Academic Senate President Report to the Board

Accreditation:

I wanted to thank Dr. Steinback for presenting the Show Cause Report to the Board on Monday. I needed to take my wife to the airport and could not make the Board meeting. I'm not sure if Dr. Steinback had the opportunity to share with you the incredible collaboration and hard work that went into the writing, editing, evidence collection and organization and printing of the report but in truth the fact that we were able to turn it in a day early is nothing short of amazing. To give you an idea of what I mean, we thought we had finished the report when Mr. Henry brought in Dr. Doug Houston on Thursday last week who basically turned our understanding of how to respond upside down. After thinking that we had finished, the working groups had to go back over the weekend (some groups working upwards of 20 hours) and revisit several key aspects of the report. In the meantime, the preponderance of evidence had to be organized, formatted, digitized, and hyperlinked. In a very short period of time our editor, Erin Farmer, had the unenviable task of bringing all the voices together. Of course it had to be printed and made available electronically. Watching everyone work so hard for a common goal was really something. I have even heard that the Board itself had something to contribute.

That doesn't mean that we don't have areas to improve on, quite the contrary. Next week well get together with the Working Groups to find gather input on the pre-writing, writing and post-writing phases. We are very much aware that this is the very beginning, not the end. I know that working group participants will have valuable input on what the College can do to "live the Standards". Because as I'm sure you know, while this report will hopefully get us off Show Cause, it most certainly will NOT remove ACCJC sanctions. I firmly believe that the Working Groups will have ideas that can be turned into action plans that will help us move the College to a better place. We must have our eyes on the future and continue to challenge who we are and what we need to do to improve quality teaching and learning.

Learning Communities

The Board will be proud to know that Solano Community College will be hosting the "California Learning Communities Consortium 2009 Curriculum Retreat" tomorrow through Saturday. Our own Brad Paschal, Learning Communities Coordinator, has been the lead organizer at Solano and has done a remarkable job. The brochure mentions, "You'll leave with concrete plans for Learning Communities implementation or expansion". Many of our faculty and staff will be attending and/or presenting.

Academic Senate Meeting

We have not met since my last report, so I have no news there. We will meet on Monday, so watch for more updates. On the agenda are reports from Study Abroad, BSI and Learning Communities in addition to plans for our tenure reception, faculty of the year award, and a discussion of the duties and responsibilities of Senate officers.