Thursday, October 15, 2015

Oct 15 meeting of the Academic Senate

Student participating in the Great Shakeout today.
Oct 15 meeting of the Academic Senate

     Melanie H mentioned an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education—about cheating and the efficacy of “assigning seats.” Check it out.
     Also: she offered her pitch for the Susan G. Komen anti-breast cancer stuff. Thanks, Diana H, for your contribution, she said. 
     Next event: “bingo for boobies.” Only $25. Raffle.

     Student Success and Support Program (officer). Blah, blah, blah. Additional funding this year. Robert M. spoke in support, so there’s that.

Executive reports:

     Kathy S: murmurous blather about enrollment management and who or what should do that. She also spoke about scheduling process and info. (Factoid: the Almanac of old has turned into “Inform.”) Spoke about prospect of better data about schedules. One faculty member is invited to a “BPA” (whatever that is). Anyone interested? Sounds like Kathy will attend if no one else steps up. Related to enrollment management, but “not exactly the same.”
     Bob U: resource requests due “soon.” Still working on Budget. Davit presented a “preliminary 5-year plan” at a recent meeting. Sounded pretty dicey. Bob glanced at the plan and it looked dire, but who knows. Tomorrow, a Barc and a Drac meeting (Basic Aid allocation and District Resources allocation).
     Brett M: Ac Affairs had a “talkative” meeting this week. Cheating and the classroom measure: upcoming “photo rosters.” Paper work for field trips (fear of increased number of forms). Issue of cleanliness of some of the A-buildings.
     Steve R: blah, blah, blah. No, there won’t be more forms; they’ll be reconfigured. They [who?] want to “streamline.”
     Brett: looking for “something different” for professional development week. That inspired an outré joke, but I didn't catch it. Classified Senate is asking for faculty participation—maybe museum tours. Theme: “discovering Southern California.” They want to encourage mixing of faculty and classified.
     Complaints about cleanliness of restrooms in B200. Brittany: those restrooms like 7-11 restrooms. That got a laugh. How come Brittany knows so much about such zones? Dunno.
     Diana H: we need to get our “Carnegie unit act together.” In future, we’ll have to include statements of hours of homework per lecture hour. Supposed to be two. You might have to make outside-of-class activities “more robust,” she said.
     Recently, Tiffany gave a presentation on “native GE patterns.” We should ask: if a student is compelled to take course C, does that really contribute to their “general education”?
     D went to OC Business Association luncheon. Went to CTE workshop too. Tell students: employees (?) want kids to take Writing 1 and 2, Excell, Word, etc. Also on Saturday at CTE regional workshop: State throwing money at getting people ready for workplace. 25 suggestions about how to do that better, I guess. CTE people should get more involved. If we don’t get our acts together, money will go elsewhere. A window has opened to change how this money is spent. Get involved. So said Diana.
     Kathy S: there’s a Faculty Association meeting this evening about the contract. If the proposed contract is ratified, it can be up for approval at the next BOT meeting.
     Also: Claire (Pres of the union) tells us: Chancellor’s Office task force recommends that we should consider moving accred to WASC rather than ACCJC (WASC is the main entity of which ACCJC is the community college branch). Our Board and Chancellor won’t be writing letters in support of this rec. Our college Presidents are skeptical of it. Distrustful of Chancellor’s Office task force. The problem: they didn’t ask for our input as they claim. Concern expressed also: will the ACCJC punish those who pursue this (if ACCJC survives this)? Should we support this task force’s recommendation?
     “Grow a spine,” I said.
     We couldn’t vote on it since it was not agendized. Likely will be agendized next time.

Item 6: BPs and ARs (review process)
     Some discussion of BP/ARs for academic renewal, repetition, credit by examination, independent study. You’ll recall that there was much discussion about some of these issues months ago. Craig J chimed in about concern that students are gaming the system (repeating courses), etc. Hence, new regulations. Steve had lots of questions about the repeatability reg.
     I fell into a deep coma.

Item 7: grievance pool.
     Any interest to join the grievance pool? We need volunteers! Send name to asenate. Melanie H knows most about such service. A veteran.

