Academic Affairs Cluster

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE OF CPC

M I N U T E S

April 16, 2008

1:30 p.m.

Music Conference Room

ATTENDANCE

PRESENT

Administration

Dr. Kristi Blackburn, Dr. David Humphreys, Bobby McNeel, Dr. Robert Richards,

Luis Rosas

Faculty

Nabeel Barakat, Carmen Carrillo, Sally Fasteau, Joy Fisher, Evelyn Lum, Joyce Parker, Jim Stanbery, Mark Wood, Bradley Young

CALL TO ORDER

The meeting was called to order at 1:30 p.m. in the Music Conference Room.

Mr. Stanbery stated that the agenda for the meeting has one item on it; namely, to come to an agreement on a process for merging unit plans into a cluster plan, with the implementation of the process and the actual merging to take place at the committee's next meeting on April 30. Dr. Humphreys will not be presenting the unit plans that he has received to date but will simply suggest a prioritization process.

Dr. Humphreys stated that what he understood to be his charge for the day was to present a straw design for a way to get from unit planning to cluster planning--how the committee should make those steps that would help to amalgamate all the different interests into a cluster plan that would go forward. “My proposal is that the process should begin with a “brief” review of the college and district strategic plans. The second piece is spending due time on the environmental scan.”

Luis Rosas stressed the importance of the district strategic plan, looking at our goals and objectives in a wider picture--in a panoramic view--looking at the state economy, trends and data, to see where we collectively want to put emphasis in the formation of our plans. It was recommended at this point that this issue be suggested as an agenda item for CPC at its next meeting on April 28.

Discussion then centered on how to get faculty more involved in the planning and SLO assessment process. Since this involves the fulfillment of contractual obligations, Dr. Humphreys recommended that a meeting take place in the near future, with union involvement, to take up this issue.

In terms of the next meeting, what would follow the review of district and college strategic goals and environmental factors would be an opportunity for the unit heads to present their overall plan and the priorities that they want implemented now.

Dr. Humphreys presented some questions to the committee for further discussion.

While you may list 15, 20, 30 activities in your unit plan, are you going to bring forward all 15 or 20 of those to be prioritized within the cluster? And would we bring forward such things as hiring specific faculty? Mr. Stanbery replied that our forms are set up to prioritize activities. “Those activities cite the resources required to implement them, such as positions or equipment. However, if we start trying to prioritize positions per se, then it creates a potential conflict with FHPC. FHPC’s manual says that it prioritizes positions in accordance with the college plan, and to the extent that our plan is good and our priorities are sound, FHPC’s decisions will wind up implementing the activities involved.”

The next question is, do we include any facilities issues? Here again, what we prioritize are activities, including any facilities required to implement these activities.

If we have ten separate unit plans coming forward, how far down the priority lists should a unit go in terms of what the unit wants us to consider? While some members suggested limiting each unit to presenting two or three priorities to begin with, Sally Fasteau stated that there could be some inequity between the larger and smaller divisions by doing this. It was then agreed that every division should present as many as it chose. Mark Wood noted that "if I can bring forward whatever I think is most important to my students, if all seven of the departments in my division have something that is really crucial and they have done all the SLO’s and the measurements, I should now be able to bring all this forward and let the college decide."

Dr. Humphreys will create one list, in no specific order, of all of the priorities compiled from the unit plans. He will then send out the unit plans electronically in advance of the meeting along with the list of priorities. When submitting their unit plans, the unit leaders were asked to highlight the activities to be included in the prioritization. All unit plans are due to Dr. Humphreys by April 25.

What kind of ballot do we want especially if we have a long list of priorities? Mr. Stanbery remarked that there has to be some quasi-objective way of ordering them. “If we go by the manual, the prioritization criteria are the college goals, and the ballot simply lists the proposed priorities and the seven college goals, and you assign a number in the column for each goal according to the extent to which you feel that that proposed activity contributes to that goal.

There was consensus to defer the decision as to what criteria the committee will use in the prioritization process to the 3:30 Tuesday agenda meeting prior to the committee meeting April 30.

There was also consensus that full discussion would follow the first ballot, after which a second ballot would be taken, not necessarily at the same meeting, and the final rankings would be made public, with an option for the two co-chairs to review that result, and if the co-chairs feel it fails adequately to reflect concerns of college-wide significance, they have a right to share these concerns at a later meeting and request a third ballot.

At the meeting on the 30^th an additional motion will be brought forward as proposed by Mr. Young for a college hour TTh from 12:30-2 p.m.

ADJOURNMENT