In 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were annihilated.

Some refer to what happened as a tragedy, and others use the phrase “Medz Yeghern,” meaning “great calamity,” to allude to it.

However, today, Armenians are still fighting for recognition of the catastrophe that occurred in 1915 as “genocide.”

The Armenian Student Association held a commemorative event marking the 95th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 22 in LB 220 at noon.

The event featured guest speaker Father Vazken Movsesian, priest of the St. Peter Armenian Church in Glendale. He spoke about why the genocide should be recognized and its implications for the present and future of global society.

Early on in the presentation he discussed what he deemed an inaccurate report made by USC Annenberg TV about an Armenian commemoration held at USC. The report discussed the commemoration and what happened in 1915, but it did not refer to either of these as genocide.

“What they reported was that the Armenians got together to remember the ‘tragedy’ that befell them,” Movsesian said.

“When the event name is ‘Armenian Genocide Commemoration,’ and you as a reporter don’t even report the name, what are you saying? You’re saying that somebody told you to take off that name.”

According to Movsesian, “there is no other side to the story. It’s genocide.”

He continued: “We’re all victims of genocide. We’re all children of genocide, because this affects each and every one of us.”

Movsesian highlighted a response given by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to a question posed by California Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Glendale), as to why the Armenian Genocide is the only one the United States is “incapable of recognizing.”

Rice responded to this by saying that the United States encouraged Turks and Armenians to examine their past, and by doing so, “to get over it.”

“So we as Armenians have a tough, tough situation,” Movsesian said in reply to this, adding that the genocide should be remembered and recognized.

Because America has yet to recognize the genocide, Movsesian applied the implications of the event to issues currently facing society, specifically the Rwandan genocide and the war in Darfur.

He shared with the audience that he took a trip to Rwanda in Africa in 2006.

“The reason why I went there, I figured, if I saw Rwanda in 2006, I’d know what it was like to be in Armenia [in] 1925.

“Obviously our stories are a little bit different. Armenians were thrown out of their country, Rwandans still are there, but they do present us an opportunity to [see], how do you survive with the perpetrator right above you?”

He encouraged the audience to maintain awareness of the event that took place in 1915 and of issues facing today’s world.

“You have technology at your hands,” he said. “It’s great to play Farmville; put a time limit. Give it 10 minutes, then spend the same 10 minutes looking into genocide issues … I know it’s fun, keep up with the Kardashians, OK? Now give yourself 50 minutes to keep up with what’s going on in Armenia.”

To wrap up his presentation, Movsesian discussed the war in Darfur to reemphasize the importance of the Armenian Genocide.

“1915 was the first step. The second step was the Holocaust. Then came Cambodia. Then came Bosnia. Then came Rwanda, and now, it’s happening in Darfur.

“Learn about it,” he said about the situation in Darfur. “Blog about it. Put yourself in their shoes. Walk with them. Feel what it’s like. Understand what the story’s about. Right now in Darfur, every morning parents have to make the decision, ‘Who’s going to go out to get the water for the family?’ And you know who gets to go out?

“They send out the girl to go get the water and this is because the worst thing that will happen to her is that she will only get raped…. Parents shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

He concluded by urging those present to also take part in upcoming commemorative events, including a fast that was held on campus on April 24.

“We as Armenians have a past. We need to bring that past into the present and make it work to forge the future,” he said.

As the event approaches the 100-year mark, many are still far from letting it fade away in history without recognition.

“My ancestors experienced one of the greatest atrocities between the years of 1915 [to] 1923,” said Tevin Chopurian, president of the Armenian Student Association. “[We] as a nation are still fighting for recognition and reparation. Fighting to get our historic lands back and advocating so that history won’t repeat itself.”

The event has yet to be recognized by the Turkish government as genocide, and Turks feel differently from Armenians about the issue.

The report posted by Annenberg TV News presented the viewpoints of some Turkish students, including Rifat Tigli who said, “These people, who have never been to Armenia, who doesn’t know about Armenian culture and Turkish culture, are making claims about my history.”

Another Turkish student, Enes Kilic, said that both Armenians and Turks suffered from the event in 1915.

“My father’s family went through tough times. They were attacked by their own neighbors,” he said.

Other Turks appear ready to move forward. According to Hakan Tekin, consul general of Turkey in Los Angeles, said, “We want to build bridges of friendship with the Armenian community.”

