Heads up - Nov. 16 meeting

Heads up re      Meeting of the Representative Council November 16, 2017  2:00 – 3:50 pm, BSTIC 101   J. ASCCC Faculty Liaisons for Guided Pathways, Non-Credit, CTE and Legislative The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges is looking for faculty liaisons for the following areas:  ·         Guided Pathways  ·         Noncredit  ·         CTE  ·         Legislative  Shall the Representative Council close nominations and appoint? L. Student Disciplinary Action Concerns Concerns have arisen about student disciplinary action process at the college.

I do believe this item arose owing to irregularities in Dean Cipres’ handling of a student problem. Let us know what you’d like us to say. Better yet, be at the meeting this afternoon.

 

M. Privacy Policy and Recordings

Privacy policy in the syllabus and recordings in the classroom 

 

--Senator Roy, rbauer@ivc.edu

Nov 2, 2017, Senate Meeting: lowering the heat on Guided Pathways

[See earlier reports: Oct 19, 2017, Senate Meeting & Oct 5, 2017, senate meeting: meta-majors!]

     Allow me jump to the most important item, which came up during Senate Prez June McLaughlin’s “executive report”:

Executive Report:

Thomas Fallo

     • In her “executive report,” Senate Prez June M noted the appointment of one Thomas Fallo as the new interim chancellor. (Long-time interim Chance Debra Fitzsimons will be leaving in December; her family obligations compelled her to leave early.)

     • Evidently, there is a process called “Canvas conversion,” i.e., the conversion of old Blackboard courses to the Canvas format. The union is concerned that faculty are compensated for this work, but some sort of vote on the matter was recently set; but it was postponed. “Drat,” they said.

June

     • June will be attending (and has already attended) the (State) Senate Plenary over the weekend. She recently attended some Guided Pathways* discussions there. Based on conversations with officials at the State Chancellor’s Office, the word is that “It is wide open about what we should or shouldn’t be doing” to satisfy the existing Guided Pathways push. For one thing, we don’t need to settle on particular meta-majors any time soon. As long as we have a plan of some kind by March, we’re doing fine. (Earlier in the meeting, I reminded the group that faculty in our School are unhappy with the rush to decide on “Guided Pathways” meta-majors and the apparent failure by the college to consult with faculty Pathways-wise.)

     Evidently, we’ll need to fill out some sort of form, but this form “is very loose.” Our merely “exploring ideas” for meta-majors is enough, it seems.

     “Faculty own Guided Pathways,” said June. It’s not administration’s baby. “Nobody should be talking about meta-majors right now,” she said. [END]

The Scholarship Process:

     We briefly discussed the “scholarship process,” which, we were told, will be “going live” on Nov. 6. We were asked to announce this factoid in our classes.

     Ilknur, with her usual light touch, asked for an overview of the process. The Foundation Director and others seemed unable to provide a simple explanation. The process depends, it seems, on the particular scholarship. It’s apples and oranges and pineapples, too, process-wise.

     Michelle M explained that the Counseling crowd are putting together scholarship workshops and the like. My notes mention “mindless meditation workshops,” but I suspect they are actually “mindfulness” meditation workshops. That makes more sense, I suppose. (The Counselors are pretty New Agey, it seems.)

     The Senate decided that we should discuss the Scholarships Process in future. It will be agendized, said June.

That old Cipres problem:

Elizabeth Cipres

     Our own Henry C reminded the group of a recent incident concerning a problematic student; the problem was brought to Dean Cipres and the latter’s reaction was “weird.” The instructor seemed to feel that his/her concerns were dismissed out of hand, and the student was readmitted contrary to policy.

     The Senate is on the case, said Prez June M.

Academic Affairs:

     Someone read a report from Academic Affairs’ Dan D, who was absent owing to illness. According to the report, the committee has received VPI Chris McDonald’s proposal for the new “IDEA” school. (Grumble, grumble.) The committee will be taking up that topic at its next meeting. Also, the committee is working on January’s Flex Week schedule.

     Hot damn.

