Summary Notes - Standard IV Meeting

Summary Notes - Standard IV meeting

Friday, February 3 2012

11:00 – 11: 30

Present: Diane Caulfield, Jennifer Higa-King, David Panisnick, Preshess Willets -Vaquilar

Cynthia Smith, Shanon Miho

Unable to attend: Erika Lacro

UPDATES

Cynthia reiterated the key points raised at the meeting with the Marcia and Erika (Accreditation Co-Chairs) for Standard Four. Summary notes from this meeting were sent out earlier in the week:

Most importantly - final draft deadline: April 5

GOVERNANCE AND STAFF SURVEYS

Jennifer:Jennifer distributed and explained the work she and David Fink did in creating cross-tabulation findings, as well as graphic displays. She commended the work done by David in helping to prepare these reports. She explained how to interpret the findings. Some initial observations were that staff generally scored lower on virtually every category. The group affirmed their intent to follow David C.’s advice to look at the areas that scored below 3.25 mean as the most problematic issues.

She also shared her findings based on her content analysis of the written comments. She explained her decisions regarding categorizing and counting method. Areas receiving the most comments were problem areas related to communication (lack of accountability/transparency) and indications that people did not know how to participate. It was noted that in identifying areas to remedy, it is not just administrators but also committee members themselves who have to communicate more effectively.

Preshess: Preshess shared the results of her analysis of the staff survey; these notes were sent out via email earlier. She commented that there was clear alignment between the issues raised in both surveys, in particular related to staff feeling less valued, less consulted, and less able to participate. There were also concerns about how positions are filled (lack of proper vetting processes).

One possible area for improvement discussed briefly would be to use technology to keep staff better informed, since they are less able to attend meetings. Also mentioned was that there could/should be more staff meetings held on a regular basis. The clear problems indicatedin HR are not within the purview of this committee but the findings and observations will be passed on to Standard III

Shanon: Shanon indicated that the past reports she is looking at for comparisons include the report done based on the specific survey done by Standard 4, and the comprehensive catch-all survey done by all accred. committees in 2006. She is still comparing but noted that the 2006 standard 4 survey had different questions and thus there will be minimal amount of point to point comparisons. It was decided that the most useful comparison will be to see any changes, or continued concerns, about the rank order of items.

The group agreed that once there are written findings based on the comments, the survey results will be released to the campus in the interest of presenting a full report. The goal will be to have this done in the next two weeks.

Action Steps:

All committee members are to read these over to help draft report evaluation , and possible action step, language.

Cynthia will work on a preliminary draft to start this process and will have this to committee members prior to the next meeting.

STUDENT SURVEY

The group approved the draft of the student survey – this is ready to go out.

Action Steps:

Cynthia will work with David Fink to finalize survey

Cynthia will check with Student Senate regarding use of email list serve of HCC students and also whether as an alternative, could use a student mailing list via Banner.