Senate Executive Committee
Meeting Minutes
February25, 2015
In attendance:Jerry Moore, Caroline Coward, Kate Esposito
Pat Kalayjian, Thomas Norman
Absent:Charles Thomas
Minutes:Susanne Walker
Guests:Provost Junn
Chair Moore Report: Moore reviewed upcoming dates of importance for Senate Exec
Tuesday, March 3rd, 10:45 – 11:15 a.m. Meet with ACE Internationalization Team
Wednesday, March 4th 8:30 – 10:00 a.m., Breakfast with ACE
Monday, March 9th, 2:30-3:15 p.m. Meet with Exec Vice Chancellor and General Counsel
Moore attended the Chair’s meeting 2/19/15. Moore reported that it was an interesting meeting that stimulated a lot of ideas and he said some of the resolutions that he put together were a direct result of that meeting. Such as:
Action Item*California State University, Dominguez Hills AS Resolution in support of ASCSU AS-3197-14/FA Re., “The Need for a Comprehensive California State University Policy on Academic Freedom”. Moore said since Tom Norman was involved with the vote that this resolution endorses, he would like Norman to present this starred (*) Action Item on the floor of the Senate on 3/4/15. Esposito asked if this was a new policy or an existing policy. Moore said they’re reexamining an existing policy particularly in the area of online materials that individual faculty are developing. Norman said the main issue that brought about this resolution is that on a couple of campuses faculty had been harassed.
Proposed Sense of the Senate resolution with regard to Opengov.com: Moore said one of the things that came out of the Chairs meeting was with regard to financial transparency. Chair of AS San Luis Obispo, Gary Laver, stated that all of their financials were online on Opengov.com. Moore viewed it and found it to be really impressive along with the number of municipal counties who have also put their financial data up there. Moore asked if Senate Exec thought it was something reasonable to move forward with. He said he would first speak with President Hagan and Bob Fenning about it. Moore said it isn’t about faculty vs. administration, it’s the basic responsibility that state entities have to report to the public about how they’re using their money. On the Cal-Poly page, not only do you get a pie chart on the student success fee, you click on that portion of the budget and it tells you what the different student success fees are being used for; how much is going to graduate assistants, how much is going to salaries and benefits for full-time folks. Moore felt it had a higher level of detail and ease of use thenanything we have comes close to. He saw there could be some immediate advantages with it - in so far as the different CSU’s posting data, it would be possible to do some inter campus data comparisons. Something else Moore felt worthy of note was that currently Gavin Newsome is putting his office on it and it could look pretty good for our campus to take the lead and have our information up there. Moore said while he’s not sure of the cost, he estimated based on research, around the $20k range. Moore said he understands that it is always possible for someone to game the system. The data going up there is posted by financial managers within the institution. Esposito said she loves all of it. Her criticism is that we would be so prescriptive. An example is PeopleSoft. She would recommend that we say that our recommendation is an open platform with an open budget, and our recommendation based on what others are using would be opengov.com. Esposito asked if this is a for profit organization? Moore said yes, as are PeopleSoft, EAB and others are computer based vendors, or the higher education industry. Moore noted that Coward had raised the concern that these entities come and go. Moore said if it was passed and the administrators came back and said we understand what you’re looking for and we have a better platform then we can approach it that way. Moore said what he thinks it helps us do is to make a really clear statement about a potential outcome. Pinto recommended in the resolution to use language such as “urges the President and other members of his administration with fiscal responsibility to make budgetary information accessible, open and transparent and available to the campus community and to the community at large in an online format.”Coward suggested making another resolve recommending the open.gov. Esposito said the rationale could read to ensure that this information is transparent and available, we recommend using an independent vendor not affiliated with the CSU’s or the state of California.Norman said it’s not granular enough – he would like to push for even more detail. Pinto said that a place that no one is really sure what’s happening is in the Foundation. Norman said to address that, include in the first resolve after make budgetary information “available for the University and all auxiliaries”. Norman had a few more suggested changes. Moore asked that he send them to him in writing. Norman said the next change he would make within the rationale, 2nd line, make the word accountings, singular, to read “transparent accounting”, and then have it read “of their use of taxpayers’ dollars.” The next suggested change by Norman was in the following sentence: “has been presented in an incomplete or misleading manner” rather than incompletely or misleading. Moore said he will meet with President Hagan to review this proposal prior to presenting at a Senate meeting. Moore said he believes there is tremendous symbolic value to doing this, part of which is being one of the first campuses to do it.
