Thursday, January 17, 2013

January 17, 2013: the General Assembly meeting


Today's Academic Senate "General Assembly" meeting
January 17, 2013
    
Your two senators attended today’s meeting of the Academic Senate’s General Assembly, which, as Senate Prez Kathy Schmeidler noted, is not designed to perform “business,” but rather to inform faculty of issues, etc., and to provide an opportunity for comment, blah, blah, blah.
When I was first hired (in 1986), the semesterly General Assembly meetings were very well attended. Not any more. This meeting was sparsely attended. Our own school seemed to be best represented, with about four members present. Three or four administrators were also present, including VPI Craig Justice, who said little, and our own Karima Feldhus (plus the inevitable Kathy Werle).
To their credit, senate leadership provided the following verbiage to remind everyone of the point and purpose and procedures of an academic senate:

a. Role of the Academic Senate in College and District Governance
i. Per Title 5 and California Education Code, the Academic Senate is authorized to represent the faculty on academic and professional matters. [Handout: Title 5, 10+1]
ii. The Academic Senate is responsible for placing faculty representatives on all college and district committees related to academic and professional matters, except for those functioning within academic schools, departments or programs, or for those seats reserved for representatives of the Faculty Association as the bargaining agent.
iii. The responsibilities of the Academic Senate are defined in Education Code, Title 5, BP 2100.1 and BP 2100.2.

b. Procedures and Protocols
i. All full-time and part-time, tenured and probationary faculty are members of the Academic Senate, and are entitled to bring before the Senate issues relating to academic and professional matters at the college or in the district.  If you have a concern that needs to be brought to the Senate’s attention, please contact your Senate Representative or the Senate office (asenate@ivc.edu).  Actions to be addressed by the Representative Council must be submitted to the Senate office no later than one week prior to the scheduled meeting. 
ii. Seating of the Representative Council: The Representative Council is composed of the Senate officers, two representatives from each of the ten Academic Schools and two representatives from the Associate Assembly (part-time faculty).  According to the by-laws, each school can elect alternate representatives who can serve in place of the regular senator, but these alternates should be selected “in the same manner, at the same time, and by the same constituency that selects the senator.”

FULL-TIME FACULTY HIRING. Kathy briefly discussed the full-time faculty hiring issue. You’ll recall that, last semester, as our fiscal “crisis” gradually emerged, it became clear that the college president had seemed to settle in his mind a response to that crisis that would include freezing full-time hiring—we had expected to hire 10 or 11 new faculty. For a variety of reasons discussed last semester, this did not sit well with faculty, and, for that and other reasons, a special committee was formed (BSR).
From my notes for the Nov. 15 senate meeting:

VP Bob U reported on a recent meeting …that occurred on Wednesday. Bob referred to our new fiscal issue—that our revenues are flat but expenses are rising. Discussion of that issue at the meeting led to a decision to form yet another “budget” committee. As I’ll explain later, it appears that the formation of this committee was inspired by the perception that top administration (or just Glenn) was considering a controversial unilateral budget-saving measure—namely, not hiring new faculty this Spring.  

Kathy chimed in: she has been unhappy that no one seems to know what our “budget situation” is—evidently, only by Director of Fiscal Services, Davit Khachatryan, has “seen the budget.” And so pressures have been applied to top administration to reveal the facts, such as they are.

Kathy mentioned that, in the garden of Budget-land, there is “much low-hanging fruit,” and so it should not be difficult finding ways to reduce costs by 5%, as we are now told to do (by the Chancellor).
. . .
Craig was somewhat vague about how much hiring [will become possible], although he did say he was “hopeful” that we could hire the full complement of 10 (actually, 11) this Spring.

Craig recommended that, despite the budgetary uncertainty, we should make a formal request to proceed with “announcing” these positions (i.e., advertising: soliciting applicants). We expect that things will get clear by January.

One issue in the background of these budgetary concerns is parity (in hiring, in having full-time faculty) between IVC and Saddleback College. A year ago, Saddleback College decided to hire lots of faculty all at once. We decided to spread out our hires over three years. A decision, at IVC, to proceed with few hires in the Spring looks pretty bad to many of us, parity-wise.