Item 10: Academic calendar
     Miriam C, who is on the committee, showed a slide of proposed Ac Calendar, 2017-2018. (See links below.)
     Complaints: please reduce # of flex days, etc. Please start semesters when other colleges do. Much concern about negative impact of unusual early start dates. Committee addressed that and also equalized days per each semester (83/83).
     Complaint: when students have Thur and Fri off, then they don’t show up on Wednesday, etc. Thus put contractual days (there are three) strategically in weeks of holidays. Creates a week off in Fall. Etc.
     Miriam was presenting two proposals--very similar--and their relative advantages/disadvantages. Bob U and Miriam got into a dispute over this (Bob and his people insisted on the second version). Very entertaining 'cause Miriam don't back off no how. Generally speaking, I don’t think it’s ever a good idea to contradict Miriam C.
     Craig and Steve chimed in. Don’t know what that was about. People sure do have opinions and wants and needs, boy. They love to carp and spew.
     Diana: don’t want whole week of Thanksgiving off ‘cause students will become brain dead, yadda yadda. That’s not my experience! said some. Students come back from break "refreshed," like daisies.
     Listening to Miriam speak pains my mind. But I like her. She’s fierce.
     Schools should discuss these versions. (See below.)


Item 13: the Pathways Project
See
     A decade of intensive focus on improving student success in community colleges has produced notable effects: a dramatic increase in awareness of the challenges and in commitment to college completion as a critical goal; a sea change in the use of data to assess and monitor student success and institutional performance; a growing body of evidence regarding effective educational practice in community colleges; and increasing numbers of institutions that are putting that knowledge into practice and demonstrating encouraging results. These promising developments can be attributed to the unprecedented efforts of a collection of philanthropies, national organizations, state systems, and institutions that have worked both collectively and individually to investigate practice, implement change, and produce results.
     Now, there is a striking convergence of research and lessons of experience, as these people and their organizations have come to the shared understanding that progress, while evident in some places, is too slow; that the favored solutions of the past decade, while often necessary components of change, do not adequately address the magnitude of the challenges community colleges and their students face; and that typically, the changes thus far achieved have not been fundamental enough—and certainly not scaled enough—to achieve the improvements in completion of college credentials with strong labor market value, especially among low-income students and students of color, that are necessary to reclaim the American Dream. …
Craig H seemed to have the job of advocating our participation in this silly series of seminars (twice a year for three years). He had lots of buzz words. “We’d gain a national perspective.” Blah, blah, blah. “Student intake,” “completion rate,” etc. Buzz, buzz, buzz.
     Melanie expressed skepticism about measuring student success. Brittany drew attention to reference (above) to “labor market value.” Kathy S advocated that we participate. We voted: 17 for, 4 against. So we've approved this dang thing. (Brittany and I voted agin it.)

     Technology Advisory Task Force: woman spoke. Blackboard is coming out with a new improved version. Training sessions, etc. Word documents, files, etc. Monday, 10-noon.

Item 14: next time. 15: budget. We got a version from Bob.

Item 16: full-time hiring priority list.
     We don’t have the FON (Faculty obligation number). Frustrating.
     Melanie: reading is on the list.

Item 17: emergency, safety
     [Emergency call] Response time issue: Chief Glenn provided data, says Kathy. Sometimes pretty long. Why the delay?
     Kathy discussed plan to put a device in each room that allows locking the door from inside, etc. Some gizmo will enable disengagement of device. Go to A123 (conference room) to see that.
     Check out this page:
http://www.ivc.edu/resources/police/Pages/EmergPrep.aspx
    —Lots of info about various emergencies and such.
     Spoke with Mel on the way out. Told her she was fierce. "That's a good thing, isn't it?" I said.

1 comment:

  1. Flex week definitely needs to be shortened! And while it would be great to interact more with classified staff, we (faculty) are tremendously busy trying to prep our classes that we don't have time for field trips. Not to mention summer runs straight into fall with no grading period.

    Go Miriam! We need a strong advocate to change our calendar to one that complements those of other colleges in our region.

    ReplyDelete