Moore said another concern that was brought up at the Senate Chair meeting had to do with CourseMatch, the online program where students can take courses offered on another campus, 2/3 of which can meet various kinds of general education requirements. Moore reached out to Brandy McLelland and Cynthia Turner and the email Moore received back on 2/23 said “none of our students have enrolled via CourseMatch for the spring semester. Additionally we’re not offering any CourseMatch courses to other CSU students for the spring semester.” Moore said we should try to figure out what happens in the fall because that’s when most of our students are admitted.
Moore said he shared with everyone EO1100 which changed EO1065 regarding general education. The major changes that affect us is that the at this point our Area D courses which are basically the social science courses have been divided into 4 categories which have been eliminated. The other thing that has changed is that there is an explicit call for campus wide learning outcomes for GE that are based on LEAP and an explicit call for campuses to consider the organization of approved courses so that students may choose from a variety of cores or themes each with an underlying unifying rationale. Esposito said she spoke with Vice Provost Mitch Maki about the notion of pathways or thresholds or “wicked problems” (as discussed at the COMPASS conference). Maki recommended suggesting it to Provost Junn and perhaps a task force could be established but in the meantime, he said you might consider doing when there’s a new chair is having a standing agenda item at each Academic Senate of where the GE Committee is in implementing these changes and have them report the same as EPC or FPC. Moore said he spoke with Ed Zoerner to clarify on the discussion about English 109, English 110, English 111 and whether or not it will increase the number of lower division GE’s over what we already have. Apparently it doesn’t.
EPC Report – Kate Esposito said she’s been unable to get anyone to serve on EPC. John Price is going to stay on it, but he is fairly unavailable at this time. With regard to the revision of the GE Charge - Esposito said she reached out to Jamie Dote-Kwan to get some additional feedback. The Senate Exec Committee discussed potential changes. In the OVERVIEW: recommendation is to take the quality of teaching and learning and strike that, and instead have and the alignment of learning outcomes. It was then recommended that they take out the GEC will be composed of because the membership is described later on in the document. Esposito said under CHARGE, it would read “The Committee reviews, approves, and or denies proposals for curricular modification including the addition or removal of specific course offering within designated GE area requirements;” Senate Exec agreed to strike out governing the program, as well as statutes enacted by the California State Legislature. It was agreed it should read instead “as determined by the state of California Code of Education, rules and policies adopted by the Board of Trustees of the California State University, and/or resolutions by the CSUDH Academic Senate.” The group agreed to strike “The General Education Committee is an organizational committee of the CSUDH Academic Senate. The Chair of the Committee reports on the Committee’s activities to the Academic Senate during its regularly scheduled meetings at the request of the Chair of the Academic Senate”, and replace it with “As an organizational committee of the CSUDH Academic Senate, the Chair of the Committee reports on the Committee’s activities to the Academic Senate during its regularly scheduled meetings at the request of the Chair of the Academic Senate.” The group agreed to keep “While decisions of the Committee are normally final, under extraordinary circumstances they may be referred by the Academic Senate to the Educational Policy Committee for adjudication.1”It was a affirmed that they would not change the makeup of the Panel Membership from the previous version.
