Academic Senate Report to the Board

First things first…

Welcome to our new Senators LaNae Jaimez, Karen Wanek, Matt Borchert and Richard Kleeberg. Many thanks to those who formerly occupied those seats: Ferdinanda Florence, Deborah Kalish, John Nagle, Michael Goodwin and Thom Watkins. They will be missed and I thank them for having made the Senate better.

Also, we have a new Administrative Assistant, Ms. Connie Adams, who has begun to learn the ropes of managing the Senate. I am grateful that she is here and hope she enjoys working at Solano College.

Meetings:

I met with Dr. Laguerre, as the Senate had instructioned me, to discuss the eminent executive level reorganization. I did my best to summarize the questions, concerns, and positive feedback that I have received about his proposed change. I expressed to him that the College needs to see how this is "productive dialogue" and that it would behoove him to make manifest the ways in which constituent input is, or is not, influencing the nature of the final product. In addition to discussing the substance of the reorganization, I urged him to follow the form for change that the College has recently embraced in the Integrated Planning Process; the Strategic Proposal Form, as the vehicle through which he discuss this change.

 

In the Senate:

Reports:

Dr. Laguerre is becoming a regular fixture in Senate meetings. We are glad that he can make the time to speak to us.

Our Election Committee is moving forward with our election timeline and we hope to have a new At-large and Adjunct Senator seated by October 19, 2009. Additionally, we need to hold elections for a Vice President.

Information/Discussion Items

Dr. Lisa Waits, VP S.S. gave a report from her area; including a student discipline report, Academic Council procedures, revisions to policies and procedures 5300—Student Conduct and Discipline, and some recommended friendly updates to the Senate's Academic Integrity policy. This is all very valuable information for our faculty to have and speaks well to the Senate's 10+1 item relating to student success.

We have established task forces to address our Senate goals for the year. [Online Elections, Constitution/Proportional Representation, Enrollment Management, Accreditation Committee of the Senate]. In a move to model the Integrated Planning Process, the Senate will be using a modified Operational Proposal form as a means of planning and evaluating our endeavors.

When presented with a scenario in which an academic dean added a student to a faculty's class without consulting the faculty member, the Senate reaffirmed our commitment to faculty primacy in the classroom.

A response to a Board query:

I spoke with our Distance Education Coordinator, Sandy Rotenberg, and our Distance Education Committee Chair, Rennee Moore, and they have brought me up to speed on the concern about our proposed change in the catalog language would effect students:

1. First, the debate begins most recently with changes in Title 5 language that made manifest the fact that the quality and content of online and face to face instruction should be the same.
   

• (b) Each distance education/telecourse shall include regular effective (formerly personal) contact between instructor and students through group or individual meetings, orientation and review sessions, supplemental seminar or study sessions, field trips, library workshops, telephone, correspondence or other in-person activities. Personal contact may be supplemented by telephone contact and correspondence.
  
• Separate Course Approval. If any portion of the instruction in a proposed or existing course or course section is designed to be provided through distance education in lieu of face-to-face interaction between instructor and student, the course shall be separately reviewed and approved according to the district's adopted course approval procedures
  

1. Additionally, the Academic Senate for California Community College's paper "Ensuring the Appropriate Use of Educational Technology: An Update for Local Senates" adopted in the spring of 2008, mentions that the of Department Education has "red flagged" evaluation and assessment as one of six areas of concern regarding distance education.
   

• This means that exams and accountability are on the DOE's radar.
  

1. However; transcripts do not currently denote a class as having been taught online or face-to-face.
   
2. Finally, as Rennee Moore so aptly stated, "I'd like to add that administering an in-person final is optional. The faculty member may chose to continue giving the final exam online. As with face-to-face courses, faculty may choose to use different forms of final assessments (projects, papers, or traditional exam). In addition, faculty regularily make arrangements for students that have extraordinary circumstance that prevent them from attending the final exam. I don't expect that to change."
   

   
    

Other news…

The Senate office is being moved to the 400 building. By our next meeting, I think, we should be relocated.