Notes - April 16th, 2007
The De Anza Academic Senate
Approved Notes for the meeting of
April 16th, 2007
Senators and Officers present: Bambhania, Cadge-Moore, Capitolo, Chenoweth, Coleman,
Cordero, Dolen, Gallegos, Glapion, Goodwin, Guevara, Hearn, Jensen-Sullivan, Joplin,
Kessler, Kramer, Lathers, Lee-Klawender, Lizardi-Folley, Miller, Paicius, Raffaelli
Schaffer, Setziol, Winters, and Zill
Senators and Officers absent: Cole, Maynard, and Osborne,
DASB:
Classified Senate: Olivia Patlan
Administrative Liaison:
Guests:
[NOTE: Item numbers are reflective of agenda numbers in the order they
are actually taken up at the meeting.]
The meeting was called to order at 2:34 a quorum being present.
I. Approval of Agenda and Notes: The agenda was approved as distributed.
The notes of March 19th were approved as distributed.
II. Needs and Confirmations: There were no confirmations. Chenoweth and Hearn announced
that it was time to populate the committee to be called the W.A.I.T.T. (We're All
In This Together) committee dedicated to making the college friendlier especially
for new and prospective students. Chenoweth proudly announced that Olivia Patlan
and Barbara Dahlke from the Classified Senate have volunteered to join the group.
III. Bond Measure Review Subcommittee: A resolution by the officers formally creating
a Bond Measure Review Subcommittee was approved unanimously. Senators were asked
to go back to their constituents to ask for volunteers.
IV. Using Retention Figures in Tenure Evaluation: It has been proposed by the administration
to have retention data become a quantitative measure for tenure review. Discussion
revealed that, although retention is certainly a crucial element in education, tenure
review needs to focus on the reasons for low retention. Also, it appeared to those
commenting that other aspects of tenure review point to retention as an issue or a
potential issue and that just gathering numerical data would need to be extremely
sophisticated and ongoing, accounting for vagaries of different disciplines and specific
courses involved, quarters surveyed, and class size. All in all, the clear sense
of the group was in opposition to the inclusion of retention data as a quantitative
measure.
V. Process for Hiring Committees: Hearn announced that this was likely to be an ongoing
agenda item and that people should not expect decisions directly effecting change
during this meeting. A pair of documents were distributed which combined previous
work by the Senate, Board Policy elements, and work by the officers.
Some points made which will require further consideration:
- Notification of department faculty by division deans
- Carefully crafting language exerting some but not too much control on departmental
processes
- Having the Executive Committee select faculty from departments in situations
where departments are unable to come to agreement
- Preventing division deans from being in untenable positions with regard to committee
formation
- Providing divisions in addition to departments the opportunity to have and share
relevant knowledge and input
- Refraining from putting too much responsibility in the hands of division deans
VI. Academic Senate President Report: The item began with a brief presentation by
college president Brian Murphy. Murphy told the group about pending legislation sponsored
by Ira Ruskin which would establish a center for the development of open educational
resources and include a three million dollar grant. In order to facilitate the possible
beginning of an effort involving the creation of a center, the Senate was asked to
establish a subcommittee of interested persons. There is already a list in existence
of faculty in the district who are interested in pursuing the open source ideal, most
of whom are at De Anza. Part time faculty are included in the concept.
It was MSCU (Winters/Goodwin) to establish the committee. Hearn will get the list
of those already demonstrating an interest and either she or Chenoweth will invite
participation of those people but also including all full and part time faculty.
Hearn also reported the following:
- A new Vice Chancellor for Business Services has been selected.
- The search for a new Vice Chancellor for Human Resources and Equal Opportunity
will continue by starting over.
- Applications for Interim Vice President of Instruction at De Anza are due this
week.
- There continues to be no action on the materials policy despite previous remarks
that it was the Academic Senate which was holding up the process.
- Chenoweth is nearly ready with the De Anza Shared Governance web site.
- Enrollment was reported to be flat as of the time of the meeting. However, this
was characterized as being, in part, good news in that on campus enrollment is up
whereas Job Corps enrollment is down. The 2007-2008 proposed budget does not include
growth but Hearn suggested that we could still accomplish growth in the 2007-2008
academic year and reap the benefits of it in 2008-2009.
- The Campus Budgeting Team is looking for an equitable method of budgeting. This
includes the possibility of zero based budgeting, known to be odious to many.
VII. Strategic Planning Update: Hearn briefly gave the group a report that essentially
meant that things were proceeding as expected. She will send out electronically
a very lengthy document. However, the group will not be asked to go through the whole
thing. Rather, she would like to have suggestions for specific areas Senators would
be interested in discussing. A summary of the budget requests will be distributed
for the April 23rd meeting.
VIII. Instructional Testing Update: A draft of a "Testing Proctor" position was
distributed. Hearn read four main points from a second document not yet ready for
distribution. It will be ready for distribution prior to the April 23rd meeting at
which time the item will be discussed fully.
IX. State Senate Executive Committee Resolutions: A selection of resolutions was
distributed. Due to time considerations, the group focused almost exclusively on
resolutions pertaining to proposed changes in the state list of disciplines and the
minimum qualifications for them. A brief discussion of each of these was followed
by a request for speedy communication to and from faculty in departments potentially
affected.
One other resolution merited the group's attention for the remainder of the meeting.
A resolution calling for a cessation of new articulation activities with the California
State University (CSU) system was discussed. Davison revealed that top representatives
of the CSU faculty expressed embarrassment at the heavy handed and aggressive proposals
coming from the system office. Basically the problem is that current articulation
agreements are being denied at a high rate for reasons unacceptable to community college
faculty and detrimental to the community colleges.
X. Good of the Order: - Khanna announced that Stephanie Sherman had been appointed
Curriculum Committee Co Chair by Judy Miner. The officers responded by saying that
this may not be in order since their understanding was that the position was specifically
reserved for the Vice President of Instruction and not a designee.
- The Senate's reception for newly tenured faculty will be April 23rd from 4:15
until perhaps 5:30. Senators and officers were encouraged to stay and enjoy the
food, drink, and celebration. Honoring of the recipients will begin at approximately
4:45. President Murphy was thanked for providing the refreshments.
- Joplin announced that Karl Schaffer will perform a solo dance show in Santa Cruz.
See him for details.
- Earth Day is Sunday April 22nd.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:34