May
1 meeting of the Academic Senate (Rep Council):
Guest Cathleen Greiner (Dean, Online and Extended Education) explained
the “Program Advisory Group,” which has been made possible by a grant. This
concerns creating a bridge between K-12 and the community college system. It
also concerns basic skills, ESL, adults with disabilities. The grant is paying
for the existence and activities of this group. Evidently, stipends are
available for faculty who wish to participate. Meetings will likely start
during summer. Anyone interested?
Diana H, curriculum maven, reported that the Student Success Summit was
successful.
Michelle Scharf, counselor, announced upcoming “Transfer Day,”
which will be replete with “therapy dogs” and massages. Our own Kurt Meyer will
be among the scheduled speakers. It was not clear whether Kurt would be
administering the massages.
Item 27 was moved up: the CTE [Career Technical Education] Coordinator, June
McLaughlin, provided an update. Evidently, “they” are looking for a new
chair. (CWE [Cooperative Work Experience] coordinator needed?) Contact jmclaughlin12@ivc.edu
if you are interested.
It
appeared that the group has been thwarted by difficulty in finding a common
meeting time, but June expressed hope that that could be overcome.
The Rep Council decided to add a new item to the agenda: a presentation
concerning “what the IVC budget looks like” by Davit Khachatryan,
Director, Fiscal Services.
Senate VP Bob U first addressed the group, explaining that “resource
requests” are now being processed. The “Basic Aid Allocation Resource”
Committee (BAARC) has been meeting, and so has DRAC (District
Resource Allocation Committee), re the budget.
You can view the existing draft PowerPoint. (I’ll see if I can find the url.
Here’s what I wrote down, but it isn’t quite right: http://bit.ly/1kgG012.
I’ll contact Kathy.)
Davit addressed the group, noting major planning assumptions: 3% growth,
.86% COLA, etc. As things stand, IVC has comfortably entered the “medium size
college” category and will likely remain there; meanwhile, SC has dipped, or is
about to dip, into the high end of medium (no longer large). This change
necessitates a change in the DRAC model, and so expect some activity (and
fireworks) there.
[Mostly, Davit flashed the usual factoids and projections concerning FTES and
whatnot. My eyes glazed over. It all sounded vaguely positive, I guess.]
At some point, Bob U or someone said, “We’re preparing for
‘slop-over’—when we [IVC] eclipse SC in [the size of our] programs.” The
upshot: IVC will benefit from the remarkable changes occurring in the relative
sizes of IVC and SC programs; and, obviously, SC will not relinquish its
historical advantages easily.
In the end, we learned that there are 262 resource requests this year, adding
up to about $5 million. It sounds as though there isn’t enough money to fulfill
all of them.
The “decision-making schedule” is this: the proposed budget is under review. A
recommendation will be sent to SPAC (Strategic Planning and
Accreditation Council) by the end of May. SPAC will send its recs to the Prez
by July. The final decisions will be made by August/Sept 2014.
Evidently, we’re testing new and improved software re budgeting. (Worry.)
Senate Prez Kathy S stated that our goal is to make the budgeting
process a “budget and planning” process, so we don’t have to reinvent the wheel
each cycle—something like that. And so, to an extent, in future, things will be
budgeted “automatically”; this means less money will be “available” at the
start of the process, in future.
Item 7 concerned the Board Policy review process.
There was some discussion of the proposed policy concerning student travel,
which seemed to be problematic for two or three senators who were nevertheless
satisfied to allow the policy to go forward on the condition that the forms are
redone in accordance with the proposed changes. (I gather that the existing
forms are tres shittay.)
We were advised to look carefully at proposed policy 4310—concerning duties
and responsibilities of chairs.
Here’s the draft (you’ll have to scroll down quite a bit to get to 4310):
The new and improved policy for full-time faculty hiring (4011.1) has
finally moved from VC of HR David B’s desk. Pres Kathy S urged us to approve
it, despite its limitations, imperfections. It is a vast improvement over what
came before, evidently. It is much more “flexible”—allowing for common sense
adjustments. E.g., recently retired faculty clearly can be on committees.
Overcoming objections from HR, the new policy permits larger committees
(maintaining proportions). Now, HR clerks no longer run the process; committee
chairs are decided by the committee, etc.
Here’s the draft:
--And
so the senate acted to approve this revision.
Item 28 was the “Common Assessment Initiative.” Evidently, we’ve secured a
grant to allow our participation in a pilot activity, developing standard
assessment tools (re basic English, Math, etc.). Many (including Tracy F)
expressed reservations and skepticism about this state-wide effort: sounds like
“common core,” which is perceived as problematic. In response, we were told
that creation of these common assessments is inevitable. The only decision to
make is whether (a) to participate in the process of creating them—or (b)
allowing some vendor to create them for us. Surely it is better to participate
in these pilot programs, helping to define the assessments.
The group was persuaded to support this pilot program.
Item 11 was the proposal to adopt (the option of) plus and minus grading (PMG).
