Solano Community College Academic Senate

President’s Report to the Senate

2010-05-17T13:30:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

FABPAC: Dr. Laguerre announced that on Monday the Vallejo Center was approved as a center by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors (BOG). As a result, the District expects to receive will receive $1 million for 2009-10 and the funding is ongoing. Chancellor Jack Scott commented that his first day on the job was at Solano College. Chancellor said that he's proud of the progress our college has made. Dr. Laguerre reported that the $1 million is allocated towards the Vacaville Center and at the next meeting we will bring forward some initial proposals for allocating the dollars. The District has essential staffing and service needs to fulfill for Vacaville like maintenance & operations, lab technicians, and so on. The Vacaville Center has been receiving $1 million since it achieved center status in the early 1990's.

The Variance Report: In FABPAC, several members indicated that the discussion on the report elicited more disagreement and discontent than was recorded in the minutes. The members had many questions and concerns about the report, the clarity and validity of the numbers, the disproportionate percentages, and were informed that responses were forthcoming. Jeff Lamb and Louis McDermott questioned expending exactly 75% of the year's budget. The report's variance numbers would naturally trigger a barrage of questions—how true are the numbers. Dr. Waits responded to the amendment comments by saying that VP Roth is currently intensely involved with Banner training six out of the last 10 days since the April 21 meeting. The short-term delay is expected to benefit us in the long-term. Generally, we would expect a response, however, it's her understanding that a definite date was not mentioned to respond. Last year's variance report format was provided to VP Roth, which staff is attempting to recreate. The comments will be shared with VP Roth.

SGC: In Shared Governance I provided a regular PERT and Accreditation update. We discussed the possibility of using the CCLC's Policy and Procedures numbering system instead of our own to facilitate the continual revision and editing of our Board Policies.

We further discussed some of the language in the 5000 series Board Policies and reviewed a new one, 1140, on Building Dedication Plaques.

Finally we received from Human Resources an updated ALG BP 4800 that reflects the changes in administrative structure after the reorganization and changes in the title and compensation of the Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs. The new title is Executive Vice President and there has been an increase in salary by $10,000. We were provided with a revised ALG salary schedule that includes a new step 53. Of concern here is that SGC had always expressed concerns about the workload and salary of this position. Dr. Laguerre downgraded it in order to make the re-organization more fiscally palatable. Additionally, the changes to the ALG salary schedule was not presented to that group.

PERT: The FABPAC provided helpful comments to the IPP:

Thoughtful discussion ensued on methods to help the proposer(s) know FABPAC's role and expectations in evaluating a proposal's budget. Comments and suggestions for PERT to be sent from FABPAC via Jeff Lamb include:

The proposer should have a list of FABPAC's general guidelines on what it will look for. FABPAC agreed to begin the work to develop guidelines for distribution. For example, because FTES apportionment is general fund revenue, should a proposal "claim" FTES as a sole funding source when these dollars already "hit" and are allocated in many areas? Example: A PE Program's funding is proposed to be offset by FTES. A student isn't taking only PE courses. Is there a rule of thumb on what percentage goes to the program or course and what goes elsewhere? What is the expected FTES offset?
We should have a fiscal services "fiscal review" of the proposal prior to the FABPAC committee review. This review would give the committee guidance on how the funding might work.
The Review Groups could play a stronger role. RGs look at existing programs and determine if it's a duplication of efforts and to make a determination of how the new program fits with existing programs.
Proposal needs to take into account the current state-wide budget climate—whether good or bad—to assess viability of passage and funding.
For example,
given the current budget climate, proposals should consider the state's focus on basic skills, transfer rates, and workforce development.
It is helpful if the proposer can be present at the meeting to answer questions and mitigate concerns.
One of FABPAC's charges is to identify potential funding sources, and when we do approve and fund a proposal, we have to somehow track all sources. Last year's proposals would be funded if there was money available—no specific budget was identified.

Additionally, we have been working on the metrics that accompany the Strategic Goals and Objectives.

Accreditation:

In FaBPAC, I expressed concerns that the work accomplished last year in creating the Special Report is in jeopardy this year in terms of accuracy on the fiscal side, vis-á-vis the Third Quarter Variance Report. Dr. Laguerre responded that this report was shared at the Supt/President's Cabinet meeting and they also had questions but there is an explanation for it. He noted that confusion arose because the 2009-10 budget was not set up properly—it was just rolled over. Categorical budgets were either lumped together or did not move over to 2009-10. Excel shadow spreadsheets were maintained to track budgets, rather than fully utilizing Banner. Training is the top priority so data can be extracted accurately, and staff is working very hard to rectify systemic issues. Prior administrators did the best they could with shadow systems—in the short run it worked okay, but in the long run it is not.

Events:

I represented faculty at the Vacaville Center Opening Ceremony and gave a small speech.

President’s Report to the Board

2010-04-21T17:17:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

Area B: I traveled to Lake Merritt College and participated in the Area B meeting in which we reviewed and discussed resolutions that would come to the floor in Plenary.

ASCCC Plenary: In addition to several great workshops… one that I presented at…J the Plenary is a time of giving guidance to the ASCCC through a series of resolutions. In the resolutions, of note, were several related to:

Support for the Consultation Council's recommendations to the ACCJC. (Resolution 2.03)
Plan to infuse cultural competency (Resolution 1.02)
Two papers on Equity and Diversity
The questions of transfer and articulation that Robin Arie-Donche brought to the Senate was referred to Exec. (Resolutions 4.04 and 4.05)
Opposition to Proposed Modification of the California Community College Mission (Resolution 6.01)
Chancellor's Office MOU with Kaplan (Resolution 7.03)

Additionally, I went to a presentation on CCC Assess. (This links to a 2009 doc that has some information but is not current). It is a system wide effort to provide a "centralized common assessment model". Meeting for statewide faculty input are set for May 7^th and 8^th.

In the Senate:

Academic Council: Dr. Waits brought to the Senate revisions to BP 5200 on the Academic Council that reviews petitions from students on matters pertaining to their academic performance, enrollment status or registration/withdrawal procedures. The Senate is always pleased to get information of this kind from the administration and Dr. Waits is to be commended for doing so. Of note in the revisions presented is the request that students provide documentation to support their claims and that the decisions of the Academic Council are final. (In the past, students were allowed to appeal to the Vice President of Academic Affairs.)

We received a Treasurer's Report. In addition to the budget allocated to the Senate we have monies that are donated by faculty to the tune of about $141 monthly. Our current balance on this account stands at $9,273.00. We will have a few expenses before the end of the semester still.

The Senate is at the beginning of our election process. Daryl Allen is chairing this committee. We have several openings: the Vice President/ President Elect, the At-Large Senator, an Adjunct Senator and a one year adjunct replacement. We have put out a call for nominations and should be holding elections in the coming weeks. I hope to present the new Senate President Elect by the last Board meeting of the semester.

Our Distance Education Committee reported that it has asked all divisions to work on departmental guidelines for online instruction to ensure that we comply with Title V requirements and ACCJC standards. Also, the committee discussed concerns over the excessive workload on our Distance Education Coordinator. While the number of students who login to online courses and the number of online sections has increased, the reassign time for the coordinator has not. The committee brainstormed possible solutions to alleviate the amount of work the DE Coordinator does.

One of our Math faculty members, Corrine Kirkbride, presented questions and concerns about cell phone use in campus buildings, especially around faculty offices. She is looking to create a board policy to this effect. The Senate provided some guidance and input on her proposal. It seems that, in the end, the District's current BP may extend to the areas she is concerned about. More to come on this later…

The Chair of our Distinguished Faculty of the Year Award, Thom Watkins, has put out the call for recipients of this award. Additionally, LaNae Jaimez has agreed to lead our preparations for the Senate Tenure Tea to honor those faculty who receive tenure this year.

Our representative to the Banner Committee, Richard Kleeberg, gave an update on the functions of Banner that are of interest to faculty, namely the Course Studio portion. It seems that there have been some changes in the committees that give input to the decisions around Banner and we are re-grouping, as it were. We expect to hear more on Course Studio in the near future. The potential is to have course web pages for all faculty through Banner.

Other topics:

I spoke with Dolores Davidson who is on the "Relations with Local Senates" committee. I've invited her to come to SCC for our last meeting of the semester to serve as a resource to our new President and Senators. She will be available on May 17^th from 2-3, be present during out meeting, and then be available from 5-6, if necessary.

President’s Report to the Senate

2010-04-19T11:05:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

FaBPAC: We discussed the three Strategic Proposals that the Senate reviewed some time ago. The discussion focused primarily on the feasibility of the budget associated with the proposals. It is important to emphasis that this kind of rigor is vital and an important function of FaBPAC in the Integrated Planning Process. Dr. Laguerre also brought forward news that the College has taken steps to have the Vallejo Center receive center status, meaning that we will receive 1 Million more per year to the general fund. Also, there is a good chance that we'll get a one-time payment of 1 Million for this year. We'll know more after May 3^rd when the CCC Board of Governors meets.

SGC: Of note was the discussion on the Board Policy 5000 series. For the most part, what was presented mimicked what Dr. Waits brought before the Senate some time ago. There some additional text added to the BP 5300 procedures. The following language what added:

"10. Mental Health Clearance

Mental Health clearance may be required before a student who has been disciplined for dangerous, abnormal or erratic behavior is readmitted to a particular class or allowed to come onto District property. The Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs (or designee) must receive a letter from a licensed mental health professional providing reasonable assurances that in his/her professional judgment the student will no longer continue the behavior which gave rise to the Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs (or designee) taking disciplinary action against him/her or that the student's continued presence on campus is not a threat to himself/herself or others. The mental health professional must be licensed by the State of California, and the Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs (or designee) must verify that the mental health professional is credentialed to render a professional opinion. The student shall bear the cost and expense of obtaining mental health clearance."

I've been asked if the Senate has issue with this addition.

DE Committee: Agenda topics included;

Area B: I traveled to Lake Merritt College and participated in the Area B meeting in which we reviewed and discussed resolutions that would come to the floor in Plenary.

Support for the Consultation Council's recommendations to the ACCJC. (Resolution 2.03)
Plan to infuse cultural competency (Resolution 1.02)
Two papers on Equity and Diversity
The questions of transfer and articulation that Robin Arie-Donche brought to the Senate was referred to Exec. (Resolutions 4.04 and 4.05)
Opposition to Proposed Modification of the California Community College Mission (Resolution 6.01)
Chancellor's Office MOU with Kaplan (Resolution 7.03)

Other topics:

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Senate

2010-03-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

SGC: Shared Governance got a PERT update, an Accreditation update (see below), approved the IRB Policy, a Banner update, and spoke at length about the Strategic Proposals. The final ranking of which was: 1) Pathways to Success, 2) TLC Re-Design, and 3) Add a Women's Intercollegiate Sport. Also, Dr. Laguerre made a commitment to have the Tutoring Center moved out of the portables by Fall.

S/P Laguerre: I gave Dr. Laguerre a report on our team's visit to the ASCCC Accreditation Institute. See comments below. We also discussed Distance Education at Solano. I mentioned that in September when we participated in the ACCJC training that DE was an area that might need our attention because it touches on so many standards. I also re-iterated what our current DE Coordinator, Sandy Rotenberg, had shared with him about the growth of online and the need for more support for that position. Dr. Laguerre assured me that he understood the value of DE and had asked Tom Grube to take the idea of more reassign time for the coordinator back to the union executive. Additionally, he asked that our Senate DE Committee begin anew its exploration into new Learning Management Systems. Lastly, we also discussed plans a preparations for this week's Board Study Session/ Dinner with Faculty.

Board: Of significance to the Senate is that all those faculty who were up for review and/or tenure were approved by the Board. Also, for some reason, the SunGuard contract was postponed until the next Board meeting.

Other Items:

Accreditation Institute: In general, the outing was very productive. Solano sent a team with two faculty, two staff, one student and one administrator. The sessions were informative and strengthened our knowledge of the accreditation process. Based on what we learned, what we might want to do is re-examine our Program Review process to ensure that it will stand up to ACCJC standards. We tend to use our Program Reviews and Three-Year Plans as internal planning documents that don't get a full public viewing or attention. It might be a good idea to see about using them as a way of having "productive dialogue about the College's strengths and weaknesses". Also, while we have taken strides forward on SLOs, we need to ensure that we extend program review and Service Area Outcomes (SAO) not only to the Student Services side of the house but also to Administrative Services.

Area B: We went over the different resolutions for the Spring Plenary that have come forward to date. There are some very interesting ones on transfer and accreditation. Consultation Council.

Spring Plenary: I will need to attend the Spring Plenary to take place in San Francisco from April 15-17, because I am presenting, are there any other takers?

ASCCC "Relations with Local Senates" Dolores Davison from Foothill/DeAnza College has offered a visit to our Senate in early April. I have accepted with the idea that it would be a good idea for an ASCCC representative to observe our Senate meetings and serve as a resource for questions and answers about the Statewide Academic Senate. I also thought that our new Vice President/ President Elect would appreciate meeting her and having the opportunity to connect with the ASCCC and to ask questions about how to run meetings and navigate the Senate. When there are firm dates, I'll let Senators know. If for some reason this does not seem like a good idea, please let me know.

Senate President Report the Board

2010-03-17T18:20:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

PERT: In the Process Evaluation Review Team meeting we reviewed one of the training video modules that Rob Simas and I produced on Operational Proposals, discussed the e-mail that Rob will be sending to $ALL soliciting performance indicators for our Strategic Objectives, and we discussed our systematic evaluation of the Integrated Planning Process to date.

Accreditation: As I mentioned in my Accreditation Update at the last Closed Session, I have held two informational meetings with the Accreditation Committee to give co-chairs guidance on how to move forward with the accreditation self-study this semester. My sense is that working groups have begun to meet and the campus has taken its first steps toward completing the 2011 Self-Study Report. Also, I have activities planned for the March 17 optional Flex Cal day. We had a nice showing for this work session today. Finally, there is a group of faculty, staff, and administrators who will attend the State Academic Senate Accreditation Institute this weekend. I'm sure we'll have plenty to report back on.

American River College: I went with Nancy Konecny and Susanna Crawford to American River College for a tour of their Learning Resource Center and to discuss how they have implemented their Basic Skills Program. We were able to glean some interesting insights that may inform our discussions

Distance Education: Rennee Moore has stepped down as the DE Committee for personal reasons and Dale Crandall-Bare has been selected by the committee to take over her responsibilities for the remainder of the semester.

In the Senate: This week the Senate met and had, as usual, a very full agenda.

Representatives from SunGuard came in to give us a glimpse of what a fully functioning MySolano portal might look like. In particular, Senators were eager to find out about the full range of services to available to facilitate communication with students. (Course Suites). Unfortunately, because while most of the services we were to see are "hidden" and not yet "turned on", the SunGuard rep was working from a remote server that had quite a few problems. The session served the purpose of introducing SunGuard to the Senate, but was not very informative. We do have plans to give it another try in the near future.

As the Board is aware, regrettably this semester because of budget constraints the College has had to eliminate the LD Specialist position and one of our faculty colleagues is being reassigned to another area. The Senate is always concerned about any possible steps toward Program Discontinuance that do not go through the District's approved policies. Our concern was that by eliminating a position there was the potential for a de facto elimination of the Learning Services Program. We had a very healthy and robust discussion of the topic. The Senate's position will be to ensure that the District follows its Program Discontinuance Policy. In our next meeting we are going to engage in the planned annual review of this policy to ensure that it meets our current needs.

The Senate will be holding a series of elections soon. The positions that are up for election are the Vice President/President Elect, one At-Large Senators, and about half of the Division Senator: Humanities Division, Math & Science Division, PE, & Athletics Division, and one Part-Time Representative.

Other items:

As Senate President I have requested faculty volunteers to serve on the FABPAC, the MySolano/ Luminus Committee, the Vallejo Expansion Committee, and the Equivalency Procedures ad hoc committee. Response has been strong for most areas. Mary Ann Haley from Cosmetology has volunteered for the FABPAC, Richard Kleeberg for MySolano, several faculty for the Vallejo Expansion and two reading and one DSPS faculty member for the Equivalency Procedures. I especially wanted to point out the Board the appointments to the Vallejo Expansion Committee. As I'm sure you recall this committee had no faculty voice and the fact that it does now is a very good step for the College.

President’s Report to the Senate

2010-03-15T12:37:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

FABPAC: At the Financial and Budget Planning Advisory Council meeting we reviewed and forwarded to the Board the "Proposed Facilities Use Procedures and Fees". I provided an accreditation update. We were also informed that the College would not be going forward with the $1.8 million SunGuard that would include the hiring of the Chief Information Systems Officer.

SGC: The Shared Governance Council meeting of March 10 had PERT, Accreditation, Institutional Review Board, Banner update, Dinner with the Governing Board, Strategic Proposals, Policy 5000, the Board agenda and area updates as agenda items. The IRB will be voted on at the next meeting. It seems that its approval is forthcoming. The Banner update included the information that the College was going to move forward on a two-year, $1.64 million contract with SunGuard to make the last "push" to get the College out from under the Banner rock. This contract will not include the CISO position. SGC was able to discuss the Strategic Proposal on "Adding a Women's Inter-Collegiate Sport" to SCC. We still have two other proposals to discuss.

Accreditation: I have held two informational meetings with the Accreditation Committee to give co-chairs guidance on how to move forward with the accreditation self-study this semester. My sense is that working groups have begun to meet and the campus has taken its first steps toward completing the 2011 Self-Study Report. Also, I have activities planned for the March 17 optional Flex Cal day. Finally, there is a group of faculty, staff, and administrators who will attend the State Academic Senate Accreditation Institute this weekend. I'm sure we'll have plenty to report back on.

VP ASA hiring committee: I wanted to let the Senate know that this committee has been meeting and is making good progress.

The Board: The Board Study Session focused on an accreditation update, an overview federal education budget changes, and the academic calendar. Additionally, they discussed Dr. Laguerre's proposal for the Board to dedicate future study sessions to discussions with faculty, staff and students.

Other items:

As I'm sure most of you saw, I sent out e-mails requesting faculty volunteers to serve on the FABPAC, the MySolano/ Luminus Committee, the Vallejo Expansion Committee, and the Equivalency Procedures ad hoc committee. Response has been strong for most areas. Mary Ann Haley from Cosmetology has volunteered for the FABPAC, Richard Kleeberg for MySolano, several faculty for the Vallejo Expansion and two reading and one DSPS faculty member for the Equivalency Procedures.

President’s Report to the Senate

2010-03-01T14:30:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

The FABPAC met on Feb. 3^rd and 17^th. The topics included a budget update, a discussion on programs that encroach on the general fund, internal controls relative to the district financial audit report, public records access request issues, and proposed facilities use procedures and fees. When discussion the budget, there have been some interesting comments regarding the inclusion of furloughs (a savings of around $500,000 for the District) and early retirement incentives (another potential $500,000 savings). As for the discussion on encroachment, the district "targeted" four areas (the theater, contract ed, community services, and SBDC) that encroached on the general fund. While these areas no longer of concern, the question remains about what other areas of the college encroach significantly on the general fund. This item has been on the FABPAC agenda for almost a year now.

The SGC met on Feb. 10^th and 24^th. The topics included: a report from the PERT, SCC's "legislative platform", information on accreditation, revisions to job descriptions, a discussion of the academic calendar, strategic goals, the need for coordination between hiring and finance via a staffing master plan, the Institutional Review Board, the introduction of several strategic goals, and a look at the Governing Board agendas. Dr. Laguerre put forth his steps to connect with our elected officials to further SCC legislative initiatives: a Higher Education Center in Vallejo, build a new Library with 50% State matching dollars, build a new Science and Technology Center, and a new Biotech building in Vacaville. We have been discussing the Dean of Academic Success and Learning Resources, the Chief Information Systems Officer and Center Administrator positions. The Calendar Committee has been working with SCFA to fix the academic calendar. The issue revolves around the week of Thanksgiving (and only having two instructional days that week) and compliance with the State. The suggested solution is to take optional days from the beginning of the fall and using them to take the entire week of Thanksgiving off… the problem would be that the Senate, for example, relies on the optional flex at the beginning of fall to meet. A solution is forthcoming. The IRB was presented for information and will be voted on next time. As for the Strategic Proposals that the Senate forwarded to SGC, they will discuss them at their next meeting.

The Board has met for a study session (Feb. 3^rd) and a regular meeting (Feb17th). The study session dealt with: a program partnership with Bay Area Clean Water Agencies, SERP (early retirement incentives), a budget update, a discussion on the Strategic Planning efforts, SunGuard Higher Education Presentation, and Emergency Protocols and Incident Command Center Update. Highlights from the regular meeting included the announcement from closed session that the Board has authorized Dr. Laguerre to issue layoff notices to one faculty position (the person will not be laid off but rather reassigned) and three staff positions. The Women's Soccer team and the Speech and Debate team were honored for their accomplishments this year. Also, Ross Beck presented the opening ceremonies of the Vacaville Center. Of note, too, was a follow-up presentation by SunGuard regarding a two-year contract for our CISO position and other support services that will take us to a full Banner implementation. This was a 1.8 million dollar proposal.

