Academic Senate Report to the Board

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.