Thursday, April 5, 2012

April 5, 2012: hiring physics instructors, SLOs, Scholarship Program issues

SENATE NOTES: the 4/5/12 meeting of the IVC Academic Senate Representative Council

Craig Justice
      Early in the meeting, VPI Craig Justice explained the rush for approval (or at least “sunshining”) of a change in our physics hiring committee. Both colleges have been pursuing the hire of two physics instructors each, and all parties agreed to pursue these hires contemporaneously to prevent “cannibalization” of one college of the other. The IVC hiring committee included an outside expert, namely, a Saddleback physics instructor. But that instructor—Mitchell Haeri (that’s right, Melanie’s husband)—discovered that a relative was applying for the job, and so he had to step out. Naturally, we could wait until a replacement is found—efforts thus far have yielded nothing—but it appears that that will take time, and we have no time—we don’t want to be hiring after Saddleback has done its hiring, for the above-mentioned carnivorous reasons.

      The loss of an instructor on the committee meant that the committee membership lacked the required proportions, and so Craig dropped Liz Cipres from the committee, always a wise move.
    
     And so we’re going forward with a relatively small committee. Some were reassured when told that Roy McCord is still on the committee. (He’s some kind of physics guy, though he mostly yammers about astronomy.) I wasn’t happy with the situation, since the likes of Howard Dachschlager and Kiana Tabibzadeh were still on the committee.

     Craig got his informal consent to the change.

     Steve R of Academic Affairs explained that the scholarship workgroup has had one big meeting, and its subgroups have also met. The core issue is what constitutes “reasonable implementation” of recently uncovered standards that seem to offer quite a challenge (discussed previously). In the end, we may have to track down someone at a college where this challenge has been met, hire ‘im as a consultant.


      Kate Clark addressed the group concerning our SLO efforts. We’ve done well, she said, but she still awaits completion of “degrees with emphasis.” “Degrees and certificates official names must be sent to Jennifer Calderon for inputting” (said the agenda). A “webinar” is being prepared for “dealing with assessment and entering the data in TracDat.” Kate showed us how to look at the SLO info on Inside IVC (the faculty part of the college website). Kate read off a list of feet-draggers, including honors and philosophy. We must get our stuff in.

      REMINDER: SLOs should appear on all courses syllabuses. There will be an effort to check to see if we’ve done this—this summer. SO NOW HEAR THIS. Get those SLOs onto your syllabuses.

      Jerry Rudmann yammered for a while about the “mentoring program,” something we’re slowly developing. We need to come up with a proposal for this program by the Fall. There’ll be a Flex Week activity.

     Steve R updated us on the Scholarship Committee. The first meeting was “robust,” he said. This seemed to be a euphemism for strong passions forcefully expressed. Gnashing of teeth maybe.

      Someone asked why the Scholarship ceremony is always held in the morning. Surely, many people would prefer an evening event!

     There was a brief discussion in which it came to light that, a while back, someone involved in scheduling the ceremony came from a college “where they used to do it that way, in the morning.”

      So we’ll likely attempt to move the ceremony to the evening, starting next year.

     As usual, there’s zero “leadership” coming from Roquemore.

      We were supposed to get a report about the “Student Success Taskforce,” but Senate Prez LDA was once again absent (traveling). I asked why we even had such a committee, and this produced mostly blank stares. Eventually, Craig Justice muttered a few things about new laws requiring blah, blah, blah.

      SENATE ELECTIONS.
     Next, we discussed the upcoming Senate elections. The deadline for nominations for candidates for Prez and VP is April 6, 5:00 p.m. By the time of the Senate meeting (Thursday, April 5), the senate had received only one nomination: Kathy Schmeidler for President. (She’s a good and capable person.) But there had been no nominations for VP. There was silence.

      (I have it on good authority that, on Friday, someone sent in a nomination of Ray Chandos for President.)

      We briefly discussed the recently revised college “goals and objectives.” We were reminded that “the new deadline for accepting strategies for consideration is Tuesday, 4/17/12.” Or was that 4/15?

     REPEATABILITY AND COMPARABLE COURSES.
     We received a list of courses regarding “repeatability and comparable courses.” Faculty are asked to review this document and to come back with comments at the next meeting. I’ve got the attachment (I), if you want it.

      Next, we discussed the Scholarship Taskforce, evidently the group that actually reviews and assesses student applications. Our own Brittany Adams has volunteered for this duty, and she was unanimously approved by the Rep Council. This year, there are 650 applicants! If others seek to join in this effort, they are certainly welcome.

      Our next item was the “district-wide planning council.” We need faculty reps. Anyone interested? It sounds pretty important and likely only meets twice per semester.

      The next item was recent board approval of a five year plan. I believe this concerns construction projects in particular. Apparently, we’ve been having trouble with the “low bid” approach to construction projects, especially given the downturn in the economy (causing subcontractors to fail, thus causing dilemmas for chief contractors).

      Jeff K recommended that we view Brandye D’Lena’s recent presentation of the reasons for switching to the alternative approach, called “design-build.” (That occurred at the last board meeting. The district website has streaming video.)

      Dean Kathleen Werle brought up an issue that somehow failed to make it to the agenda—something about a rep on the search committee for the new Director of Research, Planning, and Accounting. We brainstormed to come up with some Rube Goldbergian way for the senate to approve someone asap.

     That was about it.

Roy Bauer

Senator, H&L

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