The IVC Budget:

     VP Jeff K briefly discussed Davit’s recent presentation of the budget. I asked for an overview. There’s the usual talk of dire problems and an uncertain future: upcoming “cliffs” created by the cessation of various kinds of funding. Moaning. Anxiety. Panic.

     What to do? Jeff didn’t seem to hold administration’s approach to the budget in high esteem. I think he implied that the denizens of A100 tend to regard temporary funding as permanent and then go apeshit when the funding finally gives out. “Get a clue,” Jeff seemed to say, but didn’t.

Adult Education:

     We turned to item M, the Adult Education block grant “Consortium,” something co-led by our own Dean Cathleen G. We’re talking about $20 million per year spent in OC on Adult ESL, CTE, Basic Skills, etc. Adult Education has been growing very quickly in recent years. Our own AESL program has gone from zero to twenty sections in just two years.

Field trips:

     Item I: Board Policies, etc. for (I think) Field Trips.

     Field trip forms have been very problematical (aka “shitty,” clueless, inconsistent, etc.). A committee worked on improving the forms for months. We now have the proper numbers and documents we need for all field trips, said Stefanie A, who served on the committee. Everyone (in the district) now has the same forms. Blah, blah, blah.

     A fellow spoke who seemed strongly opposed to the changes in these policies and forms. “If you want to prevent field trips, you’ll pass this policy,” he said. But when some issues were clarified, he did a 180.

     Ilknur had something to say, too. It was pretty peevish. That’s all I got.

The State Senate's Eric Thompson,
philosopher

Guided Pathways again:

     Item K: Guided Pathways

     We’re looking for faculty leaders re Guided Pathways, noncredit, CTE, Legislative, etc. Any volunteers? Open nominations.

     Anyone interested? We already have some nominations. Send nominees to asenate@ivc.org.

     Henry said that our own Rebecca K is willing to be nominated for Guided Pathways. Good.

Laser week:

     Laser Week 2017 is coming up. People yammered about that for a while. I could barely stand it.

    That was about it.

—Senator Roy

*From a proposed state senate resolution: "Whereas, Faculty voices have been raised in critique, concern, and opposition to the ways guided pathways models have taken shape, both before the publication of The Vision for Success3 and afterwards in response to the Vision for Success, ...." —Did the resolution pass? Don't know yet.

Oct 19, 2017, Senate Meeting

Dear All,

Unfortunately, you’re stuck with my [Henry's stuck-worthy] senate report this week. Here’s what I have for the meeting of October 19, 2017. These are just the highlights. Feel free to skip to Item J: Guided Pathways.

Item D. Public comments: Martin M. (from PE/Kinesiology) noted that naughty scallywags were unplugging electric cars at campus charging stations so they could plug in their own cars. He went on to suggest that if something wasn’t done, there was a possibility of a violent altercation taking place. Tempers run high with this sort of thing we learned. Senators discussed what was to be done: security cameras, time limits on charging, recharging fees, etc. It sounds like senate will revisit this at a later date.

Item G. Senate approved curriculum for the 2017-2018 Catalog. Including the new classes: Humanities 10 and Writing 15.

Item H. Approved the latest revision to AR 4011.6 Employment Procedures for hiring the new Chancellor. The revision removed very vague and open-ended language from the hiring procedures.

Item I: New school at ATEP. For those who weren’t aware, this academic year VPI Chris has been pushing the idea of a new school to be created at ATEP with the proposed name IDEA (an acronym). Please see Roy’s last senate report. The senate was reminded once again that we already have a program called IDEA run out of Student Life and so calling the new school IDEA would undoubtedly lead to confusion. Nevertheless that still leaves the larger more important question: what will be the consequences (intended and unintended) of starting a new school for the college? Apparently this proposal has many unanswered questions. Strangely, Dan D. reported that the matter has not been discussed at Academic Affairs. The senators voted to table the matter so it could be discussed at Academic Affairs.

Item J: Guided Pathways and Proposed Meta-Majors. No action was taken on this at senate. This item was scheduled for five minutes on the agenda -- the senators discussed it for thirty. Roopa apparently had some revised names for the “meta-majors” in the pathways “road show” -- see Roy’s last senate report. These new and improved names came about in the wake of suggestions from particular schools. Unfortunately, due to a mix-up, she didn’t have the new revised names available to show senate.