PERT: This group has continued to work on reconciling the former Strategic Plan with the new one. Additionally, they submitted a list of recommendations to Dr. Laguerre regarding ways to improve our Integrated Planning Process. The PERT is also discussing was of soliciting input from the campus community on the metrics used to evaluate our progress towards Strategic Goals and Objectives. Finally, the PERT will begin its annual review of the IPP.

Updates:

ASCCC: As I'm sure you all read in the most recent ASCCC President newsletter, the Chancellor's Office signed a MOU with Kaplan University. This was done without consulting the ASCCC or any other statewide groups. The blowback has been noteworthy. The end result is that post facto, the Chancellor's Office may hold meetings with ASCCC and other groups for their feedback. I received information regarding a local Senate Resolution on course section elimination in hard budget times from ARC. It seems that they have experienced difficult cuts without input from faculty. If it pleases the Senate I can present you with the ARC resolution and we can have further discussions at a future meeting.

Accreditation:

As we look to solicit more fully participation and leadership in the accreditation Self-Study, it seems necessary to provide an update on the organizational process to date and the plans for the near and not-so-near future. The goal of this document is to give you a sense of how we plan to move forward and how you fit into the large picture.

Where we are?

After our January Flex Cal training in which we used the wiki to facilitate a better understanding of accreditation standards and to provide resources about accreditation, we have a fairly good idea where faculty and administrators fit into the writing of the Self-Study. Cynthia Simon, CSEA President, is updating her list of which staff will participate where and will forward it soon. Ralph Myer, Local 39 President, will provide a list, as well. Nancy Blanc and Connie Adams have pulled together the sign-up sheets and those administrators who have been assigned to specific areas. We should have a comprehensive list for the entire campus shortly. We have also received the ACCJC response to our last Special Report. You can access their finding on the SCC website. In sum, they have eliminated recommendation seven on fiscal stability and we are on-watch for the other recommendations. While we still remain on sanctions, the good news is that the next Special Report won't be due until October 2010, one full year before our Self-Study. This means that they've given us one more extension on the two-year rule to resolve our deficiencies.

What's next?

In essence, we are moving ahead on two fronts; preparing for and writing a Self-study and responding to the ACCJC report with a Special Report with Visit. The plan is to keep these two efforts separate while at the same time ensuring that they are highly articulated. As for the October 2010 Special
Report, the goal is to keep those Working Groups related to the recommendations for which we are still on sanctions moving and writing. Look for an invitation to participate, but know that those faculty, staff and administrators who wrote the last response are on the task. As for the October 2011 Self-Study, there are some basic ground rules in place that might be a good place to start. Based on what we've learned since our 2005 Self-Study we know that writing narrative and collecting evidence is the responsibility of all employees. If you are in the Widget Department, expect to work on the area(s) related to your specialty. Deans and other members of the Administrative Leadership Group have participation in accreditation as a part of the formal evaluation. Expect to have accreditation on division agendas. All faculty who participate as a Co-Chair will not have to worry about optional flex hours for the next year and a half. These items have buy-in from Dr. Steinback and Dr. Laguerre.

Organization

We are in the process of creating an Accreditation Committee. The membership of which includes the Accreditation Liaison Officer (AL0), the Academic Senate President, the Director of Research and Planning, and the Editor (these individuals are the members of the Accreditation Steering Committee). Additionally, there will be Co-Chairs from each of the larger areas within the standards, eg. two Co-chairs for Standard I A, who are the additional members of the Accreditation Committee.

The Accreditation Committee will be responsible for providing input to the Accreditation Steering Committee and for reporting out to Working Groups, shared governance bodies, the Academic Senate, and the Board of Trustees. It will be asked to lead the College as we develop the Self-Study. This will include input on the pre-writing, writing, evidence gathering and postproduction phases. This group will establish and/or refine our timeline, expectations, and outcomes. They will also be a resource to the campus community regarding standards and "all things" accreditation.

Co-Chairs

The Co-chairs have been either selected or nominated by the Superintendent/President, the ALO, the Academic Senate President or the President of CSEA. In most cases they are a faculty/ staff and an administrator. Their job is to:

· Establish timelines

· Assign work

· Review narrative

· Ensure that evidence accompanies narrative

· Communicate and report-out

· Encourage participation

· Be available as a resource

· Use the wiki

· NOT do all the work

· NOT be an editor

In order to begin the process, co-chairs will be given a packet with the following resources:

1. Membership list

2. Timeline

3. Tracking Sheet

4. Style Sheet

5. ACCJC "Dos and Don'ts"

6. ACCJC rubrics

7. ACCJC "Questions to be asked"

Of additional importance as a significant resource for accreditation is that Dr. Laguerre has asked that we explore the idea of an Accreditation Self-Study Coordinator. This would be a one-year, 100% reassign time position that is to be filled by a full-time faculty member. This person would work exclusively on the Self-Study from the Fall of 2010 to the Fall of 2011. This represents a major commitment to the accreditation process.

Academic Senate Report to the Board

2010-02-17T17:43:00.001-08:00

Information/Discussion items:

The Senate is actively engaged in a discussion about electing our next Vice President/ President Elect. The issue is that we are out of sync with our elections and are debating how to move forward. It is highly likely that we'll hold an election well before the end of the semester.

Our Director of Research and Planning, Rob Simas, presented the Senate with partial ARCC
data and a first draft of the College's 500 word report. The data in the ARCC report comes from performance data that is aggregated at two levels—the individual college level (core indicators) and across the community college system (system-wide indicators). The system-wide indicators are based on peer groupings (i.e. similar size and distance to transfer partners, similar levels of academic preparedness upon entry). It truly is an apple to apples comparison. Our response is, and our numbers, are important because the State Legislature uses this data to make decisions about California Community Colleges. Our local Academic Senate Senator's will come back to our next meeting ready to report back from their constituents and provide comments on the ARCC report.

Dr. Laguerre had presented to the Senate a few weeks ago the idea of having the Academic Senate President as a standing member of the President's Cabinet. I wanted to ensure that the Senate was in agreement with this move. Our discussion showed that indeed the Senate approves of this move.

Transfer Center Coordinator Barbara Pavão gave a very informative presentation on transfer rates at Solano. Here longitudinal data supports that a growing number of students are transferring from SCC to both UCs and CSUs. I think that because transfer is one of the three pillars of California Community Colleges' mission, it would be a good idea for Ms. Pavão to give a version of her report to the Board.

Finally, I wanted to share with the Board the response I got from Dean Rota from Fine and Applied Arts/Behavioral Sciences regarding the elimination of courses in the area of textiles and clothing the Board was concerned about in a previous meeting:

"Many years ago (maybe 15) the faculty in Fashion Design and Fashion Merchandising retired. Their positions were not replaced and over the years we stopped offering most of the courses. We have moved the Textiles course to Interior Design and some of the costume related courses were moved to theater. We haven't offered the courses in these majors for more than 10 years and they should have been removed from the Curriculum during the last curriculum review. I took on the task of cleaning up several areas where we have no faculty and no courses offered (this is reflected in the Curriculum Committee minutes)"

Academic Senate Report to the Senate

2010-02-01T11:09:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

In Shared Governance, Dr. Laguerre was out of town so the Interim Director of Human Resources, Dr. Largent, chaired the meeting. We were given a draft job description for the Dean of Academic Success and Learning Resources. The position still lacks input from the Library, but in essence it is completed. A partial list of responsibilities include; library services, basic skills, distance education, and faculty development. What I have noticed today is that the original intent of the position was to spearhead the creation of a Center for Academic Success that oversaw the reading/writing/math labs and tutoring center. I'm checking now to see if this omission was by design or not. Dr. Largent also shared with us the tentative timeline for the VPASA and Executive Director of Institutional Advancement positions. Additionally, she shared that HR has spent about $7,500 in advertising these two positions. I gave a similar PERT update to the one Rob Simas gave to the Senate; recommendations and actions by that group. I also gave a quick accreditation update. The Policy 500 series was up, but Dr. Waits was not there to bring the item forward. I imagine that it would have reflected the Student Conduct policies that we reviewed earlier. What needs to go to the SGC is the Institutional Review Board and the Strategic and Operational proposals (1, 2, and 3) that the Senate has approved. They should appear on the next SGC agenda.

In the Financial and Budget Planning Advisory Council (FaBPAC), VP Roth led us through some highlights of the Governor's Budget Workshop. The District is working on scenarios for a 0%, 3% and 5% decrease in State funding in anticipation of mid-year cuts. The jury is still out on this because the Governor has even spoken of a 2% increase. According to VP Roth, the general consensus among those present at the workshop was that there would be somewhere between 0 -3% reductions considering the State of California is experiencing a 21 billion deficit. In the FaBPAC, there was a presentation on early retirement incentives called SERP. This item is going forward to the Board at its next meeting/study session. What we got was an overview of what early retirement incentives might mean at SCC. When you calculate out the total number of early retirements, not replacing them all with new hires or factoring in possible substitutes/interims/consultants/ or adjunct faculty… the district could stand to save 3 million dollars over 5 years.

I met with Dr. Laguerre and he has asked that I invite all senators to attend the first regular study session of the Board of Trustees this week Wednesday at 6:00. In a previous SGC meeting and then the Board took action on changing the general set-up of the Board meetings. Big changes include having Closed Session at the beginning of the meetings, reducing the number of regular Board meetings in favor of Study Sessions, and the addition of an information/action item spot on the Board agenda. The SGC expressed its concern about these changes noting that Closed Session at the beginning of the meeting is inconsiderate to the public because it is hard to know when they'll end, that study sessions are good they could potentially limit discussion as an item comes up for action and finally, that a combined information/action item might be a detriment to the reflection that having an item up for information then, a week later, up for action offers.

In the PERT meeting we reviewed all of the suggestions and recommendations that Rob Simas received regarding the District's Strategic Plan. The PERT considered all recommendations. Here is version 1 and 2. We kept our eyes out for items that were more tactical rather than strategic, items that were subsumed under already existing goals and objectives, and we tried to be as respectful as possible to the process and the voice of those who were asked to represent their area in the Strategic Planning Workshops. We did make several changes and Rob will be forwarding the final document back out to the College. If you've got a constituent who wonders why their idea or suggestion was not included, please have them communicate with Rob.

Accreditation:

With Robin Steinback out with a hurt knee we are without our "quarterback", as it were. I'm trying to play first string and bring all the pieces together. I am currently coordinating the list of faculty who have volunteered and looking for gaps. The immediate goal is to identify those who will be part of the Accreditation Committee; this means co-chairs, ALO, Senate President, and Editor. I also have been asked to identify a few faculty to participate in the ASCCC Accreditation Institute in March.

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-12-16T18:11:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

Superintendent/ President Laguerre and I met this week and had a chance to catch up on some housekeeping items such as bringing Strategic and Operational proposals forward to Shared Governance, sending faculty to the ASCCC Equity and Diversity Institute, reinstating the Senate budge, and the job description for the Dean of Library and Student Success. I think of substantial importance as well was Dr. Laguerre's commitment to include faculty in future discussion about the Vallejo expansion. He explained the current set-up and the need for a community based group (the Vallejo Expansion Committee) that would vet and then report out to an internal group that would include faculty voices. While this did not occur seamlessly this time and is a somewhat mute point since it seems this particular deal has gone sour, I look forward to working with Dr. Laguerre to appoint faculty to an internal group that as yet needs to be created. Having productive dialogue with effected constituents is vital. These are the standards of "institutional planning and institutional effectiveness" that we will live and die by (or rather get on or off sanctions for) with ACCJC. We also spoke about the College's continued commitment to build a new library. As I'm sure you recall, the Board passed a resolution on June 24^th (agenda item 8.a) in support of a Final Project Proposal (FPP) to build a new library and to renovate the theater basing its decision to go forward with the FPP relying on Measure G funds that we had thought the College would use as 50% matching funds. Since that time it has since come to light that those Measure G monies were already encumbered. I was glad to hear of Dr. Laguerre's strong commitment to "making it happen" and to not lose our place in the "line" at the state for this project.

Dr. Steinback and I have met to continue our planning for the next accreditation report. I know that she is on the agenda so I won't steal her thunder.

I was also a member of a TRIO grant writing committee with Joe Conrad, Erin Vines, Arturo López, Philip Andrieni, Jerry Kea, Rob Simas, Shirley Lewis, and Nora O'neil. The grant is designed to serve first generation, low income students. We are hopeful that our efforts will provide the funding necessary to serve these students at Solano.

Dr. Jensen was back on campus to give a workshop on enrollment management. As the College faces even harder economic times, understanding the relationship between enrollment management, the budget, and our ability to best serve our students is critical.

As Senate President I was asked to help lead the college with Rob Simas and Dr. Robert Jensen in discussion about our Strategic Plan (the mission, vision, core values, and strategic goals and objectives.) You'll be pleased to know that we were able to pull together both the internal and external groups and have quite a bit of information to synthesize. Without going into too much detail I would say that the discussions were very honest and direct. In particular with the internal group, those present were able to clearly identify the College's current strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats and then articulated some very self-reflective observations that lead to the re-vamping of our Strategic Goals. The external group, too, provided some very useful insights and perspective, at times in harmony and at times in conflict with the internal group, to the discussion. Our commitment to all of those present is to synthesis their comments and to report back out the "new and improved" Solano Community College Strategic Plan. (Many thanks to Ross Beck, Director, Public Relations, Marketing and Communications and Tracy Schneider, English professor and Learning Outcomes Assessment Coordinator). I would say, however; that at the end of the day, the work we did over the last week or so is the easy part. Solano is very good at making plans (ACCJC even commented on this) but what we are not so good at is implementation and evaluation. While the College should be glad that Dr. Laguerre made a commitment to follow-through in these areas, I think that the responsibility lies with the campus community. We should be holding ourselves accountable to do what we say we are going to do and then to continually evaluate our efforts.

Senate Business

The Senate held a special meeting with our educational administrators on November 30^th and then did not meet during our regularly scheduled December 7^th meeting.

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-12-02T17:54:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

I had an opportunity to speak with Dr. Laguerre recently and we spoke of the importance of institutional trust, accountability, and adherence to process at Solano. He was able to clarify for me some of the apparent inconsistencies in job "morphing" as we adjust to budget constraints and move toward reorganization and we did have an opportunity to speak more at length about the proposed Vallejo expansion.

Dr. Steinback: You'll be happy to know that while accreditation is no less important to Dr. Steinback and me, we have been spending our time talking about other important issues to the campus. The Solano is doing some internal recruiting for Coordinator positions for Basic Skills, Ethnic Studies and Humanities, preparing for the Strategic Planning Workshop, and continuing with our discussions about faculty hiring priorities. Of course, we are continuing to work toward our next Self-Study and are working on training opportunities during our Spring Flex Cal.

Enrollment Management: Dr. Jensen was on campus today and gave an informative talk on the nature and importance of enrollment management. He sends his regards.

In the Senate:

We had an extra-ordinary Joint meeting with Education Administrators for an hour to continue our discussions on Full-time faculty hiring priorities for 2010-2011. Working on a compressed timeline, Deans have sought input from faculty and are now collecting data to put forward requests to hire two faculty hires. The deadline for their faculty hiring reports is December 17^th. The Senate and the Deans will continue their discussion on faculty hires in our next regular joint meeting in January.

Also, fulfilling our obligations to the Integrated Planning Process as a Review Group to Strategic and Operational Proposals that speak to Quality Teaching and Learning, the Senate and the Deans continued our discussions on proposals.

We also continued our discussions in the Senate after the Ed. Administrators left to get a Distance Education Report from the DE Coordinator, Sandy Rotenberg. I've linked to her presentation but would like that because the report is so informative that it be presented to the Board in a future meeting.

The Senate received an update on our Enrollment Management and Election Procedures Taskforces. With Enrollment Management the Senate can expect to have a discussion with Dr. Steinback, gather up best practices for retention and persistence from a faculty perspective and then a resolution or paper on the topic by the end of the spring semester. As for Election Procedures, while I had thought the taskforce was deliberating on the possibility of online elections… they've decided to consider more "old school" ideas like staffing an election booth for Senate elections. The Election Procedures taskforce will have a final report soon.

President’s Report to the Senate

2009-12-02T16:39:00.001-08:00

As per the Senate's request, I had a meeting with Dr. Laguerre
on November 23, 2009

The major themes that I wanted to address were institutional trust, accountability, and adherence to process

I shared with Dr. Laguerre that Solano has had difficulty in the past because decisions had been made without a clear understanding of the particulars: rationale, data, evaluation, etc… around those decisions. I brought to his attention a series of recent personnel actions that raise concern at a time when Solano needs reliability and dependability. We have had Dean positions become Directors that go through Shared Governance but then when a Director position is changed to a Dean, it does not go through the process. We've had Executive Coordinators become Special Project Grant Writers when there is a Strategic Proposal for a Grant Writer/ Researcher position that has had to go through the Integrated Planning Process. In the wake of VP Field's departure the Interim CISO position goes before the Board and is filled while the other half of the VP of Technology and Learning Resources' job description, the Interim Dean of Library and Learning Resources, won't be filled until July. I explained that there is confusion among the Senate about where, when and how the proposed Dean of Enrollment Management will be filled. We need consistency and transparency.

I also shared with Dr. Laguerre the Senate's concerns about the Vallejo expansion. I passed along your concerns about following process, a lack of information (are there other alternatives to the current location?), input and buy-in by faculty. I mentioned the Senate's concern for how this expansion would affect Measure G prioritization. He did share with me that while the College had thought that we would be able to use matching funds from Measure G to build a new library, that money is, or more specifically, never was available. Our MG funds are currently around 15 million. When I expressed concern for the 1300 building, he assured me that that project will go forward. When I asked how buying a piece of property two city blocks from our current location, that is designed primarily for an automotive program we don't have at Solano, become a priority? He assured me that we were only looking into, not purchasing, the property and that there would be plenty of time for input down the road. I re-iterated our concerns for how this site and its potential programs would impact our current hiring practices. Finally, in regards to the Vallejo expansion, he assured me that nothing has been decided, that the Board is exploring options to potentially solve our "landlocked" status in Vallejo.

I was reminded of the words of Julia "Butterfly" Hill who said the distance between word and action is integrity. Solano must support its emerging process if we are to succeed.

The last item I shared with Dr. Laguerre was that after his presentation I believed that it would be good to have a timeline for implementation and a visual aide to clarify when changes will ocurr and who will be affected by them.

Our Distance Education Coordinator, Sandy Rotenberg, presented the following report during the last Senate meeting that I thought you might want to access here, too.

Academic Senate Report to the Board

2009-11-18T17:41:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

Reorganization Forum: I was able to attend one of the forums in which Dr. Laguerre shared with the campus community his vision for the Executive level reorganization. Those present were interested and inquisitive, asking several questions. While there are still some areas that are tentative, the proposal has taken shape and the campus is adjusting to the idea of future changes.

Plenary: I attended the Academic Senate for the California Community Colleges Fall 2009 Plenary session in which local senate representatives participate in break-out sessions and learn from each other. Additionally, the body deliberates and votes on many resolutions that guide the ASCCC throughout the year. I was able to represent the college by leading a discussion as a member of the ASCCC Faculty Development Committee.

Senate Joint Meeting with Educational Administrators:

Reorganization:

Dr. Laguerre shared with the reorganization presentation with the Academic Senate. There were several clarifying questions and a few good ideas that were shared. The Senate seemed keenly interested in the details in the organizational structure, in particular the scope and responsibility of the proposed Dean of Enrollment Management and that of Library and Academic Success. Dr. Laguerre laid out the timeline for our most recent hires for the Director of Human Resources and the Vice President of Finance and Administration as well as that of the other new hires within the proposed reorganization.

Full-time hiring priorities:

The process: At Solano College we have a faculty hiring process that ensure faculty voice while at the same time recognizes the contributions of our Deans and the "whole-college" view of our executive administration. Normally, in spring data is collected and deans solicit division faculty input. Then over summer the deans prepare a report based on data and faculty input. In the fall, reports are finalized and prioritized by deans and the VP of Academic Affairs. Finally, the Senate discusses with the Deans in our joint meeting this prioritized list that is then put forward to the Superintendent/ President.

The current situation: Last year, the college hired two nursing faculty and had one position pending. We experienced three retirements in 2008-2009 and now three more in 2009-2010. We are "down" a significant number of faculty. We recognize that these are difficult economic times, but I feel compelled to highlight that further reductions can have an impact ability to serve our students. It is vital that faculty hires come from our divisions. We should not let external forces entirely dictate faculty hires.

My comments become more important in light of the proposed Vallejo expansion that was mentioned, not necessarily formally presented, to the Senate for the first time. I am obligated to report to you that the idea of purchasing the former car dealership nearby generated much discussion. Senators had a myriad of questions ranging from how this purchase fits into the college's master plan and student needs to what has been done to research other facilities. If indeed we will use Measure G funds for this purchase, will we end saying to a particular constituent group… "we know that we had planned to redo your building, but now… there was this great deal…"

Solano College has recently been put on sanctions for a lack of productive dialogue, poor institutional planning, poor institutional effectiveness, and fiscal instability. Are we "living the standards"? We need to be on a track of consistency, transparency, reliability and integrity.

