District unity is the main reason a contest is being held to find a new name for the Kern Community College District. The district’s three colleges, Bakersfield College, Porterville College and Cerro Coso College include portions of five counties that are not reflected in its current name, district officials said.
Academic Senate President Susan McQuerry said the new name will be inclusive of all the counties in the district.
“Our district serves an area 25,000 square miles big which includes not just Kern County, but Tulare, Mono, Inyo and San Bernardino counties,” she said. “By calling it the Kern community college district we exclude the other members of our district, so a name change will include all of them.”
The recent district audit was a factor in the name change after so many years, McQuerry said.
“They recommended that we either break apart so that BC was independent of the Cerro Coso and the Porterville, or that if we were going to stay together that we become more interactive, that we share more resources, that we develop processes that would be the same at all three schools,” she said.
The recommendation was first made to rename the district at a strategic planning retreat last March, according to KCCD chancellor Dr Walter Packard. He said a name is symbolic and should include all counties in the district.
“We don’t want people to feel excluded. Some people have actually said ‘We’re up here in Porterville and we don’t feel that name represents our service area of the district.’ So we’re striving for a great sense of inclusion for our folks in the district.”
Packard said the contest is a way to get the campus community involved.
“Rather than making an independent decision (on the new name), we decided to do something that that the students could be involved with.”
All staff members employed in the current semester and all students enrolled in the current semester can submit name suggestions in the contest. The winner will receive two nights of lodging in Mammoth Lakes plus ski lift tickets if they are used during the ski season. The winning name will be selected by the Board of Trustees and is expected to be announced and adopted in January.
Steve Eso, president of the faculty union, said he is in support of the district’s renaming.
“I think it’s a good idea and it makes sense to me,” he said. “It’s a little irritating that the (current) name doesn’t include all the counties.”
Eso said he knows of at least one faculty member who has submitted a name in the contest, but doesn’t know if he will submit one himself.
“I don’t know if I have any winning names bouncing around inside me, but you never know.”