Senate meeting, Feb. 2, 2017

My notes are a bit sketchy, but I guess they'll do:

Feb 2, 2017 meeting of Academic Senate, Rep Council

 

Woman came up to talk about student scholarships. Many scholarships have fewer than five applicants. So, there you go.

 

Executive reports:

 

Kathy: we now have paucity of part-time senators. Any interested parties? Let us know. (Senators to represent part-time faculty. Write asenate@ivc.edu.)

 

DRAC (District Resources Allocation) meets tomorrow. Something might actually happen at the meeting—will address the way in which we use the DRAC model, which is problematic (last 8-10 years). DRAC model developed nearly twenty years ago, served the district well, kept the peace. At first, IVC was getting much less allocation per FTES. We were cheap then. Late 90s and early oughts, agreements reached: over years, things evened out. The model was set up to balance income according to how many students, with limit on growth. The state always had a growth expectation, we adopted that limitation in restricting growth. How could IVC grow faster than that? In mid-2000s, use of model was frozen. If met the target, we got paid. If not, we had a year or two to make it up, not lose the money. With freeze: paid according to the target, and so the target became self-perpetuating. So you could slack off a bit, but ability to change proportions went away. We’ve been frozen at 35%, or whatever. Will go back to focusing on targets, but then looking at the actual. This will help IVC, since, in last few years, IVC has been growing faster than SC. Zero sum game, allocations. Leftovers, basic aid. Kathy has noticed improved mood at DRAC. Things are much better with interim Chancellor Fitzsimons. She’s doing much better job understanding what’s going on. 

 

Chancellor search? I can say that the board is very interested in what is going on on the committee. A few members met with the committee to learn “what we were doing.” They seem to trust the committee. I don’t know anything about the pool, but the process is very hopeful. 

 

VP Bob U: not much to report. Next week, three committees will meet, including BARC. Woof.

 

Academic Affairs guy, Brent: Proposed amendments/changes to bylaws. Show to your people. This will be posted. Discuss. Three options. Let us know what you think. “Yell at us.” 

Kathy: bylaw changes, different. Recommendation of senate, voted on whole membership. Term limits? Two terms, then get out. Can get back in later. Recommendations.

 

Interesting paradigm to elect someone for two years. Something to think about. Steve: when we had it that way before, we had great trouble getting people to run. Kathy: things change. 

 

BP and AR:

Drone AR adopted by the chancellor (AR 3960). Students cannot fly their drones in the building without pilot’s licenses. At the moment, framers/adopters have been cautious about regulations/safety. But have not been as sensitive about instruction and also outreach, marketing, etc. (Anyone who flies outside needs a pilot’s license.)

 

Item 8 – need more people for grade grievance.

 

Item 10 – Advisor handbook. Not heard from person. Grumble grumble.

 

Item 12 – AACC pathways project. People are at conference at Tempem Arizona right now. –Not heading toward a “one size fits all” conclusion. That’s good.

 

Item 14: California Promise program.

Hopefully you’ve all been talking about this in your schools. Entire year scheduling. 

Didn’t get enough votes for this to pass (here at Senate). Arranging your scheduling to permit students registering for a year at a time. Need to do that to have access to some funds. We can‘t do it right now because IT can’t do it. 

 

Motion: support adjusting process so that we schedule an entire academic year at one time?

 

Vote: 21 -1 – 0 Passes

 

Item 15 - DE coordinator co-chair

Meredith anticipates taking leave midway through semester. Need a co-chair. 

Open nominations:  none

 

Item 16 – Academic Calendar 2018-9

Asked to give advice to the Calendar committee—pursue 16 week semester and then either longer or shorter intersession. Lots of documents posted about this.  Life sciences is happy to consider 16-4 16-8. 16 16 12—what we used to have. Brittany: hate that. None of our classes (in Humanities) can do 6 weeks. Kathy: I’m hearing. Yes, investigate the possibility, but longer summer is what is really important to people. Don’t cut the summer, whatever you do. “I’ll pass that along.” 

 

Item 17 – senate elections – need to appoint an elections committee (Rich and Joon)

Pass the word. Any interest in participating? 

