March
6, 2014 meeting of the Academic Senate (Rep Council)
Some
important stuff, I guess, occurred at this meeting:
BROWN
ACT. Evidently, there are new Brown Act regulations (or a new interpretation of
old BA regulations) according to which, henceforth, the Academic Senate must
use clickers to vote during meetings (the point is that we need to
record each Senator’s vote). Wow. [The Brown Act is California’s “open meetings
law,” which attempts to secure openness in the operations of “legislative
bodies”—such as City Councils, Boards of Education, etc. To a degree, our
Senate is a legislative body.]
FYI:
VP of SS Linda Fontanilla generally attends senate meetings. One might
suggest that, in the past, VPI Craig Justice attended these meetings in order
“to keep tabs on the faculty,” that dark and duplicitous crew. Now, Linda seems
to have been assigned that unsavory task.
Linda
announced that “Senior Day” was a great success.
Dean,
Online and Extended Education, Cathleen Greiner—another Cuesta
refugee (who, natch, was snapped up by IVC when she was fired from
Cuesta)—informed the group about AB86, legislation that provides money for,
well, whatnot. Something about adult ed and “career pathways.”
The
always vigilant Tracy F of Social Sciences asked if there were any
new developments re administration’s recent apparent trial balloon of taking
control of co-curricular funds away from student government. --Nope. (See
previous meeting’s notes.)
CREAN
LUTHERAN AGAIN. Tracy said she has concerns about CONTRACT ED. She seemed
concerned about our program at Crean Lutheran High in particular. (She didn’t
identify the problems.)
(You’ll
recall that, about two years ago, some remarkable irregularities came to light
at Crean: adjuncts were pressured to sign disclosures or assurances about their
religious views, etc.)
Tracy
asked: are we having the right kinds of discussions before getting
involved in this sort of program? If it isn’t working, how do we fix it?
Item
6: Board Policies and Administrative Regulations
Ac.
Sen. Pres. Kathy Schmeidler went home owing to illness, and so VP Bob Urell ran
the meeting. He reported that Kathy had hoped we would approve BP3007
(concerning restrictions on handling cash) and AR4000.8 (Access to Campus
Facilities ). The former was indeed approved; the latter was held over pending
answers to some questions.
We
took no action on any of the other BPs and ARs on the list for item 6—and so
some expected discussions did not occur. Not yet.
INTERNATIONAL
STUDENTS. Item 9 concerns the International Students Program. The senate
has been joining in the campus discussion of the advisability of “growing” this
program. ESL (and the School of H&L) has pursued the notion that we should
consider whether we are supporting these students sufficiently now—before we
consider expanding the program. (Recently, at least one senator expressed
distaste for spending money on foreign students. Chemicals can mess you up.)
I
do believe that one or two of the Senate cabinet members revealed their opinion
that administration has shown its hand: that they’re interested in expanding
the Int’l Student Program simply to increase revenue. Not sure.
In
the past, many have suggested that we should not expand this program for the
sake of revenue only.
The
ESL duo of Jeff and Rebecca has been visiting the senate in the spirit of
providing “clarifying info,” not promoting any particular action or measure.
(That’s the idea they were selling anyway.)
At
this point, this much seems clear: many Int’l students are not well-served by
the program. Evidently, many of them are simply not prepared to do regular
course work, owing to language difficulties, etc. But since their form of
residence in the U.S. is limited to three years, often, these students find
that they must return to their countries before they have secured their goals
at the college.
(Digression:
dang, this is the sort of thing I had in mind when, early on in the senate’s
discussion of the Int’l Students Program (perhaps five or six weeks ago), I
asked how the Int’l crowd views our program. At the time, people seemed to be
in a great hurry to explain that the program is a great benefit to foreign
students. But if this pattern of disgruntlement is significant, then our
program is not so clearly a benefit.)
Our
current level of support (of Int’l students) looks pretty feeble when we
compare our program with that of other colleges in the area. Clearly, we need
to support these students better than we have been.
