Students make blankets for abuse center

Christine Carrillo

Costa Mesa High School and Orange Coast College worked together this

spring to help create blankets for children served by the Orange County

Child Abuse Prevention Center.

As part of a fashion course at OCC, the 10 high school students

enrolled recently delivered the completed blankets to the center’s

Welcome Baby Program. The program is for first-time mothers and their

infants six-months-old and younger.

The students involved in making the blankets said they not only

enjoyed helping the mothers and babies within the program but also

appreciated the experience they obtained from it.

“I’ve wanted to be in the fashion business since the seventh grade,”

Kim Truong, a junior, said. “This course has provided me with a fantastic

experience. I want to own my own little boutique some day.”

Truong said she plans on taking more fashion classes during her senior

year and will transfer to OCC after graduation.

Students received college credit for the course and were able to

participate in a fashion program that trains students for Orange County’s

sportswear industry.

“This is a class that exposes high school juniors and seniors to

careers in the fashion industry,” Sibley Sabori, an OCC fashion

instructor and a child development specialist with the center, said.

OCC currently has more than a hundred fashion major students many of

whom already work in the industry.

OCC adds Arabic to language curriculum

Orange Coast College’s Curriculum Committee recently added Arabic to

its foreign language curriculum beginning Fall 2003.

Currently, OCC’s Literature and Languages Division offers six foreign

languages and will be adding Vietnamese in Fall 2002.

“Our goal is to also add Korean, Chinese and Portuguese in the next

several years,” Michael A Mandelkern, division dean, said. “We have a

very diverse student population and a diverse community. We feel that the

more languages we offer, the better.”

While the course will basically be a language course, some culture

will be taught. The addition of the class faced no opposition at OCC and

is now waiting for transfer approval by the University of California and

California State University Systems.