President's Report September 2008

Meetings

I've had the opportunity to meet with VPAA Steinback on two occasions since our last Senate meeting. The bulk of our conversations have been related to the Accreditation Midterm Report. However, we did spend time on the inner workings and progress of the Basic Skills Initiative Committee. I am pleased to announce that VPAA Steinback has proven herself to be available to meet regularly with Josh Stein and Tracy Schnieder. (Basic Skills and SLO coordinators.)

I attended the BSI Committee meeting on September 8th. They have decided to adopt a new approach to the committee that includes submission and approval of written proposals for their different initiatives, the incorporation of data driven decisions and a general agreement to rethink how their initiatives are funded. Minutes.

At the Enrollment Management and Student Retention Committee, because they have been designated as a Review Group for Strategic Planning, they took a look at two different strategic development and evaluation form proposals, one for Math and the other for Umoja. These two proposals were met with general support. The committee also discussed a strategic proposal for student athlete success on Friday of last week. Because I didn't attend that meeting, I'm not sure how things went. Minutes.

The Board of Trustees has met twice since the Senate last met. Items of importance would include a call for community members to serve Superintendent/ President hiring committee, the proposed timeline for the S/P search, and the selection of VPSS Waits as our Intrim Superintendent/ President. Additionally, I sent an e-mail to the Board offering faculty input on the selection of a search firm and the community members for the S/P hiring committee. I received a response from President McCaffrey, assuring me that he'll bring these items to the attention of the Board. Minutes.

Brad Paschal and I got together to discuss Learning Communities and the idea of creating a Standing Committee of the Senate for this endeavor. Brad will come before the Senate soon with more details.

I've continued to meet one-on-one with Division Deans (Bob Johnson, David Redfield, and Maire Morinec) to facilitate communication with the Senate. These conversations have been very helpful to me so that I can get to know more about the issues and challenges facing the different divisions on campus. I think that I'll continue with these kinds of meetings and include the Vice Presidents.

Scott Ota and I got together to discuss the look and feel of our Senate webpage. We decided to reorganize things slightly to include links to the minutes of our different standing committees.
At
At FABPAC I was able to highlight concerns about our response to recommendation #7. The accute lack of faculty input on this response has brought home the importance of our level of committment and engagement in the entire accreditation process.

Correspondence

I've received a series of letters from the State Academic Senate. The first was about our ESL/Basic Skills 2007-08 Expenditure Report followed by one on the comprehensive set of guidelines for distance education in the CCCS. They provided a link to this Website. I also received information on the Disciplines List Revisions that included their proposal process, timeline and form. Later, I got one with general information that discussed the State Senate's publications, resolutions, awards, and institutes for next year. Lastly, I've gotten some information on State Academic Senate Board of Governors Nominees.

Accreditation Midterm Report
Erin Farmer has currently completed the fourth draft of the report. It is available on the intranet. VPAA Steinback has come up with a revised timeline . Of note is the request the Senate to see the report on 9/15 and to submit for action on 9/22.