The De Anza Academic Senate
Approved Notes for the meeting of
February 23rd, 2009
Senators and Officers present: Argyriou, Botsford, Brennan, Cichanski, Coleman, Cordero, Hanna, Hughes, Goodwin, Kang, Karst, Lathers, Lee-Klawender, Liu, Logvinenko, Maynard, Miller, Mitchell, Roberts, Setziol, Sherby, Swanner, Walton, White, and Winters
Senators and Officers absent: Dolen, Glapion, Guevara, and LaManque,
DASB: Classified Senate: Al Guevara
Administrative Liaison: Lydia Hearn Guests: Karl Schaffer, Brian Murphy, Cynthia Kaufman, Bob Stockwell, Judy Mowrey, and Jim Haynes,
Curriculum Co Chair: Anu Khanna
[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 removal of item IV (Student Services Program Review) due to a daunting list of more time urgent items .
Brian Murphy came and gave a brief synopsis of the recently approved State budget and its ramifications for the college. He mentioned that only prisons fared better that community colleges while health care and other items suffered deep cuts , the idea that the officially balanced budget contained "gimmicks" and "fiction", and that it required affirmative action by the public in an election to work. More specifically the effects of the budget on the college include 1) no cut to the apportionment base, 2) no mid year cut, 3) no Cost of Living Adjustment, 4) the removal of funding for some specific programs ($40,000,000 statewide), and 5) deferring payments to the District until after July 1st, 2009 which will have the effect of a loss of interest income to the District.
The fact that the budget is an eighteen month budget is good news in that it gives the college a year to plan how to eliminate its share of a $7,500,000 District structural budget deficit. This means that no lay offs are imminent. In order for the deficit to get no worse, the college has a target of over 7% growth. This tall order is due in part to a 93% reduction in Job Corps WSCH.
Back to Item I: The notes of February 9th were approved as distributed.
II. Needs and Confirmations: There were no confirmations and the group was spared collective boredom when Lee-Klawender decided not to trot out the ongoing needs.
III. Program Review: Logvinenko and Cichanski requested, on behalf of the Physical Sciences, Mathematics, and Engineering, a postponement of the Program Review self study due date to April 10th. Argyriou and LeeKlawender said that the request would be forwarded to the IPBT.
V. District Mission Statement: It was the sense of the Senate that the current Mission Statement is preferable to one proposed. It was also suggested that one proposed word ("effective") would be a reasonable addition.
VI. Educational Master Plan Drivers: Since there was nothing distributed, the proposal was projected on to a screen. Many comments came quickly and were almost
entirely negative or questioning. Two types of comments stood out and will be conveyed to Martha Kanter by Argyriou, 1) the first four items seemed contrived in that their appearance and manner of presentation suggested a particular agenda in common rather than an objective analysis of the current state of affairs and 2) much of the data and projections seemed well off base and out of date. The fact that the latter was the case was held to be due to the extraordinary times in which we find ourselves rather than poor methodology i.e. what would ordinarily be recent enough data and reasonable projections simply are not given the great and rapid decline in the national and regional economy over the last six months.
VII. Board Policy : "Harrassment and Discrimination": Although the document as a whole was largely non controversial, three areas for improvement were mentioned, 1) Rather than force the reader to search through the notoriously difficult to research Title 5, the current filing period for claims of harassment or discrimination should be stated, 2) There is a problem with the way the issue of religion is presented, and 3) there should be a section carefully defining terms used.
VIII. Curriculum Changes: It was MSCU (Mitchell/Hanna) to approve the plan submitted by the Curriculum Committee to begin a change in the calendar of deadlines for course outline revisions by having one third of course outline revisions normally due in the Fall be due the previous Spring. In her presentation, Khanna showed the number of courses due this Spring by division.
IX. SLO Resolution: The draft resolution previously distributed as information was due for discussion with action pending at the March 2nd meeting. There were few comments but it was the sense of the Senate that the document should be revised at the point where it reads "...recognizes that the ongoing assessment of Student Learning Outcomes is NOT:" Several specific suggestions were made, among them "should not be" and "must not be". Also, it was the sense of the Senate that the group's thinking about "individual faculty evaluation" needs to be clarified in some companion presentation so as to value the good aspects that SLO's predict yet guard against misapplication.
X. ICC Feedback: A modification of the language in the section on "Communication and Expression" was suggested and received support. It was suggested to change "switching between linguistic and cultural "codes" as needed" to "using linguistic and cultural "codes" as appropriate". There was continuing concern about the document promising that students will do things that they are, in fact, unlikely to do. It appeared that presentations and accompanying documents need to provide context both specifically and generally.
XI. Staff Development Position, XII. Diversity Director Position, and XIII. Faculty Hiring: Argyriou reiterated that there are 9 vacant positions to fill, three of which are in categorical programs, therefore leaving 6 available full time faculty positions and 11 announced discipline proposals. During discussion it was MSCU (Setziol/Hanna) to extend the time of the meeting by ten minutes. The result of the discussion was very strong support for the Staff Development position and support for the diversity position.
Good of the Order and announcements: - The item was held over due to lack of time.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:44.