Purpose

The Southern California Commissioner College is an alliance of local Scouting America Councils of a type described by Scouting America as a Cluster of Councils’ College with the host council periodically rotated among the participating councils. Created for the pooling of resources to allow for a fully qualified staff, instructors, and a greater number of students to interact with one another, and to ultimately provide an extensive, well-rounded curriculum offering for the purpose of working towards earning your degree and becoming a better, more effective Commissioner.

Structure

The Southern California Commissioner College is organized around one hour long segments which are referred to as classes. Typically there will be five to seven such segments in a day. Related segments can be grouped together into tracks. Generally,  there is a College Dean or (Chancellor) from the host Council, who oversees the staff for all the planning and execution. Each track can also have a separate Track-Dean (from the participating councils) who coordinates the instructors in each track. Typically there will be five to nine tracks on a given day. Students may move freely between tracks to meet their individual training objectives.

New Commissioners

For new Commissioners, the most important thing to know is that there are tracks which are devoted to getting you trained and functioning as soon as possible. We generally offer Basic Training for Unit Commissioners; we also encourage you to consider participating in many of the classes in the Bachelor’s track. Consult your District or Council Commissioner for their recommendations.

Veteran Commissioners

As you get more experience as a Commissioner and attend additional Commissioner Colleges, we encourage you to participate in first the Bachelor’s track, then the Master’s track, and then the Doctoral track of classes. The culmination of your participation in the College of Commissioner Science involves the execution and writing of a doctoral project or thesis; you can consider examples here. We will also offer a Continuing Education track, Technology track, and other advanced topics for experienced Commissioners. We also invite Commissioner staff from the Council Service Territory and National levels to come and present new information and encouragement for our Commissioners.

Course Numbering

All courses are numbered and named. Like most colleges, introductory courses have lower numbers. Our courses also have letter designators which show the level they are most appropriate to. BCS courses are primarily designed for people at the Bachelors level. MCS for Masters level. DCS for Doctoral level.

Degrees

Commissioner’s College degrees are designed to help insure that you develop a comprehensive training plan for yourself. Bachelors Degrees focus on material which could prove useful to the Commissioner in their role of providing direct service to the Scouting Community. The Masters is designed to better prepare the Commissioner to be of assistance to his fellow Commissioners as an Administrator or Mentor. The Doctoral Degree should be sought by those who want to move the Commissioner Service to a higher level by first understanding deeply how the service is supposed to work and second training others in what they have learned. See Degree Requirements.

Reciprocity and Course Acceptance

The Southern California Commissioner College does not preapprove, approve, or accept thesis/projects, award or confer degrees (with the exception of presentation and/or public recognition of prior Doctoral or Distinguished Commissioner Service Awards, when prior arrangement has been made with your local Council Commissioner). All of these tasks (and others), including any question of course credit acceptance can only be approved/deviated
from/changed/arranged by the Council Commissioner, in your home council of record. Commissioners who participate in locally authored courses must have the approval of their Council Commissioner to use those courses to fulfill degree requirements beyond just fulfilling elective requirements. Scouting America also requires that an out-of-council candidate (looking to receive a degree from a college outside of their council) must secure the approval of his/her council commissioner.

Curriculum

It is our intention to regularly offer a core of courses, while rotating various courses in and out of the curriculum to allow us to offer the complete set of nationally designed courses as well as a selection of locally designed courses tailored to meet the needs of our attendees. It is our goal to always offer something new and particularly relevant. If teaching click here to download the course materials and syllabus for each class.