| Health Services Coordinator Sharon Manakas, the 13th recipient of Moorpark College’s Distinguished Faculty Chair award, was honored at the college’s Flex Day celebration this morning. Potential recipients for the award are nominated by a faculty member and all nominations are voted on by former honorees and members of the Academic Senate. Each year the Moorpark College Foundation inaugurates a $500 scholarship to honor the DFC. Manakas will establish her scholarship's criteria and it will be awarded for the first time in May, 2010.
Criteria for the Distinguished Faculty Chair award are service to the college and community and excellence in teaching. Manakas demonstrated her excellent teaching style by delivering a compelling talk titled, “Behind the Mask,” which encouraged faculty and staff to “see behind the masks of our students by modeling servant leadership characteristics,” she said. “In return our students will be healthier and will be inspired to serve others.”
Over 17 years as a college health educator, Manakas has developed sensitivity to students’ physical and mental health needs which may interfere with their academic goals. “The masks our students wear can be deceiving, so we need to look closer to understand what is really going on.”
Manakas coordinates the delivery of medical and psychological services to students.
With a staff of other health professionals, she renders first aid and assessment and treatment of acute injury and illnesses. She counsels and does crisis intervention. A growing concern for Manakas is providing communicable disease prevention and treatment. Her office is planning a Swine Flu education and seasonal flu vaccination program that will begin September. “The key to avoiding the flu this upcoming fall and winter is prevention,” she said.
Other responsibilities in the area of health and safety for Manakas are co-chairing the college’s Standardized Emergency Management System. She chaired the college’s Wellness Committee which was instrumental in making Moorpark College a smoke-free campus. She facilitated the crisis intervention team, provides suicide prevention training, and is co-founder of the behavioral intervention team.
Manakas is a state leader as well. She recently completed a three year presidential term of the Health Services Association California Community Colleges (HSACCC), an organization that advocates, promotes and improves health services for students in the California Community Colleges.
While Southern Section President for HSACCC in 2005, Manakas was part of a team which led the effort to persuade the legislature to pass Assembly Bill 982- which allowed community college districts to initiate a student health fee to be paid by all students. This created a permanent and stable funding stream for student health centers on community college campuses. The fee is $17 per semester and allows students to access a wide spectrum of services. “For some students this is the only health care available to them,” Manakas said.
Another feat accomplished under her HSACCC tenure was the placement of Student Health Services as an equal partner along with other services on the State Chancellor’s online directory of student services. Prior to an executive board meeting in Sacramento in 2006, health services wasn’t listed at all and the mental health services they provided were organized under Disabled Student services.
Her counterpart at Pierce College said “She lobbied for the whole patient and for recognition that our community college students are some of the neediest in the state and need to know that we can provide services,” said Beth Benne, Pierce’s Health Services Coordinator.
Manakas spent nearly a decade as a pediatric nurse on the adolescent unit and gastroenterology and respiratory procedure unit of Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles before joining Moorpark. She has a bachelor’s and master degree in Nursing from CSU Dominguez Hills, an associate degree in nursing from Ventura College and an licensed vocational nurse degree from Mira Costa College.
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