Rep. Schiff has previously attempted to introduce legislation to recognize what happened as genocide. However, Turkey, a key NATO ally and U.S. partner in military functions in Iraq, claims that a genocide never occurred.

The Armenian Genocide is commemorated by Armenians worldwide on April 24.

More information about the GCC Armenian Student Association is available at http://www.gccasa.org.

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Attending class in fuzzy slippers and pajamas might sound absurd, but it’s an option available to more than 3,000 students at GCC this spring.

Glendale currently offers more than 50 distance education courses, also known as online and hybrid courses, in which 51 percent or more of the instruction is taught online. These courses are offered at the college in various subjects such as business, music and health.

Although some distance education classes require a number of on-campus meetings, online and hybrid courses generally do not require students to be physically present on campus at designated times, allowing for them to “attend class” at their discretion.

For those who lead busy lives, online classes are a fitting solution to tight schedules.

Panditha Sarathchandra, a student at Pacific Oaks College in Pasadena, chose to take online courses at GCC due to a number of time-constraining commitments.

“[I] am a [part-time] nanny and a figure skater practicing for my first competition next year,” she said. “And finding ways to complete my classes on time is not easy which is why I prefer online courses.”

For student Nicole Inman, schedule flexibility isn’t the only advantage to this type of learning.

“I prefer the online courses since I don’t have the distractions of other students acting up in class,” she said. “I am able to concentrate better without those distractions.”

As with most situations, there is good and bad, and there are also disadvantages to this non-traditional type of class. With no instructor verbally presenting material in a classroom or giving reminders to complete assignments, students are left to push themselves to get their work done, and it can be a challenge.

“Unfortunately it can be hard to stay disciplined without the classroom experience,” said April Kass, who recently completed Health 104 online. She added that is difficult to stay “motivated … to get the work done on time.”

Kass also said that a negative aspect of online courses was the lack of student-teacher relationship that is present in a traditional classroom setting.

Title 5, California’s education code, requires that distance education standards match that in traditional classroom courses, including student-teacher communication.

To meet this requirement, health instructor Barb Erfurt regularly hosts a live chat session to facilitate a virtual classroom experience for her online students. The chat session allows them to seek advice on personal health problems.

Erfurt also utilizes a public discussion board for her students to post questions and share thoughts. Students are able to read posts by their peers and may respond to them just they would be able to respond in a physical classroom.

If traditional and online courses still don’t provide an ideal or convenient learning environment, there is the option of taking a hybrid course.

Hybrid courses are designed so that students spend part of the course in a classroom and part of it online.

Instructor Brett Miketta teaches a hybrid five-unit computer science course, where three units are designated for in class work and two units are designated for online work.

Miketta believes that Glendale’s hybrid education “is getting … marginally better than our face-to-face [education]. And it’s because we’re leveraging that technology.” What does not work well in a classroom can be accounted for in the online environment, and vice versa.

Miketta has also found that this non-traditional education method results in more communication with his students.

“I find that … I actually get more direct communication with the students in the online environment than I do in the classroom, the reason being that many students fear raising their hand and asking a question.”

With the budget and finances a big concern for many students throughout the state, distance education courses may offer a partial solution.

Student Michael Sanchez, who has taken online courses at Glendale and Santa Monica College, said that online coursework allowed for him to avoid the hours of commuting he would have encountered if he were enrolled in traditional classes.

Another student, Jacob Hernandez, took a course at GCC online for reasons similar to those of Sanchez.

“I took [health] online so I wouldn’t have to drive to campus, save money on gas, and not have to worry about finding a place to park,” he said.

According to Miketta, online courses may be more cost effective than traditional ones because they do not require classroom space or utilities, and can be taught by adjunct faculty.

However, according to Associate Dean of Instructional Technology Shereen Allison, “It’s not a major cost saving.

“It does help in terms of … when you’re looking for classroom space if you can take some of the courses that can be done online. If you do some of them online, you have an easier time scheduling classes, so there are a lot of benefits to it.”

However, quality remains Glendale’s primary concern in distance education classes.

“You’re not going to find any online classes that have a huge number of students in them, and that’s generally one of the bigger determinants of how expensive something is,” Allison said. “So if you’ve got one teacher per 20 students, versus one [teacher] per 100 [students], the smaller class is more expensive, technically.”

