After our challenges in 2003, I am pleased to welcome our Spring 2004 semester with cautious optimism about the state budget and our prospects for more realistic and stable funding.  Thanks to the good planning efforts of Dr. Dean Colli and our Enrollment Strategies Committee, we are holding our own with enrollment.  Our students are loyal and persistent.  Even with nearly five percent fewer class offerings than last spring semester, we are nearly even in enrollment!

We are fortunate to have a generous college community and good friends.  After last October’s firestorm, the GCCCD formed a Fire Victims Fund to assist students, staff and faculty affected by the disaster.  In late January, the fund had received $10,643, much of which has been disbursed. In addition to individual contributions, donations came from the ASGC, Keenan and Associates, the Rescue Task Force, the GCCCD Administrators’ Association, Academic Senate of Cuyamaca College and Santiago Canyon College, which collected funds when Cuyamaca College women’s soccer team played there.

The Orange County Fire Authority presented Grossmont College with a crystal statue acknowledging their use of Grossmont College facilities during the time they were engaged in firefighting in San Diego’s East County.  The statue is engraved, “Thank you for ‘Taking Care of Us’ during the Cedar Fire. “ Chip Prather, Fire Chief.

Our sister college in Japan, Jin-Ai Women’s College, sent a donation to the newly established Christy Seiler-Davis Memorial Scholarship, which will be awarded to a re-entry student.  Seiler-Davis is the only Grossmont College student known to have perished in the fires.  We are grateful and touched by this special expression of international friendship.

Respectfully,



Ted Martinez, Jr.