Balajadia bringing SJCC back to life

Blake Balajadia is San Jose City College’s new director of student development and activities, replacing interim director Elizabeth Eckford.

Technically this is his second semester because he started in December, but he is still adjusting to life at a new school.

Q: What were you doing before you came to SJCC?

I was overseeing the student organization committee at San Jose State University. They have almost 450 student organizations, 38 fraternities and sororities and then the councils that supervise them. I did a bunch of programming on campus and worked with associated students so it’s really similar to this. This component has the Veteran’s Resource Center, outreach, job placement and then the ambassadors so that’s the new part for me.

Q: Why did you choose SJCC?

I saw opportunity. The idea that I could work with and support all the organizations on campus was cool to me. I want to get more groups going and bring this campus back to life. I also wanted to try working with a different population. At SJSU, you get people from the ages of 17 to 25 for the most part. Here, there are people aged 17 to 70. Some are here from SJSU taking classes, and some just want to improve their lives. Every day is a different story when I talk to folks. It’s a new experience for me, a learning experience.

Q: What about your field of work inspires you?

Watching people grow. Anyone involved in education loves that. When someone starts working for me and they run into a problem, we’ll talk about it and I’ll ask them what they learned from it. For someone to say they know how to handle a situation from here on out, that’s a life skill. It’s the experiential learning that I find the most exciting and rewarding. I could never be inside a classroom lecturing students and telling them what to do. I’m driven by people connecting and growing with one another, and everyone I work with here is like that.

Q: Based on your previous experience, how could we bring more students to SJCC?

We need to make it a point to tell people what we have. If each one of us is proud of our school then people will want to go here. I would love to have a huge marketing department with a professional film crew come in and make a video to show life on campus. We just need to figure out a way to remarket what we already have. Smaller classes make for an awesome experience, and some schools actually market themselves by saying they have lower class numbers to increase learning. I would promote that, and I would love for other people to know that.

Q: What are some activities you have planned for this semester?

I haven’t planned any of my own yet. I’m mostly supporting the Associated Student Government and other things from other departments. I’m still getting in the flow of things and I’d like to start throwing my own events, but I don’t want to oversaturate what everyone else has planned. When the weather starts to get better, I’d like to have outdoor music events. I’ve noticed a lot of people here have children so it wouldn’t necessarily have to be during the school week. We could also screen free movies on the football field and have open mic nights. I’m also interested in showing discount movies in our theatre on campus. It would also be really cool to do an outdoor concert over the summer with electronic music. People love electronic music.

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