Academic Affairs Cluster

ACADEMIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE OF CPC

M I N U T E S

September 3, 2008

2:30 p.m.

President’s Conference Room

ATTENDANCE

PRESENT

Administration

Dr. David Humphreys, Bobby McNeel, Luis Rosas, Dr. Linda Spink

Faculty

Nabeel Barakat, Carmen Carrillo, King Carter, Sally Fasteau, Ellen Joiner, Jonathon Lee, Evelyn Lum, Lauren McKenzie, Rod Oakes, Joyce Parker, Dr. Stanley Sandell, June Smith, Jim Stanbery, Mark Wood, Bradley Young

CALL TO ORDER

Luis Rosas called the meeting to order at 2:40 p.m. in the President’s Conference Room.

I. ADOPTION OF AGENDA

The agenda was accepted as presented

II. ADOPTION OF MINUTES

The minutes for the meeting of August 13, 2008 were accepted as presented with one correction: under item III. Review of Efficiency Assessments from all Divisions, change paragraph to read June Smith made the recommendation that the committee concentrate not only on the numbers and the classes that divisions are saying they are going to cut but the rationale for making those cuts.

III. GETTING WORLD CAFÉ IDEAS INTO UNIT PLANS

Mr. Stanbery stressed the importance of making sure that the more concrete proposals that come from meetings such as the recent World Café get into the college planning process. He also addressed questions that have been raised in the past including “do planning items originate at the level above units?” and “can the cluster committees themselves or can the college CPC itself adopt planning agenda items?” One of the points that has been insisted on in the past when the planning manual was being adopted was that ideas could originate at the higher levels but no unit could be forced to put something into its plan against its will. In other words, CPC or a cluster committee could suggest an idea and refer it to a unit if that unit would be the one that would have to implement it, but the unit could not be forced into changing its unit plan accordingly. The committee affirmed by consensus that this is still an agreeable basis on which to proceed. Mr. Stanbery went on to note that in looking over the handout listing all of the items that had been proposed at the previous World Café event in April, there were at least eight that were specific proposals and could be referred to units.

Dr. David Humphreys announced that he has all of the output generated from the World Café and that it has been distributed to the Essential Skills Committee and to the people who led the various conversations at the most recent event. Anyone who is interested is invited to come back to the next meeting of the Essential Skills Committee meeting on September 15 to join in a discussion of the various proposals. Dr. Humphreys went on to say that there may be some proposals that are basically the province of the Essential Skills Committee that they feel they could actively pursue but then there will be others that wouldn’t normally fall within the committee’s purview that would be forwarded to division chairs.

Dr. Robert Richards noted that one of things that this cluster is going to have to do in the very near future is to go back and review its strategic goals. We also have to go through at least some revision of the strategic plan. The last strategic plan expired in 2007 and the college needs to show that it has actually approved a plan for 2007 and beyond. It is currently in the fact book as a draft and has not yet been finalized.

IV. HOW TO APPROACH PROGRAM VIABILITY ASSESSMENT

Mr. Stanbery drew the committee’s attention to a portion of the Program Review Policy (Part II): Initiation, Viability, and Discontinuance and noted that when Luis Rosas reviewed the District’s position on the economies that the college needs to make at a previous meeting, he said that there was a possibility that the District would not only be looking at classes but would be asking colleges to justify particular programs. He went on to say that the purpose of today’s discussion is to reacquaint ourselves with what these procedures are and perhaps some of the implications. In particular, there has been some discussion not of discontinuing PACE but of truncating it to some extent. June Smith had previously forwarded a copy of a memorandum outlining some of the concerns expressed by King Carter. A few of the committee members voiced their appreciation on the clarity in which Mr. Carter shared his thoughts about the PACE program which gave them a greater understanding of the issues involved.

Mr. Stanbery commented that a number of the division chairs in the narrative sections of their unit plans made observations about future intentions and areas to be strengthened. This same type of introduction has never really been written into the cluster plan. Before the next meeting, Luis Rosas, Dave Humphreys, Jim Stanbery and anyone else who is interested is invited to get together and talk about just a couple of paragraphs that could be used to begin the cluster plan commenting on the general statistics and strengths and weaknesses of what we have envisioned within the divisions and then this would come back before the committee as a whole.

Mr. Stanbery cited Board Rule 78016, Vocational and Occupational Viability and Program Discontinuance, saying this is the provision the District would cite to argue that according to this rule, regardless of your viability procedures, if you have any occupational program on your campus that does not meet the requirements of this subdivision and it hasn’t met those requirements for at least a year, then it shall be terminated. Mr. Stanbery wanted to alert members of the possibility of their getting that interpretation from the District.

Dr. Humphreys noted that in the current draft of the Academic Program Review Policy and Procedures Manual, a program average class size below 25 for 2 years or more is cited as the supplemental criteria that may trigger program viability review. He went on to comment that this is a much more effective trigger because it is so specific. The whole process is not essentially about termination but about rescuing and revitalizing them. In the older signed version of the document it is program discontinuance, and here it is revitalization or discontinuance.

Sally Fasteau voiced her concern over problems she has experienced with the current templates in the manual. Dr. Humphreys said he would make adjustments in the templates and get those out to committee members as soon as possible.

June Smith commented that what has been done in the past is that we have received agreements on the major items and the appendices for a manual we have always held that the latter are really drafts or samples. So they can be labeled as samples in the revised manual and then you can make changes as you are working through them without having to go through the formal process of having the entire document held up or redone.

Carmen Carrillo recommended that the committee continue to use the documents that were given to them for program review and then as each division goes through program review, it makes the necessary adjustments to respond to the questions as such because it is a living document. The only thing we want to do is make sure that we are consistent with our responses.

Since there is some tweaking of the language in the program review document that has to take place anyway, we are going to make clear in the document that these templates are samples and that any division chair that is using those samples is free to make reasonable adjustments in the non-substantive portions of the document.

Dr. Humphreys added a cautionary note and suggested using the forms and templates as bare bones and that anything that is additive to that is fine but he wouldn’t want to see anything subtracted from it.

Mr. Rosas noted here that we need to identify immediately which occupational or career programs do not have every-other-year reviews.

It was the consensus that until the manual issues are resolved, hopefully within the next week or two, those who want to go ahead and proceed as best they can including specifically the justification of programs in their division the viability of which might be questioned.

IV. ITEMS FROM THE FLOOR

No items from the floor.

V. ADJOURNMENT