Academic Senate Highlights

December 12, 2005

President’s Report: President Fellguth has been working with Cathy Noble and Kathy Mendelsohn on the draft agenda for the January Flex days. Discipline faculty will meet together to work on curriculum. In particular they will be provided with reports going back to fall 2002 of courses that have not been offered or have not “made.” This data will inform faculty decisions about curriculum that needs to be revised, inactivated or deleted.

The sentence “The Board reserves the right not to accept recommendations.” was added to Board Policy 2005 on shared governance at some point. The Senate has been working on having this sentence removed for quite some time, since it contradicts Title V regulations and was added without Senate approval. The Senate has been notified by administration that this sentence is now being removed.

Discussion Items: Ignacio Pando brought forward a matrix of issues that have been brought to him and other faculty about the nursing program. The number of students taking prerequisites at Hartnell, but planning to go elsewhere for the nursing program, are increasing. A group of concerned faculty met to discuss these issues among themselves, with the Division Dean, and now with the Senate. Issues include staffing difficulties at all levels from director to faculty and even clerical staff. Other issues listed are stress on nursing faculty due to staffing problems, lack of updated website and catalog information and lack of online program application. (To see a copy of the matrix, please contact me or Ignacio.)

He emphasized that the nursing faculty have done a fantastic job of revamping the curriculum and preparing students to succeed on the board exams. Issues on the matrix are detracting from the work they are doing.

Alan Hoffman, Kathy Schrader and Donna Duell gave input, including suggesting that we need to work as a college to solve these problems. The department should not be alone and isolated with these issues. The Senate will have this issue as an action item next meeting to determine the next steps it should take.

Senate Goals: The senate adopted the following goals for spring ’06:

1. Re-establish and document hiring committee and selection committee processes.

2. Review and update the Committee Handbook

3. Review and update the Senate Constitution

4. Information competency

5. Review accreditation self study and prepare minority report

Action Items: The senate tabled approval of the Matriculation Report until the Matriculation committee function, members, meeting times and minutes are submitted as per Resolution 2.07.

The Senate made the following appointments:

• Jorge Sanchez, Chris Svendsen, and Lisa Storm to the Distance Education Pilot committee as per the new article in the new contract.
• Cheryl O’Donnell and James Beck to the Curriculum Committee.
• Joe Welch, Larry Souza, Jerri Nemiro, and Jennifer Fellguth to the Technology Master Planning Committee.
• Jim Butler and Ron Bates to join Pimol Moth on the Physics screening committee. Jesse Cude will serve on the second interview committee.
• Carol Thole, Carol King, and Dan Perez for the English/ESL screening committee.

Phil Adams was authorized to chair the Accreditation Minority Report subcommittee for the Senate. He will recruit others to assist.