You Can Do That at COCC

Sept. 3, 2025

Dipping into tidepools, taking the opera stage, designing wedding cakes and many other unique learning opportunities await at COCC — fall term admissions deadline is Sept. 12

There’s a lot to learn from purple sea urchins.

When students of “Intro to Marine Biology” at Central Oregon Community College visit the Oregon coast for the course’s three-day fieldtrip — generally staged in the spring or summer — they spend time tide-pooling at places like Yaquina Head, shuffling between pools to observe an array of inhabitants. Among those sightings, typically found down along the lower tidal zone, is a purple-colored spiny resident that provides a captivating encounter. It’s a resident, though, that’s wearing out its welcome.

Rapidly overpopulating due to a lack of predators — chiefly the sea otter, long extinct on the Oregon coast because of hunting, and the sunflower sea star, decimated by a bacterial disease in the past decade from warming seas — the purple urchins are multiplying and eating kelp forests with abandon. Those kelp forests, in turn, offer vital habitat and food for many fish, invertebrates and other ocean-goers, including, ironically, the otter, which Oregon has tried to reintroduce without success.

But urchins can serve as barometers of ocean health, used to gauge how climate impacts are increasing ocean acidity. “We collect eggs and sperm from urchins back in our lab on campus, making embryos and watching the larvae develop,” explains Sarah Fuller, COCC biology professor. “They struggle if the ocean is too acidic.” As oceans are absorbing carbon dioxide, Fuller explains, the process creates carbonic acid — yielding a more acidic ecosystem, which is harming many species, from coral to oysters.

While the nearest tidal zone might be almost 200 miles from Central Oregon, COCC seeks to provide an academic catalog that exposes its students to diverse — and even unexpected — learning experiences.

The college offers, for instance, credit courses in specialized studies like medieval art. And the biology of emotional intelligence. And — be ready to lunge! — pickleball. “Paris: City of Lights” takes students on a historical journey of the city, from its founding by a Celtic tribe in the third century B.C.E. to today’s skyline of contemporary architecture. Journeys of another kind, religious faith, are at the heart of anthropology’s “Magic, Witchcraft, Religion,” a study in exploring multicultural awareness.

When performers of OperaBend took the stage this past June to bring Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” to Central Oregon (held at Mountain View High School), COCC conductor and music professor Michael Gesme led the live orchestra. “It was probably the best cast that we have ever assembled. It’s one of my favorite — and most stressful — things that I do each year,” he shares.

Designed for vocalists, instrumentalists and production technicians, “Opera Performance” involves the study and performance of operas. An audition is required before enrollment, and students have the opportunity to work with OperaBend’s professional guest soloists.

The course is typically offered annually, usually in the spring term, says Gesme, with the culmination being a performance of a fully staged opera. “It works similarly to the other ensembles at COCC, like Cascade Winds and the Central Oregon Symphony, where the COCC music department partners with a community organization to assist in making the performances happen.”

Smocking, embossing and string-work are all in a day’s work for Penny Fraker, adjunct instructor in the culinary program, who shapes edible masterpieces with flour and fondant. Those aforementioned cake-making design techniques (patterning a frosting surface, creating stamped designs and using delicate lines of icing, respectively), and many more, are part of “Wedding and Celebration Cakes” (being offered this winter term). Fraker, a graduate of COCC’s Cascade Culinary Institute, brings real-world cottage bakery expertise and plenty of creative inspiration to the learning environment.

“We emphasize the practical skills needed to build the foundation for a centerpiece that not only looks stunning but will hold up to the demands of the event. I am always excited to share the most popular trends in cake design and help equip students with the confidence to be creative,” she says.

From “Popular Culture: Detective Stories” (offered at the Prineville campus this winter term) to understanding the psychological and physiological underpinnings of stress in “Stress Management” (at the Madras campus this fall term), you can do that at COCC.

Visit cocc.edu or call 541-383-7700 to learn more. COCC’s fall term starts Sept. 22; admissions deadline is Sept. 12.