tate Chancellor Diane Woodruff visited EC last Monday to see how the money that went into the construction of the new Humanities Building was spent.

“I love your new building; this is just amazing,” Woodruff said.

Woodruff was impressed with how the new Humanities Building turned out after initial concerns of how the money was being spent on the three-story building, which includes a new area for the Writing Center, a center Woodruff was proud to know had been implemented in the construction process.

Woodruff said her priority is the students and improving student success, as seen by establishing a new Writing Center, EC has done that.

“My highest priority as chancellor was to try to do something to improve the students’ success rates because so many come in and need help with their math, and we’ve got this basic skills money so I wanted to know what your college was doing,” Woodruff said.

“So augmenting tutoring, it sounds like, is one of the main things you have used the money for.”

Another topic that was an issue presented to Woodruff was a proposal she is against, which would raise the price of units from $20 per unit to $26 per unit.

According to Woodruff, the last time student fees were $26 per unit in California, community colleges in total lost 175,000 students and Woodruff has alternatives to raising the fees.

“Our students are struggling and the cost of living in this area, just like many others in California, is so high we’ve got to at least keep the fees low because textbook costs are really high and living costs are really high,” Woodruff said.

Woodruff, along with Mark Wade Lieu, president of academic senate for California, took the time to check out the other programs EC has to offer, like the astronomy department; EC is one of the few schools that has a planetarium.

“It is always fun to see another college campus in your own small world and see the possibilities for what can be done in different programs,” Lieu said.

“The most exciting thing is to see how excited everybody locally is about what’s happening on their campus, because community colleges are very local and so the enthusiasm locally is always just really good,” Lieu said.

Overall, Woodruff was impressed with the effort to service students’ needs.