Faculty Council Minutes
January 13, 2006

In attendance:

Sonya Christian	Christina Salter	Joe McCully
Bert Pooth	Chris Siefert	Iley McCready
Sheila Broderick	Mary Brau	Bojana Stefanovska
Dennis Gilbert	Jim Bailey	Ray Smith
Stephen Selph	Sharon Kimble	Lynn Tullis
Mark Harris	Karen Louise White	Judy McKenzie
Alice Whitenack	Larry Scott	Cynthia Adams
Jim Salt (LCCEA)	Jane Batterson

Approval of the minutes of the Council meeting of Dec. 9, 2005:
Will be sent out for approval after review of section on Learning Plan.

Announcements
Mary Brau announced the passage of the Higher Education Reauthorization Act which will affect our policies on acceptable transfer credits. We will now be using two broader, nation-wide lists of transfer courses (CHIA and US Department of Ed.), rather than the northwest regional list we used in the past.

Alice Whitenack announced that Tova Fabin will likely be the new chair of the Diversity Council.

Sharon Kimble announced that the Business Department has moved into its new offices.

Karen Louise White announced that Mary Spilde accepted a sustainability award from Mayor Piercy on behalf of LCC.

Christina Salter announced that she attended a meeting on early intervention and that Marva Solomon is getting a human rights award.

Larry Scott announced meeting of the Northwest Earth Institute which is having discussions on sustainability. All interested should contact Larry or Joe Russin (Science). Larry will be working with Dennis Gilbert to move the evaluation team forward.

Sonya Christian announced that Sarah Ulerick and Sheila Broderick will be discussion leaders at a conference on SB 342 at PCC. Also selected to attend (space permitting) are Steven Selph, Mary Brau and Dick Solomon.

Curriculum Funding Committee Charter
Mary Brau will revise the charter for consideration at the next meeting. The following points were raised:

• The committee’s reports should be biannual.
• The word “advise” is too weak: the purpose of the committee should be to make funding decisions that are forwarded to OISS.
• OISS needs to see that decisions are aligned with governing council priorities.
• OISS decisions should be limited to what is fiducially responsible, not which curricular developments should be funded.
• If the committee decides what should get funding, there is an avenue for accountability of OISS in its decision making.

Mary will work on the following:

• Put “Funding” in the title.
• Change “advise” to “inform”.
• Remove the names of current members.
• The “Purpose” statement contains language on “determination” (work with Dennis).
• The “Scope” section will have an additional bullet noting that decisions be made in a timely way.

Instructional Technology Strategic Plan
A number of objections to the plan were raised:

• Although computing has been decentralized (from main-frame to individual machines) support remains centralized. This is inefficient and forces divisions to pay for local help.
• There is no plan to assess the effectiveness of technology.
• Use of “open-source” software should be an overarching strategy.
• There is a lot of variation among divisions in terms of the level of technology available in classrooms.

It is recommended that people with concerns forward specific wording to the Learning Council through Bert or Ken Zimmerman.