally controlled education movement emerged during the last modern great wave of social activism among our people–the American Indian Movement that began in the late 1960s. In the last 45 years, tribal educators and our schools and colleges have been at the forefront of the restoration and preservation of our identities. Our work ensures that our ancestors and descendants will recognize us.

Now is the time to affirm that we are entitled to an education that honors our identity, our knowledge of Creation, and our relationships. We are entitled to the best of public education – a tribally controlled education – that culls content from our knowledge with teaching methodologies and assessment that uphold our ways of learning.

As our social activism grows, look to our Native educators and encourage them to bring Idle No More into their classrooms. It is a modern-day teachable moment in the context of our cultural ways and the histories of our people. It is a moment that can last a lifetime. It is the work of a lifetime that will be felt for seven generations.

Dr. Cheryl Crazy Bull is President and CEO of the American Indian College Fund.

Seeking Volunteers for Quil Ceda Elementary Book Fair

We are looking for a minimum of 10 volunteers to help us organize and run our upcoming 2013 Book Fair from Monday, May 20 – Thursday, May 23 at the Quil Ceda Elementary School in Marysville.

Tentative Book Fair Itinerary

Fri, May 17: 3:45-4:40 pm – Set up

Mon, May 20: 8:30 am – 3:50 pm – Classroom Sneak-Peak

Tues, May 21: 8:30 am – 3:50 pm – Classroom Sneak-Peak

Wed, May 22: 7:30 am – 8:30 pm – Open for Shopping; 5-7 pm Family Pajama Night

Thurs, May 23: 8:30 am – 3:50 pm – Open for Shopping; 3:50-4:30 pm – Pack up the Fair

If you are interested in becoming a volunteer for a portion or all of the Book Fair events, please contact Kristine Leone at kristine_leone@msvl.k12.wa.us or 360-653-0890

A&T repair lab teaches computer skills

By Kirk Boxleitner, The Marysville Globe

Kirk BoxleitnerMarysville Arts & Technology High School junior Mason Totten examines the inner workings of a malfunctioning laptop during the school’s repair lab class. — Kirk Boxleitner
Marysville Arts & Technology High School junior Mason Totten examines the inner workings of a malfunctioning laptop during the school’s repair lab class.

MARYSVILLE — A project that began with six students two years ago now sprawls into three separate class periods of budding techies looking to test their skills while helping out others.

The computer repair lab at the Marysville Arts & Technology High School started up so near the end of the 2010-11 school year that it became a summer project, as students volunteered to fix up malfunctioning but ultimately serviceable machines for the One Laptop Per Child nonprofit charitable campaign, which provides affordable educational devices to the developing world.

Paul LaGrange, the computer applications teacher for the Marysville Arts & Technology High School, explained that his students’ work on behalf of OLPC soon expanded to providing low- and no-cost repair services to members of the local community, not only to give the students in-class opportunities for hands-on applications of what they’re learning about computers, but also to benefit their neighbors.

“This is a student leadership class,” LaGrange said. “They run everything. I exist so that they can have a room to work in. They’re learning how to build websites and program and do graphic design.”

John David Pressman, a junior in the class, explains how the repair lab works with an enthusiasm and exhaustive degree of detail that can only be described as relentless. While he appreciates being able to send computers to those in need in Ghana and Guatemala and Liberia through OLPC, he’s noticed one recurring fault in many of the malfunctioning OLPC machines that he’s needed to fix.

“Your computer’s clock runs off a separate power source, like a really big watch battery,” Pressman said. “Those clocks have to be fed that power all the time, or else they’ll reset to Jan. 1, 1970, which is the Linux default. The problem with that is that the computer can’t process any files whose dates are in the past or in the future, so when you turn it on, it says, ‘I’m dying here,’ and just hangs on the boot screen.”

The computers he’s received from the community offer a far broader diversity of challenges, although one memorable PC tower appeared not only to have been corroded, but also assembled in an entirely counterintuitive way.

“It wasn’t the user’s fault,” Pressman said. “The manufacturer had its insides not following any standard. They put the hard drive on top of the battery, which is the hottest part of the machine.”

While Pressman is thinking he’ll probably go into software programming instead after graduation, fellow juniors such as Christian Bakken and Joel Scott are already planning on studying applied electrical engineering and computer science in college.

“I’m always finding out something new here,” Scott said. “It broadens my knowledge base, and it feels good to give back to people.”

While Mason Totten, also a junior, suspects he’ll mainly pursue computer repair as a side-hobby as an adult, he expressed a similarly altruistic sentiment about his work.

“Everyone deserves to be able to access as much information as they can,” Totten said. “Hopefully, this will allow them to explore the Internet.”

At the same time, Scott and Bakken aren’t above relishing those occasions when computer owners donate their malfunctioning machines, rather than asking for them to be repaired and returned, because such computers become the subjects of their own experiments.

“Donated computers are as exciting as Christmas presents,” Bakken said. “We’ve even made a Frankenstein new computer entirely out of spare parts.”

While the students are happy to pitch in for the community, LaGrange pointed out that their work is not inexpensive, and welcomed members of the community to contact him at paul_lagrange@msvl.k12.wa.us about making donations of their own.

