Thursday, August 31, 2006

August 31, 2006

SENATE NOTES

August 31, 2006 “Meeting of the Rep Council”

We started off with a moment of silence for our colleague Alan.

Saddleback College Academic Senate Pres. Bob “Bee man” Cosgrove mentioned that there’s a move afoot to associate with Indiana University. The idea, I believe, is that students would take 90 units with us and then they’d transfer to IU to finish their Bachelors. There was a concern that this program wasn’t going through the appropriate Academic approval processes.

Someone joked that our new motto is: “Indiana wants you.”

As reported previously, the college is moving forward with strategic planning. The Academic Senate needs to “populate” five focus groups with faculty. Jan was approved as one of two faculty members for the Academic Planning focus group.

Obviously, these focus groups are important (at any rate, we’ve been assured that the planning process is “really real”), and so please do give some thought to satisfying your committee obligation by nominating yourself for one of these groups (Academic Planning, Enrollment management, Organizational effectiveness, Resources and budget, and Student success).

As this goes forward, the Strategic Planning Process is undergoing revision. (We’ve reported on this previously.) The 500-lb Chancellor Gorilla imposed a planning process unilaterally, blah blah blah.

Wendy reports that the district (i.e., the 500-pounder) is now backing off and allowing the colleges to do their own planning. For us at IVC, the new planning may yield a “new way of doing business.” I’m not sure I understood the point. Perhaps the point was only that, since these focus groups are working now, they may as well do the relevant work—so, for instance, the “Resources and Budget” focus group may as well be doing the work of the budget committee. The “Academic Planning” focus group may as well do all the academic planning, and so on.

Evidently, Glenn actually works hard on occasion, and he did so this summer with regard to the “model” for our college. I’ll try to get clarification on this. I think the model concerns only the Strategic Planning process. I got the sense that the changes entailed an undoing of changes made by someone referred to as “the old college president.”

I have a copy of the new 5-year SP Process that the senate approved. Let me (or Julie) know if you’d like to read it.

Not long ago, the Chancellor announced (proclaimed?) that the colleges should begin to focus on distance education (DE), a phenomenon (or method) about which he claims expertise. For a time, he seemed to promote the headquartering of DE at ATEP (i.e., somewhere in the dirt we own in Tustin). Evidently, all others said, “you can’t headquarter DE in some place, fool.” Well, he has now backed off of that and it now appears that each college will make its own decisions re DE.

I sense a pattern here.

There was more yammering about SLOs. Wendy and others testify that Jerry Rudmann’s two-hour SLO workshop is excellent. (It’s really simple, says Greg.) Says Wendy, those who need to learn about SLOs (e.g., for the sake of Program Review) will have a problem if they haven’t gone to one of these workshops.

I do believe that the next—and last—workshop will be held on Sept. 15 (12-2). (Frank?)

As you know, IVC has advocated an alternative calendar. SC doesn’t want to change its calendar. Surprisingly, the board doesn’t appear to oppose two different calendars. The 500-pounder was supposed to present a recommendation in May, but that didn’t happen. So this issue has been allowed to fall by the wayside, or, as Wendy put it, it was allowed to “roll under the bed.”

Meanwhile, it now appears that IVC will for the first time have input on planning the calendar (i.e., the status quo calendar), which, in the past, was entirely directed by SC. So we need to decide what that input will be. If you have any ideas, speak with Wendy or Julie. Evidently, Julie’s been on the district calendar committee since Bush I! Garsh.

IVC’s Accreditation Progress Report is now posted online. (It’s a preliminary draft.) Take a look at it. Let Wendy (or us) know if you have any suggestions. (I do believe that the draft was recently approved by the board. That’s interesting, for it is a fairly honest document.)

As you know, our colleges are on the low end of the spectrum, statewide, concerning reassigned time for senate officers. The matter was brought to the attention of the trustees—who seemed to have trouble with such concepts as OSH and LHE—and they have directed the Chancellor to work with the Academic Senate Presidents to arrive at “adequate” reassigned time.

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