Josette Madonia
MesaCC Legend

Grounds for Thought café on the Mesa Community College (MCC) at Dobson was the first campus café recognized in the New Times’ March 17 “List of 5 Dope Breakfast Spots.” The Phoenix New Times’ Chow Bella has published put out a list of exceptional spots for a bite to eat since approximately September 2017. The paper has a large student readership and thought incorporating a campus café could appeal to those readers.  Bianca Mihalcescu, the Grounds for Thought café’s morning manager was featured in the article. Bianca said she creates new drinks daily based on customer’s tastes. Her more popular recipes have given her a space on the café menu under Speciality Drinks as Bianca’s Menu.

The Espresso Patronum named after the Harry Potter spell is one of Bianca’s most ordered drink and was mentioned in the New Times article. It is an iced coffee with two shots of espresso, coconut, white chocolate, and milk. Another one of Bianca’s drinks is the Bubonic Plague.  A drink with dark chocolate and hazelnut and according to Bianca, “it kills.” Bianca said the café is famous for the Jared Special and the Wookie. The café, Grounds for Thought, also gets good reviews on yelp drawing in customers who are not students or employees of MCC. Bianca says she gets calls from people who find the café through yelp but the café is not so easy for them to find.

“We don’t even really have a sign on the wall outside that says Grounds for Thought. It’s just like a little saxophone and some music notes,” Bianca said. The main café is located in the Library and High Technology Center in LB 11, but there’s also has a location in the Student Union. The café is family-owned by Rick and Tamara Hanson. they also run campus cafés in Chandler-Gilbert Community College and Glendale Community College. The student hang-out spot is a far cry from its 1994 start as a cart outside the MCC Clock Tower Building on MCC.  The artwork is hung on the walls of the café and three of Bianca’s own pieces are on the wall behind the counter. A glass space at the entrance of the café is a satellite lab space for MCC Art Gallery. The exhibition “In a Different Light” will be displayed there until September 15, 2018.

Bianca calls herself is an eco-nut because she likes to think of ways to eliminate waste. The café offers 25 cents off on drinks to anyone bringing in their own cup. and Bianca will lend out cups for to customers who sit at the café and even those heading to the nearby library can borrow a mug since the library now allows drinks. A fun fact about the café is that they are a member of Local First Arizona, a nonprofit organization that celebrates independent, locally owned businesses, and supports other local businesses. The deli selections, pastries, and cookies are made by all from local businesses. The café Grounds for Thoughts tries to steer away from well-known bagged chip brands like Doritos and Cheetos to and sells those made by local establishments to further support local businesses like them.

Jack Carroll
MesaCC Legend

Mesa Community College Students are now able to park on campus without needing a parking permit. In a recent email from the Public Safety Commander of MCC, Steven Lieber, he announced that “Parking Permits are no longer required for our MCCCD [Maricopa Community College District] Students.” “It was really a question of what the value was of having students register their vehicle,” said Mikel Longman, Chief of Police of the Maricopa Community Colleges Police Department, about the decision, “We thought ‘you know what, we’re an open campus, and students should be able to freely park and not worry about having to register their vehicles’.”

“Most colleges and universities charge for parking, ASU charges a ridiculous amount, but we have never charged for parking. Why would we require students to get a parking permit when there is no value?” The student responses to the change were happy, but slightly hesitant about it, with MCC student Brooke Donovan saying “I’m completely fine with it, except for the fact that people who aren’t from MCC can now park here.” Another student, Anita Farley seemed to be more okay with the idea “It makes people who aren’t students want to park, which might be a good thing but maybe not for the school.”Although students now have the ability to not use permits, faculty of the school is still required to use parking permits for employee parking areas, and everyone else is otherwise still subject to the same rules as before.

“We are still writing parking citations for parking in the employee parking areas without a permit, handicap and fire lane violations,” says Lieber in the email. Although the changes have been put in place, the Parking & Traffic Control section of the Mesa Community College website has yet to reflect these changes. Elements like the requirement for students to have a permit, the instructions for showing it clearly, and the financial penalties for not showing the permit are still visible on the website.

“All students and employees who operate a motor vehicle on college property must register their vehicle and display a valid parking permit on the vehicle.” says a now-outdated portion of the website. This could be an issue for students, since they may be inclined to get a parking permit after checking the official website for information, which would only result in wasted time and undue annoyance. The new rules for the parking permits are in place as of April 2.