Allison noted the increased demand for these courses.
“I think that you definitely see that [demand is] growing,” she said. “From what I hear from students, they seem to want more and more.”

Of the students currently enrolled in credit courses at GCC, nearly 18 percent are also enrolled in online and hybrid courses.
As demand for these courses grows, so will the college’s offerings.

“Our job is to service our community,” Miketta said. And if our students want online education, we need to be able to provide that to them…. If we don’t increase the online offerings, then our students will be going to [other colleges] because students can take online courses anywhere in the state of California. And as long as it’s in our community college system, it transfers and it counts.”

More information can be found at http://glendale.edu/index.aspx?page=269.

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These days, it’s impossible to watch television or listen to the radio for 10 minutes without hearing a commercial in which Kalmenson and Kalmenson has cast the voices.Cathy Kalmenson, who cofounded the voice-over casting company with her husband, Harvey Kalmenson, in 1993, held a workshop on March 25 in SC 212 that provided insight into the voice-over industry. The workshop began at noon and attracted an audience of more than 100, resulting in a standing room crowd.

Kalmenson, a voice casting director who has worked in the industry for 30 years, introduced the audience to the world of voice acting by playing voice auditions and voice tracks that have been used for actual commercials.

To begin the workshop, Kalmenson offered advice on how to prepare for jobs in the field. She particularly emphasized acting and improvisation skills.

“You’ve got to get your acting chops going on because it’s not about vocal quality, it’s about interpretation,” she said. “You need to be able to be loose and improvise in case the director asks for a take two or take three.”

She also advised against submitting “premature demos,” many of which she has received via email and CD, and most of which she said she would give a “C” if they were graded.

“Cs are average…. We can’t afford to spend any time with average. It’s got to be above average.”

Premature demos also serve as the lasting impression of the actor.

When producers contact Kalmenson and Kalmenson for voice actors, they typically provide “specs” for the gender, age range and personality type of the role they want to fill. The voice casting director noted that vocal quality was a “spec” that was not identified.

“The truth is, [voice over] is not about vocal quality,” Kalmenson said. “If you are blessed with a fabulous [voice], super. That’s great. But truthfully, [vocal quality] rarely comes up.”

Kalmenson also talked about “truth casting” which she explained by giving an example of commercials requiring certain accents. For these commercials, the company would select natives who possess the accents, rather than non-natives who can portray the accents.

She added that fluency in another language is also an advantage in the voice over industry.

A highlight in the workshop was a mock audition in which Kalmenson asked for two volunteers to read a script for a Ford Flex commercial. She asked them to read lines in a voice that had an urban feel, had a little edge and was not super refined. The voice also had to be intriguing, confident, conversational, and self-assured. The actor additionally was advised to recite the lines as though talking only to one person.

“Even though you’re going to be talking to millions of people out there in TV land, the truth is it’s one set of ears at a time,” Kalmenson said, “and it’s quite intimate, and those [intimate reads] are the [ones] that win the job.”

Following the mock audition, Kalmenson played the track that won the spot for the Ford Flex commercial so the audience could examine how the voice actor portrayed the given profile.

She subsequently went into further detail about demos, which normally run around one minute. Within that minute, actors must be able to effectively portray a personality that voicecasters can profile.

“Your mission with the demo is … to say, ‘Here’s who I am,'” she said.

To illustrate this point, Kalmenson played two demos that managed to effectively portray personalities in one minute.

Toward the end of the presentation, Kalmenson played four seemingly different JC Penney commercial tracks. She explained that although there appeared to be subtle differences in each of the tracks, the only difference in each was the background audio. She said that the voice track was the same used in each commercial, but that the varying background audio resulted in an audio illusion.

The workshop concluded with final emphasis on importance of acting and improvisation skills. Kalmenson played a few audition tracks of two couples that role- played for a commercial spot. While the audience generally agreed that the script read by the couples for the audition tracks was entertaining, a completely different script was used for the commercial spot.

Among the students satisfied with the workshop was Kameron White, who found the presentation “very nice” and “very informative.” He also said he found voice over a “very exciting field to look into.”

Kalmenson and Kalmenson is based in Burbank. The company currently has 23,000 voice actors on file, many of whom are from Los Angeles. They have cast voices for many prominent commercials, including the original Budweiser frogs and the current Tony the Tiger for Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes.

For more information, call (818) 377-3600 or visit http://www.kalmenson.com.

