Academic Affairs Cluster

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE OF CPC

M I N U T E S

May 7, 2008

2:30 p.m.

President’s Conference Room

ATTENDANCE

PRESENT

Administration

Dr. Kristi Blackburn, Dr. David Humphreys, Luis Rosas

Faculty

Nabeel Barakat, Carmen Carrillo, Sally Fasteau, Joy Fisher, Jonathon Lee, Evelyn Lum, Lauren McKenzie, Joyce Parker, June Smith, Jim Stanbery, Mark Wood, Bradley Young

Students

Liz Anceno

AGENDA

The agenda was adopted as approved.

MINUTES

Because a quorum was not reached, adoption of the minutes of April 9 and 16 were postponed.

Jonathon Lee stated that the Library division is not included on the ballot. They did their unit plan in February under an earlier template. It was a combined unit plan and program review with no dollar amounts on it. He also met with Dr. Humphreys yesterday and he does have a unit plan but it conforms to the new template. Mr. Lee requested that no substantial action be taken beyond simply the exercise of looking at it until he can somehow fold the unit plan into it.

Dr. Humphreys stated that because Luis Rosas also wanted to talk about the office side of the cluster, it then raises the question about what the process of the second ballot is going to be, what will be included and what will not be included. Due to the fact that he received only five ballots, Dr. Humphreys stressed the importance of committee members’ adhering to deadlines.

Lauren McKenzie stated that “when we look at the tabulation and the process is going to be skewed, and when I looked at some of these activities, we will do these regardless of what anybody says. They are not new priorities. We will go ahead and do them because it does not necessarily affect another division. I gave all those very high rankings.”

Jim Stanbery pointed out that the objective of today’s meeting was to get good observations from people who have gone through the process but without trying to reach any decisions.

Dr. Humphreys stated that “my major concern other than total participation of everybody and getting it all together, was still a confusion I think that we all experienced about whether we needed to rank absolutely everything or not. Lauren McKenzie’s point is well taken because now you have some relatively minor things that you are going to do anyway tucked way up high above things that have to do with going for dollars and resources. I still felt confused when I look at what the results are as to the things that we want to bundle together. The thing that I would come back to on the second ballot is that I would love to have every unit or division tell me what are the three, four or five items that you want ranked to go to CPC. I am going to strip out everything else except that in the ballot. We can provide a rubric and then have a clearer set of choices that will help us when we now move things forward to CPC. It is a good exercise and a valuable process.”

During a discussion of how much the budget should play into the decision making process, Jim Stanbery stated that “we will get use to the kinds of things that shouldn’t be in here and the things that should through the practice and on the budget practicality you know my reservations about even having that category in it. I had hoped that people would not use that one factor to invalidate our approach. Policy in the end is supposed to drive budget. Budget does not drive policy. We have a list of priorities. If we can’t fund the things that are at top priority, okay we can’t, but we just go down the list to the things that we can fund. So if there is some thing that is going to cost $100,000 but we really want it and there is something that is going to cost $6,000 that is further down and the college only has $6,000 available, obviously it is that lower priority that is going to get funded but it doesn’t mean that we don’t put the other thing at the top of the list.”

Mark Wood brought up a procedural point as to who the voting members of the committee should be and that we need to take a look at the planning manual and find out who the members are. Mr. Wood went on to say that he doesn’t even think we should have a budget line if we are not going to prioritize by budget. If it isn’t there then it shouldn’t be a factor. However, going with Jim Stanbery’s statement, if we have a $155, 000 thing here and we have a $6,000 thing here, and we don’t have the $155,000, we go down but if we have let’s say $160,000 do we want to spend $155,000 on that and not get anything else on the list? Is it really worth it to make that No. 1 priority on the campus and we are going to forsake a lot of other things. We might lose 12 things by getting two at $150,000. So budget does kind of play in there.” One additional matter he brought up was his belief that the criteria used in the ranking process was far too wide. His suggestion was to pick a goal for the campus such as increase enrollment, retention, or basic skills, for example, and whatever it is we need to say that these are the things that we are focusing on, does this activity support that thing and then move in that direction.

June Smith stated that she questioned this exercise as a valid statistical measurement and that she would much rather see the committee develop a model whereby each unit identifies its top priorities and then have the committee come together and reach a consensus on what priorities are absolutely needed for the college to go forward with in order to meet its educational goals.

Brad Young stated that “one of things that I have noticed in here and that I have mentioned for many years is that I am still a believer of the line item budget approach. I don’t think there is not a division that did not put in for tutors. If you look at the learning outcomes and where we are going in that field, from our division, more and more of our instructors are switching back from objective to subjective methods. They are bringing in the critical thinking and reading and writing skills which is requiring more on the tutoring side so we are seeing a shift within our division by many of our teachers. We are beginning to see a lot of similar needs in all of our divisions so the question becomes is it actually a division need or a college need or cluster need and perhaps we need to fish out a pot of money for that. I think there are certain things that should be at the cluster level such as tutoring and outreach.”

Luis Rosas stated that “we don’t have forever to do this. The other three clusters are ready to go. We are going to have to have that CPC meeting very soon where we all sit down together and prioritize for the whole college. We need to come together with all of the information that we have. We have a pretty good start. We have all of the things that are important to us already on a spreadsheet. We are supposed to do this through robust dialogue according to the accreditation guidelines. We can meet again a week from today from 1-4 p.m. for prioritization. If everybody gets everything in today so that we can have all of the important items listed on this spreadsheet and the numerical values will be left for a matter of individual judgement.”

Dr Humphreys added that “I would suggest that between now and Friday, that everybody that has a unit or discipline that you make it absolutely completely clear to me which ones are your top three and what I will do is go through and I will go back to the template that I had and I will delete everything except what you tell me.” Jim Stanbery noted that members will not be limited to only three, but which ones do they really want to go forward to CPC. The ballots will be completed at the meeting.

ADJOURNMENT