Tracy and her school (Social Sciences) support the proposal for the obvious
reasons (greater precision). For what it’s worth, few CC districts have PMG,
though the practice has been widely embraced elsewhere. We have assembled some
information about what it would mean to embrace PMG. Please look at it prior to
our next meeting.
Item 12 was our ongoing “security and safety” discussion (“Academic Affairs
Committee is engaged in conversation with the Safety Committee concerning
campus safety and security policies and procedures.”) We’ll receive a report at
the next meeting. (Please continue to let Roy or Melanie know where you stand
with regard to these issues.)
Item 13 concerned the Faculty Advisor Handbook (For Student Clubs). Dennis
Gordon is working on it, but he’s wicked busy these days. No doubt he’ll
get back to us.
Item 14. As you know, senators have expressed concern re “Contract Education,
Community Education, and Continuing Education.” We expect a report at our next
meeting.
Items 15 and 16 concern (1) Program/Discipline/Course Realignment Policy
Revision and (2) (new) School/Department Definition and Realignment Policy.
Should these be combined into one process? Evidently, there’s an active
forum about this issue at asenate@ivc.edu. (http://inside.ivc.edu/committees/asenate/SitePages/AcademicSenateForum.aspx)
 |
| Bugsy, cat |
For the PDCRP, see
For the SDDRP, see
We were told to prepare to provide input next time. Please send your input to
Roy or Melanie asap.
Item 18: Diana H was appointed our next Curriculum Chair (there were no other
nominees).
Item 19: “Senate Appointment: Academic Affairs Chair.” No nominations yet! Any
interest out there?
Item 20: “Senate Appointment: Recorder.” Brooke C was nominated, then
appointed. (She’ll make a great recorder. She’s a terrific colleague.)
Item 20: we approved the proposed new Program Review instructions.
Item 24 was the notorious “School name change from School of Fine Arts to
School of The Arts.” Essentially, that was approved, though often in the spirit
of “maybe not a good idea but we opt not to fight this particular battle.”
Thankfully, this action went down quickly.
*Item 25 was interesting: “Proposed
change: Director of Fiscal Services to VP of Administrative Services.”
According to the agenda, “President Roquemore has proposed a reclassification
of Director of Fiscal Services to Vice President of Administrative Services.”
In the course of discussion, these factoids emerged:
·
A. Possibly, there are significant reasons for replacing the Director of FS
with a VP of AS.
·
B. This proposal, however, would entail, not simply that change of offices, but
the automatic reassignment of the current D of FS (namely, Davit K) to a
VP of AS
Essentially, I raised this question: shouldn’t the person who is VP of AS be
hired via the usual process for hiring VPs? (I.e., my God, if this proposal is
adopted, the VP of AS will have attained that role without the usual
search/hire process!)
It seemed clear that most in the room were inclined to answer in the
affirmative. Unfortunately, the existing proposal entails Davit’s automatic
elevation to VP.
I did not say this but I suspect that many of us were thinking: a year ago,
we were railing against both Roquemore and Davit over their manifest
incompetence re budget records/development. Why on Earth would we elevate one
of these knuckleheads to a VP of AS position?
Someone motioned approval. We voted; the motion failed (received 13 votes; 1
fewer than required).
No
doubt this matter will return to the senate.
We received an update re the Scholarship Ceremony, May 16, 8-10 a.m. Steve R
took the opportunity to complain bitterly about the Scholarship committee—“the
most dysfunctional I’ve ever been on in all my years at IVC, and that’s saying
something.”
Your senator: Roy Bauer
REMINDER:
1.
Recently, you received the following plea from Ac. Sen. Prez Schmeidler:
April
28:
Discussions at the Academic Senate for the past couple of years indicated that
many of us still harbor some concerns or questions about the Early College
Program. In response, we are attempting to assess the extent and breadth of
these questions and concerns, the level of support for the program as it
currently exists, and faculty ideas for improvement of the program.
Please respond to the survey. You may have missed the first email, since I
neglected to include a subject line. So here it is again; we are extending the
open period.
Please use the following link https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Early_College_2014
to access a survey concerning the IVC Early College Program.
N.b.:
2. LISTENING SESSION: As you know, on Wed., April 30, the board of
trustees hosted a “listening session” designed to exclude administrators and
managers for the sake of allowing a safe haven for frank classified (and
faculty) commentary. By all accounts, the session was very successful. It was
well-attended (Wednesday morning, Chancellor Poertner realized that the session
was to occur in the A100 lobby—utterly contrary to the meeting’s purpose—and
thus he scrambled to arrange a replacement room that, as it happened, was
smallish). Many spoke and spoke well, evidently awakening board members to
issues at IVC—officious behavior, administrative retaliation, absurd
proliferation of committees and meetings, etc. Reportedly, the board was so
pleased by the meeting—the outpouring of sincere comments—that they expressed their
willingness to hold further sessions.
One can get a sense of how the meeting went by viewing participant comments
here:
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