 

Item 18 – establish election dates. June McLaughlin, Business Law: nominee, president of Academic Senate

Senate meeting, December 15, 2016: WHEN HOPE IS A PLAN

When Hope is a Plan

 

Academic Senate Rep Council

Thursday, December 15, 2016

 

Agenda:

https://inside.ivc.edu/committees/asenate/Meetings/2016-17/16-12-15/Rep%20Council%20Agenda%20121516.pdf

 

Public comments:

Henry (who subbed for Brittany but looked nothing like her) and I drew attention to the OCC instructor issue (she is being harassed by video-taping right-wingers) 

Henry read the OCC (senate?) statement; Kurt helped out

There was a good discussion; everyone expressed concern, support. We looked for a work-around of the absence of an agenda item for this meeting. There seemed to be consensus that the senate should do something of the kind requested. We put off further discussion until the item concerning college fora (one is planned for Flex Week, Spring).

 

Kathy forewent her exec report

Same for Bob, etc.

 

BP and AR review

The “review” committee met, etc.

I asked about 3950 – unmanned aircraft systems. We buzzed each other about that. The item was strafed from the approval list (this time), I think. Some real issues. 

 

AR 3502 Campus Safety
AR 3801 Hazardous Waste Removal
BP/AR 3950 Unmanned Aircraft Systems
BP 4101.1 Faculty Salary Classification Changes and Initial Classification Placement
BP 4203 Sick Leave for Educational Administrators and Classified Management Personnel
BP/AR 5515 Transfer Center
BP 5520 Shower Facilities for Homeless Students
AR 5615 Student Records Compliance with FERPA
AR 6106 Course Approval (Stand Alone Credit Courses)

 

We approved the rest.

 

HIRING POLICIES. Kathy mentioned that she is working on new revisions of the various HIRING policies. She’s seeks input. I noted that some of us in the School of Humanities would like to make some changes to the faculty hiring policy. Kathy indicated that anyone interested can just send her their inputtery via email (asenate@ivc.edu).

 

Item 14: President’s forum

Apparently, focus on academic freedom and 1^st amendment issues contemplated for event during flex week, spring.

Re Academic Freedom, I mentioned Dennis White’s notorious 2003 directive to faculty: thou shalt not discuss the Iraq War in the classroom unless thou acquireth prior approval from His Nibs’s office. The directive was, I said, never rescinded. Kathy remembered it differently. She’ll seek “clarity” from the President’s office.

 

The OCC issue re the instructor who was videoed in class opining negatively about the President Elect (it went viral, she’s been harassed by the usual suspects ever since) was raised. Some of us clamored for support of the instructor, the OCC senate statement, etc.

First motion: support OCC senate statement

Approved (We’ll send word to the OCC senate)

We noted that this should be done quickly or not at all. Evidently, it will be done quickly.

Second motion: Kathy seemed to want a broader statement, one less tied to the specifics of the OCC case. In the end, we voted to have Kathy/cabinet come up with statement by Saturday morning. Senators will have an opportunity to approve/disapprove BY MONDAY. Approved 21/0/0.

 

We discussed nominees for offices for the upcoming Senate elections.

 

Chair of Academic Affairs: both Brett and Dan (our Dan D, “Double D”) have been nominated. The group voted sans discussion.

 

Dan: 12

Brett: 6

 

So Dan will be our new (and much more focused) Academic Affairs chair. THANKS DAN.

 

18.

Cheryl Delson and a fellow named Massimo Mitolo were both nominated for (I forget what). Here’s how that vote turned out:

 

Delson: 11

Mitolo: 7

 

21. It was time to approve/disapprove various search committees for new hires.

 

Geography - Yes

Political Science - Yes

Biology – [put off for now]

English – yes (unanimous)

Digital Media Art –

Moved to send this back, owing to a lack of non-department representation (aside from the chair, Dean Joe). 18/2/1

 

(Item 15)

Davit arrived to give his budget update and, um, audit update

As per usual, projections show that, in coming years, costs will go up but revenue will not, unless we take steps. Right now, we’re relying on various one-time funds. Not clear if or how those will be replaced.

We had a decent discussion. It is possible that the Governor’s Budget (in January) will include a “baseline adjustment,” which could yield us millions. We’re hoping for that. That seems to be our “plan.”

Davit noted that, meanwhile, there are lots of resource requests from faculty/programs. We’ll go forward with that process, despite projected shortfall.

I asked about international students (see line on non-resident tuition: projections: going up)

I asked about weekend college (it’s in place now).