I know that Dr. Laguerre will bring about these conversations. I also know that faculty will be there ready to participate.

IPP and Strategic Planning update:

Speaking of planning, Rob Simas gave an update on the Integrated Planning Process and in particular the Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT). This group is meeting and moving forward to ensure that Solano College has the necessary analysis to fully implement our planning processes. Mr. Simas also shared with us the information I'm sure you have on our upcoming discussions to discuss our Strategic Plan.

Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-11-04T18:32:00.001-08:00

Meetings and Events:

Scholarship Foundation Awards Ceremony: I had the good fortune to be able to present awards again this year. It is a great pleasure to see our students and their friends and family come together to celebrate their success. The Scholarship Foundation Committee always does a great job and this year was no exception. In particular I wanted to highlight Dorothy Hawke's leadership. She has promised that even though she will be retiring this year that she will continue to work on this committee. (I wish she would also make time to continue to come to our FaBPAC meetings, but that might be asking too much!)

Flexible Calendar Committee: We are planning our Spring professional development activities around global citizenship. There will be an interesting keynote address by Peter Menzel around his book of photography, The Material World. Ron Zack, our photography instructor, was instrumental in bringing this renowned artist to the campus. Connecting to this theme as well is our citizenry in the College and our participation in the accreditation process. We will offer several workshops to prepare us for our next accreditation Self-Study. Many thanks to the Flex Cal Committee, and in particular Chuck Spillner, for their hard work. Chuck was highly motivated to complete this task because he goes in for hip surgery soon. Keep him in your thoughts in hopes of a smooth procedure and a speedy recovery.

Accreditation Visit: I had the opportunity to speak with both of the Commission representative, Drs. Nixon and Stephens. I think that everyone is in agreement that Solano is on the right track. Dr. Nixon was interested primarily in our campus dialogue and you…the Board. I assured him that while we have room for improvement that Solano is moving in the right direction. Dr. Stephens was primarily interested in the Integrated Planning Process (IPP). Solano should be very encouraged by its work in this area. Dr. Stephens mentioned that we had done such a good job that we should consider "franchising" our processes.

In the Senate meeting:

The Senate received its now customary report from Dr. Laguerre and then moved on to discuss the Student Services Board Policy on "Standards of Student Conduct" and the Academic Integrity Policy. Dr. Waits was present to walk us through the changes in the Board Policy revisions that brought this policy in line with current Community College League (CCL) language. Senate feedback, I think, strengthened the revised document by localizing it to SCC.

Within our new Integrated Planning Process (IPP) the Senate and the Academic Deans serve the Review Groups for Strategic and/ or Operational proposals that are related to our Strategic Goal #1, Quality Teaching and Learning. Because we are in the first year of the IPP this is the first time that we've had these kinds of discussions in the Senate. We reviewed four strategic and two operational proposals. I think it is a testament to the clarity of the process that Senators had a good idea of what was expected of them and how to address these proposals. From here they move on to Shared Governance, then FaBPAC, then the Superintendent/ President's Cabinet and ultimately to you (the Board).

Other thoughts:

The Senators from the Academic Senate wanted to extend their most heartfelt condolences to Board President A. Marie Young. We are saddened by the loss of her husband and hope that she finds comfort in the lifetime of memories his life has brought her.

President’s Report to the Senate

2009-10-19T12:42:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

Financial and Budget Planning Advisory Council: Items of note include the Green Initiatives Grant for $418,000, two workforce development grants worth $50.000, and the Budget was approved by the Board on October 7, 2009. Additionally, due in large part to Susan Rinne's determination, we have received $1.8 million FTES as a result of miscalculation recovery. Terri Pearson-Bloom sent out a very articulate e-mail on the subject that I've linked here.

We also received an update on the current categorical programs funding situation. There was a handout distributed showing the difference in categorical program budgets from 2008-09 to 2009-10 and it showed a total funding loss of $2.3 million. Another spreadsheet showed the categorical program budgets, the carry-over (if any), and total cuts needed for 2009-10 in Student Services.
The state created guidelines this year on what funds are flexible versus non-flexible. Because the state is allowing some transfers between funds that historically had strict compliance requirements, a public hearing is required at a Board meeting in order to approve transfers. In particular, this concerns the transfer of $227,809 from Matriculation into DSP.
VP Waits requested FABPAC's support of the proposed transfer and advising the college still needs to identify at least $178,663 to keep all categoricals whole for 2009-10. There was group consensus to support that FABPAC was informed, supports the proposed plan, and the transfer is appropriate. The topic will be on the October 21 Board Agenda. VP Waits thanked everyone for the endorsement.

Lastly, VP Steinback estimates we'll reduce 123 3-unit classes next spring. The Chancellor's Office is stressing to all colleges to focus on Basic Skills, workforce development, general education, and transfer –also support student services.

Dr. Laguerre presented information on the executive level reorganization. He used the same powerpoint that he had used in many division meetings.

Shared Governance Council: Items of note included: The topic of sections reductions for spring came up. SCFA President Tom Grube presented the union's concerns about how course reductions will affect adjunct faculty. My response was that while the Senate values our adjunct faculty, the Senate's role is to ensure that faculty voices are heard in the discussion revolving around the cuts. We are to make certain that the College participates in productive dialogue and makes cuts based on informed input. Because the Chancellor's office has presented its guidelines for cuts, I requested that the District present SGC with a report on which sections will be cut from which disciplines and how spring semester 2010 differs from a typical spring. I stressed that there should be a clear philosophy for making cuts that includes faculty input. Does the Senate want to offer a response to this? Should we create a "philosophy statement" on course reductions?

Bob Myers was present to discuss a Strategic Proposal on Women's Intercollegiate Sports. Unfortunately, SGC had not received the proposal due to a clerical error. We will discuss it in our next meeting.

There will be discussion in the next month or so on the College's Strategic Plan. On October 29th the PERT will meet with Dr. Jensen and then on November 12 and 13th there will be a campus forum and finally on December 4, there will be a community forum on the Strategic Plan.

Dr. Laguerre also commented that there have been some organization changes as a result of Jay Field's departure. A Chief Information Officer position will be created and Jim Ennis will most likely fill that slot. Also, there is a good chance that an academic Dean position, a Dean of Library and Learning Resources, will be created to run the Library, Distance Education, the Teaching and Learning Center, and perhaps tutoring. For the moment this will be filled with an interim but the end goal is to flesh-out the position even more to potentially fill the need that the BSI committee put forward for a center for academic success. This model would include reading/writing/ and math labs as well as the student athlete support under one roof.

We also briefly discussed the budget and got an update on the CBO, HR, and Curriculum Analyst position. They are all moving along well.

Legislative Education Project visit: The LEP staffers were here on October 13, 2009 and spoke to several groups on campus. They were interested in our thoughts on how the decisions that they've made in Sacramento are affecting us. They asked about BSI, accreditation, and categorical programs.

The Board: You can view the Board minutes here.

Other Items:

Accreditation: The visiting team from ACCJC will be here on October 29, 2009. The team will be smaller and stay less time on campus. I have continued to speak to divisions about accreditation and have thanked them for their contributions, advised them of a survey that is soon to be administered, answered questions about our current status, solicited input on how we are progressing, and invited them to participate in the next accreditation reports.

Appointments to Committee: I have asked for participation in a variety of committees. The response has been very good. We should be proud of the strong spirit of collaboration on campus.

IRB: I will be bringing forward to Shared Governance Council the Institutional Review Board recommendations that we approved last semester.

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-10-07T16:58:00.001-07:00

Farewells:

Vice President of Technology and Learning Resources Jay Field. I wanted to personally thank you for your time and dedication to Solano College. Long Beach City College is fortnuate to have you and Solano will seem a little less without you.

Meetings:

Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT): This group met for the first time officially and we reviewed the charge, scope and composition of the PERT. Additionally, we prioritized our first set of objectives for the year. We will meet regularly for the next few Fridays and then less frequently after that. I appointed Ruth Fuller and Tracy Schneider to this committee as senate faculty representatives. The Senate President is an ex-oficio member.

Accreditation:

The Report: Dr. Steinback advised us that the final draft of the report is available on the Intranet. I advised the Senate that there have been some minor revisions, so it is important for the Senate to read and ensure the final product is not substantively different from the one we approved last week.

Training: Last week Friday a team of Solano College faculty and administrators went to an ACCJC standards and self-study training. Because we have become, unfortunately, such experts on accreditation, there wasn't a great deal of new material. However, it was a good opportunity to meet some of the commission employees, ask direct questions about standards, and to come together as a team from SCC. Additionally, it was important to hear yet again that the Standards are not some arbitrary guideline established by the ACCJC in isolation but rather produced by us and our peers. I did receive an e-mail questioning why SCC was obligated to participate in the training. The answer is that we could have refused to participate. However, eligibility requirement 21 requires the college to maintain a healthy and professional relationship with ACCJC. Not going would have damaged that relationship.

Division Deans: I am in the process of meeting with Division Deans. My goal is to get feedback from them on the accreditation process at SCC, to see how they might contribute, and to on their division agendas to speak directly to faculty to answer any questions they might have and the solicit help for the next reports… especially the self-study in October.

In the Senate:

Basic Skills and Program Review. Dr. Steinback brought the Senate up-to-speed on the BSI coordinator positions that have gone through the appropriate channels and will soon be advertised to all faculty. Additionally, she presented a revised program review schedule that compensates for previous deficiencies and re-aligns this process with that of our accreditation self-study schedule.

Learning Communities. Brad Paschal reported that our Learning Communities Committee is focusing it's efforts this semester on PR, spreading the word about our LC courses and working to increase enrollment and faculty participation.

Working toward our goals: The Senate has established taskforces to achieve our goals for the year.

Election Procedures: Karen Wanek and Matt Borchert will be producing a report on how elections are going this year and then will pass that information on to Lou McDermott who will incorporate this information into his work exploring options for Senate election procedures.
Constitution/Proportional Representation – No report
Enrollment Management—LaNae Jaimez discussed the basics of this taskforce's plans to: raise awareness about the numbers associated with enrollment management, collaborate with other groups on campus to collect best practices for student retention and persistence, and report all findings at the end of the year.
Accreditation Committee: No Report

A question for the Senate?

We discussed a letter that Humanities Senator Lisa Giambastiani had presented from one of her constituents. In essence the letter poses the question, "Should faculty be obligated to sign the evaluations of their supervisors?" The Senate is currently discussing if this falls under our 10 + 1 obligations.

Other items:

The Senate office has been moved to 422.

President’s Report to the Senate

2009-10-05T10:01:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

Shared Governance Council (SGC): The Senate and SGC met to vote on the accreditation document. The Special Report was approved unanimously.

Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT): This group met for the first time officially and we reviewed the charge, scope and composition of the PERT. Additionally, we prioritized our first set of objectives for the year. We will meet regularly for the next few Fridays and then less frequently after that. I appointed Ruth Fuller and Tracy Schneider to this committee as our faculty representatives. The Senate President is an ex-oficio member.

Superintendent/ President Laguerre: During the "Presidents Meeting", Dr. Laguerre mentioned that the hiring committees for HR Director and the VP of Business and Administrative Services are moving forward. He announced that Vice President of Technology and Learning Resources Jay Field has taken another position at Long Beach City College. There was some discussion as to how to adjust for his absence. Of immediate concern is who will lead the IT Department and the Library. There were several ideas discussed, including the formation of a collection of learning resource areas into something similar to the Center for Academic Success that Butte College has. As details come forward, I will pass that along to you.

Accreditation:

The Report: Dr. Steinback advised us that the final draft of the report is available on the Intranet. Because there have been some minor revisions, it is important for the Senate to read and ensure the final product is not substantively different from the one we approved last week.

Other items:

The Senate office has been moved to 422.

Academic Senate Report to the Board

2009-09-23T18:11:00.001-07:00

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:

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

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.

However; transcripts do not currently denote a class as having been taught online or face-to-face.
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.

President’s Report to the Academic Senate

2009-09-21T14:13:00.001-07:00

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. You will be missed and I thank you 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:

Shared Governance Council (SGC): September 9th, 2009

The job descriptions for the Director of Fiscal Services and the Bond Accountant came back before SGC with suggested modifications. Board Policies 1070 Board Self-Evaluation and procedures to BP 2035 on evaluating the S/P came back for comment to the council. Members suggested that the Board broaden its self-evaluation and that of the S/P to include more input from all constituent groups and the frequency of the evaluations.

Financial and Budget Planning Advisory Council (FaBPAC):

This meeting was cancelled to allow for the joint SGC/ Academic Senate Accreditation meeting.

A conversation with S/P Laguerre:

I met with Dr. Laguerre, as per you instructions, 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. What should be the next steps that the Senate takes?

Accreditation update:

The second draft of the accreditation document is now up on the intranet. There are still a few holes… a few paragraphs and some evidence, but for the most part, it is complete. Senators and all groups on campus are urged to read it.

Other news…

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

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-09-02T17:17:00.001-07:00

Updates:

Accreditation: We have found an accreditation editor, Tracy Schneider, who we are confident will do a great job and are very pleased that she has agreed to take on this responsibility. As of today, all but one of the Working Groups have turned in their narrative to her. Working groups are still in or have already finished the evidence gathering phase. The goal is for the first completed draft to be ready by September 10, 2009. The campus community can view the completed working group drafts at the accreditation wiki (http://techlr.pbworks.com)

Administrative Assistant for the Senate: I'm pleased to announce that the Senate has found a replacement substitute administrative assistant, Ms. Connie Adams, who appears on your agenda tonight. She brings much experience and energy to the job.

Faculty Development Committee. I've been asked to serve on the ASCCC faculty development committee. We have our first meeting tomorrow in Sacramento.

In the Senate:

Reports:

Dr. Laguerre was not able to speak so he sent the new Interim Director of Human Resources, Dr. Trudy Largent, in his place. She updated the senate on the Interim CBO search and the permanent CBO search.

Information/ Discussion Items

Study Abroad Committee: Ferdinanda Florence, the chair of that committee, presented the proposed Study Abroad/Travel Abroad website (http://www.solano.edu/fine_arts/sats/faculty.html) The site will not only guide students who want to participate in a study abroad program but serve as a resource for faculty who want to propose a new study abroad local.

Distance Education: The chair of that committee, Renee Moore, presented catalog language that would precede online offerings that advises students that some of our online classes at SCC may require a face to face final that would be given at the college.

Executive Level reorganization 2010-2011: The Senate is discussing the pros and cons of this move.

Senate Goals:

Accreditation Reports and Standing Subcommittee

Enrollment Management

Constitution/representation

Online Elections

President’s Report to Academic Senate

2009-08-31T11:39:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

Financial and Budget Planning Advisory Council (FABPAC): August 19, 2009. VP of Technology and Learning Resources Field led FABPAC through ACCJC recommendation seven and sought input and advise on how to move forward. As you recall, FABAC is the working group for this recommendation. It was a very productive session and by the end the group had divided the workload and knew what to do. They will review the narrative for recommendation seven at the next meeting. Then, Judy Anderson presented to the group a new FABPAC calendar that incorporates and accommodates the important dates of the Integrated Planning Process. Finally, Dr. Laguerre communicated to the group that the budget forums held over the later part of the summer were well attended and produced many good cost saving ideas. He also mentioned that he had received from CSEA list of "34 things" that represented their ideas on cost savings. I've also attached here the latest version of the college's efforts to respond to our budget deficiencies, the "People and Things" list.

Board of Trustees (BOT) Meeting: August 19, 2009: 1) The College accepted a donation for $5,000 from the Chinese-American Association of Solano County and another $5,000 from CC Yin McDonald's to the SCC Educational Foundation for Students Helping Students Grant. 2) Dr. Steinback gave an accreditation update. 3) Dr. Laguerre informed the BOT about the budget forums. 4) Kitchell received an award for the design of the Vallejo Center. 4) The BOT approved the divisional reorganization. 5) S. Rinne gave a 4th Quarter CCFS-311Q report. The final word is that we will have a $1,077,000 deficit. 5) Dr. Laguerre announced the Student Budget Forum that will take place on September 3rd.

Shared Governance Council (SGC): August 26, 2009. Dr. Steinback chaired the meeting for Dr. Laguerre who could not be present. There was a lively discussion on two different job descriptions, one for the Director of Fiscal Services and the other for a Bond Accountant. This was due in part to the fact that the job descriptions were originally from the late '90s and needed to be updated and because the representative duties for the Director of Fiscal Services had been modified significantly. Other news included a change in SGC membership. Dr. S. Lewis is no longer a representative for management but rather for the Minority Coalition. We also reviewed and discussed our meeting schedule. Over the summer we had switched to a 1-3 timeslot and now need to move back to our regular 2-4 time. We also agreed to continue to meet over next summer. This is significant because even though most faculty are not here, SGC needs to be able to continue and we need to have a voice on what is being done while most of us are gone.

Updates:

Accreditation: As of today there I can say that all Working Groups have met and are in the process of completing their section of the report. As Dr. Steinback mentioned in her most recent e-mail, you should contact the co-chairs for their meeting schedules if you'd like to participate face-to-face or you can visit http://techlr.pbworks.com/. Also, Tracy Schneider has agreed to serve as the accreditation editor!

Basic Skills Committee: As you know, most, if not all, of the BSI coordinator positions are up for renewal. The positions are currently being reviewed by SCFA. I believe that they will be moving on them shortly. However, there are areas the Senate should watch. 1) There is a budget report due in October. 2) BSI has several initiatives planned, from last semester, that need to move forward. 3) There is a Coordinator Workshop on September 17th and somebody should go. [Funding for this comes from the BSI budget]. 4) The Senate might want to consider having regular non-coordinator representatives to this committee so that business can continue in times like this.

Integrated Planning Process (IPP): The IPP has been approved by SGC. Rob Simas has sent a request to the appropriate individuals for representation on the Process Review and Evaluation Team (PERT). Senate President serves as a standing member of this group and I've been asked to appoint two faculty members. I'm going to appoint Ruth Fuller and Tracy Schneider because they have been on the ground floor of the IPP since the beginning.

Hiring Committees: I've appointed Terri Pearson-Bloom and Thom Watkins to the Director of Human Resources hiring committee and Michael Goodwin and Adrienne Cary to the Vice President of Business and Administrative Services hiring committee.

Administrative Assistant for the Senate: As you might know, Christy Martin has found full time work at Travis Air Force Base. I've put through the paperwork to hire Connie Adams who will begin working on September 3rd.

Faculty Development Committee: I've been asked to serve on the ASCCC faculty development committee. Wish me luck.

President’s Report to the Senate

2009-08-31T09:59:00.001-07:00

Fun in the summer sun…

As I reported to you at the end of the spring semester, Dr. Jensen felt strongly about continuing to meet with Shared Governance Council and the FABPAC over the summer. Dr. Laguerre was of the same mind and so several of your faculty colleagues and I have been meeting with these two groups throughout the summer. I thought it prudent to give you an update.

FABPAC:

June 17, 20009

Budget:
1. Dr. Jensen gave us an update on the California State budget situation. A very informative update can be found at Community College League of California website. Of note is the push to fund Physical Education courses at .75%. The CCLC and the System's Office were opposed to legislators dictating how districts should do business the push now is a reduction in apportionment in an amount equal to the amount that the .75% funding of PE courses would have generated. This allows districts to decide for themselves how they will accommodate this reduction without being prescriptive.
2. At SCC, Dr. Jensen asked staff (certified and classified employees) to gather information on categorical programs. Because we look to suffer from cuts ranging from 13 to 57%, how does the college want to handle them? Do we limit range of services or limit offerings (do less).
Accreditation:
1. Mr. Henry, Dr. Jensen and Board President Young were able to speak to the ACCJC for 5 minutes regarding our updates since the Show Cause Report.
Enrollment:
1. Summer is up 30%. See Dr. Steinback's "College-Wide Enrollment Comparison"
SCC Budget comments continued: Susan Rinne
1. There are certain programs at SCC that are not directly tied to the General Fund and yet rely on it for funding. Such programs have been dubbed "co-curricular" programs, yet strictly speaking they are not. The Theater programs, Community Service, SBDC, and Contract are four such programs. These groups have been given a two-year window to attain self-sufficiency (meaning they no longer rely on general funds for their funding.)
2. FTES accounting error (1.8 Million). It is possible that some of this can be offset by:
  1. Recovery costs including Dr. Jensen's and Mr. Henry's salary.
  2. How to pay it back and how much that really is, is still in flux.
3. Perry Smith is doing a re-audit to find under-reported FTES.
Jensen goes to Sacramento
1. Regarding the over-reporting of FTES, he is asking for a mortgage-type repayment.
2. He discussed the Library and the Theater as being eligible for statewide refurbishment monies.
3. Vallejo Center used to need 500 FTES for Center status, now it is 1000 FTES.
4. Locally PGE/ Global Energy came to SCC to discuss $$ savings and grants for retrofitting.
The Library is eligible for State retrofitting at 100% funding (no matching dollars)
1. Also, if the State Construction Bond passes it would be possible to re-submit for 50/50 matching dollars to build a new library at SCC. The idea would be to leverage Measure G funds. It seems that the college was at the top of the list for a new library but a former S/P declined the project.
2. Regarding Measure G funds: With 45 million left, Dr. Jensen believes that it is time to re-evaluate our spending and has temporarily suspended all new projects.
Banner:
1. There was mention of banner, but my notes are unclear… sorry.
Strategic Proposal process
1. The Umoja proposal that made its way through the Integrated Planning Process was denied due to lack of year-to-year evaluation.