At the aforementioned meeting on the 14th, Glenn seemed inclined to pull the plug on the planned hires, entirely because of our budget issues. Kathy had been given a heads up about the meeting; she attended and expressed displeasure with the notion that this decision might be made entirely on the basis of fiscal concerns. After all, she said, the decision to hire 10 faculty per year (i.e., spreading out the hires) was made for a wide range of reasons beyond budgetary concerns (e.g., the quality of the search committees, etc.). Why take action only in this one sector (faculty hires)?

I reminded the group that the Chancellor, in his email and in his recent forum presentation, emphasized that finding solutions to address our big budgetary problem should involve collaboration, not unilateral decision-making from the top. (“Duh,” Kathy seemed to say.)

The above tensions between Glenn and others yielded the decision to form a new “budget” committee [namely, BSR].

One rep insisted that we should be mindful of the “great pressures” on Glenn to deal with our new budgetary challenges. So let’s go easy on the guy, he said. But Kathy emphasized that she fully appreciates the pressure and responsibility Glenn feels; still, we should approach this matter carefully, rationally. No “knee-jerk” reactions.

She referred to leaders’ temptation to become “authoritarian” at such times as these. She emphasized the importance of having a strong faculty presence on committees—in part to counter these authoritarian tendencies.

Today, Kathy explained that the full-time hiring process is being held up because the President has not sent paperwork to HR yet. Evidently, the problem is “fiscal concerns,” which have not yet been resolved.
I asked whether this delay is problematic for our hiring process—are we running into deadlines for advertisement, etc.? The answer: we’ve passed those deadlines. The situation is pretty bad.
Kathy noted that, by next week’s Senate meeting, she might have more information for us about this logjam difficulty. But, IMO, since the BSR group won’t even issue its recommendations until later this month—they’ll then go on to SPOBDC, where they’ll be fretted over for a while—the prospects don’t look good for moving forward with hires.
Evidently, part of the problem is the perception that the college will “get a bad reputation” if it advertises for jobs and then later pulls them. Kathy’s position is that one instance does not make a reputation, and so we should go forward with the paperwork. (That seemed to be Craig’s position as well—at least last semester.)
Kathy seemed to allude to recent revelations that “administration” simply isn’t allowing the “conveyor belt” (I think that was her metaphor) to move forward. I suggested that we have a “crisis” and we may as well call it that. Kathy was uncomfortable with such language. She wants to pursue some non-public arm twisting, see how that goes.

INSTITUTIONAL EFFECTIVENESS. We moved on to a report regarding the “Institutional Effectiveness Committee.” Kathy Werle explained that all committees are doing a self-assessment. Kathy S hopes that that process will yield some streamlining and “pruning of the bush”—an allusion to the common perception that the college has too many committees and comprises too complex a structure.

PROGRAM REVIEW. Academic Affairs Chair Roopa M briefly discussed Program Review. You’ll recall that, at a recent senate meeting, we referred to a document that lists all of the programs that are supposed to be engaged in either “comprehensive,” 2-year, or 4-year reviews. I noted the areas of our School affected. (This document is available under Inside IVC.)
Kathy explained that TracDat serves as an organizing program for that process. In the end, however, the actual PR document will be in pdf form. Evidently, at Inside IVC (under “Inst’l Effectiveness”), one can find a Word document that explains the process or at least how to use TracDat and such. Also, there’s a template that should be very helpful.
We were reminded of the importance of PR. PR analysis will be the basis of resources requests. So we’ve got to do this PR stuff right and on time. (That’s funny, coming from me.)

ACCREDITATION: Kathy explained that the Accred’s letter will arrive in early February. But the communication from the Accreds concerning our SLO progress will not arrive until after July.
 The Fall 2012 SLO assessment data was due on January 5. Kathy seemed to imply that lots of programs have already missed that due date, but they should be working on their SLO assessments and getting that done. If you are in charge of a program, you need to inform your adjuncts that they, too, must turn in their SLO assessment data. (Have I done any of this? No. I’ll get on it.)
Kathy briefly advised us regarding how best to include SLOs on syllabuses. She declared that SLOs should be derivative of Course Outline “Learning Objectives” (LOs). She advises writing SLOs and LOs in such a way that they are essentially the same. Then one can list LOs on the syllabus and declare them to be SLOs, more or less.
PLEA. Kathy noted that the Ac Sen President often ends up writing the Accreditation reports, but that need not be so. She put out a “plea” for volunteers to do or to help in the writing. ANYONE INTERESTED?

