Academic Senate Highlights
President’s Report
Invitations
have been sent to Classified Senate, the administration, the Board of Trustees,
and the Student Senate to send a representative to the meetings of the Senate’s
committee structure task force. Its purpose is to review the role and
effectiveness of committees and to propose revisions to the committee
structure. Dr. Hoffman responded and
will be participating. No other
responses have been received. The first
meeting was held today, but only the Senate president and faculty
representative were present. A letter
will be sent to all groups to explain why full participation in this process is
important. [editor’s note: Governance
structures is one of the 11 items of the Senate’s domain. Changes in the
governance structure require mutual agreement between the Senate and the
Board. In order to facilitate reaching
mutual agreement the Senate would like to develop the proposal with input. It can take longer to reach mutual agreement
when all parties are not involved in the development.]
President
Fellguth researched staff development funds and whether the college has
received them from the state. There is still some uncertainty about the amount
and how/when they will be distributed to the individual colleges. Senate will follow up on this and report
back.
Committee Reports
Technology Master Planning
Team had
a demonstration of “customized portals.”
These would be the interface to an online database of answers to
questions and would be updated almost immediately. This would augment the Hartnell webpage which
can only be updated periodically. TMPT is exploring this technology.
Curriculum Committee has only three more
meetings left for the spring semester and the agendas are filling up. In addition to course outline approvals, the
committee will be discussing hybrid courses (part online/part
face-to-face). Chair Kathy Mendelsohn
stated that for a course to be offered as a hybrid course it would have to be
approved for online and it would have to be listed in the schedule of classes
as a hybrid course. This will not be
possible for fall, but with work by faculty and the Curriculum Committee in
early fall, it will be possible to meet spring schedule deadlines. Kathy also spoke about the need for
technology to support the work of the Curriculum Committee and urged Senate
support for the purchase of CurricuNET (see below). The VP of Instruction has asked the Business
Office to encumber three years of funding and the work by the Curriculum
Committee (with the company) to set up the system could begin in summer and
early fall. Support from the Academic
Senate could help to facilitate the funding.
Chair
Cheryl
O'Donnell reported that the Student
Learning Outcomes group has completed answers to the questions requested by
the Senate’s task force on committee structure.
They will be ready to meet with the task force ahead of schedule. In light of the recommendations from the
accreditation visit it is important that the SLO group becomes a governance
committee, that work on SLOs continues and that the work is fully supported by
the college. In addition, the
Accreditation Commission is requiring detailed information about SLOs on
questionnaires. For example, they are
asking for the percentage of courses with SLOs identified. For Hartnell it is
less than 1%. In order to meet the
accreditation standards, curriculum revisions will also be required. That will
be a good time to make sure that SLOs are in place for the courses. CurricuNET will support linking SLOs to
course outlines and make the process easier to manage.
Diversity Committee is working on the Equal
Employment Opportunities plan. They are
also interested in examining what we are doing as a Hispanic Serving
Institution.
Budget Committee is now meeting twice a
month. Meeting schedule will be posted
on the Senate website. It was noted that the schedule of Budget Committee
meetings includes twice monthly meetings during the summer. The question was asked, “Can a shared
governance committee meet during faculty non-work days?” Currently the
committee is getting information about how the budget for this year was
developed, but no work on developing the ’07-’08 budget has begun. There was speculation that this may happen
during the summer when faculty are not present.
At the Budget Committee’s meeting with the accreditation visiting team,
the VP of Adm. Svcs. responded that everyone was NOT on board with the Senate’s
plan to review and propose revisions to the committee structure.
Discussion Items
Departmental Move Policy:
Mary
Dominguez addressed the Senate’s concerns about the departmental move being
used by students as a way to add a class that had been full during the add/drop
period or to move late in the semester to an instructor with a more favorable
grading policy. She said there is no
policy about departmental moves, but there is a procedure. The student must turn in an add form and a
drop form at the same time. Both must be signed and “departmental move” must be
marked. Both instructors should know
that it is a departmental move. Only
about 20 students a semester do this. Most do it for work schedule
changes. The Senate debated whether a
policy is needed or whether this was an unusual circumstance. Mary also noted that there have been
instances of students forging faculty signatures on forms. Faculty can check the PAWS rosters often
during the semester and if a discrepancy is noticed, contact A&R.
CurricuNET adoption: This will be an action item at the next
Senate meeting, but a straw poll was taken showing unanimous support for
purchasing and implementing CurricuNET.
If you would like to view it, contact Kathy
Mendelsohn. She will send you the
link and guest password.
Constitution Revision: The Senate constitution needs revision. It was last revised in 2000. Some of the areas that need revision are the
membership categories (e.g. library area needs its own representative—they are
currently combined with counseling) and method for amending the constitution
(currently requires 60% of ALL full time faculty—sometimes difficult to get
that level of participation in a vote).
Peggy Mayfield has been working on this Senate goal and will continue to
identify changes. Watch for a vote during
fall convocation!
Faculty Professional
Ethics Statement: The Senate adopted the AAUP ethics statement
many years ago. In light of comments by
the accreditation visiting team, it is important to reaffirm or update
this. A revised version was presented to
the Senate. Senators noted that Occ. Ed.
and Nursing have Ethics Statements that are shorter and perhaps more specific
to Hartnell. The Steering Committee will
look at these and others and bring back a revised statement for adoption.
Senate Proposal for update
of Full time Faculty Hiring Process:
The
subcommittee (Cathy Noble and Jennifer Fellguth) has researched processes at
other colleges and prepared a draft. Goals of the revision are to address
hiring irregularities brought to the Senate in fall (see
The
draft will address the faculty role in
- Determining the job
description for the position announcement
- Determining the
members of the selection committees
- Marketing/advertising
the position
- Determining the need
for writing samples, letters of recommendation and other parts of the
application packet or interview process
It
will also address procedures/steps for addressing problems with a selection
process and describes a role for Senate President should problems arise. It will include a way for the selection
committee to present any dissenting view to the Board of Trustees in closed
session. The draft will come back to the
Senate for adoption after some revisions.
Then it will be presented for mutual agreement.
Potential student lawsuit –outdated
Diesel Mechanics curriculum in catalog: This item
will be continued at the next meeting when the Senate has more
information. However, a discussion
ensued about the importance of catalog clean up and the updating of
programs. The responsibility for this
resides with faculty, but in many cases the problems are in areas with no full
time faculty. What happens then?
A
Program Review process that was well integrated with curriculum development,
planning, and budgeting would help. It
was suggested that the results of the program reviews done by disciplines
should come to the Senate. They would be
an important tool for policy decisions in the Senate.
Action Items
Faculty appointments:
Dan
Petersen and Peggy Mayfield to the Full-time Faculty Hiring Committee
Wayne
Davis and Millicent Madrigal to the Selection Committee for EOPS Director
SLO Committee Approval
The
Senate approved the proposal of the Student Learning Outcomes Committee.
[editors note: “Governance structures” is one
of the items on which the Board and Senate must reach mutual agreement before a
change is made.
See http://www.asccc.org/Publications/Papers/Participating_college_governance.html
The proposal to add this
committee will be presented for mutual agreement. Once that occurs the Student Learning
Outcomes committee will become part of the official committee structure with
description, function, and membership codified in the Committee Handbook. As the Senate task force reviews the committee
structure any necessary links to other committees will be determined and the
Senate will propose ways to make those connections work.]
Cathy
Noble noted that the Student Services work on SLOs was commended by the
accreditation visiting team.