There were numerous good questions from senators about what sort of (unintended) impact pathways itself would have on: small programs; students who are IVC because they want to explore different possible majors, mature students taking classes for lifelong learning, etc. Again the problem ofunintended consequences. Roopa’s response was that pathways would not impact any of the aforementioned. This seemed a bit presumptuous at this point. There is wide-spread concern about pathways, especially from engineering, social and behavioral sciences, and us. Wow, strange bedfellows.

There seems to be much confusion about how discussion and decision-making regarding pathways is taking place. Rebecca K., the co-chair of the Senate Pathways Workgroup, noted that the purpose of the workgroup was to provide a means for faculty input and concerns to be heard. There seems to be the widespread impression that Roopa M. and Brent M. are the ones making decisions, since they were the ones who put together the “roadshow” and wrote the meta-majors -- albeit with some workgroup input. Rebecca suggested a Pathways Summit wherein faculty from the different schools could voice their concerns directly and discuss the implications of pathways. She commented that there is no one-size-fits-all model for pathways and that we must decide very carefully what is best for us as a college. This proposal seems more transparent than Roopa and Brent acting as the voices for faculty. Ben M., from SBS, declared he would really like to see the data on the efficacy of pathways at other schools. More discussion surely to follow. 

Item K. Faculty Hiring Priority List. Senate discussed the FTFHP list as calculated for Tiers 1-3. In short, looks like our school isn’t hiring this year. Counseling is near the top (of course).

There was some confusion with the fourth position of the list for LLR. Apparently the librarians feel that they have been sidelined for ESL. The issue of their next hire was apparently not discussed in their school and the librarians say they have been surreptitiously passed over. The senate voted to approve the list with the exception of the fourth position -- which needs to be discussed by the LLR faculty.

Item M. English Co-requisite Course. After waiting very patiently, Deanna presented an update on the new English co-requisite courses now up and running. At the moment, student enrollment is being done manually by issuing APCs. It seems there are quite a few hurdles on the tech side of things. There will be a work-around for fall 2018, but a long-term solution through district IT is far away.

Item O. IVC Mission statement. Senate voted to approve the new (revised) mission statement here. Enjoy!

“Irvine Valley College offers clear and guided pathways to transfer opportunities, certificates, associate degrees, employment, and further education to a diverse and dynamic local and global community. We support student access, success, and equity. IVC fosters economic and workforce development through strategic partnerships with business, government, and educational networks.”

Your senators,

Roy B.

Henry C.

Oct 5, 2017, senate meeting: meta-majors!

Oct. 5 meeting of the IVC Academic Senate (Rep Council)

PLEASE SEE “META-MAJORS” SCHEME BELOW!

I’ll focus on what seemed most important. Let’s skip ahead to item L:

Item L: Guided Pathways, First Reading

We were presented with a draft of a document entitled, “Irvine Valley College: Guided Pathways.” (Note the link.)

Two names were attached: Brent Monte and Roopa Mathur.

You really should look at it. (It’s only a PowerPoint presentation.)

Brent M got up to present. He called his presentation the Guided Pathways “road show.” 

He explained the core idea of Guided Pathways. Students come to IVC with a goal. GP would provide the “quickest path to get there.” 

He alluded to the time it takes students to graduate. It’s 2.6 years at IVC, 4.6 years statewide. So we’re doing fine, relatively speaking. Still, we want students to achieve their goal quickly and efficiently while at IVC. Less time, fewer classes, more completion. Happy buzzing widgets flying out the door.

He recited this factoid: 70% of students haven’t seen a counselor after the first week of classes. 

The META-MAJORS:

Eventually, we got to the heart of the matter: proposed “meta-majors.” According to the existing proposal, new students would be confronted with a set of possible meta-majors and they would be required to choose one (at least for the first semester) and follow the track of that meta-major.

I’ll show you the meta-majors in a moment. 

Some faculty from the social sciences suggested that the list of meta-majors seemed geared to channel students into STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math). The social sciences didn’t seem to come up much in this proposed scheme. What gives?