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2009 may be coming to a close, but Dawn Lindsay’s journey as the interim superintendent/president of Glendale College has just begun.

Since stepping in office this July, following the departure of Audre Levy, Lindsay has approached her job with passion and enthusiasm.

Though bound by a busy schedule, Lindsay sat comfortably in her office on a Thursday afternoon to take time to reflect positively on her first semester.

“I love it,” she said of her job. “I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying working with the faculty and the staff. I’m enjoying making the contacts out in the community. I’m loving the receptivity that we’re getting back in the community as far as the welcome and the desire to be collaborative .… I’m very proud of the work that we’re doing and I’m very proud to be able to represent this college.”

Barely six months into her term, Lindsay has already engaged in efforts to encourage college growth.

“We really are working hard to get people out in the community so people hear and see Glendale College on a day-to-day basis,” she said.

To help address budget cuts, she said that the college has been “working so hard to look at various grants and collaborative efforts and really doing some very strong lobbying at the state, but even more so at the federal level.”

Even with the current deficit, Lindsay said that GCC is so committed to students and the community that it has an estimated 3,000 full-time equivalent students for which it receives no state funding.

Despite drastic funding cuts Lindsay does not appear to view the economic downfall as an obstacle: instead of worrying too much about the problem, she has diverted her focus on ways the college can secure additional funding.

In October she visited Washington D.C. to work with a federal lobbyist to help Glendale get in touch with people who make major decisions about budget appropriations.
Lindsay said that the constituent groups she met with were “very pleased with the collaborative relationships that we’ve got with our community .… ”

She is scheduled to visit Washington D.C. again in February to continue lobbying efforts.

The interim president expressed how proud she is of the college and noted attributes that make it stand out from other community colleges.

“We’ve got an amazing transfer curriculum, we have an amazing general education curriculum, we are really, really building up our career and tech education program [vocational programs],” she said. “But I think what really, really allows this college to stand out from probably any other college I’ve worked in, and I’ve been in five … the faculty and the staff and the administration at this college are so committed to the success of our students.

“There’s passion, there’s drive, there’s love. This college is in people’s hearts and souls. That’s how deep it goes. And I’ve never been in any other institution where I’ve seen that degree of dedication. It’s amazing.”

Lindsay started working at community colleges on the east coast in 1991. Since moving to California in 1994 she worked at Saddleback College for 8 1/2 years and at Riverside Community College for 3 1/2 years.
“[A] community college, in my opinion, is just a very, very special place to work,” she said.

With her experiences at community colleges, Lindsay said she prefers them over four-year institutions.

“Once I got my foot in the door of a community college, I never wanted to leave,” she said.

She obtained her doctorate in organizational leadership from Pepperdine University, holds a master’s degree in educational counseling, a bachelor’s degree in psychology and obtained a bachelor’s of social work degree from Western Maryland College.

Lindsay expressed pride in the successful partnership between the college and Glendale Water and Power, which resulted in creation of the Glendale Water and Power Academy.

“Glendale city had a problem, and the fact that they were having a hard time keeping their workers employed because they were losing them to outside agencies. So they came to us with a concern,” Lindsay said.

Together the college and Glendale Water and Power applied for funding to create the academy.

Twenty spots are open in the program, 17 of which go to unemployed Glendale residents.

“That’s just an example of working with the community to get people back, employed, where they’re contributing and living and staying within this community and continuing to give back,” Lindsay said.

Perhaps one contributing factor to Lindsay’s energetic approach to her job is servitude leadership, a humble form of leadership by which she abides. Under this principle, the higher one ranks in an organization, the more that people that person serves.

“It’s my whole training, ” Linsday said of the leadership principle. “It’s my whole background. It’s about respecting differences of opinion and being open to different ways of thinking about things.”

She added that servitude leadership is “not [about] what you keep, it’s what you give away.”

As she wraps up her first semester as the college president, Lindsay looks forward to continuing to serve GCC.

“It’s really nice to come to work with people that are just so much fun to be with. And with students that are so directed and so driven and so given,” she said.

With the holidays just around the corner, Lindsay is looking forward to spending time with her family and friends.

She also wishes everyone a “wonderful holiday season.

“We’ve done a lot and we have a lot to be proud of. We have a lot to be thankful for, a lot of successes that we can talk about, and I think it’s time we celebrate.”

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