COMMITTEE ASSIGNMENTS. Any changes in committee assignments (presumably something that might occur during this week’s School Meetings) need to be sent to the Academic Senate, which has become the record keeper of such data (but not the policeman).  Kathy reminded us that there are spots open on many committees, especially district-wide committees. It is in faculty’s best interests to fill these seats. (Go to http://inside.ivc.edu/committees/asenate/Faculty%20Service%20Assignments/2012-2013%20Faculty%20Service%20Assignments/FacultyServiceAssign-2012-13_110612.pdf
for committee grid.)
Kathy noted that, if we have trouble communicating and finding info via the crapulent architectonic of Inside IVC (she didn’t put it that way, of course), we should get word to her about that. The senate leadership would be glad to help get things straightened out.

FACULTY ASSOCIATION. The big issue that remains: “department chair” compensation. It’s still unsettled, and that sucks.

CURRICULUM COMMITTEE: Diana said something about her two Tech Review groups—that they’re “working their fannies off,” and so on. One is under the impression that she is overwhelmed, though she does not usually say that.

BUDGET UPDATE: Ac Sen VP Bob U essentially provided a version of Budget Director Davit’s presentation yesterday. I do believe that that presentation is available online in some sense.

There are two parts to this update: what’s going on at the state and what’s up at the college.

THE STATE. As you know, Brown has increased apportionment funding. But we don’t know whether that will go to growth or COLA. Lots of money will go to paying down “deferrals.” Some money will go to enhancing online instruction. Adult Education responsibilities will be shifting from K-12 to CCs.
            A major policy change: “completion” replaces enrollment as a basis for funding apportionment. But it is no secret that “completion” is not yet clearly defined. The meaning of completion is a major topic—at the State Ac Senate and elsewhere. Some faculty at our meeting cited some of the difficulties with the concept of completion.
There’ll be a 90 unit cap per student and similar caps for CSU and UC. Evidently, student exceeding the cap will pay out-of-state levels of tuition. Good Lord!
Kathy chimed in to say that there might be some shifting of responsibilities (instruction) from CSUs to CCs. This is ill-defined at this time. Everything seems to be ill-defined.

THE COLLEGE. With regard to our college: our “basic aid” funding obscures the meaning of Prop 30’s impact for us. It appears that our DRAC will have to reconsider how it allocates money. It’s just not clear how we will “feel” this $100 increase (per Full Time Equivalent Student).
Bob mentioned BSR, the committee formed a month or two ago to contemplate approaches to our immediate budget issue (costs keep rising, revenues remain flat). BSR has wide representation; much work being done. The group’s recommendations are coming soon. There’s a “suggestion box” at Inside IVC. (Open it up; see bottom left.)
Ideas BSR is kicking around:

· Non-resident tuition increase
· How to replace many recent classified retirements
· Long-term debt repayments (energy, etc.). Basic aid?
· Faculty hiring (10 positions).
· (Chancellor Poertner wants faculty salary/benefit proportion to go down from 92% (or so) to 86%.)
· The $800K of annual increase in built in salary increases
· Priscilla brought up: what about going back to our cheaper “chair model”?

SKEPTICISM, MYSTERIES. There was a certain amount of skepticism expressed about our budget difficulty and explanations (or lack thereof) regarding it, and Bob seemed to share it. Why was this difficulty not anticipated? What about all those money-saving golden handshakes of a couple years ago? Why can’t we get a clear figure of how much our budget is? Bob actually used the term “mystery” to refer to basic questions regarding our budget plight.
At one point, referring to efforts to get details about the budget, Bob said: “They’ve done it [i.e., particular actions], but they don’t remember why.” Sheesh.
Bob reminded us that the new status quo is the following: all money requests will be based on program review and administrative unit reviews. The deadline for completion of those (resource requests) is March 15.


--Senator Roy Bauer

No comments:

Post a Comment