Evidently, owing to our BASIC AID gravy train (whereby we are funded by a portion of local property taxes, forgoing state apportionment), we are not allowed to layoff anybody (cuz, I guess, we’re swimmin’ in dough). Ties are hands (darn). We can eliminate programs, but that’s not a popular move.

Everyone seemed to agree.

And that was about it.

 

—SENATOR ROY

November 17, 2016, Senate Meeting: "SLO pride!"

Report: the 11/17/16 meeting of the Rep Council, Academic Senate (See agenda)

Some of this is important, I suppose. 

A health professional by the name of Stacy Lavino (MS, LMFT ) gave a presentation of mental health services here at IVC. It all sounded pretty good, I guess, except that Lavino is our only “mental health” specialist and she’s available only 25 hours a week. Meanwhile, student are freaking out over the usual things plus the latest Trumpian horrors.

The last item, Item 22 (COR, SLO, Syllabus), was placed first. Essentially, the issue concerns new Accreditation demands regarding “course outlines of record” (CORs). The Accreds, it seems, require that a course’s SLOs appear—really, not just sort of—on its COR, but that’s not the case for IVC CORs. Shiny new VPI, Chris McDonald, thought he had solved that problem by adding a red box on each COR labeled “SLOs” and pointing at the existing “Learning Objectives” per outline. (I.e., he sought to magically turn our LOs into SLOs via such labeling.)

That won’t pass muster. (What was he thinking?) 

So what to do? McDonald then hatched the minimalist plan of cutting and pasting existing course SLOs from TrackDat, where they now reside, into an unused box on the CORs (under “methods of evaluation”). But Kathy Schmeidler (senate prez) and her crew carped, owing to the absence of “vetting” of said SLOs through senate committees/processes. The unstated premise here was perhaps that some of these SLOs are south of excellent, albeit duly authored by “faculty experts.” Of course, if they are south of excellent, they are so wherever we put them. And so it seems that Schmeidler and crew were advocating some massive effort to get our SLOs up to snuff asap as per some Senate process. (Note: SLOs are only an Accred concern; the Cal CC bureaucracy only cares about LOs.) 

Natch, some faculty took umbrage, noting that existing SLOs were penned by faculty experts, so “why is the senate sticking its nose in where it don’t belong.” And many of us have taken the position that SLOs are “bullshit” and that we may as well produce easily-conceived bullshit SLOs. The “quality” point goes nowhere with that crowd no matter who’s the judge.

Whatever. The senate got bogged down in a debate over this. Growing weary of such down-boggery, I moved that we accept McDonald’s recommendation and, soon, that passed (20/3/2). Done deal. The only compromise: Schools/disciplines will be able to revise their SLOs (getting them up to snuff, I guess) up to December 5. After that date, McDonald’s cutting and the pasting begins. 

Item 16 was “Basic Skills Coordinator.” Brooke Choo is now an interim dean and so we need her replacement on Basic Skills. Angel Hernandez has agreed to finish up the semester and Brent Monte has agreed to serve in this role in Spring.

Item 17 was “Senate Elections: Open Nominations for Curriculum Chair, Assistant Curriculum Chair, Academic Affairs Chair, Recorder, and Past President.” 

Schmeidler and Urell are not pursuing the P and VP offices. We need candidates.

We’ve received no nominations. (Historically, it is about now that Ray Chandos pops up as a nominee. You don’t want that.)

Meanwhile, Chris L is a nominee for Curriculum, Cheryl D is a nominee for recorder, and Brett is willing to continue as chair of Academic Affairs. 

No action taken. Nominations stay open until the next meeting.

Item 20 is “Hiring Committee Appointments.” We need a member of faculty to volunteer to serve on the search committee for VPI. In the end, we gave it to Diana Hurlbut (because Chris L didn’t want to compete for the role).

Kathy Schmeidler will serve on the Chancellor search committee.

—Roy 

Special meeting (Nov 3): more pizzas than people

On November 1, President Schmeidler sent out this announcement:

This coming Thursday, Nov 3, the Academic Senate Cabinet is hosting – but not attending - a gathering for all faculty members in the CAFÉ (in the library) during the usual Representative Council meeting time, 2-4 pm.  There is no agenda, there will be no minutes or recording. You all will have an opportunity to meet & eat, chat, discuss, sing, dance (if there’s room and desire), and generally carry on, and talk about the cabinet members to your hearts’ content since we will all be at the ASCCC (Academic Senate for California Community Colleges) Fall Plenary in beautiful Irvine periphery. Food will be provided - more than just our normal meeting snacks. Only faculty members are invited.  All faculty members are invited.