FABPAC July 1, 2009

Dr. Steinback reported on summer enrollment numbers.
Susan Rinne presented an overview of the 2009/10 Tentative Budget and advised that there will be 0% growth in 09/10. She said if everything the State is saying they are going to do comes to fruition, SCC will realize a $1.4 million reduction. Susan advised that, because the College has a budget, we will get our apportionment. It was noted that the summer FTES will count toward 09/10 FTE, but the Intersession goes to 08/09 FTE. Currently, the College has over 9,700 FTES. SCC is out of restoration and now in stabilization.
The FABPAC questioned the "co-curricular/ encroachment" list of programs that take from the general fund when they "shouldn't" and has asked that a full list of programs be provided so that we might better understand see ALL programs that encroach on the general fund.

FABPAC July 15, 2009

Susan Rinne ran this meeting and did a fine job!

Accreditation
1. Dr. Laguerre expressed his gratitude to all who contributed to the Show Cause Report.
2. Dr. Lamb gave a brief overview of the work he and Dr. Steinback have been doing over the summer to get ready for the next Special Report (due on October 15, 2009!) He discussed the results from the evaluation of the accreditation process from the spring. The full results can be found here.
Solano Budget:
1. S. Rinne passed out the latest version of the "Savings/Reductions/Revenue Enhancement" sheet (dubbed the "people and things" list.)
  1. She noted that nothing has changed except that Jay Field was able to negotiate a $150,000 reduction in the cost of the eCollege contract! This means that one more of the four or five jobs on the "watch list" is no longer a concern.
2. We were also given a copy of the SCC General Apportionment-Calculations sheet. While I cannot pretend to summarize her comments, but one thing is for sure, as Terri Pearson mentioned, it is clear that SCC is on a better track for transparency with budget numbers. Find the GA-C here.

Shared Governance Council

June 24, 2009

Dr. Jensen discussed some of the consequences of the division level reorganization.
Budget to the Board.
1. Little or no changes.
2. Three positions are still on the watch list. The college is using three delta points to check and re-evaluate these positions (July, September and January). Based on the settling of the budget, what happens with the "dirty dirt" clean-up, for example, the college will be able to decide if we can afford to keep our current staffing levels.
3. Tuition is going up from $20 to $26 per unit. This applies to those who have already registered and those who have received financial aid.
4. Cuts in categorical programs will most probably be mitigated by one-time stimulus package money by 50%.
  1. State mandates on categoricals are suspended.
  2. All categorical money is in the same "bucket". This allows us to prioritize spending.
  3. Jensen believes that lay-offs will occur in categorical programs.
5. Apportionment money will be reduced statewide by approximately 10% of WSCH. This is the response to the desire to reduce funding for PE courses by .75 FTES. SGC will need to decide how to deal with cuts. Should we cut from PE or spread it out across the college?
6. Jensen wanted to state for the record that the college can afford the contract settlement costs.
Accreditation:
1. The letter will be arriving soon (Monday or Tuesday)
2. It might be possible to fold the October 15 Special Report in with the Self Study.
Board Policy 6000
1. Reviewed and discussed but no action, no quorum.
Board Policy 2005
1. Jensen would like SGC to "stop, look, and evaluate" this BP to ensure that the college is living up to SB 1725 and the spirit of shared governance.
Rich Christiansen presented two revised position announcements:
1. Dean of Admissions and Record and Dean of Financial Aide. Both are being reclassified as "Director" positions.

Shared Governance Council

July 8th, 2009

On July 1, 2009 the division re-organization took place. Kevin Anderson, Minority Coalition representative, expressed concerns about faculty buy-in, logistics (CTE in 1800 and Business in 500) support, etc…
Accreditation:
1. Dr. Lamb gave an update on the evaluation of the show cause report.
  1. Feedback from SGC included comments on more convenient meeting times, posting minutes from working group meetings, a calendar of meeting times, and the need to celebrate accreditation status with the campus community.
2. Rob Simas presented the Integrated Planning Process for "conceptual approval" to SGC. He shared an overview of the process, the specifics of the PERT, and identified the next steps for the campus. He noted that the Nixon Report speaks highly of our nascent planning process and that gives us good reason to see it to fruition.
The change in job description for Dean of Admissions and Records and the Dean of Financial Aide were discussed. Lisa Waits will take the groups comments and bring them back to SGC in coming weeks.

President’s Report to the Senate

2009-05-15T10:48:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

I met twice with Dr. Laguerre. The first time was to discuss the roles and responsibilities of the Academic Senate. He was interested in when we met, how we are organized, the standing committees of the Senate, etc… He also mentioned that he would be interested in having a 5-10 minute permanent slot on the Senate agenda… What do you think?

Then last week he has asked that Leslie Rota and I co-chair his "transition team" over the summer. We met to discuss what this team would do. In essence he is looking for us to organize an internal and an external team that can inform him of the good work being done at the college and further define the community's needs. I think this is a great opportunity to highlight our successes and to begin to discuss our challenges. Senators, if there is a program/ person/ service/ or area that you know is an unsung hero on campus, let Leslie or I know. We want to put our best foot forward. Also, if there is that area where you know we can improve… pass it on.

At Shared Governance Council we discussed quite a bit, extending well beyond our typical meeting time:

Review of budget reduction process
1. Constituent groups presented philosophy statements
2. FABPAC prioritized
3. Delta points have been set for July, September and January for funding
Reorganization
1. As you've all seen, the reorganization is upon us.
2. Dr. Laguerre has participated in these discussions.
3. Members of Executive Council presented their plans for reorganization
  1. Academic Affairs
  2. Student Services
  3. Technology and Learning Resources
  4. Human Resources
  5. Administrative and Business Services
4. These changes are not presented as a "done deal" and Dr. Jensen has assured the committee (and by extension the campus community) that he is willing to meet "everyday, all day" to discuss viable alternatives.
5. Of note are the six classified/manager positions that are slated for lay-offs in July unless the numbers change.
6. One item that Dr. Laguerre mentioned was the future possibility of putting the library and distance education under Academic Affairs.
Of note, as well, is that Shared Governance and FABPAC will be meeting over the summer. While no "substantive" decisions will be made… Dr. Jensen has made it clear that the "train doesn't stop" over summer.
Dr. Rich Christiansen also announced his retirement effective July 1.
Bob Johnson has accepted a job at another college.
Senators, SGC has asked that over the summer, all constituent groups have a clear alternate. Is there anyone who will be teaching over the summer and would be available to go to a few SGC meetings?

At the Board of Trustees Meeting:

Dr. Jensen communicated to the Board the FABPAC's request to consider changing our current law firm.
We heard from our National Debate Team Champions,
Got a bond update
The Board gave special recognition to Student Trustee Brannen
They accepted Laverne Beverly's and Frances Mason's retirements
We heard a sabbatical report from Dale Crandall-Bear and Annette D'ambrosia.
There was also an informative budget report on the 311 Q.

Other points of interest:

With the budget reductions, there are not only people, but programs that are on the "watch list". From what Dr. Jensen has said, these are programs that are not doing well (FTES) and they have been told that there is a problem. While no March 15 letters were sent this year, it is possible that there will be some reorganization or discontinuances next year. We need to be very watchful as these actions unfold. While I was not here in 2003/4, I've been told that the way programs were discontinued was not fair. Our 3 year long discussion on our current Program Discontinuance Policy is a direct result of it.

There will be hiring district-wide committees in the near future: The VP of Administrative and Business Services and the Director of Human Resources. I want to assure you that as Academic Senate President I will ensure that there is faculty representation on these hiring committees.

I have given the letter to be sent to ACCJC Chairperson Gaines to Dr. Jensen to be forwarded. (All communication between the college and ACCJC must come through his office.) Here is the letter I sent. As you can see, I took out the parenthetical sections and I also read through Jeannette's comments. I've made some stylistic changes to create a tighter letter. (On GoogleDocs the formatting didn't come through.) Senators, do you think it necessary to draft a letter to SCFA or not?

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-05-06T13:12:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

On Monday, April 27^th, I met with Dr. Laguerre. My first impressions of him still remain true. He is a man of integrity who is planning on staying at Solano for the long haul. When he asked me what Solano needs from its new Superintendent/ President I responded that we need a strong guiding hand and that we would continue to need some of the leadership skills that Dr. Jensen has shown. In particular I mentioned that the Accreditation sanctions have put the College in a real position of change and that I was hopeful that he would be able to identify the healthier elements of change and to support them.

Accreditation Visit:

I met with three of the four ACCJC representatives. They were all very positive about the work we had done and in general were impressed with the steps taken to turn the College around. One of my messages for them was that there is much change afoot at Solano but that we still need time for the seeds of change to take root. I assured them that we do have a plan and are working for the betterment of the College. When asked if I thought that the changes we were making to "live the Standards" of accreditation would stick or not, I assured them that we have the will and the commitment to move forward. For me, it is not only about change but creating a living manual, vibrant processes and outlines, for change. When I think of our old planning models that led faculty and staff to go to the Board for change I know that our newly re-vamped Integrated Planning Process is one piece of the puzzle that promises a much more accessible and accountable means of change. At the end of the day, WE are the ones who will have to live the changes and hold ourselves, our colleagues and the Board accountable. The visiting team report will go to the Commission and Dr. Jensen will have a chance to comment on it for accuracy. We should have the Commission's decision by mid-June.

Senate Business:

Senate Resolution 09-02-- As a result of our earlier conversation in Shared Governance and in the Senate about the Board's Code of Conduct, the Senate has passed the following resolution:

Enrollment Management Trend Analysis-- In an attempt to better inform the Senate of the nuances associated with scheduling and enrollment management, I asked Dr. Steinback to present her most recent enrollment trend analysis report. Since it is apparent that Solano College will have to grow its way out of our current budget problems, I think it is important for the Senate to be as informed as possible about enrollment management. We want to be able to provide knowledgeable and informed input on decisions that affect quality teaching and learning.

Institutional Review Board—Rob Simas presented the final draft of a Board Policy and procedures for a Solano College Institutional Review Board. This Ad Hoc committee of the Senate worked over the semester and has produced a very concise and thorough document. In particular the committee wanted to recognize the efforts of Debra Berrett, Occupational Education. The Senate will vote on this item in our next meeting.

Plenary Resolutions –Robin Arie-Donch presented the ASCC recommendations from Plenary Resolutions that local Senates adopt and implement CCC General Education AP test equivalency list and the "Standardized Template for Advanced Placement Exam Information".

Constitution: We continue try and scratch out time to update our by-laws. I don't think we'll make it this semester.

Integrated Planning Process—In our continued efforts to "live the standards of accreditation", in particular Recommendations 2 and 3 on planning and effectiveness, the Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT) presented its most recent draft of the Integrated Planning Process for the Senate's conceptual approval. The PERT is looking to establish a timeline for approval and implementation of the Integrated Plan and know that over the summer we'll need to continue to move forward and since the Senate doesn't meet during that time, we need the Senate's tentative "go ahead" on the Integrated Plan.

President’s Report to Senate

2009-05-04T11:21:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

There hasn't been a Shared Governance Meeting since we last met but FABPAC has met. Dr. Jensen mentioned that the ACCJC visiting team thought that we'd made "good progress" and that we "got it". There was also an extensive discussion on the "Summary Budget Savings/ Reductions/ Revenue Enhancements" document. Areas to watch are:

Programs rely on statewide funds but in reality can encroach on general funds.
Community Service programs (Contract Ed, SBDC) will need to "chase money for their salary"
The EC will evaluate the most up-to-date numbers in July and then review them in September and January.
The FTES "oops" seems to be less severe, not 2.2 million but perhaps somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million.
- It seems that it may be possible to negotiate with the System's Office to establish a payment plan.
- We will need to add any payments necessary to the deficit.
- However; we are doing an internal audit to double check past FTES to see if we missed any under reported FTES to offset the deficit.
Dr. Steinback reported our current FTES situation looks very good! She will speak to this at Monday's meeting.
The items that are "on the table" for committees to discuss are 1.2, 1.16 and 2.9.
Dr. Jensen firmly believes that our Centers need to be "Cost Centers" in that what they generate in FTES should go directly to them, not simply into the SCC pot-o-cash.

Accreditation Visit:

Items for your consideration:

I have received a request from Shirley Lewis about graduation on May 22 at 7:30 PM in the Gym. She needs two faculty marshals and four faculty presenters. Any takers? Graduation is a great opportunity to celebrate our students' success.

Also, we have about $1,300 in travel and conference money available. Because we are currently in a budget freeze I asked Dr. Jensen about sending two faculty members to the Faculty Leadership Institute June 18-20. He has approved funding with the caveat that those who present would need to report out on their experience. Any takers?

Letter from the SCFA:

It would appear that the union believes that the Senate doesn't understand its role. The Academic Senate received an e-mail on April 29, 2009 from Tom Grubbe (SCFA President) on behalf of the SCFA Executive Board. They present concerns that, in addition to discussing our different roles, the Senate continues to discuss letters sent by CTA Attorney Joe Colton. SCFA presents that there are those on campus who would put a wedge between SCFA and the Senate. Additionally, they comment that SCFA has made it clear to CCA that they do not want the Association placed front and center in the statewide debate on SLOs and yet maintains that SFCA won't undermine CCA's efforts.

They ask that the Senate:

Modify the letter that we are considering to ACCJC Chairperson Gaines (giving us a copy with highlights and revisions they suggest).
Remove all reference to the 'Colton letter' from the Senate President's blog
Discontinue mention of this 'issue' in:
- Meetings and Communications with
  - the Board,
  - the faculty,
  - the public,
  - the administration,
  - and the ACCJC

If we don't agree with their recommendations they would like to set up a meeting our two groups and Mark Wade-Lieu and Ron Reel.

I am interested in hearing Senators' comments and thoughts on this topic. Today's meeting should be a good one to build consensus.

Academic Senate President Report

2009-04-20T13:30:00.001-07:00

There is not a great deal to report this time around so I'll keep it as short as possible.

Show Cause Report Post Mortem:

Dr. Steinback and I organized a discussion on the Show Cause Report. A group of about 20 people participated in the hour and a half long meeting in which the pre-writing/writing, evidence and action plan phases of the report were discussed. You can access the minutes at the Show Cause Wiki. I will be hosting more discussions through different online and face to face modalities this week and then meeting again with Working Group Co-Chairs next week to create a timeline and workflow to gear up for our next round of accreditation reports/work. We can expect another Special Report and then, of course, the Self-Study.

Shared Governance Council:

There was a continued discussion on budget reductions… we are on Draft V of the report. Here is a bulleted list of items that were discussed/requested:

Add a list of consultants. Who? And, how long?
Get soft bids on services of law firms for in-house legal services and categorize our current legal issues.
ASSC provided a list of budget reduction suggestions.
Dr. Jensen recommends that for any reduction to be seriously considered it must first pass through and Ad Hoc group that would study and rank reduction recommendations.
The goal is to move away from the "last in, first out" model of budget cuts to something that is more vision/efficiency/data driven.
There has also been a FTES reporting error to the tune of 2 million dollars in overfunding. Dr. Jensen is in discussions with the Chancellor's office and is pushing for a 3 yr payback.

Robin Steinback presented an Enrollment Trend Analysis. I would like for her to present these findings at a future Senate meeting. Part of her efforts focused on various measurements of class size and % Fill. The administration's goal is for the college to be at 525 WSCH/FTEF. In order for this to happen SCC will need to analyze high enrollment classes, compare ourselves with other colleges and establish benchmarks for successful programs, look closely at our scheduling, and Deans must closely monitor enrollments.

Dr. Jensen advised us that the five person ACCJC team would be coming on April 27^th. They will, as last time, want to speak to the Senate. There was also a rumor on campus that the wrong draft of the Show Cause and/or the Closure Reports were filed with ACCJC. This rumor is entirely false.

The VPABS job description was slightly modified to emphasize CPA experience.

Members of SGC were given a report on scheduling effectiveness from December 2003, "Recommendations from the President's Task Force on Scheduling Effectiveness." We will discuss it next week.

Finally, the letters that were sent from CCA/NEA lawyer, Joseph Colton, to Dr. Barbara Beno and those that Dr. Beno sent to SCC were discussed. I recommend that Senators who are interested in this item should check the SGC minutes and attachments. There are four letters to view (two from Colton and two from Beno).

A letter to ACCJC Chairperson Gaines:

I've got a letter that I want the Senate to consider that would be sent to Ms. Gaines as a way of preserving the "integrity of the relationship between ACCJC" and SCC. I'll bring copies to the Senate meeting today.

President’s Report

2009-04-06T13:18:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

Much like you would hope they would be, my meetings with Interim Superintendent/President Dr. Jensen hold few surprises in that what he says to me in a "one-on-one" he later says in Shared Governance Council, FABPAC and/or campus e-mail updates. He has made it abundantly clear that the only way we are going to get out of our current financial situation is to "grow out of it." He offers that the Senate might focus its energy and attention to retention and persistence, during Flex Cal for example. He has several ideas that I'll share below while reporting out on FABPAC and SGC about funding streams, enrollment, and growth. Also, as he mentions in his most recent campus e-mail update, there was a reporting problem with FTES and the College will have to take serious and immediate action to remedy the problem. He reports,
"FTES Audit – We recently had an outside audit of our "320 Report", reviewing multiple years, and it has been determined we have FTES that will be decertified. The number is being double checked by the auditors. The final report is expected shortly. This has two major negative impacts to our budget: 1. our base apportionment funding may be reduced, and, 2. we have to pay back the funds not actually earned from prior years. We have begun negotiations with the Chancellor's office to develop a plan to address both these items, hopefully over multiple years, to reduce the impact to our budget. FABPAC will be kept updated on this issue so contact your representative for details."
Accreditation: On Thursday, March 19 and Friday March 20, several of the accreditation Working Group co-chairs met with the Dr. Doug Houston, a consultant that Mr. Henry brought in from Lassen College. His comments were extremely helpful and provided for even greater focus and clarity. In my meeting with him we discussed not only the accreditation process but also the wiki (which he loved!) and the Integrated Planning Process. Then later on Friday, You were all a part of the Joint SGC/Senate meetings that occurred on Friday and then Wednesday to discuss and vote on the Show Cause and Closure Reports. I wanted to thank the Senate for its thoughtful and productive comments on the Show Cause Report. I know that the final product was more thorough because of your input. While the weekend of March 21/22 ended up being extremely busy for the Working Groups, the end product was better. I think that the wiki provided an opportunity for the campus community to have "continual and open" access to the report which I think made our vote to approve on Wednesday much easier. While I wanted to ensure that we had the opportunity to discuss any questions and concerns, I was grateful that the approval was so smooth.
Chancellor's Circle Luncheon: On Thursday, March 26, I went to this luncheon at Contra Costa College. I was able to hear Chancellor Jack Scott speak, meeting with local Academic Senate Presidents, and ASCC President, Mark Wade-Lieu. Of note was that when I introduced myself to Chancellor Scott he pulled me aside and asked about Solano and let me know that if there was anything we needed that his office was available to help. The discussion with other Senate Presidents focused primarily on Accreditation.
The Colton Letter: On Thursday, April 2, the Executive Board of the Senate (Past President, Gail Kropp, Treasurer, Thom Watkins, Secretary, Lisa Giambastiani, and I) was asked to meet with Dr. Jensen, Mr. Henry and the SCFA Executive Board. Even though the SCFA Executive Board declined the meeting (two SCFA representatives did come), I felt that the Senate should still go. As I'm sure most of you are aware there is a, as Tom Grube put it, the CCA and the ACCJC are having a "war of words" about SLOs, accreditation and workload. (An interesting ACCJC article on SLOs can be found here.) Regrettably, Solano College has been sucked into a statewide debate. The original Colton letter was sent on March 16^th (I have a copy but because SCFA decided not to share it with the campus community, I don't want to encroach on their decision) and since then there has been much activity about it. My first response was to speak to Gail Kropp, Past President, and then to Mark Wade-Lieu, the ASCC President. Let me share that e-mail exchange with Mark to you to give you a better picture things:

Mark,

I am writing to you for advice. Amid our efforts to write our show cause report (due, ironically enough, on April 1) we were blind-sided by CTA's Department of Legal Services. Their attorney, Joseph Colton, wrote a letter on March 16 to Dr. Beno as the "official counsel to Solano College Faculty Association" to "discuss and clarify various statements you [Dr. Beno] have made pertaining to…If the faculty do not adopt Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs), regardless of collective bargaining the college will lose its accreditation and close at the end of the 2009 Spring semester." As one might imagine, Dr.Beno replied that "[T]he ACCJC has not changed its expectations for institutions compliance with the standards that have to do with student learning outcomes…" This kind of State-level distraction has the potential outcome of putting Solano College in the middle of a very large conflict at a time when we are scrambling to be removed from sanctions.