Exactly the same could be said for the disciplines within the Humanities. (See below.)

Here are the contents of the PowerPoint’s “slide” that presented the proposed meta-majors:

META-MAJORS

Students must choose a meta-major — broad clusters of majors 

·         STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) 

·         Business, Economics, and Entrepreneurship 

·         Culture, Languages, and the Global Citizen 

·         Teaching, Law, and Public Service 

·         Creativity, Arts, and Design 

·         Health and Wellness 

·         Undeclared (Student must take pre-designated courses such as Career 

·         Exploration, Math, and English. Undeclared is only an option for the first 

·         15 units) 

These are proposed Meta-Majors and not finalized. Programs may appear in multiple Meta-Majors. 

Senators spent considerable time discussing this slide. Among those senators (and others) who spoke, much skepticism was evinced about it.

The senate seems to be in an awful hurry to approve this draft (or some version of it). We’re set to vote on a draft at the next meeting! What’s the big rush?

In my mind, the most important comment was that made by our own Dan D, chair of Academic Affairs. He simply noted the problem of “unintended consequences” of adopting such a program. Really, we have no idea what we’re getting into here (or so I think).

Also: if we must move ahead with GP, surely we can do better than the above scheme!

Let us know if you are as alarmed as we are about this development.

If you wish to discuss the above with a member of the relevant committee, please contact our own Rebecca Kaminsky

Also, send any concerns to your senators:

·         Henry C

·         Roy B

Other matters:

The latest IVC budget news:

You’ll recall that our college has been struggling with a very significant budget hortfall ($7.9 million), and, consequently, all sorts of budget-cutting measures have been taken. Alas, this has reduced our course offerings, producing lots of pain, etc.

Senate VP Jeff K reported that the deficit now “looks to be gone.” Indeed, we now have a $70 K surplus.

Jeff spoke as though this were a scandalous state of affairs, as in “you mean to tell me that we dropped all those courses for nothing?” Or maybe: “do you people have any idea what you’re doing?” –Not sure. There’ll be more discussion about our curious fiscal situation in future.

Catalog Re-Write:

Diana and the Curriculum Committee are attempting to edit/fix the writing in IVC’s course catalog. She made a plea that those contacted with requests to edit the verbiage of their areas PLEASE RESPOND ASAP. 

Item K: New School at ATEP

Point of clarification: this does not concern the new building at ATEP. The building will be called IDEA (an acronym): done deal. This issue is whether we should create a new School and whether it should be called IDEA. VPI Chris M got up and made his case. He said that creating this new school would not change the budget. It would provide some leverage for “basic aid” dollars for that school (and its programs), he said.1

Sep 21, 2017 senate meeting

September 21 meeting of Academic Senate

 

Public comments:

Eddie Tiongson of AAPI passed around a flier about a presentation concerning green cards: “Are you eligible to apply for a green card? Come find out.” Two of the speakers are attorneys. Three sessions: Sept 21, 28, Oct 19. See Elevate AAPI @ IVC with AAAJ-OC

 

Moved up item L, Tech Guy Jim Gaston

 

L. SmartSchedule (SS)

SS touches just about everybody. The design team for SS has wide representation. Worked on SS for close to a year.

1^st phase: February. 

2^nd phase: this semester. 

3^rd phase: early 2018

 

1^st: up to date cosmetically; the look and feel is different, not structurally different

Mobile responsive (adapts to the device that you’re using)

Ultimately, the underlying infrastructure is completely changing. Increases performance of the system.

 

2^nd phase: moving it into the cloud. Cool things under the hood with the infrastructure. More intelligent searching.

Jim would be glad to come to your meetings to go into detail.

In phase 3: Schedule building. Student can set some options for filtering results. Set times I’m not available, am available.

 

Executive reports:

 

June M (Prez):

One idea that came up in General Assembly. deciding what we’re going to do next few semesters. 3 key priorities: let’s decide on them. Define them. Schedule our approach.

DACA is not agendized for today, but it’s now on our list, we’re working on it.

