Notes - April 21st, 2008
The De Anza Academic Senate
Approved Notes for the meeting of
April 21st, 2008
Senators and Officers present: Argyriou, Bambhania, Chenoweth, Coleman, Cordero, Dolen, Gallegos, Glapion, Goodwin, Guevara, Hanna, Hughes, Kessler, Kramer, LaManque, Lathers, Lee-Klawender, Maynard, Miller, Mitchell, Ng-Lee, Schaffer, Setziol, Shively, Walton, White, and Winters
Senators and Officers absent: Chang
DASB: Classified Senate: Al Guevara
Administrative Liaison:
Guests: Alex Swanner, Lena Chang, Jeri Montgomery, Sefan Hird
Curriculum Co Chair: Anu Khanna SLO Coordinator: Maryalice Bonilla
[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 2:36 a quorum being present.
I. Approval of Agenda and Notes: The agenda was approved as distributed.
The notes of April 14th, 2008 were approved as distributed with several modifications of the language in item V (Reorganization) and a correction (to $75of the amount authorized for flowers for the widow of Will Paicius.
Also included in this item was an introduction by guest Stefan Hird to attempts to revive a tradition of demonstrations on any number of issues May 1st.
II. Needs and Confirmations: Spera Georgiou was confirmed for service on the Instructional Designer (Distance Learning- classified) position Search and Selection Committee. Dolores Davison was unanimously approved to be the District Senate President for the 2008-2009 year.
IV. Board Policies: After a discussion which demonstrated confusion and which was in part about the workings of a consent calendar being introduced by Chenoweth, three proposed Board Policy statements received endorsement: 1) Enrollment Priorities, 2) Student Equity, and 3) Guidelines for administering Environmentally Sustainable Practices.
V. Reorganization: The three items in President Murphy's proposal which became the focus of the group at the April 14th meeting were discussed in great detail. After testimony from nearly all present it was MSCU (Mitchell/Cordero) to approve the following statement. "It is the position of the De Anza Academic Senate that Distance Learning belongs in the Instruction area. Putting it in another area would be inappropriate." Chenoweth acknowledged that there had been many compelling arguments made including one from Child Development which had its house divided by administrative decision. The result has not been a success. With regard to the Library, many comments and suggestions were made including one combining several others which called for the Library, Distance Learning, and the various Student success programs to be grouped together with a responsible administrator possessing the Library minimum qualification. This suggestion came immediately after a reminder that the sense of the Senate at the April 14th meeting was that the people in those three areas should be brought together to discuss such a union.
III. Textbook Rentals: Jeri Montgomery was present to give an update on the prospects for a Fall implementation of the Textbook Rental plan. Based on a very enthusiastic response and finite storage space in the bookstore, she said she would like the Senate to prioritize or choose which texts to include. On the other hand she said that the bookstore had some limitations and some situations in which they would not be interested. For example, there would need to be a commitment on the part of ordering faculty to keep using a specific edition for two years if the book is used every quarter and for three years if it is not used every quarter. Also, more expensive books should be favored over less expensive books and books for general education classes should be favored over other classes since those texts are less likely to be retained by students after a course is over. Since the bookstore is using a grant from the Foothill De Anza Colleges Foundation and that grant is only for $5,000, this will be a very limited pilot project. Immediate response to this last point indicated an interest in finding more money for this worthy effort.
VI. Faculty Mentoring: LaManque presented an update on the status of the effort. His presentation primarily consisted of an introduction to the basic aspects of the initiative, the fact that this pilot is intended to involve a target number of 25 faculty members and 150 or so students, the fact that no stipend is planned for the pilot phase, and a request for more faculty volunteers.
VII. GE Review/Student Learning Outcomes: Chenoweth began by distributing two documents, one a modified timeframe for the whole effort and one called "CORE COMPETENCIES Expanded description worksheet". The timeframe needed to be modified because of the work on core competencies which it seemed logical to work on first. Upon the presentation of proposed core competencies, two things became apparent, 1) that it needs to be made clearer that not all courses will be expected to call for and measure all competencies and 2) that an additional round of open forums need to be added to present to any and all comers the proposed competencies and get responses to them.
VIII. Elections: Academic Senate Elections are to be held May 7th and 8th. The offices of President, and Vice President and both one and two year term Part Time Faculty representative are open. A new flyer replacing the one asking interested faculty to contact Will Paicius was being distributed at the time of the meeting. In response to a question about load released, the officers mentioned that there was an approximate aggregate maximum and an approximate distribution with the aggregate being 1.5 and the distribution being .7-.75 for President, .45-.55 for Vice President, and .25-.30 for Executive Secretary.
IX: Opening Day Speakers: Chenoweth spoke of a distribution of candidates' names and introductions and asked if there were any additional suggestions for consideration at the April 28th meeting. Setziol reminded the group that Amory Lovins had been suggested several times but was somehow missing from the list.
X. Good of the Order and announcements: -
The meeting was adjourned at 4:25