What even more complicates the matter is that our Solano College Faculty Association (SCFA) President and the Executive Council of the union were not informed of the Colton letter and are equally up-in-arms. Compensation for SLOs is not even on their radar right now. I offered to sponsor a joint letter to our campus community and Dr. Beno from the SCFA and the Academic Senate denouncing the Colton letter. Our SCFA opted for a response just from his area. I have yet to see his official letter.

My question is what should I do as local Senate President? What kind of response should I make? I have copies of the letters I reference above and e-mails between our SCFA President and our College President and our Special Trustee if you'd like more precise details. This seems to have become a bit of a "pissing contest" at a state-wide level.
Best,
Jeff Lamb
Academic Senate President
Solano Community College.

Here is his response:

From: Mark Wade Lieu[mailto:mwlieu@asccc.org] Sent: Wednesday, March 25, 2009 11:09 AM
To: Jeffrey Lamb
Subject: Re: Solano College
I will be honest and tell you that I am not really sure what the best course of action is.

With the incredibly tight deadlines of the accrediting commission imposed on addressing sanction recommendations, colleges are incredibly tense, and this tension been detrimental to thoughtful and collegial discussion and responses to the recommendations. The involvement of the statewide unions (CFT and CTA) complicates the issue further. The situation is incredibly complicated for everyone, and getting embroiled in this situation with Mr. Colton's letter is not only a serious distraction but can disrupt the ability of the academic senate to provide leadership in your college's efforts to get off of show cause. So, reiterating my disclaimer in my first sentence, I think that you should allow SCFA to take this on by itself. That will allow you to focus on addressing the accreditation recommendations themselves and distance yourself from the more problematic discussion of whether or not accreditation standards are interfering with collective bargaining. I'm not sure that you need to issue any formal response - the fact is that Mr. Colton does not speak for your senate and did not do so.

That is my inconclusive reply. I have incredible empathy for what you are going through, and I'm sorry I don't have something more concrete or definitive to guide you in this difficult situation. However, I am always available should you need a sounding board to bounce ideas off of.
Take care.
Mark Wade Lieu, President
Academic Senate for California Community Colleges mwlieu@asccc.org

In Thursday's meeting Dr. Jensen and Mr. Henry expressed their concerns and shared the March 24, 2009 letter (page 1 and page 2) that Dr. Beno wrote to Solano College in response to Mr. Colton. In addition, while SCFA has asked Colton to clarify that he was not writing on our behalf, Jensen and Henry feel that there should be a direct response from SCFA to Dr. Beno. I know that SCFA Executive Board is considering this possibility. (You've all received the e-mail that Tom Grube sent to Faculty today, April 6^th, 2009).

Because one of the eligibility requirements for accreditation is maintaining a healthy relationship between institutions and ACCJC, I've asked for copies of Colton's "clarification letter" and any letter that SCFA might send to ACCJC. My recommendation is that the Academic Senate should let the Executive Board of SCFA handle this matter. All communication on this issue needs to come from them.

FABPAC and SGC:

For the most part, what has been said in SGC is being repeated in FABPAC. There is quite a lot of information so I'll cover it in bullet points:

ACCJC visit will be on April 27^th. This will be a four person team.
- Dr. Jensen's recommendation is that we "put our best foot forward"
- For him, this means don't complain unnecessarily and to take down union Coalition signs.
Dr. Jensen put forward a modified Budget Development Calendar because FABPAC is so far behind. Here are the original and the modified calendars.
There is a private auditor firm coming to SCC. Their report should be ready by the end of April. They will help to ensure the credibility of reporting docs from Banner and will do a Management Development Analysis. Based on the work they'll do the audit cycle should be easier.
Dr. Jensen also reported on the FTES issue he mentioned in his College update. The number attached to the over-estimate of revenue 2 million dollars. As he mentions he is in dialogue with the Chancellor's Office looking for "mortgage approach" solutions.
Also, he mentioned again the need for SCC to grow its way out of financial problems. Yet, he added that because there is a "culture of conflict" on campus we all need to "own the problem". Some ideas for growth included:
- Competency based Basic Skills
- High Tech/ Soft Touch approach to teaching
- Staggering Basic Skills to non-Basic Skills courses
- Checking Pre-requisites and pre-screening for success
- Centralizing BSI services to save time and money
- We need to engage our students in on campus activities and jobs so they stay here and take more units.
- He mentions the Ventura Promise as one model for us.

Learning Communities Conference:

We should all be proud to work with such wonderful colleagues as Brad Paschal and those who contributed to the success of the Learning Communities Conference 2009. I had the opportunity to be there for the first session on Thursday and was reminded, in these times of difficulty, just what a great place Solano is. Brad commented to me that he was worried that people might think that he was simply "rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic" with this conference. I think that he has nothing to worry about. It is BECAUSE of efforts like this that we will not sink!

Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT)

2009-04-03T12:59:00.001-07:00

Sal,

I am grateful for your interest in the PERT group because it shows the importance of understanding the "new" planning processes that are in the works that will help Solano take steps toward resolving the deficiencies posed in ACCJC recommendations one on productive dialogue, two on improving institutional planning, and three on improving institutional effectiveness. I say "new" because in reality the PERT is not new and dates back to 2004, but more on that below. One thing is for sure, Sal, we all know the pitfalls and inadequacies of "hallway" politics, backdoor deals and personality driven decisions on campus. The need for change is almost tangible. What we are obligated to do is leave behind, as ACCJC so aptly pointed out, our "Culture of Conflict" and look forward to an open, transparent, planning cycle.

As you know, Sal, I've only been at the Solano five years, so I might not have all the history right but I'll do my best to lay it out for you. Coming off the Show Cause Report, I've got some time on my hands. With that said, I'll have to combine your questions in order to answer them:

What process was in place, and followed, which led to the formation of this group? In other words, from where does this group derive its authority?
Were these positions open to all faculty members? If so, who determined who would be the individuals that would comprise this group?
Were these individuals appointed? If so, who appointed them?

In reality there are several parts to my response because the Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT) has evolved.

First there was the Strategic Plan Coordinating Council (SPCC) from 1996-97 (Armond Phillips, James Bracy, Sandra Dillon, Stan Arterberry, John Wagstaff, Willard Wright, José Ortiz and Rob Simas) that created the College's "Strategic Plan" and then the "Review and Validation of the Solano Community College District's Strategic Plan" in May of 2000. This is where our "Core Values, Vision & Mission, and Directions, Goals, & Performance Indicators" come from. The Mission Statement was last reaffirmed by the Board in June 2005. While there are no changes in any of these items to date, the College should recognize that they are due for reevaluation.

Then from 2003-05 there was the TASKFORCE ON PROGRAM REVIEW, PLANNING, AND BUDGET DEVELOPMENT: Gerry Fisher, VP Student Services — Willard Wright, VP Admin & Business Services — Jay Field, VP Tech & Learning Resources — Charles Shatzer, Assc. VP of Workforce & Community Development — Rob Simas, Director, Research & Planning — David Redfield, Dean, Math & Sciences — Shirley Lewis, Director, Student Development — Ruth Fuller, Mark Berrett, Nancy Konecny, Academic Senate Representatives — David Brannen, John Glidden, ASSC Representatives — Cynthia Simon, Janice Larsen, Classified Representatives. This group created the "Recommended Processes for Solano Community College's Integrated Evaluation, Planning, & Budgeting" in December of 2004. Inside of this recommendation is the first mention of the PERT.

Unfortunately, in the process of the 2005 comprehensive review and affirmation of accreditation by the Western Association of Schools & Colleges Accrediting Commission for Community & Junior Colleges (WASC/ACCJC) and in subsequent reports, Solano Community College was given recommendations to enhance its overall effectiveness as a regionally accredited postsecondary educational institution. Specifically concerning the College's program review, planning, and budget development processes, the Commission recommended:

General Recommendation 2: Improving Institutional Planning

In order to improve institutional planning, the College should clarify and simplify its terminology and processes used in planning so that the vocabulary is more easily understood and accepted institutionally, the planning processes are more integrated, and the plans actually get implemented. (I.A.4, I.B.3, ER 19)

General Recommendation 3: Improving Institutional Effectiveness

In order to improve institutional effectiveness the College should establish and implement a clear, systematic, consistent, and ongoing method of measuring and evaluating its effectiveness in achieving stated strategic planning goals and student learning outcomes. (I.B.2, I.B.3, I.B.6, I.B.7, ER 10, ER 19)

To begin the College's work on implementing these recommendations, the educational administrators attended several workshops beginning in the summer of 2006 during which various planning issues, models, and strategies were presented. In order to begin the process of implementing the Commission's recommendation, consensus was to adapt the goals from the College's existing Strategic Plan to follow the general format of the exemplary model developed and used by Cabrillo Community College (Aptos).

The College's original Strategic Plan specified seven "strategic directions," with two "strategic goals," each goal having at least two "performance indicators" specified. The current effort combines the original goals into one goal statement within each strategic direction, resulting in seven "strategic goals." Two new components have been added in order to provide more focus in our actions and feedback on their results: strategic objectives and annual targets to measure the achievement of these objectives.

Following the Cabrillo model, the College may focus its resources on one or more strategic objective in any planning year, but the data for all objectives will be collected and evaluated every year. For purposes of planning, the College has established AY2005-2006 as its baseline academic year. Where possible, data from prior years will be used in conjunction with the baseline data to establish annual targets for the College.

An integral piece of the 2006 model was the way in which strategies or action plans were to be proposed, considered in budget development, and evaluated for effectiveness. A form was drafted (again, based on the Cabrillo model) to effect this. The specifics of processes and timelines were put into practice for the AY2009-2010 planning/budgeting cycle. This was presented as the "Strategic Goals, Objectives, Measures, & Targets AY2006-07 through AY2008-09."

Even though the integrated planning process experienced a brief hiatus, the College has reevaluated this good work and recommitted itself to the integrated planning process. The PERT has updated the forms, process, and timelines to incorporate student learning outcomes (SLOs) and service area outcomes (SAOs), the Core Competencies for SCC's general education program, and our latest Educational Master Plan. This new "Integrated Planning Process" encompasses program review, planning and budgeting for both operational and strategic level proposals, feedback, and overall evaluation processes. (I've gleaned this information from several reports, primarily those mentioned above.)

However, Sal, you ask about authority. The timeline for this goes like this:

During the SHARED GOVERNANCE COUNCIL MEETING on January 28, 2004 from 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. in the Board Room the minutes reflect that, "President Perfumo discussed the structure of FABPAC, Strategic Planning Coordinating Council and how it integrates with program review and the budget. President Perfumo added that the accreditation self-evaluation starts in fall 2004 with an accreditation site visit to take place fall of 2005. Gerry Fisher and Rob Simas will co-chair a planning committee to address the integration of planning, program review and the budget and will invite representatives from various constituencies to participate on the committee."

Then, at the SHARED GOVERNANCE COUNCIL MEETING of September 22, 2004 from 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. in the Board Room, Academic Senate – Gail Kropp reported that, "three faculty members would serve on the steering committee for the Task Force on Integrated Planning, Program Review and Budget."

On October 20, 2004 the Financial & Budget Planning Advisory Council (FABPAC) discussed at length the Strategic Planning Flowchart: "Rob Simas explained that S/P Perfumo directed Rob Simas and Gerry Fisher to establish a task force entitled Program Review, Planning and Budget Development to establish a process flow to better integrate and unify all campus planning. He distributed a draft flowchart and timeline of the current planning process. The Task Force is now focused on Budget Development process flow and timeline. The Task Force needs to determine from FABPAC how the budget development process will integrate with the Program Review and Planning. Gerry Fisher explained the Task Force's mission is to clarify, simply, and integrate. It's attempting to merge the budget cycle into the plan.

Taken from the flowchart, the Budget Development cycle includes the following major components:

Budget review of current-year allocations (Aug-Oct)
Identification of possible external funding sources (Nov-Dec)
Review information from 3-year & other plans for future budget considerations (Jan-Mar)
Allocation recommendation for project funding (Apr-May)

Dorothy Hawkes expressed concerns that the flowchart seems to illustrate that Executive Council has a 'one-way street' to the Governing Board. Gerry Fisher commented that in FABPAC's roles & responsibilities, it's stated that recommendations are forwarded to the Supt-President. If S/P had revisions it would be returned to FABPAC with rationale why it was revised and/or rejected. Dorothy Hawkes asked how does 2004/05 priorities come in now that District has 2004/05 budget dollars. Gerry Fisher explained that District moves forward and establishes priorities, whether there's funding or not, during the spring for the next year. For example, the 2004/05 priorities now can be funded. Floyd Hogue noted there were Instructional Equipment dollars that were used to fund some of the 2004/05 priorities also. Current planning process: VP-Academic Affairs and VP-Student Services integrates its priorities, then get forwarded to the Academic Senate. Business Services & Human Resources plans come in. Along with way, FABPAC reviews the priorities, although no dollars are attached. District wants to revise the process so that budget development is integrated with establishing priorities from all areas at the same time. Jo Ann Smith expressed that FABPAC should get to see all priorities with projected dollars attached."

SHARED GOVERNANCE COUNCIL follows on November 10, 2004, 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m., Board Room, "Vice President Fisher distributed a document entitled, 'Institutional Initiatives for 2005-2006.' Vice President Fisher explained that the document was drafted last summer at an Educational Administrators' summer workshop and jointly reviewed by the Educational Administrators' and the Academic Senate. The Task Force on Program Review, Planning, and Budget Development is looking at the program review cycle. A recommendation coming out of this task force is to align our terminology more with what other community colleges use. The task force also recommended that the initiatives be called goals. The Council discussed initiative number five and the lack of soft skills for employees in the workforce. Employer readiness courses focusing on soft skills, as well as writing and math skills were discussed. President Perfumo added that this topic will be discussed at the upcoming Solano County Office of Education Superintendents' Meeting. Initiative number three, 'Provide competitive compensation and funding to recruit, hire, and retain quality administrators' was discussed. The Council agreed to amend initiative number three to: 'Provide competitive compensation and funding to recruit, hire, and retain quality administrators, faculty, and staff.' Vice President Fisher will take this recommendation back to the task force and report back to the Council.

The next week on November 17, 2004 FABPAC took a look at: "FABPAC Roles & Responsibilities:

Item was reviewed as it relates to the Strategic Planning Flowchart. Gerry Fisher explained how the District needs to integrate the flowchart with budget development.
Gerry Fisher stated that after the task force has finalized the flowchart process, it will return to FABPAC for final support to the process.
The Chair noted this also means the Roles & Responsibilities will get reviewed to make it work for the planning process. The Chair indicated we will form a subcommittee to look at this in closer detail after the strategic planning process is complete."

The Taskforce and its document then went back to SHARED GOVERNANCE COUNCIL MEETING on January 26, 2005 during which time "Recommendations from the Taskforce on Program Review, Planning and Budget Development –

Gerry Fisher explained there are three main strands or areas that interact and merge: budget, evaluation and planning. He emphasized page 9 of the handout, the flowchart visually displaying the three areas and the timeline and process. The entire planning process is delayed if the State budget is not passed on time. President Perfumo asked that everyone take the document to their respective groups and have dialogue about it. She added that workshops and forums will be held to help the whole campus understand the process. She requested that everyone critically review the document and ask themselves—how would we explain the process to, for example, an accrediting team member, as well as the public.
President Perfumo thanked the taskforce for their work on the draft, and particularly Gerry Fisher for his leadership on the taskforce."

Then back it went to FABPAC on February 16, 2005 for a brief moment, "Task Force on Program Review Draft:
VP Gerry Fisher continued discussion on the Program Review Task Force's draft." But on March 16, 2005 there is a more detailed account of the draft:

"Gerry Fisher reviewed the Program Review's timeline and explained that priorities for Administrative & Business Services and Human Resources will be eventually integrated with Academic Affairs and Student Services.
Floyd Hogue commented the 2003/04 Program Review was recently completed and believes there's a "missing step." The Review has a list of recommended initiatives, but it's not specific enough. He added that more discussion is needed on whether items on Three Year Plans get accomplished and not rely on Program Review to measure the District's effectiveness.
Bob Myers noted the Three Year Plans are very important to his area. Most, if not all, require funding and many priorities stay on year after year. However, it's a good way for him to visually see where he's at.
Fran Brown explained that from her perspective all of the District's plans are disjointed: program review, three-year plans, and the educational master plan. Much repetition takes place. She feels the "tools" she's given do not work.
Dorothy Hawkes echoed Fran's comments and further added that FABPAC, according to the Roles & Responsibilities, is included in making recommendations on priorities.
Gerry Fisher added that when he did his plans in OAR, he can tell what has been accomplished—it was clear to his area.
Bob Myers commented due dates for the plans are "staggered," and feels the three-year plans should be the "base."
Floyd Hogue noted that the three-year plan could be incorporated into the educational master plan to reduce redundancy.
Gerry Fisher responded that he will reconvene the task force and share the comments with them."

Finally, our 2005 Self-Study for Accreditation states, "[The] Task Force [on Program Review, Planning, & Budget Development] representatives reported regularly to the members of their constituent groups (Academic Senate, unions, educational administrators, Executive Council, ASSC) during the life of the Task Force. The Task Force proposed final recommendations to the Superintendent-President which were shared with and accepted by the groups' leadership. The document prepared by the Task Force is the basis for ongoing staff training."

It wasn't until this last year that the Strategic Goals, Objectives, Measures, & Targets AY2006-07 through AY2008-09 has actual been implemented. Our Show Cause Report 2009 mentions this process and the role of the PERT in the following way, "[I]n order to react and adjust to any issues or problems that came up as the College put its Strategic Proposal Process to the test, PERT solicited input from Review Groups (such as Basic Skills Initiative Committee and the Enrollment Management and Student Retention Committee), Shared Governance Council, and the Financial and Budgeting Planning Council (FABPAC) on the Strategic Proposal Process. For instance, when it became apparent that the Shared Governance Council needed better guidelines on how to proceed and a rubric to evaluate and prioritize proposals, PERT developed those documents [Evidence 1.26 Minutes SGC 10-08-08, Evidence, 1.26a Minutes SGC 10-22-08, Evidence 1.26b Minutes SGC 11-12-08, Evidence 1.26c Minutes SGC 01-28-09, Evidence 1.26d Minutes SGC 02-11-09, Evidence 1.26e Minutes SGC 02-11-09 Tally Sheet, & Evidence 1.26f Strategic Proposal Process & Ranking]." The great news is that the process is working and on February 25, 2009, FABPAC has evaluated, ranked, and moved forward to the Superintendent/President recommendations for funding.

So that's the first part of the history and timeline for the PERT group but there is another part of the story. It starts with the 2009 ASCCC Accreditation Institute that took place from January 23-25. Tracy Schneider (LOAC), Robin Steinback (VPAA) and I went to prepare for the accreditation report but came back with a clear understanding that while the Board and Mr. Henry would have to be the ones to solve Recommendations 7 and 8, the faculty had something to contribute for Recommendations 1, 2 and 3.As a matter of fact, the Academic Senate early on set as one of its goals for this year to better understand the relationship between it and budget processes. Aside from the "Strategic Proposal Process" there was no clear connection between planning and budget on campus. As a matter of fact, Sal, the connection between SLOs, Program Review, and Budget is barely negligible. As Senate President, one of my areas of concern is "processes for institutional planning and budget development". As I dug on the Intranet,I found the "Recommended Processes for Solano Community College's Integrated Evaluation, Planning & Budgeting" document. From our discussions in late January 2009, Robin, Tracy and I realized that we needed more participation so we spoke to Rob Simas, then a little later Ruth Fuller (an original member of the TASKFORCE ON PROGRAM REVIEW, PLANNING, AND BUDGET DEVELOPMENT) and then Dave Redfield also joined the group. As our Show Cause Report 2009 mentions, "To encourage broad-participation in evaluating the process [the integrated planning process], PERT presented the process to Shared Governance Council, FABPAC, the Academic Senate, and at an open campus forum. [Evidence 1.27
Minutes SGC 02-11-09, Evidence 1.27a Minutes FABPAC 02-25-09, & Evidence 1.27b Minutes Aca Sen 02-23-09]. (The Show Cause Report doesn't reflect the Joint Senate and SCFA meeting where the Integrated Planning Process was also discussed!)
The comments and insights gained by discussing the strengths and weaknesses of the College's planning, evaluation and budgeting processes greatly informed the final new 'Integrated Planning Process.'" While the PERT has not met during the madness of the writing of the Show Cause Report 2009, we do plan on continuing to meet. What we've realized is that we need a classified staff representative on the committee to help us out. I'll be talking to Cynthia Simon about this soon.

Also, Sal, please know that the PERT's current membership is really only more of an ad hoc group than anything else. There was such urgency to move forward that this was the best we could do. Additionally, the end goal is to finish this first draft of the Integrated Planning Process and then send it back through Shared Governance Council, FABPAC, the Academic Senate, and any other necessary body. After that the idea is to familiarize the campus community with the document and the process. This will mean training and a real openness to change.

I feel like I've presented so much, Sal, that I need to return to your original questions.

What process was in place, and followed, which led to the formation of this group? In other words, from where does this group derive its authority?