I showed for this thing.
It was poorly attended.
There were more pizzas than faculty.
I kinda liked it.

October 6 Senate meeting: grim budget news, finals schedule change, Pathways to skullduggery

Senate notes: Oct 6 meeting of the Academic Senate (Rep Council):

Brief Highlights

Public comments: Melanie offered her anti-cancer spiel (Susan B. Komen).

A student rep asked if and how students are informed about Spring’s finals schedule, which, as you know, switches back to the regular weekly schedule for finals week (aka, “no special scheduling”). That launched a lengthy and absurd discussion of that issue, which, of course, we recently discussed and settled in favor of a return to “no special scheduling.” We were reminded that we returned to the “no special scheduling” finals week owing to severe “internal conflicts” that attended the special schedule. We were reminded that our sister college has always had a special schedule for finals week. Perhaps their conflicts are not as severe.

We received a brief report about our efforts to write the Accreditation self-study. We were reminded that, a day earlier, we had all received an email soliciting input re drafts. “Please read for content and tone.”

The Foundation dinner will be at The Cube, March 11. Hot fun.

Re migration of data from Blackboard to whatsit: “everyone should backup all Blackboard courses.” We’ll send out a reminder.

A peevish discussion about Diane Oaks’ crew (marketing, publications) erupted. Things aren’t working out. “We ask her people, ‘Please give us the template; we’ll fill it out.’ –Nothin’ doin’.” Need a timely and efficient process but we sure ain’t got one now. Grumble, grumble.

Bob U, VP, offered a brief “budget update.” We looked at a document. “You can look at the entire budget for the college,” he said. “Read it,” he added. Have any questions? Send ‘em to Bob at the senate site (asenate@ivc.edu). 

We looked at a document that offers a five-year budget projection, 2015/16 – 2021/22. Pretty grim. One-time funds need replacement funding sources. We could easily end up short. The “shortfall compounds.” 

Revenue is flat but costs are going up. Where can we cut back? Unfortunately, we do not yet have the FON calculation.

There’s been an unexpected drop in non-resident tuition (i.e., a drop in international students). 

Golden Handshakes now on the table. 

Davit, Glenn’s budget guy, will attend the next Senate Meeting to answer questions.

Brittany raised a question about our embrace of the “Pathways” stuff. She noted that we never voted as a body to “swallow the program whole,” only to participate at a meeting and doing some of the Pathways stuff, not all of it. (She was concerned that college leadership is finagling a commitment to fully participate despite the faculty’s never having agreed to do so. Same old, same old. But worrisome!)

Brittany is working with Bret (?) (they are a workgroup) to advise the senate on this Pathways business. It seems clear that we ought to take a fresh look at the status quo at our college, pathwayswise (small ‘p’). No doubt improvement is possible. We might not want to pursue all of the Pathways (capital P) agenda though. (Look for this issue to come up at the next meeting.)

We need a fresh look at our GE situation.

--Roy Bauer 

September 29, 2016, Senate meeting: adult coloring book

Thursday’s Senate Meeting kicked off with a public comment by Michelle M, who passed out a flier announcing the IVC Counseling Department’s “STRESS BUSTERS!”

This roster of seminars includes:

• Wed. 8/31 from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.: Dream Boards – Do you know what to be when you grow up? And, if so, have you written out all of your goals and dreams for your life on a piece of paper? If you haven’t, you should!....
• Wed. 9/7 from 3:30 – 4:30 p.m.: Adult coloring book – Are you stressed about school, your friends, your family, your job or anything for that matter? Did you know that coloring can be just as beneficial for adults as it was when you were a child?...
• Mon. 8/29 from 12-1 p.m.: Make & take container plant – The acts of interacting with nature and exploring your creative side will lull you into relaxation. Use chalk markers to write a zen message on your own succulent creation.

The counsleors have arranged to secure certified therapy dogs, too! (Oct. 10) They're very clever.

Michelle noted, too, that our college, which houses 16k students, has only 1 mental health therapist, and she shows up but twice a week!

Senate Prez Kathy S noted that the district IT crew will be reconvening the “wait list” work group, hoping to improve that program.

Brett of Academic Affairs solicited suggestions from faculty (this means you!) about the proposed change to the production policy (you’ll recall that that was push-back against Dianne Oaks and her officious ways).