Karina Herrera-Prieto
MesaCC Legend

A new discovery at Arizona State University (ASU) regarding lithium batteries could revolutionize our cellphones future. ASU professors Candace Chan and Hanqing Jiang, have lead studies and found there is a possible way to find a safer alternative to Lithium-Ion batteries. According to the researchers, the safety issues with lithium-ion batteries started around 2006 when laptops using these batteries caused the devices to catch on fire. These safety issues were mostly because the chemical liquid inside the composition of a lithium-ion battery is extremely flammable. Recent lab tests have revealed that there is a way to implement a different material that can be used and could potentially lead to a safer alternative. Research has shown that the flammable chemical in today’s lithium-ion batteries could be changed into a solid ceramic polymer.

“There are some ceramics that you use in a daily basis, one example is ceramic coffee mugs so those are the class of materials that you know won’t catch on fire very easily,” Chan said.
This change could possibly make our electronics, like cell phones, laptops, and other portable devices to become much safer. In the future, we could see a change in the lithium-ion battery composition, but it’s still in the process of understanding how to get the new batteries up to scale and able to fit the different sizes of electronics. Chan wanted to share some precautions when purchasing electronics and said, “when you have a chance to buy a new product that has lithium batteries inside, I would be careful and make sure that it’s coming from a well-established company.” Chan also warns about leaving portable electronics such as laptops and cellphones out in the heat, especially in the summertime.

Sydney Ritter
MesaCC Legend

Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) is announcing the new Information Technology Institute at Mesa to meet the emerging technological workforce’s demand for talent in areas of app development. According to a press releases posted by Mesa Community College (MCC) Dr. Maria Harper-Marinick, MCCCD Chancellor, said that the institute “will bridge the IT employability gap with a new Information Technology Institute” along with providing “high-tech skills for our students to meaningfully connect with future employers and better compete in today’s modern economy for the higher-level, higher-wage IT vacancies.”

Situating MCC as the hub of the Institute is strategically aligned with the City of Mesa’s vision to revitalize West Mesa and will further enable MCCCD to reduce the job gaps in the IT sector.
According to the Chair of the Business and Informations Systems at MCC, Linda Collins, students will choose courses of study from a diverse menu based on high demand skills such as app development with Apple’s swift/Xcode, Blockchain, SQL/SQL Server, software development, JAVA, project management, technical support, Red Hat Linux, Oracle, customer service, software engineering, Microsoft C# and .NET Programming.

The IT Institute will also address employer skill gaps with quality degrees and certificates related to the highest demand jobs, accelerate workforce innovation and responsiveness, increase workforce training and customized solutions for business government and industry, and increase programmatic articulation agreements and career pathways with secondary schools to increase the number of students continuing with MCCCD.

“To provide valuable learning, on-the-job experiences, apprenticeships, internships, and capstone projects will be part of the coursework to benefit both the local community and the students’ skills. Industry recognized micro-credentials will be issued allowing students to immediately demonstrate competencies to employers as they are earned,” said Collins. As a vital component of the City of Mesa’s Innovation District, MCCCD’s IT Institute will operate out of the college’s Downtown Center, 145 N. Centennial Way, Mesa beginning fall of 2018, until a permanent facility is identified.

According to the MCC press release, the greater Phoenix area is “expecting to add 20,000+ IT jobs in the next decade with an additional 10,000 IT jobs over the next six years in juts Mesa Community College service area alone, the need for a well-equipped technology workforce is paramount.” “Despite great prospects, challenges remain for IT in greater Phoenix. The region offers a strong entry-level labor base, but lacks a workforce with higher-level IT competencies, said Collins. “MCC’s IT Institute will focus on entry- and mid-level career readiness for the IT sector, including courses to up-skill incumbent workers.

Sydney Ritter
MesaCC Legend

On April 19, Arizona State Senator Jamescita Peshlakai visited Mesa Community College (MCC) to speak to students about her experience as the first female Native American senator and how she got June 2 to become Native American Day in the state of Arizona. The MCO220 class took part in an ask and answer with the senator as they asked her questions about herself and politics.

The key points Peshlakai told the class about was her first start trying to run for Senate, her Native American background, her children, her struggles as a female Native American in the Senate and the challenges and hurdles she had to face to get June 2 to become Native American Day in Arizona. The senator finished her visit to the campus by telling the students in the class that she is planning on running for Senate again and to be active in politics.

Peshlakai did not come from a politically active family, and she never thought that she would be in that position one day she would be the one to be in charge of creating a day for Native Americans all over Arizona.

