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Faculty
Profile: |
 James Castel De Oro, photographed by Susan Cisco |
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| by Greg Perkins, Counselor, EOPS One student comments, “I was
really lost and confused about how to plan my education and career goals
until I took Mr. James’s Student Development class this semester. He
made everything so clear and easy to understand.” “I
didn’t know how to find the information I needed to have to be able to
follow my major and graduate. Mr. Castel De Oro led me to all the right
places for what I needed to know.”
“ I was
so nervous about college because no one in my family had gone to college
before. Mr. Castel De Oro
made me feel confident that I was doing the best thing and that Glendale
College was the right place for me.”
These are
typical of the statements that I am accustomed to read when I review
student evaluations of James Castel De Oro’s classes and counseling
sessions during these past three years that I have enjoyed working with
him in the EOPS Office. Prior to joining our EOPS staff, James honed his
skills of effective, compassionate counseling and teaching through more
than ten years of secondary school teaching and EOPS service with the
disadvantaged students of both LA and Orange counties. In addition to
counseling and teaching experience, James brought to Glendale College
his considerable experience in financial aid and high school outreach as
well as service experience as an assistant director of EOPS.
I certainly
have been impressed by James’s rich history of advocacy for
underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students. He has
contributed countless weekends over the past several years to
encouraging and building a base of Latino student leadership in higher
education in Glendale and surrounding communities. Through the Latino/a
College Leadership Institute of the National Conference for Community
and Justice (NCCJ), he has challenged many Glendale College students and
other youth leaders from neighboring schools to find responsible and
self-actualizing roles in our greater multi-ethnic and multi-cultural
community. In his first year at Glendale College, he facilitated the
start of a new Latino student leadership group, Independent Student
Leadership Association (ILSA) and served as its faculty co-advisor.
Through NCCJ, he also volunteers in Brotherhood/Sisterhood Camp, Human
Relations Awareness and the Youth Leadership Program.
Be aware that these groups are not social clubs or “feel
good” experiences, but organizations that challenge our youth and
would-be educators to deal directly and frankly with cross-cultural,
inter-ethnic and gender conflict resolution in the raw. These are
experiences where people are challenged to examine profound issues of
self-identity and social justice. Participants develop moral courage and
self-confidence. On the
lighter side, I didn’t realize what a dedicated and fearless colleague
I work with until I went to a counselors’ conference in San Francisco
with him last April. James is a “blue-blooded” LA Dodger fan par
excellence and has the wardrobe to prove it. We discovered, upon
arriving in San Francisco, that the Blue Crew was in town visiting their
archrival Giants at the newly opened PacBell Stadium, and we couldn’t
resist the chance to go to the game. Of course, our hero had brought
enough Dodger paraphernalia with him to outfit two fully-grown adults
from head to toe, but I chose not to be one of them. Even understanding
the fierce rivalry and fanatic emotions, I really had no idea of the
courage involved as our intrepid counselor “dodged” everything short
of flying cups of beer inscribed with the slogan “Beat LA!” James is
not easily intimidated. James is
readily moved by needs of his students, and he meets them more than half
way in the professional helping experience. He has made learning
American Sign Language and communicating with deaf students in a
professional capacity a major growth goal of his first years at Glendale
College. As a distinct challenge to his training for work with the more
traditional Latino, African-American or Asian-American populations of
disadvantaged students, he has also striven to learn as quickly and as
much as possible about Glendale’s relatively unique concentration of
Armenian students who are in need of educational equity services. He
draws upon his strong grounding in the fundamentals of cross-cultural
counseling from the outstanding Community Based Block program at San
Diego State University, where he received his Masters.
James makes friend easily, so it shouldn’t take any of us
much effort to get acquainted with him. He greatly enjoys films and
theatre and takes advantage of any opportunity for a travel adventure to
locales that recently included Hawaii and Puerto Rico. I can testify to
the fact that he is very good company after a round trip by car to an
EOPS Conference in Fresno last year. Come by the EOPS Office and
discover one of our campus’s little known treasures.
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