I've outlined the process above. I think it speaks to authority because in all instances, a Superintendent/ President or a Vice President has charged faculty, staff, and administrators to solve a problem. In all instances these dedicated people have reported out to the various shared governance groups on campus to gain further insights into their charge and to refine their products. I would also say that on the surface they "derive" authority from the Superintendent/ President, but in reality the ACCJC standards and most recently the Show Cause status of the College requires action. At the end of the day, we change or we close.

Were these positions open to all faculty members? If so, who determined who would be the individuals that would comprise this group?

I think the above documentation clearly shows that these positions were open to all faculty members and that Academic Senate Presidents were the ones who determined who would comprise these groups.

Were these individuals appointed? If so, who appointed them?

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean here. As you well know, Sal, because these committees, taskforces and the like take up a great deal of time those who participate are "appointed" but more realistically begged to contribute. The 2009 PERT group has met at least a dozen times and spent hours and hours on this project.

Academic Senate President Report to the Board

2009-04-01T18:45:00.001-07:00

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.

Academic Senate President Report

2009-03-16T13:50:00.001-07:00

Meetings:

Interim Superintendent/President Dr. Bob Jensen

I met with Dr. Jensen last week and we had a chance to speak about the overall College climate. As I'm sure most of you are aware, he is a very easy-going man who has the experience and expertise to help Solano College. He has the right balance of professionalism and accessibility that is very appealing. What is most reassuring about him is the way he affirms the values that faculty has been advocating for quite some time: transparency, accountability, and communication. In particular, his ideas on revenue generation over budget reductions are appealing. He recommends that the Senate take a look at the question of retention as a way of an enrollment strategy. This falls well within our roles and responsibility and ties in very well with what is going on in BSI. It seems appropriate that we further discuss this idea.

Vice President Steinback

I've been in regular contact with Dr. Steinback about all things accreditation. I know that Erin Farmer can communicate to the Senate our progress to date in this area.

Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT)

As per your request, I've continued to meet with PERT and we keep moving forward with the Integrated Planning Process. The document is taking great shape. At our last meeting Dr. Steinback was present and remains an advocate of this process. After our next PERT meeting I should have an almost complete document to pass along to the Senate. Many thanks to Rob Simas, Ruth Fuller, Tracy Schneider and David Redfield for all their hard work on this.

Shared Governance Council Report:

Dr. Jensen has made his mark on SGC by creating an environment of respect and accountability. He commented that SGC should continue to meet over the summer so that the College doesn't "stop" over the summer. He left it up to the group to define what that would look like, but strongly encouraged them to consider changing when we currently work.

Superintendent/President Search:

I am currently in the interviews and cannot make the Senate meeting today. Many thanks to Gail Kropp for her help today.

Academic Senate President’s Report to the Board

2009-03-04T18:34:00.001-08:00

Special Meeting on February 23^rd

Accreditation update:
- Recommendation 1 and 8:
  - In the process of writing the narrative and collecting evidence. Will turn in report on time.
- Recommendation 2 and 3:
  - In the process of writing the narrative and collecting evidence. Will turn in report this week.
- Recommendation 6:
  - In the process of writing the narrative and collecting evidence. Will turn in the report this week.
- Recommendation 7:
  - In the process of writing the narrative and collecting evidence. Will turn in report on time.
Integrated Planning Process Update
- The Senate was presented with the updated version of the Integrated Planning Process. The Process Evaluation and Review Team (PERT: Rob Simas, Ruth Fuller, Tracy Schneider, Dave Redfield and Jeff Lamb) has been working to update our planning processes. The goal is to produce a complete set of guidelines for planning, evaluation and budgeting.
FaBPAC proposed budget reductions
- Having been presented with budget reductions as FaBPAC, senate representative Gail Kropp, saw the need for the Senate to discuss any possible budget cuts and to create a philosophy statement. The document can be found here. The Senate is hopeful that FaBPAC will carefully consider any budget cuts before recommending action to the Superintendent/ President.

March 2^nd Meeting

Discussion with Dr. Bob Jensen, Interim Superintendent/ President
Accreditation update.
FaBPAC report by Gail Kropp
Faculty Resolution on Math Requirements by Joe Conrad.
"Faculty Senate Resolution
Whereas the statewide requirement for an associate degree has been changed,
Whereas the new requirement states, in part, 'competence in mathematics shall be demonstrated by obtaining a satisfactory grade in a mathematics course at the level of the course typically known as Intermediate Algebra (either Intermediate Algebra or another mathematics course at the same level, with the same rigor and with Elementary Algebra as a prerequisite, approved locally) … ,'
Whereas the faculty members of the mathematics department are uniquely qualified to determine whether a course is at the same level and has the same rigor as Intermediate Algebra,
Be it resolved that any course proposed for the fulfillment of this requirement must be approved for such by the faculty of the mathematics department."

Integrated Evaluation, Planning and Budgeting Plan

2009-02-26T21:35:00.001-08:00

At Solano, the Academic Senate made finding out more about the connection to budget and planning one of its objectives for the year. We had asked the Deans at the Joint Meeting with Educational Administrators about the connection between Program Review and budget. There was no answer. The Deans were just as frustrated as we were. The College was dinged back in 2005 for planning without implementing. It was also reported to us that we let our budget lead the college rather than the other way around, a bit like the tail wagging the dog.

For some of you the idea of an integrated evaluation, planning and budgeting plan is a foreign thing, something that we've never quite had a Solano College. I know that when Dr. Steinback, Tracy Schneider and I went to the ASCCC Accreditation Institute a few weeks ago, the last thing I thought I'd come back with was a strong desire to figure out our planning and budget processes, or the lack thereof. But that's exactly what happened. It seems that a lack of Budget Planning is a problem in many institutions. One of the session panels was all about it. I watched as Fresno City College, Cuesta College and College of Marin all presented their budget planning flowcharts. I knew that at Solano we had no such planning but when I got back to campus I started digging, digging for evidence that we had a PLAN. Many of you already know that my search was in vain.

At our College, and correct me if I'm wrong, I think that we "get" Student Learning Outcomes (SLO). I mean, we've begrudgingly come to the realization that we should spend time talking about what we expect our students to learn (that we actually learn something ourselves as we dialogue with our colleagues about it) and that it is only fair to our students that we spell out those expectations. We still have a little way to go, but we are well on our way. We also do Program Review pretty well. In the best of worlds it serves primarily as an internal mechanism to gauge our own progress and to set goals while in the worst of worlds it is an exercise in futility. We can also say that somehow our resources are allocated. We have paper, pens, computers and such, but the reality is that our SLOs, our Program Review (and not to mention 3 year plans) and our Budge do not intersect. They should.

What I did find was that while we do have a very well articulated Strategic Planning Process (remember, these are the cross-divisional initiatives that are connected to our strategic goals and Educational Master Plan [EMP]) we don't have an effective operational planning process. Faculty have submitted Strategic Proposals to Review Groups, Shared Governance has ranked the seven proposals we received and sent them on to FaBPAC. FaBPAC has now reviewed these proposals and has sent its recommendations on to the Superintendent/President. While it would be safe to say that not everyone is totally familiar with this process, it is safe to say that everyone has had it presented to them.

What I also found was a report embedded in the Intranet called "Recommended Processes for Solano Community College's Integrated Evaluation, Planning, & Budgeting" (aka Integrated Plan). The beauty of this plan is that it is an organic document that comes from within our processes and it meets our needs. But first, it is important to state that the ACCJC visiting team was not wild about this Integrated Plan because faculty and staff weren't familiar with it and the flowchart wasn't clear. It makes sense that faculty wasn't familiar with it because it was created in 2004, the ACCJC visit was in 2005 and there wasn't any training on how the process works!

What has happened since discovering these documents is that Rob Simas, Tracy Schneider, Ruth Fuller, most recently Dave Redfield and I have done our best to work on the Integrated Plan to:

Simplify the flowchart
Simplify the language used to talk about the process
Update the process to include SLOs and the Strategic Proposal Process
Create a manual to explain how the process works

Here are the documents that we've been using and working on:

The Strategic Proposal Process:

Listing of Strategic Goals and Objectives

SCC Integrated Evaluation, Planning and Budgeting Process (2004)

Please keep in mind that the Process Review and Evaluation Team (PERT), that's Rob, Tracy, Ruth, Dave and I, are working on the Integrated Plan and the process is still not fully realized. The goal is to be responsive to Recommendations 2 and 3 of the Show Cause Report.

Part of the goal, as well, is to keep the campus community informed of the Integrated Plan. I've given presentations on it to the Academic Senate (02/02/09 and 02/23/09), the Faculty Association (02/10/09), Shared Governance Council (02/11/09), FaBPAC (02/25/09) and a Campus Informational Meeting (2/19/09). We'll keep you updated as we move forward.

2009-02-15T20:30:00.000-08:00

I sent an e-mail to the Senate Presidents from Compton College and Lassen College in an attempt to get some insights into their experiences. As I'm sure you all know, Compton is now a part of El Camino College and Lassen just got off probation and is now on warning. I received a response from Saul Panski from Compton College and thought I'd share it with you. I had specifically asked him what it was like working with Mr. Henry as a Special Trustee and what they would or wouldn't do differently to get off of ACCJC sanctions.

Here is my question then his response.

Dear Sirs,
I have been trying to reach you both to get your guidance and input. I am Senate President at Solano College and we are facing "Show Cause" and have Tom Henry as our Special Trustee. I wanted to find out from both of you what it was/is like to work with Mr. Henry, how you've handled continuing to fight for faculty voice in the process of recovery, and what you've done that has worked or didn't work to move from your accreditation status.
Thanks,
Jeff Lamb

And now, Saul's response... (I edited out his personal contact information)

Have you actually been placed on "show cause?" I know you were waiting to hear from the Commission. This is extremely distressing to me, as the Commission means business. We went from "show cause" to loss of accreditation within four months.

Here is what I would say. Follow Mr. Henry's recommendations to the letter and show the Commission that all segments at Solano are working with him. He has the ear of the Executive Director of the ACCJC and as long as the College seems to be following his plan and guidance, I do not believe the Commission will pull the plug. He is your number one asset. He also brought Lassen back from the brink.

At Compton we found Tom to be professional and willing to work with faculty leadership. He respects faculty but has no real knowledge of post-secondary academic affairs (maybe that has changed with his experience at Compton and now Lassen) We worked with him to pass the partnership bill that allowed us to partner but he was just as ready to close us down if that bill had not passed. I have to tell you that he also never made us a promise that he didn't keep.

Here's the deal--neither the Legislature, the Chancellor, or the State Senate carry any weight whatsoever with the Commission. What the faculty needs to do is "admit" to the severity of the problems, work with Tom, and make sure that your Board and administration work together and in a conciliatory way with the Commission.

I want to tell you that I am confident that with the right strategy you will be able to pull Solano back from "show cause" to "probation" or "warning" and eventually back to fully, non-sanctioned accredited status.

The College also needs to reassure students that the institution is fully accredited and will remain so, to stop a possible drain of worried students (and moreso their parents)

If you think it helpful, you can also let Tom know we have talked. I think he has a pretty good opinion of me. In fact, the faculty at Compton was pretty darned grateful for his role in helping us survive the loss of accreditation, so grateful, in fact, that the Union and Senate Presidents went to Sacramento for his retirement dinner. Little did we know that he would be working even harder after he supposedly retired.

Hang in there!

Saul

Saul J, Panski
President, Compton Community College District Academic Senate
Chairperson, El Camino Compton Center Faculty Council
Vice President, El Camino College Academic Senate
Professor of History, Compton Education Center
spanski@elcamino.edu
panski_s@compton.edu
saulp@aol.com
310 900-1600 ext. 2560

Show Cause Special Report

2009-02-10T19:42:00.000-08:00

I wanted to provide an update on what's happened "relative to" the organizational elements of the writing of the Show Cause Special Report. Based on our past experiences, participation in the ASCCC Accreditation Institute and seeing what our colleagues in other institutions have done, we've come up with an organizational structure that we feel confident will work. Yesterday I met with Dr. Waits, Dr. Steinback, and our own Erin Farmer (Editor extraordinaire) to hash out the details of an organizational model that makes sense for us.

While the recommendations that need to be addressed, in essence the problems that need to be fixed, are not on the "faculty side of the house" it is our responsibility to be part of the production of the Show Cause Special Report. In the past, most notably the Recommendation 7 response when a single administrator produced the response, it did not reflect our college well. While administrative voice is important, it should not and cannot be the only voice heard. To meet accreditation standards the document must be produced collaboratively. It is in this spirit, this requirement, that we've decided to go forward with Recommendation Working Groups (RWG) that are loosely related to the ACCJC Standards. I hope that these working groups will be the foundation of institutionalizing accreditation as an on-going process at Solano College.

Each RWG will have two Co-Chairs. For now, one is a faculty member and the other is an administrator. In future accreditation reports, anyone from the four constituents will be encouraged to serve as a co-chair. The other members of the working groups will come from committees or groups on campus that are the principal stakeholders or agents of change for that particular recommendation. (Keep in mind that what we've produced represents our best sense of the recommendation and the related committees. Nothing is written in stone so if you've got a better idea, let me know!) Other salient points include:

All meetings are public and will be announced in advanced.
All meetings will either be organizational or actual "write-ins".
All progress will be recorded onto the Show Cause Special Report wiki. (The wiki is up, but not complete. It should be ready to go by Friday, February 13.)
CSEA has put forth a list of volunteers to serve who will be added to the list below.
Following the ACCJC Show Cause letter, the ERs are assigned within different recommendations.

Here is the way it looks today:

Recommendation One: Productive Dialogue

(Core groups: Superintendent/President, SCCFA President, CSEA President, Local 39 President, Board of Trustees President and Academic Senate President) Co-Chairs TBA

Recommendation Two and Three: Improve Institutional Planning and Effectiveness (respectively)

Co-Chairs: Vice President of Student Services and Tracy Schneider, LOAC Core group: representatives from Enrollment Management and Student Success Committee, Basic Skills Initiative Committee, Student Learning Outcomes Committee)

Recommendation Six: Staffing and Organizational Stability

Co-Chairs: Human Resources Director and Michael Wyly (if he's willing) Core group: TBD

Recommendation Seven: Reporting and Fiscal Stability

Co-Chairs: Vice President of Library Resources and Technology, Jay Field and Dorothy Hawkes. Core group: FaBPAC

Recommendation Eight: Leadership

(Core group: Superintendent/President, SCCFA President, CSEA President, Local 39 President, Board of Trustees President and Academic Senate President) Co-Chairs TBA

The Timeline, as indicated by Dr. Waits today:

March 9 -- Deadline for Working Groups Chairs to send information to Erin

March 19 -- Report Draft posted to the Intranet

March 20 -- Accreditation Summit (part I) from 12:00 to 5:00 pm with Shared Governance Council (SGC), Academic Senate (AS) and interested community participants

March 23 -- Accreditation Summit (part II) from 3:00 to 5:00 pm; SGC, AS, and others to approve the document.

March 25 -- Special Board meeting to present report as information

March 30 -- Special Board meeting to adopt report

April 1 -- Report due to ACCJC

What can you do? Read the ACCJC Show Cause letter. Read the "Observations of the Visiting Team Mid-term and Special Reports" (November 3rd). Reflect on ways you can provide evidence-based input. Attend the RWG meetings or add your evidence-based input to the wiki.

Accreditation Comments to the College Community

2009-02-07T14:29:00.001-08:00

Even before receiving our "Show Cause" letter, faculty and staff have been asking, "What can I do to help?" We all know that Solano College is a unique place and that we are all dedicated to keeping its doors open to serve the students that need it most. This blog report is designed to give you as many concrete things to do as possible. I'm also going to give you some links to accreditation documents and other resources.

Be a positive role model for your students and the community.

It would be easy to "kick a dog when it's down". Avoid the temptation. We best serve ourselves, the students, the community, and the accreditation team response if we admit that the college has had problems but that we are now actively engaged in a collaborative process of change.

Continue planning, working and doing what you do best… quality teaching.

The ASCC Accreditation Institute taught me that we can't let accreditation define who we are. We need to keep moving forward. We will have more self-study reports due and we can't simply say that all we've been doing is writing accreditation reports.

READ all communications.

This means e-mails and attachments, too.

Respond quickly to requests for information, evidence and assistance.

Time is short. Accreditation is our top priority.

Get informed.

We have to know the Accreditation Standards, our own Strategic Goals and Directions, our SLO Core Four, and be familiar with our Education Master Plan.

Live the Standards.

Take a moment to self-reflect. What is it that you do and how does it relate to our overarching values. (See documents above). This is not only in your class but SLOs, department, divisional, and committee work.

Collect evidence.

How could you "prove" that you are living the standards?

Offer help

Complete your SLOs, SAOs, and LOAs.

Collect your SLOs and LOAs and put them in a single, easy-to-get-to place on your computer. When the ACCJC team comes we want to be able to say that all faculty has them "at their fingertips".
Put your course-level SLOs on your course syllabus.
Consider SLOs and what you've learned as you've worked on them as you produce your Program Reviews and 3 Year Plans.
The "Observations of the Visiting Team" mentions, "[T]he visiting team confirmed that Solano Community College has established components of an institutional planning and evaluation process for the development of the college, but has not fully implemented a process for the assessment of student learning outcomes to measure student achievement of educational goals."
Specifically, the same report mentions, "Under SLO's (II.3), a thorough explanation of the use of advisory committees for vocational learning outcomes demonstrates the college's commitment to serious quality control and updating curriculum, but the absence of any comment on the work of the Computer Technology Division is conspicuous".

Know that some of our processes are GOING to change.

We need to work in an environment of data, a culture of evidence. Our future decisions cannot be made simply because they "sound" good, but rather are the result of clear planning.

Provide constructive criticism.

Simply knowing that something didn't work before isn't helpful. How can it be modified to work today?

Attend the all College forum with Dr. Beno on February 20^th at 4:00 PM.

When working with the Wikis, give evidence with your narrative.

Unsubstantiated comments are worthless.

Erin Farmer forwarded the following suggestions to me:

As part of our evidence-gathering, we might designate someone from each committee (ad hoc and standing) to review minutes for items of discussion and action that address the recommendations and organize the evidence according to topic. If I can get that information right away, I can write the narrative from the evidence, which is how it should go anyway. That is the evidence should guide what we say--this will ensure that the evidence actually supports our claims.
In addition, we should probably incorporate information that was not submitted in the last report--things we have been doing, but no one mentioned. And I know that there is some substantial material. I am guilty of failing to contribute some things. I was so busy working on the drafts that I neglected to discuss some accomplishments in the online program--curriculum approval, contract clarification, and training.
All faculty should be encouraged to examine the recommendations about dialogue and evaluation of effectiveness as they concern student learning and discuss work in their areas that enhances student learning.
Finally, I was thinking that the community needs more tangible (than news articles/press releases) reassurance that the educational quality of SCC is as fine as ever--we need to keep enrollment through this difficult time. Perhaps a faculty team could conduct community forums to explain what we are doing well at the college. People respond best to in-person outreach. Ideally, we might rally the communities of Vallejo, Fairfield, Dixon, Vacaville to help us.

Here are some helpful links:

Core 4: http://www.solano.edu/slo/general_docs/SCC_Core_Competencies_rev2.doc
Accreditation Standards: http://www.accjc.org/pdf/Accreditation_Reference_Manual_August_2008.pdf (See pp. 13 – 35.)
Educational Master Plan: http://www.solano.edu/news/EMP/
Strategic Goals: http://www.solano.edu/president/district_plans/SCCStrategicGoalsObjectivesMeasuresTargets.pdf

Our Superintendent/President, Dr. Lisa Waits asks you to…

Continue to do good work with students for their success
Read and understand the ACCJC standards in general and the ACCJC letter specifically
Begin to relate your work to the standards – how do you know what you are doing makes a difference? What is the evidence?
Make your decisions based on evidence.
Track your evidence – e.g. make sure that the committee/meeting you are a part of takes minutes, that the minutes are reviewed and approved.
Make sure that the evidence of your work and decision making is appropriately recorded with the standards
Once the wiki is up, participate.
Stay engaged. Read your e-mails, attend committee meetings and respond to requests. Your dean/supervisor needs your support and will be asking you to complete reports, attend meetings, have coffeeJ
Be positive with students and the public. Acknowledge that we are working on these issues, but move away from the blame game. Focus on what we are doing and do it. Remember, nothing is off the record and when you are having conversations, you are influencing people's perception of the College.
Read Jeff Lamb's blog and other's ideas about what to do. Information can flow several ways through the institution. Good ideas and good work is everywhere. Have initiative.

Senate President Report to the Board

2009-02-04T16:51:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

Shared Governance Council:

We are poised to prioritize and move forward to FaBPAC seven strategic proposals. The value of this is that we are at the tail end of a planning and budget process that seems to be working. From a faculty perspective having a "grassroots" proposal move from idea to fruition will mean a great deal.

FaBPAC: The first meeting was cancelled but they did meet today, unfortunately I was in a Press Conference speaking about the ACCJC letter.