Josette Madonia
MesaCC Legend

A collaboration across departments brings two projects together at Mesa Community College (MCC) based upon ancient Islamic art. In 2007, math faculty Madeline Chowdhury received a district grant to visit Granada, Spain to study the ancient tessellations that cover the Alhambra fortress. She then brought the designs to campus to begin a collaborative project with the art department. Tessellations are a pattern that completely covers a plane without gaps. The walls, floors and ceilings of the Alhambra and also the Alcazar palace of Seville are covered in tessellations. The key to both palaces that hold the ancient art and architecture of Islam were handed to Spain after the Crusades.

When Chowdhury returned she met with Linda Speranza, faculty of the art department, to set in motion a project that would create four murals. By 2008, two murals were placed in the Art/Communication and another two in the Mathematics and Computer Science buildings. The symmetry of the mosaics is based on mathematics group theory. Although the theory of higher mathematics could produce patterns, the team mimicked a couple of the classic designs. “We tried very much to stay with the techniques of not only the patterns but the firing techniques and the same clays that they used and the same glazes,” Speranza said.

The murals took an academic year to complete and were created with two experienced ceramics students. The tiles were fired in the kiln, a furnace for baking or drying pottery, several times. Warping of the tiles is part of the process and creates difficulty when fitting the pieces together. Speranza said they had to find tiles that would fit together and number them. According to Chowhdury, “They shrink two percent. I had to consider that when I was designing the template.” “So, when you put together a puzzle, you are trying to fit them together. So, if one’s off, then all of them will follow.” Chowdhury said this is an inherent flaw called “propagation of error.”

Chowdhury said she decided to try her hand at it again in 2017 when a fifth mosaic was installed on campus between the Mathematics and Computer Science building near the Life Science building. It was a full STEAM project and included the artwork of Geoff Coppola, at the time a student of MCC. The project included the math, art, and welding departments on campus as well as engineers and masonry. The shadows cast on the wall and ground from this mosaic are part of the design of the fifth installment. The installation with frame weighs 2.2 tons. Included in this is the tic-tac-toe pattern. It is not part of the art because the straps safeguard the installation.

Chowdhury said working across disciplines were both a challenge and the most rewarding aspect. “They [math, art, welding departments] are the experts in this. If we knew how to do this, we would be doing it ourselves. So, it’s that kind of subtlety that you have to do when working with others. How much to say, how little to say. How not to micromanage. How to let these artists be artists.”The mosaics are part of MCC’s Art Walk and can be found on the Art Walk map on the college’s website.

MCC and the Chamber of Commerce partner up to develop business center

Angelica Miranda
MesaCC Legend

Mesa Community College (MCC) and the Mesa Chamber of Commerce partnered up to open a business development center called the Green Flag Mesa in March, located in Downtown Mesa. The newly renovated building offers space for up to 10 companies at its new facility at 165 North Centennial Way, Suite 208 for MCC students who have been approved of their business ideas are able to use the provided space for a monthly fee of $10. Mesa Chamber of Commerce approached Daniel Piercy and Richard Toler in the business department at MCC about an entrepreneurship idea that both organizations can benefit from.

The idea later turned into a partnership to create a business development center that specifically MCC students can use. “The Green Flag Center provides the opportunity to take an idea and move forward without having to have a lot of capital or personal commitment,” said Daniel Piercy, MCC’s Business & Information Systems faculty. “We can provide them with resources and knowledge and mentorship.” Students who are ready to launch a business department and a follow-up interview will be given by either Daniel Piercy and Richard Toler. Any student who looks like a good fit to use the Green Flag office space will the be reviewed by the Mesa Chamber of Commerce for final approval. Once approved, students will pay a one-time key deposit fee of $50 and a $10 monthly access fee.

Green Flag Mesa currently has three student students who are actively using the space and two students who are pending. Students are able to use the facility for up to a year and once a student is ready to launch their business, Mesa Chamber of Commerce will match them up with community partners. This will allow students to continue to develop their business and be provided with additional resources. “The tagline is, ‘where businesses begin,’” said Sally Harrison, Mesa Chamber of Commerce and CEO. “The green flag is the flag that is dropped at the beginning of a car race. It’s kind of like the beginning of things.” The partnership between MCC and the Mesa Chamber of Commerce provides the resources, knowledge, and mentorship to launch their business ideas. If spots are still open, the center will consider opening the facility up to all Maricopa County Community Colleges.