Brett acknowledged that there seem to be some bugs in the Professional Development software. They’re working on ‘em.

Re Board Policy review: soon, the district will tackle the policy for the hiring of administrators and managers, which is badly in need of improvement.

If you want to suggest changes to the policy/AR for faculty hires, that will be coming up for review again also.

We talked about the college’s ridiculous “mission statement,” which is just verbiage cobbled together to satisfy the pinheads at the ACCJC, evidently. It’s crap, but it is necessary crap, I guess.

Kathy sang the praises of interim Chancellor Deb Fitz, whose been working hard on the Chancellor selection process, among other things, and seems agreeable to Kathy’s recommendations concerning changes to the aforementioned dean/manager policy.

We were told that at least one member of the Board of Trustees wants badly to be on the Chancellor search committee. According to Kathy, “everyone” said, not only no, but hell no, to that. (Of course, the BOT will be the one’s interviewing the final candidates.)

Apparently, Glenn held one of his “open forums” today (Thursday, the 29^th), and, as per usual, virtual no faculty showed up (well, maybe one or two).

Kathy reminded us that Glenn and crew really do want to know how they can improve these “fora.”

People made suggestions. I suggested that she tell Glenn that, in view of his pattern of violating process and repeatedly leaving faculty out of the loop, we naturally lack motivation to listen to him. She said that she’d communicate such sentiments to the fellow, and not for the first time.

Jeff came up to explain the recent change in ESL to include “Adult” ESL. That seemed OK, I guess. I noted the curious fact that regular ESL students are adults, and so it is odd to call these new courses “adult” ESL. Jeff said something like “Blah blah blah.” That’s all I got out of it. The way Jeff explained it, our regular ESL courses are “academic,” but these new non-credit courses are, well, non-academic.

“Migration” of Blackboard stuff to CANVAS is set to be completed by June of 2018. Is that OK? You’ll still be able to access your old Blackboard content until that date, but you’ll be using CANVAS by then, not Blackboard.

I think Kathy mentioned the OETF (?) and the CTE task forces. We were encouraged to make sure we get representation on both of these groups, even if we’re not directly involved with CTE, etc.

Nobody wanted to talk about revisions to the disciplines list.

We’ll be talking about Full-Time Faculty Hiring Priority List next meeting.

Re the resolution about the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges Resolution (see my recent notes): we went along with it, basically. (Minor changes.)

--roy 

September 15, 2016, meeting of the IVC Academic Senate Rep Council: Lovett to death

Many, many years ago.

The Sept. 15 meeting was largely uneventful.

Brittany brought up the Margot Lovett issue during public comments. Kathy S, Senate Prez, said she had had a conversation about it with Interim Chancellor Deb Fitzsimons, who was “very concerned.” Kathy noted that this seems to be more of a union issue than an Academic Senate issue. 

Expect exactly nothing to be done to support Lovett.

If anyone is interested in serving on the Cafeteria or Bookstore committees, let the senate know.

The senate needs Humanities reps for the CTE task force. There was pleading. Tears.

Nothing to report on Board Policy review

Ac. Senate VP Bob U asked us—that means you—to go through these documents: C1, C2, which concern resource requests and budget development. 

If you haven’t been funded, said Bob, reapply.

Brittany noted that, as things stand, it isn’t clear why some things are funded and some are not. Bob (or somebody) listed all of the committees and bodies involved in the culling process. Good grief. Talk to your dean if you’re having trouble getting funding, said Bob. “It is expected” that applicants will meet with their deans. 

Item 10: Re the budget: we anticipate deficits. There won’t be much wiggle room in the budget.

You’ll recall that Steve R has proposed a new “production policy” giving to faculty more control over the content of publications (ads, fliers, etc.). (The anti-Oakes initiative.) This proposal is now sponsored by his school, The Arts. In the end, the group decided to send the proposal to the Academic Affairs committee for review and needed modification. We suggested that the committee do its work quickly.

Re the proposal to add a Tier 4 to the Full-time Faculty Hiring Priority List Development Process: I do believe we approved this change for the time being. An effort will be made, however, to polish the policy further.

 

Re the “Final Exam Schedule” issue: we voted (18, 7, 0) to approve the change. Hence, we’re going back (in Spring) to the approach in which no special final exam schedule will be held at the last week of the semester. Exams will simply be given in the usual meeting times. (I do believe that Brittany and I were among the 7.)