BPs and ARs: 25 outstanding BP and AR. We have one for today. June really wants to get organized; we tend to come unprepared and end up rubberstamping. (True.) Let’ not do that.

 

Jeff K (VP):

Blah blah blah

 

Dan D (Academic Affairs):

We’re looking at 4 things

• ·       DAL funding
• ·       Revitalizing ivc-2-ivc
• ·       Existential questions about flex week
• ·       Use of professional development funds

We’ll bring back reports

 

Diana H (Curric):

Looking for faculty person to help us with cooperative work experience. Need to update district policy. Maybe do school service hours. A request. Please ask your faculty. Maybe 15 hours of work involved.

Code alignment for CTE is now starting. An effort to align systems across states, etc.

ACCJC says that if you’re going to have a new program, you have to answer a set of questions. The Due Diligence report.  She lost me, what with her acronyms and such.

 

Reorder agenda again:

Skip to J. 

 

J. Board Policies BP4011.6 

Chancellor hiring procedures latest revision 

 

Upcoming BP and AR:· BP 4011.6 Employment Procedures for Chancellor

Shall the Representative Council approve the revision of BP 4011.6?

Major changes:

Took stuff from classified hiring policy and pasted in here.

Point 5, line 188 - Before paper screening, committee makes a decision about how they’re going to do the ranking.

There were some unease about this item. Need more time. Tabled. CHECK IT OUT.

 

Item K:

K. SSSP/BSI/SEP Integration

Angel is here to answer questions. 

Integrated work group: BSI, Student Equity, and SSSP

The integrated SSSP/Student Equity/BSI program model promotes integrated planning and program coordination at the district and college levels. The three programs retain separate requirements as specified in Education Code and title 5 regulations; these requirements are built into the Integrated Plan to ensure compliance with applicable law and regulations. In coming years, the Chancellor’s Office intends to pursue changes in Education Code and title 5 regulations to achieve even greater integration and alignment of the three programs in subsequent planning cycles.

His plan got the big OK from us.

M. Distinguished Academic Lecture Series

DALS needs new sources of funding to revitalize the series and bring in outside speakers.

Academic Affairs (Dan D):

At committee meeting, noted non-fundedness of DAL. We’ve decided that it’s important to any college to have this kind of series, inviting distinguished scholars, et al. We have no funding at this point. Seeking authorization to have meeting to work with Foundation to fund series. Perhaps hammer out a long-standing agreement.

 

Jeff: clarification. Funding spent on what?

A: one or two speakers per year brought to campus.

Events that we can be proud of. 

 

Ilkner: maybe dump scholarships, waste of money. [Everyone stared at her. Not me.]

 

I made a motion: let’s vote.

 

Jeff: I was involved our first time, which yielded the famous Ray Bradbury visit. It was hard. Paid $5000 from student government. Important to make sure everybody’s on board, gets this done right. There were snafus.

We voted strongly in favor: yes, we’ll support this.

 

N. New Program Development Process

First Reading: Program development guidelines & New Program Letter of Intent

Three program development guides, approved at the last Curriculum meeting of the Spring 2017, needs approval.
New program Letter of Intent for approval. 

Diane has 5 minutes to present: 

We had a PD process in the past, but it wasn’t helpful.

Curriculum committee last year worked on three ways a new program could come forth.

First Reading Discussion 

Letter of intent. I’m not sure what her point was about that. Including such a letter is a way everyone learns about the change, and there are no surprises. Transparency is the goal here. We need to know if there’s going to be a problem down the line.

Not voting today. Getting input. Bring to faculty. The new program development process  helps us get our ducks in a row.

 

Jeff feels strongly that all of these policies should be dealt in one fell swoop, one document that thinks through everything. Program review, Program discontinuance. The same questions should be pursued al the way through.

 

Nice discussion. We’ll bring this back.

 

Diana: Please email Chris L and myself if you have any concerns, etc.

 

Forum:

 

Diana: DACA: Santa Ana law center is having a clinic this weekend.

Eddie: we’ll have events here too.

Don’t have to be IVC students

Robert M: a group coming on campus 7-9 Korean resource center.

 

Dec 7 proposed end of year party. Can’t call it “Xmas Party” anymore.