Reports:

ASCCC Accreditation Institute: In general the conference was very informative and allowed for some great brainstorming. While the Institute didn't give us a "magic bullet" for our accreditation woes, it did serve as a vehicle to see what the Standards are, what other institutions are doing, and what we might do as an institution. The Senate's role in accreditation is to ensure faculty participation in the accreditation document. It is our responsibility to "live the standards". What became clear during the institute as well is that while we thought we'd have a year from receiving notice of our status from the ACCJC (i.e. the letter we are currently expecting to arrive any day,) the reality is that we have a year from when the team came to visit the campus. This means that the clock started ticking in November. Also, we realized that while we need to organize ourselves for the next self-study we need to address the recommendation on budget and planning immediately. Dr. Steinback, Tracy Schneider and I have met as a team and then with IS/P Waits and Rob Simas about re-invigorating our "Recommended Process for Solano Community College's Integrated Evaluation, Planning and Budget".

Senate Meeting:

Our Distance Education Committee is working to make it easier for faculty who want to require an in-person final to do so by including language in the schedule of classes that communicates this information to students as they enroll in classes.
The Senate is continuing to update and revise its Constitution. We have started with the duties and responsibilities of our officers and will continue with the amendments next meeting.
The 2010-2011 calendar was brought up for consideration and will most probably be approved at our next meeting.
The Senate discussed the ARCC report narrative, adding faculty perspective to this important document.
Additionally, Ross Beck mentioned that he would be providing the college and the media with "talking points" to help negotiate the ACCJC's report that had not yet been received. Because students and the general public tend to assume that accreditation is only about "good teaching" the Senate asked that it be further clarified in these talking points that we are not on probation because of "bad teaching" and we recommended stronger language to that effect.

Correspondence from the ASCCC

Jonnah Laroche Memorial Scholarship. Two continuing community college students will each receive a $500 award and one student transferring to a four-year institute will be awarded $1,000. Deadline is February 15^th.

Also, ASCCC President Mark Wade-Lieu's update is also available. We are mentioned, but not too favorably… gulp!

Some Thoughts:

Academic Senate President Report

2009-02-02T12:18:00.001-08:00

Meetings:

Board of Trustees: As per the SCC faculty and staff community's request, I spoke at the January 21^st
Board of Trustees meeting to express our objections to replacing our Interim Superintendent/ President with an outside Interim. The comments I made can be found below. In essence I expressed that the faculty did not believe that this was the right time for even more administrative/leadership instability and the financial weight that that implied.

Shared Governance Council: SGC and Dr. Waits are committed to moving strategic proposals along and yet there seems to have been some confusion on what our exact charge was for the day. We were to have prioritized strategic proposals that would then move forward to FaBPAC. Instead, we found ourselves discussing our overall budget and planning processes, or the lack thereof, and how strategic proposals fit into that larger, primarily non-existent, process. It was decided that Dr. Waits would forward all the necessary documents, proposals, rating forms, etc… along to SGC so that in our next meeting, we would be able to rate and rank strategic proposals for FaBPAC. Dr. Steinback and I presented on the ASCCC Accreditation Institute. I also made the observation that the Board of Trustees was discussing their Code of Conduct and suggested that SGC adopt a similar code that would reflect how the campus community will/will not engage the Board. This idea was accepted and will be brought back at a future meeting. Additionally, Ross Beck mentioned that he would be providing the college and the media with "talking points" to help negotiate the ACCJC's report that we will receive very soon. Kevin Anderson requested that faculty voice be included in those talking points. I've subsequently sent Senators the list I got from Mr. Beck.

FaBPAC: Cancelled.

Reports:

ASCCC Accreditation Institute: In general the conference was very informative and allowed for some great brainstorming. While the institute didn't give us a "magic bullet" for our accreditation woes, it did serve as a vehicle to see what the Standards are, what other institutions are doing, and what we might do as an institution. The Senate's role in accreditation is to ensure faculty participation in the accreditation document. It is our responsibility to "live the standards". What became clear during the institute as well is that while we thought we'd have a year from receiving notice of our status from the ACCJC (i.e. the letter we are currently expecting to arrive any day,) the reality is that we have a year from when the team came to visit the campus. This means that the clock started ticking in November. Also, we realized that while we need to organize ourselves for the next self-study we need to address the recommendation on budget and planning immediately. Dr. Steinback, Tracy Schneider and I have met as a team and then with IS/P Waits and Rob Simas about re-invigorating our "Recommended Process for Solano Community College's Integrated Evaluation, Planning and Budget". As things move forward with this discussion I will keep you informed. Additionally, you can read the document, too.

Correspondence:

Dean of Math, Science, David Redfield has sent proposed wording change for page 43 of the current Solano College Catalog to bring SCC graduation requirements into compliance with his/our understanding of the new requirements of ASCCC.

Also, ASCCC President Mark Wade-Lieu's update is also available. We are mentioned, but not too favorably… gulp!

Comments before the Board

2009-01-21T19:46:00.001-08:00

The Emergency meeting on Thursday, January 15^th

Here we are faced with yet ANOTHER personnel change in our administrative leadership.

Is this the right time?

We are on the heels of a visit from Chancellor Jack Scott.
One of the recommendations that put us on Accreditation Warning from the ACCJC was because of administrative leadership instability.
A Special Trustee will be appointed soon.
We are in the middle of a Search for a new Superintendent/President. This will not look good to possible candidates.
These are difficult fiscal times: We are paying for Gerry Fisher's Contract, Lisa Waits' contract, we will be paying a new interim Superintendent/ President, and are still paying a Chief Financial Officer who is on Administrative Leave.

Is this the right time?

While Dr. Waits may not have all the required skills to be Superintendent/President because she is early in her career she is:

A competent Communicator who regularly sends out e-mail updates to the campus community
She has worked to get to the bottom of the budget questions and has communicated her findings to the campus community
She is an open and honest communicator.
She has the confidence of the faculty and staff

I recognize that the Board was split 4 to 3 and is still split (now 3 to 4) on her presidency and that there are issues of trust that influence these decisions but, any benefit a more experienced, outside Interim must be weighed against the current momentum the faculty has toward recovery under Dr. Lisa Waits.

What about the repercussions of this decision on the Faculty? We need to know that the actions that the Board of Trustees takes are in the College's best interests, not vindictive, personally motivated actions.

The faculty needs to know that the Board values the work we do and the work we are going to do to get us through this recovery and off of Accreditation Warning.

Academic Senate President Report to the Board

2009-01-21T14:49:00.001-08:00

For a word version of this report, click here.

Meetings:

Since my last report to the Board I have been in what seems to be constant and continual communication with S/P Waits and VPAA Steinback about Accreditation, the Chancellor's visit, Special Trustee Tom Henry, the budget, and divining the future about the ACCJC report due the first week of February.

Flexible Calendar:

The college is coming off the heels of our most recent professional development days on campus. The overarching theme was orchestrated between our DSP faculty and staff and our Flex Cal Committee chaired by Chuck Spillner. The day was geared to help faculty and staff better understand how to serve our students with disabilities. We learned how to refer students, what kinds of assistive technologies there are, how to devise effective interventions to classroom behavior problems, and discussed the results from a recent survey on crisis intervention.

There was, of course, an array of other opportunities for faculty to better serve our students including MySolano for Faculty, eTeachers Best Practices, eCollege workshops, Transfer and Articulation Issues for Faculty, and a discussion on Accreditation Standards and our next Self-Study.

Dr. Waits introduced soon-to-be Special Trustee Henry to the campus community and he graciously answered about three and a half hours of questions throughout the day.

Joint Meeting with Educational Administrators:

During this morning session the Academic Senate and the Division Deans (led by VPAA Steinback) hosted an informational presentation by Lesley Kawaguchi from the ASCCC entitled "Accreditation: A Campus Wide Event". Shared Governance, Executive Council, all faculty and staff and the Board were invited. Ms. Kawaguchi gave a very thorough, informative and useful talk that allowed those present to discuss the accreditation process and possible steps forward for the college. It was the first of what will be many informational meetings on accreditation.

Regular Senate Meeting:

During the regular meeting Ms. Kawaguchi accompanied the Senate and was able to answer questions. Rob Simas walked us through our Accountability Reporting for the California Community Colleges (ARCC) report and requested Senate input on the document. For more information on ARCC, see here.

We also discussed the need to clarify the mission statements, membership, and process for establishing our Standing Committees.

The Senate also recognized the work of our new Substitute Administrative Assistant Ms. Christy Martin who began working recently and has done an admirable job of learning the ropes and bringing the Senate back up to speed on minutes and other items.

Final Comments:

As we move into the next few days, weeks, and months in a new era of uncertainty at the college I wanted to stress the importance of both trust and leadership at Solano College. The faculty and staff are anxious and concerned. I would think that all of us can attest to the hard work and dedication of all campus employees. What we need is to rebuild trust between the Board and the college. We are willing and able to do our part. We will work and produce and change. I think I can speak for all faculty and staff when I say that we expect no less from our Board of Trustees and look forward to a more open professional relationship. We have all the tools to positively change our accreditation status and create a culture of living the accreditations standards. Everyone I've spoken to would agree that the four recommendations we face are a valid criticism of the college. The question is, are we willing to make the necessary changes to live the standards of accreditation? I am confident that we can and will as long as we work together.

Academic Senate President’s Report

2008-12-01T12:34:00.001-08:00

Because of the Thanksgiving break and because I'm trying to be more succinct… here is my abbreviated report:

Accreditation Ad Hoc Committee: I met with more of the representatives of this group and we were able to move forward on the overall scope and design of our future efforts with accreditation. The full minutes are available. A diagram of what the committee would look like is available. Part of the question is where should this committee reside? Under the Academic Senate or under Shared Governance Council?

Academic Senate of the California Community Colleges (ASCCC) Accreditation Institute 2009 will be held at the Dolce Hayes Mansion in San Jose, CA on January 23-25, 2009. Each day will be filled with presentations and discussions that will help senates create a successful self study and develop outcomes and assessment. There will be opportunities throughout the Institute to ask questions, share issues and strategies, and develop action plans for our campus. Registration is $350. Single occupancy rooms are $725 and double occupancy is $575. Should we attend and if so who?

In discussions at various meetings over the semester there has been talk of (re)instituting a College Hour at Solano. The idea is that this would provide a single time slot each day or several times a week that is dedicated to promoting better teaching/learning/ idea sharing, meetings, SLO discussions, community building, etc… Any thoughts?

Final Exam Schedule/ scheduling: How does the Senate want to proceed?

A colleague raised the question/ issue about College policy regarding Sabbatical replacement hiring. In essence, we have no specific policy on these hires. Dr. Christiansen explained to me that they are treated as temporary hires, much like other part-time positions. Should we work on such a policy?

At the Board of Trustees meeting from November 19^th, they Approved Curriculum Actions as Submitted by the Curriculum Committee, a Subcommittee of the Academic Senate. Click here for the agenda and list of courses. Also, interestingly enough there was no closed door session (no discussion of contract negotiations).

Lastly, while I have no news about Mary Swayne's condition it is necessary to interview her temporary substitute. I will be holding those interviews tomorrow at 11:00 and 1:30 in the Senate office. Would you like to participate? Do you have any questions you'd like me to ask?

Senate President Report Board Report

2008-11-19T14:33:00.001-08:00

Get the Word doc here.

Mary Swayne Update

Meetings

Superintendent/ President Meeting: Our discussion items included accreditation, institutional planning and budget, the final exam schedule mishap, curriculum and outreach, and a rumor about the State budget and SCC reserve funds.

I presented her with an application form and information on a joint ASCCC and CCLC presentation to our college on budget processes.
We discussed faculty forums to get our input on the upcoming possible 7% cuts. Dr. Waits has proposed that we hold a forum this semester (actually it happened today)and then subsequent forums in the spring. (See Plenary below).
She also accepted a suggestion that I passed along from Erin Farmer's that the college actively survey the community about the kinds of courses they might see us offer. This would not only allow us to serve the community's needs, but would help improve our image across the county.
At the Academic Senate Plenary, we had heard a report that the State had the legal right to take back reserves in excess of the 3-5% state recommended amounts.

RI/ Grant writer: I've been working with Josh Stein, Tracey Schneider and Rob Simas on creating a Strategic Proposal for an Institutional Researcher and Grant Writer position for Solano College. For now, we have identified need, written draft language on the job description, have plans to propose the formation of an Academic Senate Grants Committee and generally been "dreaming" about how helpful this would be for the college. I'll pass on the documents as we get further along in the process.

Misc

Senate Plenary: (Program and presentations available at link)

As a response to a recent legal decision interpreting Title 5 as prohibiting the failing of a student from a course based on ONE incident of academic dishonesty, the senate has passed a resolution to create a working group to develop a position paper promoting stronger faculty guidance in this area.
The Senate voted to create a resource library compiling SLO materials from all colleges. This information-sharing will aid in the development and refining of SLOs and reaffirmed its opposition to use of student attainment of SLOs in faculty evaluations.
There was an interesting presentation called "You Can Do It! Effective Governance that Addresses Accreditation Deficiencies (aka Getting Off Probation)" 1st Presentation 2nd Presentation
In the course of chatting with faculty colleagues at other institutions, as well as during a keynote address from Bill Scroggins, CEO at the College of the Sequoias, we learned that at least two colleges have discontinued the services of Zampi and Associates in order to save money and to reduce contention between faculty and administration. The Ohlone College Senate representative noted that their college had spent approximately 3 million in legal fees in just a few years. And CEO Scroggins reported that one of the first things he did when he took over as CEO was to fire the firm because it was too costly and did not serve the faculty and students' interests.
We also heard from several faculty members that their CIOs reported that they had learned at their recent conference "CCCCIO Fall 2008 Conference: CIOs Open the Golden Gate'" that the state can confiscate local district reserves beyond the minimum required by the state. This raised concerns for us as it might mean that our district could lose a substantial sum that would have served students, faculty and staff.
Several workshops were dedicated to senate leadership in institutional planning and budget development. While the senate does not control the budget, we were reminded that the senate can and should take a leadership role in the college's budget processes. Considering the fact that colleges may face budget cuts of 7-10%, our first question should be, "How can all constituent groups participate in the decisions as to how these cuts will occur?" Some other districts, Santa Rosa JC, for example, have already established faculty advisory committees in anticipation of cuts.
Information presented at a breakout session on the state of Information Competency at various colleges confirmed that Solano is among the leaders in local implementation of an Information Competency requirement.
The state Academic Senate also passed of resolutions that may impact accreditation. One recommends that the ASCCC conduct research to gather data from colleges and share this research across the system while another recommends that ACCJC develop and implement more complete and thorough training for accreditation teams.

Accreditation Ad Hoc: Will meet again with the group on Friday.

Correspondence: I've received the following letters from the ASCC

The ASCCC dues collection ($2,230.90)
A reminder about the Board of Governors nominations.
The ASCCC President's update.
Exemplary Program Award

Senate Meeting

Reports

Curriculum Committee – Erin Farmer commented on a presentation she attended at the Academic State Plenary on Pre-requisites. Of note was the "AB1725 Curses and Blessings: Pre-requisites and Basic Skills Alignment" Presentation that highlighted the need for us to reassert rigor into our coursework through a critical analysis of course level expectations and pre-requisites required to meet them.
Articulation Officer – Robin Aire-Donche sought input from the Senate on an offer by "For-Profit" institutions like Kaplan University to use Solano College as an articulation partner as a means of marketing their institution. The Senate agreed to NOT support such pseudo-articulation.
Flex Cal Report – Chuck Spillner. While not available to present, he did provide the Senate with documents to update us on our upcoming Flexible Calendar day dedicated to improving faculty knowledge of DSPS services.
Study Abroad – Ferdinanda Florence posed a question brought forth by her committee about study abroad and academic rigor. The question was, just because you CAN offer a short term, two week study abroad program, should you? No immediate consensus was reached, the Senate will continue to discuss this question.
Treasurer's Report – Thom Watkins
IRB—Thom Watkins reported that this IRB Taskforce has met twice and is moving forward with their duties. They've elected Rob Simas as Chair of their group. When they provide me with results, I'll forward them on in a Board Report

Information / Discussion Items
- Fire Technology Program – Robert Johnson, Roy Pike and two representatives from the Vacaville Fire Department gave an informative presentation, similar to the one given at the Board a month or so ago, to the Senate. The Senate was grateful for their time.

Academic Senate President Report

2008-11-16T21:03:00.001-08:00

For a Word version go here.

Meetings

Shared Governance Council (SGC): SGC is working on how to best address the Strategic Planning review and ranking proposal process. Because this is the "first time around" with this process SGC felt the need to create these guidelines. When we have a final copy, I'll present it to the Senate.

An interesting item did come up regarding the timeline for the Strategic Planning Proposals. As a result of my reading on the faculty role in these matters, one item jumped out to me. The Academic Senate is NOT included in the "Process for Planning a New Strategy". In other words, a strategy could go through the process and the Senate (as a body) would not have to approve it. This raises some red flags. We will need to discuss this.

Additionally, we were presented with a draft proposal by S/P Waits to create a College Accreditation Steering Committee. While I favor the idea of this kind of committee, because we were presented with a draft copy that had not been finalized nor had been vetted with the Senate, I voted against its creation. I'm not sure, to be honest, if the proposal passed.

I gave Dr. Waits an update on the Senate's movement toward giving the Accreditation Committee shape and form.
I also presented her with an application form and information on a joint ASCCC and CCLC presentation to our college on budget processes.
She mentioned that Tom Henry has been working on an audit of the campus budget and that she will be presenting her findings to the Board during their December 3^rd meeting.
I presented the idea of faculty forums to get our input on the upcoming possible 7% cuts. Dr. Waits has proposed that we hold a forum this semester and then subsequent forums in the spring. (See Plenary, below).
She thanked me for my measured e-mail response to the final exam schedule errors.
She also eagerly accepted Erin Farmer's suggestion that the college actively survey the community about the kinds of courses they might see us offer. This would not only allow us to serve the community's needs, but would help improve our image across the county.
At the Academic Senate Plenary, we had heard a rumor that the State had the right to confiscate our reserves in excess of the 3-5% recommended amounts. Considering the College has somewhere in the area of 9-12% in reserves, this is a significant amount of money. Dr. Waits could not confirm this information.

RI/ Grant writer:
I've been working with Josh Stein, Tracey Schneider and Rob Simas on creating a Strategic Proposal for an Institutional Researcher and Grant Writer position for Solano College. For now, we have identified need, written draft language on the job description, have plans to propose the formation of an Academic Senate Grants Committee and generally been "dreaming" about how helpful this would be for the college. I'll pass on the documents as we get further along in the process.

Misc

Senate Plenary

As a response to a recent legal decision interpreting Title 5 as prohibiting the failing of a student from a course based on ONE incident of academic dishonesty, the senate has passed a resolution to create a working group to develop a position paper promoting stronger faculty guidance in this area.
The Senate voted to create a resource library compiling SLO materials from all colleges. This information-sharing will aid in the development and refining of SLOs and reaffirmed its opposition to use of student attainment of SLOs in faculty evaluations.
In the course of chatting with faculty colleagues at other institutions, as well as during a keynote address from Bill Scroggins, CEO at the College of the Sequoias, we learned that at least two colleges have discontinued the services of Zampi and Associates in order to save money and to reduce contention between faculty and administration. The Ohlone College Senate representative noted that their college had spent approximately 3 million in legal fees in just a few years. And CEO Scroggins reported that one of the first things he did when he took over as CEO was to fire the firm because it was too costly and did not serve the faculty and students' interests.
We also heard from several faculty members that their CIOs reported that they had learned at their recent conference "CCCCIO Fall 2008 Conference: CIOs Open the Golden Gate'" that the state can confiscate local district reserves beyond the minimum required by the state. This raised concerns for us as it might mean that our district could lose a substantial sum that would have served students, faculty and staff.
Several workshops were dedicated to senate leadership in institutional planning and budget development. While the senate does not control the budget, we were reminded that the senate can and should take a leadership role in the college's budget processes. Considering the fact that colleges may face budget cuts of 7-10%, our first question should be, "How can all constituent groups participate in the decisions as to how these cuts will occur?" Some other districts, Santa Rosa JC, for example, have already established faculty advisory committees in anticipation of cuts.
Information presented at a breakout session on the state of Information Competency at various colleges confirmed that Solano is among the leaders in local implementation of an Information Competency requirement.
The state Academic Senate also passed of resolutions that may impact accreditation. One recommends that the ASCCC conduct research to gather data from colleges and share this research across the system while another recommends that ACCJC develop and implement more complete and thorough training for accreditation teams.

Accreditation Ad Hoc:
Will meet again with the group on Friday. Anyone interested, please feel free let me know and I'll include you in the group.

Correspondence:
I've received the following letters from the ASCC

The ASCCC dues collection ($2,230.90)
A reminder about the Board of Governors nominations.
The ASCCC President's update.

Report the Board of Trustees

2008-11-05T15:36:00.001-08:00

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):

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).
Met with the Accreditation Visiting Team representative: Dr. Ronald Taylor
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
New Treasurer: Thom Watkins from the Business Division will take over for Susanna Crawford.

