Notes - April 16th, 2007

The De Anza Academic Senate
Approved Notes for the meeting of
April 16th, 2007

Senators and Officers present: Bambhania, Cadge-Moore, Capitolo, Chenoweth, Coleman,  Cordero, Dolen, Gallegos, Glapion, Goodwin, Guevara, Hearn, Jensen-Sullivan, Joplin, Kessler, Kramer, Lathers, Lee-Klawender, Lizardi-Folley, Miller, Paicius, Raffaelli Schaffer, Setziol, Winters, and Zill
Senators and Officers absent: Cole, Maynard, and Osborne,
DASB:
Classified Senate: Olivia Patlan
Administrative Liaison:
Guests:
[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 2:34 a quorum being present.
I. Approval of Agenda and Notes: The agenda was approved as distributed.
The notes of March 19th were approved as distributed.
II.  Needs and Confirmations:  There were no confirmations.  Chenoweth and Hearn announced that it was time to populate the committee to be called the W.A.I.T.T.  (We're All In This Together) committee dedicated to making the college friendlier especially for new and prospective students.  Chenoweth proudly announced that Olivia Patlan and Barbara Dahlke from the Classified Senate have volunteered to join the group.  
III.  Bond Measure Review Subcommittee: A resolution by the officers formally creating a Bond Measure Review Subcommittee was approved unanimously.  Senators were asked to go back to their constituents to ask for volunteers.
IV. Using Retention Figures in Tenure Evaluation:  It has been proposed by the administration to have retention data become a quantitative measure for tenure review.  Discussion revealed that, although retention is certainly a crucial element in education, tenure review needs to focus on the reasons for low retention.  Also, it appeared to those commenting that other aspects of tenure review point to retention as an issue or a potential issue and that just gathering numerical data would need to be extremely sophisticated and ongoing, accounting for vagaries of different disciplines and specific courses involved, quarters surveyed, and class size.  All in all, the clear sense of the group was in opposition to the inclusion of retention data as a quantitative measure.
V.  Process for Hiring Committees: Hearn announced that this was likely to be an ongoing agenda item and that people should not expect decisions directly effecting change during this meeting.  A pair of documents were distributed which combined previous work by the Senate, Board Policy elements, and work by the officers.
Some points made which will require further consideration:
-    Notification of department faculty by division deans
-    Carefully crafting language exerting some but not too much control on departmental processes
-    Having the Executive Committee select faculty from departments in situations where departments are unable to come to agreement
-    Preventing division deans from being in untenable positions with regard to committee formation
-    Providing divisions in addition to departments the opportunity to have and share relevant knowledge and input
-    Refraining from putting too much responsibility in the hands of division deans
VI.  Academic Senate President Report:  The item began with a brief presentation by college president Brian Murphy.  Murphy told the group about pending legislation sponsored by Ira Ruskin which would establish a center for the development of open educational resources and include a three million dollar grant.  In order to facilitate the possible beginning of an effort involving the creation of a center, the Senate was asked to establish a subcommittee of interested persons.  There is already a list in existence of faculty in the district who are interested in pursuing the open source ideal, most of whom are at De Anza.  Part time faculty are included in the concept.
It was MSCU (Winters/Goodwin) to establish the committee.  Hearn will get the list of those already demonstrating an interest and either she or Chenoweth will invite participation of those people but also including all full and part time faculty.
Hearn also reported the following:
-         A new Vice Chancellor for Business Services has been selected.
-    The search for a new Vice Chancellor for Human Resources and Equal Opportunity will continue by starting over.
-    Applications for Interim Vice President of Instruction at De Anza are due this week.
-    There continues to be no action on the materials policy despite previous remarks that it was the Academic Senate which was holding up the process.
-    Chenoweth is nearly ready with the De Anza Shared Governance web site.
-    Enrollment was reported to be flat as of the time of the meeting.  However, this was characterized as being, in part, good news in that on campus enrollment is up whereas Job Corps enrollment is down.  The 2007-2008 proposed budget does not include growth but Hearn suggested that we could still accomplish growth in the 2007-2008 academic year and reap the benefits of it in 2008-2009.
-    The Campus Budgeting Team is looking for an equitable method of budgeting.  This includes the possibility of zero based budgeting, known to be odious to many.
VII. Strategic Planning Update:  Hearn briefly gave the group a report that essentially meant that things were proceeding as expected.   She will send out electronically a very lengthy document.  However, the group will not be asked to go through the whole thing.  Rather, she would like to have suggestions for specific areas Senators would be interested in discussing.  A summary of the budget requests will be distributed for the April 23rd meeting.
VIII.  Instructional Testing Update:  A draft of a "Testing Proctor" position was  distributed.  Hearn read four main points from a second document not yet ready for distribution.  It will be ready for distribution prior to the April 23rd meeting at which time the item will be discussed fully.
IX.  State Senate Executive Committee Resolutions:  A selection of resolutions was distributed.  Due to time considerations, the group focused almost exclusively on resolutions pertaining to proposed changes in the state list of disciplines and the minimum qualifications for them.  A brief discussion of each of these was followed by a request for speedy communication to and from faculty in departments potentially affected.
One other resolution merited the group's attention for the remainder of the meeting.  A resolution calling for a cessation of new articulation activities with the California State University (CSU) system was discussed.  Davison revealed that top representatives of the CSU faculty expressed embarrassment at the heavy handed and aggressive proposals coming from the system office.  Basically the problem is that current articulation agreements are being denied at a high rate for reasons unacceptable to community college faculty and detrimental to the community colleges.
X.   Good of the Order:  -  Khanna announced that Stephanie Sherman had been appointed Curriculum Committee Co Chair by Judy Miner.  The officers responded by saying that this may not be in order since their understanding was that the position was specifically reserved for the Vice President of Instruction and not a designee.
-    The Senate's reception for newly tenured faculty will be April 23rd from 4:15 until perhaps 5:30.  Senators and officers  were encouraged to stay and enjoy the food, drink, and celebration.  Honoring of the recipients will begin at approximately 4:45.  President Murphy was thanked for providing the refreshments.
-    Joplin announced that Karl Schaffer will perform a solo dance show in Santa Cruz.  See him for details.
-    Earth Day is Sunday April 22nd.
The meeting was adjourned at 4:34

Back to Top