In these four short videos, reporter and producer Tyler Williams spotlights events in fall 2024 on Sierra College’s Rocklin campus. Each video is less than 2-minutes and touches on student voice and community engagement.
Student Life at Sierra
See Ya at Siino’s: A Tribute
In this 5:08 min. video, reporter Jackson Lindstrom takes a look into the community that Siino’s Pizza, Pasta, and Grill has built in Lincoln, Calif.
Step Back and Reflect
With the current state of the world, it is inevitable that anyone, especially a college student, will encounter stress. While stress may be positive in some situations, building motivation and enabling goal-setting tendencies, it may also cloud our minds and invite anxious or depressive behaviors.
What Makes Diversity Count?
Seeing people who look like you matters– it makes people feel included. Many of the people I interviewed at Sierra College in fall 2024 felt the same way. Robert Scott, a student in the Umoja program at Sierra said, “Diversity is pretty important,” in an interview on Oct. 17. He continued, “You never want to feel uncomfortable walking around campus or in the classroom, like you’re the only one of your race, anywhere. I mean like let’s say there’s 10 Black people and you’re the only white person, you’d feel uncomfortable because you don’t fit in. I’m sure you understand!”
Law and Order or Gentle Touch? County Neighbors Fight Fentanyl
Over the past decade, the fentanyl epidemic has emerged as a critical public health crisis in the United States. According to USAFacts.org, overdoses from the drug have claimed over 330,000 lives since 2012, devastating communities large and small in the process. In Northern California, the powerful synthetic opioid’s impact has been acutely felt in Placer and Nevada counties. Despite their similarities, the county neighbors have adopted markedly different approaches to combat the life-or-death crisis.
Seeds of Addiction, Roots of Recovery
“When you’re using, it’s kind of a lonely thing,” Holly began, her words trailing off into a mix of memories. On a breezy, sunlit day in March 2024, Holly sat outside the Sierra College Rocklin campus library on the veranda for an interview with members of this year’s California Humanities Emerging Journalists team.
Harm Reduction: Support, not Stigma
As I opened the glovebox of my mom’s car looking for a tissue, out spilled a handful of individually packaged nasal sprays. Confused, I picked them up and analyzed the product. “Those are Narcan,” said my mom, a nurse at a local correctional facility, “Take a few, put them in your purse. They can save a life.”
Life of an Upstanding Citizen
Vincent Pacheco is a visionary. Pure experimentation with mediums as light as tissue paper, he has developed his own niche. Moving into multimedia altered his relationship with art and with his family heritage. Pacheco, now, as an assistant professor for Applied Art and Design at Sierra College, is able to share his experiences from his art career. Previously, he worked in the corporate world as a graphic designer for Yahoo! and then transitioned to work as a freelance artist in Seattle. While in Seattle, he developed his own design studio with clientele including Disney, Elle Magazine, Yahoo! and Samsung. In an interview with Pacheco, he discussed his personal connection to his work, and his recent art exhibit at the Ridley Art Gallery on the Rocklin, Sierra College campus.
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Under the Glove
The world of sports is full of heart-racing competition and moments, from the excitement that comes when a soccer player scores a goal to a double play on the baseball diamond. These are some of the things fans and athletes live for. They fuel the passion and enjoyment that comes from sports. Moments like these are captured in media highlights and can add to engagement, but there is a longer story that goes on outside these few minute highlights.
How Sierra Baseball is Working to Avoid Injuries
For most people an injury is just an inconvenience. Something that slows them down for a few weeks, or maybe a couple months, though rarely does it end their career. Athletes, however, do not qualify as “most people.”
Despite frequent conditioning and training, athletes are not immune to injury. Instead, it seems the harrowed “injury bug” haunts both professional and amateur athletes. “Injuries are starting to become a bigger part of the game,” Tyler Kersey, a Sierra College sophomore baseball player, said during an interview on March 18. He continued, “You see it a lot in pitchers, [especially] arm injuries.”
As it turns out, Tyler is right. Continue Reading
Johnnie Terry’s Legacy: Building LGBTQ Studies
In this ten minute video, longtime LGBTQ studies and philosophy professor Johnnie Terry looks back on his experiences building Sierra College’s LGBTQ studies program completely from scratch, and other experiences he had as a LGBTQ professor and community leader as he approaches his retirement at the end of the spring 2024 semester.
No Quick Fix for Sierra’s Parking Problems
When a new semester of college begins students everywhere deal with a familiar problem: a lack of parking. When the Fall 2023 semester began at Sierra College’s Rocklin campus, students were faced with the same problem, but this time with a twist. Large swaths of student parking were off-limits due to construction.
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