Board of Trustees

2008-10-15T11:32:00.001-07:00

Academic Senate President’s Report

A word version of this report can be found here.
Meetings

I wanted to share a unique experience I had at the Basic Skills Initiative Committee meeting. In conjunction with the transition to written proposals and data driven decisions that I reported on in the past, this committee has done something that I haven’t seen in my tenure here at Solano Community College. They were presented with an open and transparent accountability of their available funds and participated in a frank dialogue about how to administer those monies. In speaking with Josh Stein, the BSI Coordinator, he mentioned that this kind of dialogue can be attributed to the leadership of our VPAA Robin Steinback. As Senate President, I am grateful for this kind of collaborative efforts between Faculty and Administration. I am hopeful that this notion of presenting faculty with adequate financial data to make informed decisions will spread to other committees and decision making across campus.

In the same spirit of open dialogue, I wanted to comment that I also had a chance to meet with our new Interim Superintendent/ President Lisa Waits after our last SGC meeting. I am encouraged by her willingness to maintain the standing meeting between the Senate President and her office. I look forward to more conversations in the future.

Regular Senate Business

Reports
VPAA Steinback reported to the Senate information about the accreditation document and the next steps in the accreditation process. I’m sure that we are all anxiously awaiting the ACCJC visit on or before December 14th. Additionally, she reported that one of the benefits of changing over to Banner is now being able to manage carrying over a maximum student debt of $400. This has a very positive impact on our online and hybrid students. In the past, students who had any debt would be dropped from our eCollege classes. Now, this is not the case.

Curriculum Committee Chair Erin Farmer discussed her plans for the committee this semester, ”life after Accreditation” as it were. We can look forward to a new curriculum procedures handbook, workshops on Curricunet, and a report to the Senate on information regarding curricular processes for Job Certification and CTE.

Additionally, Robin Arie-Donche provided a report on changes to the timeline for changes in course transferability. When our Curriculum Committee and Governing Board approve new transfer courses or unit, prefix or title modifications to existing transferable courses, she submits these changes to ASSIST, which is the articulation database for the Community Colleges, UCs and CSUs. Furthermore, she tells ASSIST that the course is Baccalaureate-level for the purpose of having it become CSU transferable. This is done for all transferable courses, no matter what the course number is on our campus. The process is deadline driven and coordinates with the semesters. Right now, until October 17, the system is looking at courses which will be effective Spring 2009. For example, she’s submitting a new course that was approved by Curriculum Committee in September (and goes to the Board tonight) which is going to be taught in S’09.
After a course is in ASSIST, she can submit it to the UC Office of the President to be considered for UC transferability, which they decide (we don’t). Again, these submissions are deadline driven. The first submission period occurs in the summer. She submits new courses and courses that have had significant modifications, (for example, to content or prerequisites). UC reviewers consider the submissions and send her a list of courses that were approved or denied for UC transferability. There is then a second review period, which is occurring now until October 17, to appeal denied courses (she’s appealing four courses that were denied) and to submit newly approved courses for transferability. The new course she’s submitting to ASSIST are also going to be sent in during this second review period to be evaluated for UC transferability. If approved, it will be UC transferable when students take it this Spring.

Information/ Discussion Items

Brad Paschal, the Learning Communities Coordinator presented a proposal for Learning Committees to become a Standing Committee of the Academic Senate: As I’m sure the Board knows there are six standing committees:

· Accreditation and Student Learning Outcomes Committee
· Basic Skills Initiative Committee
· Curriculum Committee
· Distance Education Committee
· Flexible Calendar Committee
· Study Abroad Committee

By becoming a Standing Committee of the Senate, Learning Communities would be afforded broader campus input and buy-in on its initiatives, a formalized mechanism to maintain records and accountability of its actions, and a higher level of integration into the overall goals and objectives of the College. Because of the strong history at Solano College for Learning Communities, the Senate enthusiastically received this request. We will vote on its formation at our next regular meeting. The report that Brad presented can be found here and here.

Progress on Goals

Accreditation and SLO Committee. Initially, this committee was created and based on the State Academic Senate that combines accreditation and SLOs. Locally at SCC, we are contemplating separating these two entities. Not because they are not related, but rather because for now they have two distinct goals and are at different levels of implementation. The Senate has decided that our first step should be to create an Ad Hoc committee that will establish a plan to move forward with our accreditation process. Senators have entrusted me with the task of forming this first group and I’ve communicated with faculty who I believe might have something to contribute to the Accreditation and SLO Committee. At first blush, the committee should have a membership that very closely mimics that of the Shared Governance Council. We also recognize the need for training on Standards, improved outreach to constituent groups, folding accreditation concerns into Division meetings, and a closer alliance between narrative and evidence.

Update By-Laws: Proportional Representation. After some discussion on the current state of our constitution and proportional representation to the Senate, our At-large Senator Jeanette McCarthy and the Senator from Math and Science, Susanna Crawford agreed to spearhead this Senate goal. The constitution and proportional representation docs are available.

5000 and 6000 Policy Review. The Senate agreed with and applauded VPAA Steinback’s idea of jointly reviewing these policies. We have decided to go over them gradually between now and March and eagerly await the first batch of policies from VPAA Steinback’s office.

Action Items
The Senate voted to establish an Institutional Review Board. Rob Simas and those faculty who volunteered to participate in this group have been notified. I am confident that in short order the Board will have specific policies for their review.

Report to the Academic Senate

2008-10-06T11:01:00.000-07:00

Senate President’s Report
Available as Word doc, too
October 6, 2008

Most of my time over the past few weeks has been spent, in conjunction with Erin Farmer and VPAA Robin Steinback, shepherding in the Accreditation Midterm and Special Report. As I mentioned at our Special Meeting on September 22, 2008 when the Academic Senate approved the reports, Shared Governance Council served as the review group for these documents and we met on three different occasions to come to full agreement, twice before our last Senate meeting and once on September, 18. During the week of September 22 the ASCC, EC and Shared Governance Council all approved the reports. The Board of Trustees approved the final version during their October 1st meeting. While I cannot say that the Accreditation Midterm and Special Report remained exactly as they were when they crossed the Senate’s desk, I can assure you that Erin and I worked diligently to ensure that the spirit of what the Senate approved was maintained. It was, to say the least, a challenging task. The final version of the reports is available on the Intranet under Events and Activities.

While the Board of Trustee meeting minutes are available for viewing, I thought you might like a few highlights. The Board gave Dr. Tanaka a certificate in recognition of receiving his 8th degree black belt, making him one of only 14 people in the United States with this honor. They accepted our Superintendent/President’s resignation. Finally, the Board approved the Accreditation Midterm and Special Report.

During Gerry Fisher’s retirement event on campus, I had the opportunity to speak with our new Interim Superintendent/ President, Lisa Waits, who would like to continue with the tradition of meeting one on one with the Senate President. I am glad that she has decided to meet with me because it is a great opportunity to bring Senate issues and concerns directly to the President of the College.

I have continued to meet with the Basic Skills Initiative Committee. Early on in the semester they agreed that their committee needed to formalize its proposal process and as a result they have been reviewing proposals. The full minutes can be found here, but it is worth mentioning that there are several valuable initiatives being generated by this committee, including a Center for Academic Success (similar to that at Butte College,) formalizing an Umoja group on campus. The complete list and estimated budgets are here:

The Fall State Academic Senate Plenary session will be upon us soon, November 6-8, 2008. In order for us to participate we need to register before October 27, 2008. The event takes place in Los Angeles. A full description of Plenary is available here. Senators should consider if they’d like to participate. In the past we’ve sent four representatives.

I received a letter from the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. They are calling for nominations to represent the Senate on the Chancellor’s Office Counseling Advisory Committee (CAC). Nominations for representatives to the Senate must be accepted by October 9, 2008. Additionally, the ASCCC President’s update can be found here.

Finally, I wanted to announce that the junior Senator from Humanities, Lisa Giambastiani, has graciously accepted a request to be the Senate Secretary.

Board of Trustees Report

2008-10-01T14:04:00.001-07:00

Because the Academic Senate meets on the first and third Monday, we have not had a chance to conduct regular business since the last Board of Trustees meeting. The Senate did, however; meet for a Special Session to take action on the Accreditation Midterm and Special reports. Shepherding these accreditation documents, in conjunction with other College leaders, has been one of my primary concerns.
A summary glance at the events around the Accreditation Midterm and Special Reports would glean one simple conclusion; the documents have moved through the various shared governance bodies and have been approved by them all. As a matter of fact, the Academic Senate did unanimously approve them. Nevertheless, a more poignant analysis would reveal that we are indeed a College that is in need of changes in areas that significantly affect our ability to function optimally.
Producing the accreditation document has brought to light areas of amazing progress at Solano College and at the same time has driven home the point that we have much work to do.
We must:
      • have a clearer understanding of our planning processes
      • increase transparency in budgeting and prioritization
      • ensure that Faculty is involved in all processes, even       though we may not have the authority to execute them.
      • engage in lively and healthy dialogue with the Board
      • change the campus climate regarding Accreditation.
      • begin our next self-study TODAY.
      • get training on the Accreditation process and its       Standards.
      • routinely collect evidence.
      • avoid saddling any one individual with producing any       Accreditation response
      • get out of a “response” mode and work proactively.

I am sure that my colleagues across the campus could add to my list, but initially these are some thoughts. For myself, I am eager to begin a constructive process or renewing our College and working cooperatively to enhance what we do well and change what we don’t.

Board of Trustees Report

2008-09-17T13:19:00.000-07:00

Reports

Academic Affairs
VPAA Steinback gave update on the Accreditation Midterm Report and explained the role of the Shared Governance Council as the de facto primary “last review” body because of the representative constituents on the council. Additionally, the VPAA requested the Senate’s participation in the reviewing the 5000 and 6000 Board Policy series. I believe that it would be fair to say that the Senate appreciates the inclusive leadership our VPAA is modeling.

Curriculum
The Curriculum Committee Chair Erin Farmer reported that the committee has met once this year and was able to go over training on the approval process for Stand-Alone courses at the college in addition to issues related to linked courses within Banner.

Information and Discussion

2008-2009 Goals (in no particular order)
1. Update By-Laws (including proportional representation)
2. Accreditation and SLO Committee
3. Academic Integrity II (Academic Freedom)
4. Exploring the relationship between the senate and budget development
5. Review Board Policy 5000 and 6000

Accreditation Midterm Report
Senators are reading and reviewing the current draft of the report and will be ready to cast an informed vote during a special Senate meeting on Monday, September 22nd at 3:00.

Student Learning Outcomes
Tracy Schneider, the SLO Coordinator, provided the Senate with an update on where the campus is and where the college is headed on SLOs. She and her team are working to code course SLOs to the Core four.

Institutional Review Board
The Senate continued a discussion about forming an Institutional Review Board (IRB) at Solano College. This idea has been brought forth by Rob Simas and the Senate, while still waiting to officially vote to endorse the creation of an IRB task force, has asked that I put out a call for participants. Ultimately the task force would define the scope and composition of the IRB, but the general idea is that it would function as the authority to review and authorize any research conducted involving faculty, staff, or students – former, current, or prospective. Rob Simas has collected policy and procedural materials from other institutions that can be used to begin define our IRB.

President's Report September 2008

2008-09-15T09:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Board of Trustees Report

2008-09-03T11:13:00.000-07:00

Since the last Board of Trustees meeting the Senate has not formally met and much of my time has been spent on issues related to the Accreditation Midterm Report, the Basic Skills Initiative Committee, Learning Communities, meetings with academic Deans, and the agenda for our upcoming Senate meetings.

Accreditation:
The Accreditation Midterm Report has (as of the writing of this report) gone through a second draft process and has been viewed by the Executive Council (EC) for comment. From what I understand the EC is charged with "filling in the holes" in the document. Erin Farmer, the current report editor, has mentioned that submissions are still coming in and that there are areas that need more input. In essence, the document is in flux but is on its way to completion.

Last semester the Senate did create an Accreditation Committee. While the charge and composition of the committee has not yet been established it is clear that the process of producing the accreditation report needs the Senate's attention. President Fisher wisely urged President Kropp and the Senate to pursue a faculty driven model with at least one faculty member for each Accreditation Standard on this committee. I think that in the same way that Student Learning Outcomes are becoming an integral part of the campus culture, accreditation should, too. Dean Redfield commented in our Joint Meeting with Educational Administrators that we spend so much time "defending" ourselves that we don't have the chance to sing our own praises. My discussions with State Academic Senate representatives confirm the need for a strong faculty voice in the accreditation process. Accreditation should NOT sneak up on us. We can and should be prepared for the six year review cycle.

As a result of participating in the process of producing the Accreditation Midterm Report, I am committed to making the production of the next report more effective.

Basic Skills Initiative:
In order to familiarize myself more with our Basic Skills Initiative I attended its first meeting of the semester. Highlights included: a restructuring of the proposal and approval process for items from each area, a stronger connection between data, proposals and funding, and establishing consistent meeting times. Additionally, the different BSI coordinator terms have expired. These positions will be advertised this semester and filled before the spring semester. Most of the members of this committee attended a BSI conference over the summer and have come back energized for the new year.

Learning Communities:
I met with Brad Paschal, the Learning Communities Coordinator, to follow up on a conversation we began during the Flex Cal at the beginning of the semester. Brad and other members of the LC group participated in a conference as well this summer and have come back to reinvigorate Learning Communities at Solano College. Part of his plan may include the formation of a Learning Communities Subcommittee of the Academic Senate. More to come as details present themselves.

Miscellaneous:
I've met with the new Dean of Health Occupations, Maire Morinec, and hope to meet with Bob Johnson from Career Technical Education and John Urutia from Business. My goal is to familiarize myself with the Deans and their divisions.

Board of Trustees Report

2008-08-20T15:36:00.001-07:00

Board of Trustees Report
August 20, 2008

President’s Report
Over the summer as the new Senate President, I participated in ASCCC Faculty Leadership Institute, made several hiring committee appointments, and participated in several meetings.

Reports
The Curriculum Committee Chair, Erin Farmer, reported that the college has purchased Curricunet and it will be ready to implement in the Spring of 2009. There will be training for this new software during the fall and spring semesters. She also commented that the new majors that were revised due to discrepancies with Title 5 (Interdisciplinary Studies and University Studies) have been well received by the System’s Office and only need minor changes to be in full compliance. Then she spoke of the success of the Curriculum Institute that took place over the summer.

Distance Education Chair, Renee Moore reported that eCollege is rolling out its new platform .NeXt and that some of our faculty are participating in a pilot program. Training for .NeXt took place during Flex Cal. Ms. Moore also mentioned that the MySolano transition was not an easy one for eCollege students. There were some glitches that have, for the most part, been resolved. Distance Education Coordinator, Sandy Rotenberg, was also on hand to answer senator’s questions about our online offerings and how the more technical aspects of the Banner conversion went. She offered up a summary of online course offerings and other information in this report.

Our Flexible Calendar Committee Chair, Chuck Spillner, reported about our Flex Cal day and its theme based on the video “Discounted Dreams”. He also mentioned that there are two new members to the Flex Cal committee, Erin Duane and Kevin Brewer. The committee is considering the creation of a “Master List” of approved optional Flex Cal activities that Division Deans could sign off on and make receiving optional flex cal hours more streamline.

Information/ Discussion Items
We had planned to discuss when the Senate would meet over the year, but were short on time, so this item has been tabled. Erin Farmer, who is the Accreditation Midterm Report editor, gave an assessment of the progress on the document. See her comments here. It is quite clear that there are gaps in the information necessary for Erin to adequately do her job as editor. She can’t edit what she doesn’t have. Subsequent to Erin’s report the Accreditation Midterm Report has been distributed to the necessary representatives of the campus community and it is hoped that the holes will be filled. As President of the Senate, I have told the faculty in attendance at the Senate meetings, the Faculty luncheon during Flex Cal and to VP Steinback and S/P Fisher that I cannot, in good conscience, sign-off on an incomplete midterm report or one that has not been vetted through the shared governance process.

Other reports to the Senate came from VP Jay Field on the current status of Banner and PIO Ross Beck.

The Senate had to postpone its discussion on “Senate Goals” for 2008 and 2009 because we simply ran out of time. However, senators will now have the opportunity to get input from their constituents about which goals they support. During our next senate meeting, we will engage in a full discussion of what our plans are for this year. Some of the goals that I put forth for debate were to update our by-laws, enhance the Senate’s use of technology, continue our discussion on academic integrity/ freedom, further explore proportional representation, define and fully realize the accreditation and SLO subcommittee, consult with Academic Affairs and Student Services about policy review, and explore the senate’s relationship to budget development.

During the Joint Meeting: Academic Senate and Educational Administrators we were given a report on Solano College students by VP Waits and Rob Simas. This snap shop was helpful to see who our students are, what they do, and how this impacts our programs. For the full document, click here. VP Steinback picked up from there and gave an update on our Strategic Goals and Objectives, basing her comments on the Educational Master Plan Goals Progress Report 2007-2008.

Josh Stein gave an update on the Basic Skills Initiative. BSI continues to make strides in peer mentoring, information competency, tutoring, supplemental instruction, and reading, writing and math labs. We held our first College Success Institute enrolling 25 students, 24 of whom are continuing this semester as full time students. There is a website available in addition to some great YouTube videos of students. The college owes thanks to Brenda Tucker and Pat Vogelpohl for their hard work.

Finally, gave an overview of where the college is with SLOs. Her nine bulleted comments got right to the point and it was easy to see how we are progressing in this area. Here report is here.

This concludes the Solano College Academic Senate report.

Agenda

2008-08-19T22:28:00.000-07:00

Available at Solano Community College website.

President's report August 2008

2008-08-19T22:06:00.000-07:00

August 12, 2008

As your new Academic Senate President I look forward to the 2008-09. I have been extremely fortunate in that I am following in the footsteps of our gracious, articulate and open-hearted former Senate President, Gail Kropp. I am quickly learning that being Senate President is a complex job. Gail made it look easy and has been willing to give me advice and support at every turn. For that I am thankful. We are lucky to have her at Solano Community College.
What follows is an update on Senate business from over the summer.

Faculty Leadership Institute

From June 12 – 14, I attended the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges Faculty Leadership Institute in New Port Beach, California. I participated in sessions on Engineering Faculty Leaders, Minimum Qualifications and Equivalence, Tools for Running a Senate, Budget, Creating Alliances, the ASCCC webpage and many others. The institute was very well organized and provided a great deal of helpful information. As a new Senate President it was very helpful to know that there is a statewide Senate that has a wealth of resources at our disposal. I strongly recommend that faculty familiarize themselves with the ASCCC webpage (http://www.asccc.org/). Additionally, I would recommend that any Senator or faculty member who is interested should be encouraged to participate in the 2009 Faculty Leadership Institute that will be held June 18-20, 2009. The institute will take place at the Granlibakken Conference Center & Lodge in Lake Tahoe, CA.

Hiring Committees and Appointments

There were two major hiring committees that needed faculty appointments: the Dean of Health Occupations and the Superintendent/ President.
At the end of the Spring semester, former President Gail Kropp and I appointed faculty to the Dean of Health Occupations hiring committee. This committee was able to interview several candidates and has forwarded their recommendations on the Superintendent/ President’s office.
More recently, I put forth the names of the faculty who will serve on the hiring committee for the Superintendent/ President. Of note is that the Board of Trustees is in the process of deciding on which search firm, if any, to use for this extremely important position. As Senate President at the last Board meeting I offered up faculty assistance in choosing which firm the college might use. I have not heard back from the Board if they plan on accepting my offer.
There were a few concerns and issues that arose during hires that occurred over the Summer. In general, I would say that it is extremely important for faculty to familiarize themselves with our hiring policies and to take a professional interest in ensuring that these policies are followed. It is in our best interests.

Senate Election Results

Up for vote was the adjunct Senator position and the straw poll on proportional representation. There were two candidates for adjunct senate representative: Louis McDermott and Renza Nassab. Louis McDermott won the election and was notified via e-mail. The issue of proportional representation passed with 48 to 34 votes.
I recommend that we start the election process earlier in the year, that we eliminate paper ballots in favor of electronic ones. There are at least two reliable websites (http://www.zoomerang.com/ or http://www.surveymonkey.com/) that could work for this purpose. Finally, if we stay with paper ballots, I recommend that we include voting instructions with the ballots.

Summer Meetings

Over the Summer I met twice with the Superintendent/ President Gerry Fisher, once with Vice President of Academic Affairs Robin Steinback, and several of the Division Deans. Additionally, I attended some of the Board meetings.
In the meetings with President Fisher we discussed the Presidential search committee, he gave a Measure G update, we talked about the progress of the accreditation report and finally his work on a K-16 bridge program that he will announce and go into further detail on during Flex Cal. The meeting with VPAA Robin Steinback had to do with the accreditation report, a joint venture between Academic Affairs, Student Services and the Academic Senate to review and revise Board policies series 5000 and 6000, Basic Skills Initiative funding, and the results of the BSI Summer Bridge program. My conversations with the Division Deans were mainly geared to introduce myself as the Academic Senate President and to ensure that the lines of communication between the Deans and the Senate are open and transparent.

Other News

I received a letter from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) in late July regarding Commission Membership. The ACCJC is soliciting nominations for individuals to be considered for membership. Commissioners are appointed for a three-year term and may serve a maximum of six years. The position for which they are seeking applications are two Commission member representing the public. The deadline is September 19, 2008. If you are interested, please contact me or the ACCJC directly.