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
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