The De Anza Academic Senate
Approved Notes for the meeting of
January 26th, 2009
Senators and Officers present: Argyriou, Botsford, Brennan, Cichanski, Coleman, Cordero, Dolen, Hanna, Hughes, Goodwin, Guevara, Lathers, Lee-Klawender, Liu, Logvinenko, Maynard, Miller, Mitchell, Roberts, Setziol, Sherby, Swanner, Walton, and White
Senators and Officers absent: Karst, LaManque, Glapion, and Winters
DASB: Classified Senate:
Administrative Liaison: Lydia Hearn Guests: Colleen Lee-Wheat, Karl Schaffer,
Gregory Anderson, Jim Haynes, Elizabeth Mjelde, and Juliana Kang
Curriculum Co Chair:
[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 2:35, a quorum being present.
I. Approval of Agenda and Notes: The agenda was approved as distributed with the addition of an item titled Report from District Meetings. The notes of January 12th were approved as distributed.
IIa. Needs and Confirmations: Maynard was confirmed for service on the new biology faculty member Tenure Review Committee.
With regard to Needs, once again there was a brief reminder that there are many vacancies on committees and special attention was paid to the Instructional Planning and Budgeting Team (IPBT) and, once again, to the Facilities Committee.
IIb. Report from District Meetings: Setziol reported on the Chancellor's Advisory Council and Academic and Professional Matters Committee meetings of January 23rd. Given time constraints, his report focused on a few items rather than covering complete agendas. From the Chancellor's Advisory Council meeting, he reported that an item of significant interest to the Senate was the existence of two proposals on hiring. One proposal was to count on freezing half of the vacant positions in the district (50 at the moment) and the other was to freeze all vacant positions. He reminded the group that it was a long standing position of the Academic Senate to resist the idea of automatically freezing all positions and to favor the idea that vacant positions should be examined to determine the likely effect on the institution of leaving them vacant for a year. While especially true of faculty positions, the logic would hold for all positions. From the Academic and Professional Matters Committee meeting, Setziol reported on several items. Some were Board draft policy statements. He also mentioned that he more or less promised Martha Kanter definitive action on several items.
The main and most pressing item from the meeting was the news that getting approval to fill the vacant staff development position at De Anza is likely to be very hard if not impossible. There was a preliminary discussion about the ramifications of the situation.
III. Program Review: Lee-Klawender presented small changes to the Program Review template previously distributed. Several of the changes were a result of input given at the January 12th meeting of the Executive Committee. In this part of the item, the most significant discussion concerned the term basic skills and a question of whether or not the IPBT's interest in basic skills was limited to Math, English, ESL, and Reading. Some disciplines routinely deal with the term as referring to content and levels of proficiency within their discipline.
The item was interrupted by Item IV.
IV. Basic Skills Initiative: Gregory Anderson gave a detailed and well organized presentation of the budget for this statewide initiative. He expressed complete confidence in the work of the committee that developed the budget. He explained that the reason for delaying expenditures was a function of names and categories within the state grant changing over time and uncertainty about future year spending. This combination made caution and slow going a prudent approach. The presentation appeared to show that the Basic Skills Initiative Steering Committee was doing a good job balancing caution with need while all the while staying within the funding guidelines of the initiative.
Back to III. Program Review: This part of the item focused on a discussion about whether or not to allow instructional departments to submit program reviews from subsets of their departments. Juliana Kang and Elizabeth Mjelde were present to talk about the desire of Art History to present a review separate from that of Art. Questions were raised about the definition of the word "program. It appeared to be the sense of the Senate that strongly differentiated departments should be allowed to write something separate from an amalgamated departmental review. There were, however, concerns about whether or not data normally provided for the departmental level of organization would in all cases be available for what individual departments would decide to call programs within a department.
VII. Student Learning Outcomes: Jim Haynes and Lee-Wheat made their first presentations as the Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) coordinators for Student Services and Instruction respectively. They concentrated their presentations on the need for staff development, cooperation, and a shared understanding that SLOs should be helpful. Documents were distributed containing definitions, a purpose statement, tentative timelines, a rubric for evaluating institutional effectiveness, and a memorandum of expectation from Barbara Beno of the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC).
V. Senate Budget: The item was held over.
VI. Donations Budget: The item was held over.
VIII. Good of the Order and announcements: There was order and it was good.