Joe Giddens – Pima Post

Climate change education remains difficult for Arizona science teachers

20Nov

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

News

Climate change education remains difficult for Arizona science teachers

Photo by Dulcey Lima Posted with permission from Inside Tucson Business. Original Story can be found here. By Joe Giddens The quality of climate change education in Arizona’s classrooms received a middling grade from the National Center for Science Education’s new review of the nation’s science standards. While the state’s science curriculum was updated in 2018, Arizona bears scars of the politicization of science. “While it is disappointing to be given a ‘C’ grade … the Arizona Department of Education continues to prioritize climate change education within our science standards,” said ADE spokeswoman Morgan Dick. Science standards are what students should know by the end of the school year, however, Arizona leaves specific curriculum to the school districts. The report tied Arizona with M...

23Oct

By Pima Post Editorial TeamNo Comments

Arts & Entertainment, Features

Local artist participates in national painting project

By Joe Giddens Posted with permission from Tucson Weekly. Original story can be found at: https://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2020/10/22/local-artist-participates-in-national-painting-project As the drums ring out the Chinese New Year in a Singapore market, two young women wearing face masks watch the celebration. It's a scene characteristic of local artist Jacqueline Chanda’s work, which often allows the viewer to construct their own narrative of a scene. “I like to catch these those kind of scenes where people can say ‘I wonder what they were thinking?’ or ‘I wonder where was this guy is going?’,” Chanda said. “Did he have intent or was he was he simply taking a stroll?” Chanda’s painting, “Girl with a Turquoise Face Mask,” is based on a photograph she took while on vacatio...

6Oct

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McSally and Kelly discuss climate change, public land management in online forums

Photo by Gage Skidmore By Joe Giddens Posted with permission from Tucson Weekly. Original story can be found at: https://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2020/10/05/mcsally-and-kelly-discuss-climate-change-public-land-management-in-online-forums?fbclid=IwAR3tttQkKYOkpQ74hz8e_t5SXFA1FeJNx9NW8UyeYiso5QeP_04uXXfosJM Senate candidates Martha McSally and Mark Kelly laid out their visions of public land management for Arizona on Friday in two separate online forums hosted by the Arizona Trail Association. The online forums took place ahead of their only scheduled debate on Tuesday and today’s voter registration deadline (which has since been extended to October 23). Climate change starkly contrasted the candidates. McSally continued her rhetoric of qualifying the scientific consensus th...

21Nov

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News

Veterans Day 2019 celebrates natives

Story and photos by JOE GIDDENS Happy 244th birthday to the United States Marine Corps and Veterans Day 2019. Pima Community College’s celebration of these occasions was a free event that featured local organizations to support our Pima veterans. On hand to celebrate was the Flowing Wells School District JROTC with a military drill presentation and the Marana School District Girls’ Choir singing the national anthem. Pima held its Eighth Annual Veterans Day Celebration and Marine Corps cake cutting ceremony on Nov. 7 at the Downtown Campus. This year’s celebration took on an indigenous people’s flair to coincide with National Native American Heritage Month. The 2019 keynote speaker was retired Master Sergeant of the United States Army and Pima alumnus Gary Anderson. Anderson enli...

Pima College increases security measures

24Oct

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Pima College increases security measures

Photo and story by JOE GIDDENS Security at Pima Community College is an ongoing concern but several initiatives are in place. Text Alerts Mass alerts from Pima Police go out by email and text alerts. About 70,000 people in Tucson get the emails, but 7,000 to 9,000 get the text alerts because people must volunteer their numbers for the alert system, according to Pima Police officer Michelle Nieuwenhuis. Pima Police wants to increase the number of people receiving text alerts, because people are more inclined to check texts than they are email. Plus, there won’t be the issue of messages accidentally ending up in the spam filter. Students’ information will be entered into Omnilert, which is Pima’s text alert vendor and people will then have the ability to opt out if they don’t want to...

23Oct

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Arizona starts to eye the 2020 election

Photos and story by JOE GIDDENS The national spotlight has come to Tucson as both parties compete for Arizona’s potential swing state status in the 2020 election. Mike Pence Arrival Vice President Mike Pence, Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey and Sen. Martha McSally arrived at Tucson International Airport Oct. 3 to stump for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement. The USMCA is the successor to the North American Free Trade Agreement. The agreement hasn’t yet been put to a vote in Congress because of the Democrats’ concerns with its enforceability and on labor matters. Pence’s other objective for this visit was to campaign for McSally ahead of her expected matchup next year against Democratic frontrunner candidate Mark Kelly. The most recent poll by OH Predictive Insights in August had M...

Tucson’s 42nd annual Pride Parade celebrated

10Oct

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Tucson’s 42nd annual Pride Parade celebrated

Photos and story By JOE GIDDENS You could hear the gleeful voices of the students from Rincon-University High School’s Gender-Sexuality Alliance singing “Bohemian Rhapsody” as the participants of the “2019 Pride in the Desert” got ready. “Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me,” they sang. The 42nd annual Tucson Pride in the Desert Parade and Festival took place Sept. 28. This year’s theme was “Rise Up” for the Stonewall Riots’ 50th anniversary. The theme was of particular significance to one parade participant. Ira Nadborne was born in Brooklyn and came out in 1965, which caused “all hell to break loose” in the house. Later, he was sent for conversion therapy and was abandoned by his family. Four years later, he was living in Greenwich Village behind the Stonewall I...

26Sep

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E-scooters hit Tucson streets

Story and photos by JOE GIDDENS The City of Tucson Department of Transportation launched a six-month E-Scooter Pilot Program on Sept. 12. Two companies, Bird and Razor, each have deployed 500 scooters with an additional 250 in designated “opportunity zones,” or areas of the city that lack motor vehicles and where residents have a low income. The program aims to reduce the number of vehicles on the road and provide revenue to the city government. The City of Tucson’s income from the project is a 20-cent-per-ride fee and a $4,000 application fee from Bird and Razor. The company’s annual fee is $15,000, which will be divided into the initial six-month pilot program. The remainder will be applied if the pilot is extended, according to city documents. “I just rode both now for the fir...

Chancellor spends $20.5K+ on Spring travel

2May

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Chancellor spends $20.5K+ on Spring travel

By AMARIS ENCINAS and JOE GIDDENS During the April 3 governors board meeting, Chancellor Lee Lambert made an announcement about his travels for Pima Community College. “And then I know there was concerns about my travel,” he said. “So as a result, we’re going to enhance the current board’s travel policy. So we will be bringing an amendment to the board travel policy, just to provide a little more oversight and transparency.” The amendment hasn’t been introduced yet, but it will modify Board Policy 4.06 and it includes: The chancellor will inform the board chair of the purpose or overall end goal for travel; following the trip, the chancellor will inform the governing board of the insight acquired from the trip itself; and lastly, the chancellor will at least provide an annual written...

6Dec

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Teaching the next generation of leaders

Interview and photo By JOE GIDDENS Jennifer Wellborn is the West Campus Student Life Coordinator, she’s been in this position for the last four and a half years, previously she worked at the East Campus for a year. Wellborn is also the coordinator of Pima Community College’s Jade Retreat, a three-day leadership and social justice conference. There will be more opportunities for Pima students in the Spring. On Feb. 15 is the Emerging Leader Summit, which you can register for at: http://bit.ly/PCCEmergingLeaders. Q: What is student life? A: We are where students get involved in clubs, leadership programs, multicultural programming, basically if it’s happening at Pima and it’s not part of a student’s class. Typically it’s Student Life either putting it on or has a hand i...