Meanwhile,
there is a great demand for this kind of program. It’s growing quickly.
(It
is beginning to seem that administration will get what they want as usual. In
the end, the program will expand quickly but support will remain feeble.)
The
senate unanimously approved:
Appointment
to Strategic Planning and Accreditation Council (SPAC): Steve Felder
Appointment
to Academic Planning and Technology Committee (APTC): Brooke Choo
The
senate approved the “Revised Mission and Vision Statements.” I think they’re
shit. I voted against them. But there’s no stopping that train.
Item
13 was the Basic Aid funding priority list.
Evidently,
you can participate in the discussion of this “prioritization” by going here:
This
year, we don’t know how much money is available. Bob U suggested that perhaps
$40 million in basic aid dollars is available, but there are various
restrictions. (As you know, basic aid is supposed to be used for one-off
expenses, not ongoing expenses.)
One
of the items concerns the safety gizmos (with blue lights) that are on campus.
Evidently, there’s one between the PAC and BSTIC. It’s been broken for some
time. It provides a direct line to the police, I think—a security thing. Martin
M of PE told a story of a student and her bad episode with a coyote, in the
dark. Evidently, repair of the device has been held up by an issue concerning
coordination with Saddleback College. We all stared into that black hole,
making unpleasant faces.
There
was discussion of the resource request form. Using the overhead, we went to it,
were showed how to use it, navigate. But it was much too complex to learn much
from this brief presentation.
Evidently,
Davit, the budget guy, will email everyone a link.
Item
14 was the Full-Time DSPS Counselor Hiring. That was approved, with one
abstention.
Item
15 was the Faculty Hiring Priority List Process, which has been revised. It was
approved.
Item
16 was a revision to our bylaws. Approved.
50
SHADES OF GRAY. Item 17 concerned Color standards for furniture and
facilities, an item I had requested on my own behalf and on behalf of
several in our School. As you know, in our negotiations/conversation with
architects concerning design/construction of A400, “administration” has played
a curious card: they have appealed to alleged “color” standards for furniture
and facilities—known informally as “50 shades of gray.” It soon became clear
that many in the room were disgruntled owing to their experiences participating
in this kind of negotiation/conversation. Always, we’re told that we (faculty)
will have much “input,” but, in the end, we’re often simply told how it is
going to be, faculty input be damned. Several senators expressed skepticism
about the very existence of a “standard.” One declared, with great confidence,
that there is no standard. In the end, the group directed the cabinet to pursue
this matter: to compel administration to explain the nature and origin of any
such standard, etc. (Evidently, this matter is “time sensitive.”)
Discussion
of the “plus and minus grading option” was put off until the next
meeting.
Toward
the end of the meeting, Courses maven Diana H thanked everyone for their work
revising course outlines. She reminded everyone that HONORS COURSES need to be
a part of a degree. If that is not the case, you must act now.
VP
Bob Urell discussed changes in DRAC, which abbreviates something like the
“District resources allocation committee.” In any case, DRAC is the entity that
divides up district money between IVC and Saddleback.
A
little history: IVC has a long history of being treated as the little brother
to SC, and it has on occasion had to fight hard for resources against a
bullying Saddleback College. The old DRAC model works with the notion that 65%
goes to SC and 35% goes to IVC, but, upon looking at the data, one quickly
realizes that those proportions are wrong. Recently, Craig Justice has done a
comparison of SC and IVC programs and has found that, in many cases, our
programs are nearly the size of our sister college’s. In some cases, our
programs even surpass SC in size. This data was recently presented at
Instructional Council.
Bob
advised faculty to look at the data and to get up to speed on this issue. Our
goal, he said, is change the DRAC model. Expect Sturm und Drang.
I
do believe that a link to this data is readily available—probably at the Ac
Senate website. (Melanie, do you remember?)
I’ll
get back to you with the link.
--Roy
and Mel