Food Handlers Class, March 21, Tulalip

Food handlers class is Thursday, March 21, 2013 at the Tulalip Tribes Administration off Marine Drive. Anyone preparing or serving food on the reservation is required to have a current food worker card. Upon completion of the class and a passing test score, a food worker card will be issued which will be valid for three years from the test date.

Did Facebook search violate Everett student’s rights?

Everett student told to open page to help in bullying probe

By Sharon Salyer, the Herald

Dan Bates / The HeraldSamantha Negrete, an eighth-grader at North Middle School in Everett, was asked to open her Facebook page to help a school administrator investigate another student. Her parents, Kevin McCollum and Connie Becerra, seen here at home in south Everett, contacted the ACLU afterward. — Dan Bates / The Herald
Samantha Negrete, an eighth-grader at North Middle School in Everett, was asked to open her Facebook page to help a school administrator investigate another student. Her parents, Kevin McCollum and Connie Becerra, seen here at home in south Everett, contacted the ACLU afterward.

EVERETT — A vice principal investigating a case of cyber-bullying pressured a North Middle School girl into opening up her Facebook page so he could look at what her friends had been posting, according to the girl’s mom.

The issue raises questions about what rights school officials have to ask to see students’ social media sites and whether such actions violate students’ privacy.

Connie Becerra said her 14-year-old daughter, Samantha Negrete, was never suspected to be a part of the cyber-bullying. But she was called into the vice principal’s office and was told to type in her password and log onto her account.

“He did not have the right to bring her in and bully her and coerce her,” Becerra said. “Our kids do have a right to privacy.”

The vice principal’s actions are “likely illegal and most certainly improper,” said Linda Mangel, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. Becerra contacted the Seattle office of the ACLU when she learned what happened last month.

“It’s an awful thing to do to a 14-year-old kid who’s done nothing wrong,” Mangel said.

The vice principal was trying to find a picture taken on school grounds during school hours, said Mary Waggoner, school district spokeswoman. One student was later suspended for cyber-bullying.

“Everything we know at this point is that the assistant principal acted out of an interest in intervening in cyber-bullying,” Waggoner said. “Given the concern about cyber-bullying, one might understand his motivation to make sure that it didn’t happen at school.”

Still, the district has hired an outside investigator to see “who said what, under what circumstances and under what authorization,” Waggoner said.

The school district also is reviewing its policies on when and how staff may ask to look at a student’s personal social media accounts, she said.

Waggoner said that she was not aware of other issues of staff perusing students’ social media sites. The topic does need some clarification, she said. “In that respect, this situation is a good thing. We expect more clarity will come from this.”

Both the federal and state constitution protect against unwarranted searches, such as a public school district perusing a student’s Facebook page, Mangel said.

“What we don’t know is whether this is an isolated incident or this is the tip of the iceberg and this administration has been conducting other improper searches of Facebook pages or email accounts,” Mangel said.

Samantha, an eighth-grader at North Middle School, earns A’s and B’s, has never been in trouble at school and participates in wrestling, volleyball, basketball and choir, said her mom.

Samantha said that she feels she’s been unnecessarily pulled into a controversy.

“I wasn’t the bully,” Samantha said. “It wasn’t my fault. I feel like other kids are blaming me for what happened.”

She was likely called to the school’s office because she’s an honor student and athlete whom the vice principal “knew had respect for authority and used that authority to tell her to open up her Facebook page,” Mangel said.

The ACLU has produced an online booklet, “Student Rights and Responsibilities in the Digital Age,” to help guide both school districts and students on the issue, she said.

If the vice principal was concerned about cyber-bullying, he could simply have talked to the alleged victim to have that student show him the post, Mangel said. “He didn’t need to go trolling through an innocent party’s Facebook page.”

In the past, such questions involving schools have most often involved cell phone and email searches, she said. But more recently, the questions increasingly involve social media sites, such as Facebook.

“Well-intentioned administrators are overreaching because they think, somehow, it’s their duty to investigate in this manner,” Mangel said.

Last year, the First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University reported on a federal court case in Minnesota that involved student privacy rights on Facebook in which the student involuntarily relinquished her password.

Students enjoy a Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches and seizures by school officials, according to the ruling.

RSVP Now for EvCC Foundation Breakfast April 23

WSU President Elson Floyd to Speak
EVERETT, Wash. – Washington State University President Elson Floyd will be the keynote speaker at the Everett Community College Foundation benefit breakfast at 7:30 a.m. April 23.

The breakfast, which raises money to support student scholarships and college programs, is at EvCC’s Student Fitness Center, 2206 Tower St.

To attend, RSVP by April 19 to foundation@everettcc.edu or by calling 425-388-9434. There is no charge for the breakfast; attendees will be given an opportunity to contribute to the EvCC Foundation.

“EvCC develops the talent that our business community needs now more than ever,” said John Olson, executive director of the EvCC Foundation. “Support for the EvCC Foundation is an investment in the future well-being of both the students and the communities in Snohomish County.”

The breakfast is part of the EvCC Foundation’s efforts to increase the number of student scholarships, emergency loans and grants. The Foundation is also working to seek out equipment and support to ensure students have the technology they need in the classroom.

The EvCC Foundation, in partnership with corporations, businesses, foundations, and individuals, is committed to continuing the college’s tradition of serving as the region’s leading provider of academic and technical education.

For more information about the Everett Community College Foundation, visit www.everettcc.edu/foundation.

Category: Education