Report the Board of Trustees

For the Word Version, click here.

Meetings:

Shared Governance Council: In the post-accreditation document meeting, most of the time was dedicated to reviewing Strategic Proposals. Our charge is to prioritize these proposals before sending them on to FABPAC. The question on most people's mind is how can we prioritize without information on available funding?

Superintendent/President, Dr. Lisa Waits: We had a discussion on the Accreditation document and the future organization of the Senate's Accreditation Committee.

Vice President of Academic Affairs, Dr. Robin Steinback: We discussed: 1) How the Senate might best appropriate Rob Simas' time to provide data and data analysis for BSI? 2) The availability to meet with Deans and Senate on Program Review and Funding. 3) How to best organize the Accreditation Committee. 4) Also, we discussed what I considered to be the poor choice of times for the the S/P search committee forums.

Basic Skills Committee: Priorities and funding
for their different plans and initiatives.

S/P Search Committee: The Committee membership received a thorough orientation about the process, confidentiality and timeline for the search.

Accreditation Ad Hoc Committee:

Draft Minutes:

Senate Business:

Joint Senate and Educational Administrators

• Full-time Faculty Hiring Priorities for 2009-2010
  
  • List Approved.
    
• Basic Skills Committee Update – Josh Stein
  
  • Under budgetary pressure (and in this, we are far from alone within the CCC system), we are trying to maintain the "seed money" side of the BSI process, meant to further experimentation, gather data, and then make recommendations for expansion of effective practices based on that data, while also shifting those sustainable changes out of BSI funding and onto other budgets
    
  • There is also a major effort in the beginning phases to concatenate and cross-connect other campus-wide efforts within a "Student Success Center" to be housed in Building 100:
    
    • Student-Athlete Study Skills Center
      
    • Independent Reading and Drop-In Writing Labs
      
    • English 350/355 and 370 Activity Labs
      
    • Supplemental Instruction
      
    • Workshops on a range of student-centered issues (e.g. CME prep, study skills, financial aid, review sessions, etc., etc.)
      
  • Focus on staff development.
    
  • Major challenges being worked through:
    
    • Coordination of unified campus-wide effort (not limited to BSI as other Strategic Proposal vetting groups have raised the same issue)—this will need to be addressed at the Shared Governance, FABPAC, and EC level.
      
    • Creation of more inter-connectivity between "traditional" basic skills areas and other "at-risk" areas on our campus. I encourage you to take a look at the intranet's listing of course grades for the last three years to see which courses historically produce the most numbers of F's, D's, W's, NC's and drops. The results are surprising in that they reveal just how embedded and endemic into all of our courses are basic skills issues.
      
    • Coordination of more inter-connectivity between Academic Affairs and Student Services (again, not limited to BSI—see the two points above). The hope is that as we expand First Semester Experience into a Pathways program (see attached graphic) and create unified support mechanisms outside of the classroom, that the organic interweaving will take place.
      
• Strategic Planning "The Big Picture" – Rob Simas
  
  • Division Deans could work in conjunction with the Academic Senate to better understand how this Program Review process works; there is not a clear sense of transparency, a lack of responsiveness to the work put in, a clear articulation of the function of Program Review within Divisions. These are fundamental problems.
    

    
    

Regular Senate Meetings (10/20 and 11/03):

1. Study Abroad Committee:
   
   1. The committee discussed procedures for study abroad submissions, their commitment to academic rigor, and the strong desire for students to have a positive academic and travel experience.
      
   2. The three programs they reviewed were 1) Spanish Language in Costa Rica {with Dr. Jeff Lamb}, 2) French Language in Paris France, {with Lorna Marlow-Muñoz}, and 3) Social Science 53 (Civil Rights; Non-violence and Race Relations) in the South {Karen McCord).
      
2. Met with the Accreditation Visiting Team representative: Dr. Ronald Taylor
   
3. Academic Senate and SCC Budget: The Senate will:
   
   1. Get better informed by having a representative from the State Academic Senate come to SCC
      
   2. Invite someone from our local finance office to speak to us.
      
   3. Request appropriate budget documentation from the District
      
4. New Treasurer: Thom Watkins from the Business Division will take over for Susanna Crawford.