Faculty Council

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Guest Presenter: Stan Taylor (Governance Task Force)

Council Member & Ex-Officio Statements
Classified Council is working on the council representation issue. As it stands, if not a union member, one can’t represent the union on a council.

The Unit Planning committee is reviewing emerging the initiatives to identify emerging themes.

Portal workgroup is awaiting technological information; there will be a full report at the April 9 meeting.

Faculty were encouraged to complete the online survey on the governance proposal, responses will be analyzed this week.

On the issue of labor management, the Workload Advisory Committee is looking at where part-time faculty is being over-used, trying to reestablish a committee for full-time faculty.

Sheila Broderick is answering questions, making recommendations for workload appointments, asking for faculty support in performing the annual survey.

February 27 minutes approved
With following correction: present – Mark Harris

Learning Council Charter, relationship to Faculty Council, and Workload implications
Faculty Council is encouraged to look over the documents for this meeting, including the learning council grid from the governance proposal, and to identify the members, committees, and language: who is brought together by this proposal from these “learning support areas?” This charter considers academic planning relationships; assessment processes and IT planning are being considered. It’s important to note that the role of Faculty Council will change significantly, and that no policies out of grid will by-pass Faculty Council.

Question: What existing problems will the formation of the learning council fix? (If there’s no problem, aren’t we setting up for conflicts?)
Provides a forum where all employee groups plan together and bring issues to the table where all can consider them, so decisions can be made at the table.

Question: What does the learning council do?
Promotes broader participation to come up with priorities, drive budget allocations (see grid).

Work session on draft of Faculty Council Charter

Mason gave an overview of current (unadopted) revisions of 2/24/03 before opening the floor for questions/comments.

Suggestion: Add the library to “instructional units.”

Revision suggestion: Mission Statement should read . . . as an approval, . . . as opposed to . . . as the approval, . . . so the impression isn’t that faculty council is the sole approval, recommendation and referring body.

Suggestion: Obtain membership from Advanced Tech. and Community Education depts.

Revision suggestion: On page 6, “moderators” should be changed to “co-chairs” so as not to give the impression of such a limited role.

Suggestion: For the role of appointing people, support contractual language, this right should flow directly from contract.

Revision suggestion: III, B, par. 1: Use much more general language to involve all departments.

Suggestion: Election of co-chairs should be faculty-wide as opposed to from just faculty council.

Suggestion: 2-year co-chair term, stagger elections

An informal poll was taken whether or not co-chairs need prior Faculty Council experience to be eligible to serve. General support from those who participated.

Presentation on the Accreditation Self-Study
Russell Shitabata came to present some information/key concepts about the accreditation self-study. Three key concepts were: 1) Compliance with standards (instructional programs and their effectiveness, students, faculty, library, governance, finance, physical resources, institutional integrity) presented by elements/ indicators/ decimal units, 2) Focus on evidence of effectiveness (past/present comparisons, college comparisons, standard teams). Total of 130 participants college-wide (Plan, Do, Check, Act). 3) Ongoing self-assessment (clear, meets standards, has necessary resources).

Timeline:
April – rough draft of self-study process released, all feedback will be considered.
October – on sight evaluators (13 total), 9 of whom will focus on standards two and four. This will help us to figure how we plan and evaluate our programs.

Some questions arose about standard 6, which will be addressed and/ or solved by the new governance system. The distance learning standard isn’t reconstituted yet, it’s questioned whether or not report writing is happening before the group has done its work; Russell confirms no writing going on now; furthermore, there is some mistakenly scrambled language in 2.6 that is being considered.

Russell distributed a handout that contains the kinds of questions evaluators can ask to get information about effectiveness.

Adjourn 4:32 p.m.