Provost Junn –with all the different initiatives underway and trying to determine how they are all connected, Junn said she created a document to help do this. She shared a draft of document with the heading National Laboratory and Model for Student Academic Success, with a subtitle of “Working Draft Implementation Framework, Infrastructure, Budget and Themes.” Junn said of all of the current and proposed initiatives offered, while we won’t get them all one in the first year, we can do pieces of them, and she wanted to help others see that everyone doesn’t have to do everything. Junn said she shared the draft with her cabinet and the Deans said it does help them understand where all the pieces are. Junn said the flow chart has some missing pieces that are yet to be determined. All that we’re doing, initiatives, projects, and activities are all related to the University Strategic Plan. Should we be the Harvard of the CSU – what do we want to be famous for: High-touch Student Experience – we want our students to have Real-World and Outcomes-based Learning, Interdisciplinary, Diversity and Global Opportunities, and Community-Focused Connections and Civic Engagement. If these are the things we want our students to walk away with, then we need to sprinkle the following HIPS into the student experience.
1)First Year Experiences / 6) Undergrad Research2)Supplemental Instruction / 7) Diversity/Global Experience
3)Learning Communities / 8) Service Learning
4)Writing Intensive / 9) Internships/Fieldwork
5)Collaborative Group Work / 10) Senior Capstones
The student learning experience should be co-created with Academic Affairs and Student Affairs.
IEA: Research, Assessment & Data – everything we now do needs to track data and outcomes, not just for program success but for WASC and everything in the strategic plan.
Partnerships: we’re going to become more intentional with building a college going culture
K-12 Promise Programs, Community Colleges and Industry Partnerships
Student Learning Outcomes – Junn said she is reinvigorating departmental program review/PRP. She’s asking everyone to consider if there is anything we need to do to update the curriculum, what do we need to do to update the program, what do we need for students who major in our major are well positioned for graduate school or the workforce. Junn said she’ll be meeting with departments and colleges as they go through this. Junn said their bringing in Westchester University and they’re not charging as they want to learn from us and we want to learn from them. They’re also looking at software whereby you can just upload in one place and the department can load it into one place and the program review committee, so you can drill up or drill down, and if WASC comes, it’s all in one centrally located place. It’s standardized and can be tied to student assignments. It’s called CAMPUS LAB, a product that was recently demonstrated by Chris Manriquez that he had invited the Senate Chair to.
Junn said that Janna Bersi just came back from the WASC Commission and Bersi said that WASC is getting really specific. From now on we have to demonstrate competency in the five areas that they specified; writing, oral communication, information literacy, and quantitative reasoning. They have changed their rubric so that it’s almost impossible to get a ten year certification, it’s now six, eight and ten. If you’re below six, then you’re on probation. Junn reported that Bersi said we’ll need to ramp up everything we’re doing. Junn said what’s not clear is with seniors, will you need to demonstrate competency in your freshman college algebra class? Junn said that grades won’t count. Moore asked on the writing competency, why isn’t it that the GWR or performance in writing intensive courses wouldn’t be part of the data set as opposed to English 110 and 111? Junn said the problem is to say 90% of our students have passed, you have to demonstrate their competency.Coward asked if outside testing service is what’s being recommended? Junn said it’s unclear. She said this is where having the software is so important, because if the faculty who are teaching the courses can upload the students’ performance and they can upload the rubrics with the assignment, then they can go in and randomly check and see if they are grading appropriately, she said it’s that level of scrutiny. Norman asked if there was an opportunity to reach out to some campuses you have connections and do this together. Norman gave the example where he had met with Jay Grosflam from CSU Long Beach whose doing a field test whereby ETS is charging $50.00 and Long Beach is charging $5.00. This was in the area of business skill assessment, not the five general things. He’s reached out to about five other CSU’s who are using it, Northridge does about several thousand. If there are people with expertise, why reinvent the wheel, when you can partner with another campus. Junn said she could ask Gitanjali Kaul to inquire.
Faculty Engagement – Provost Junn said she is very passionate about Faculty Engagement and has been working really hard with the other VP’s to improve this. Junn discussed her forecast of how many faculty, tenured track if they want to reach 60% tenure density from now until the next five years, net increases above retirement. She said we’re hiring 17 in 2015 and they’ll need to hire 20 in 2016, 20 in 2017, 20 in 2018, 19 in 2019 and 19 in 2020 if they want to reach 60%. The challenge is this is the biggest expense, and this another reason the President is interested in asking the Chancellor for more FTEs, because as we grow more FTEs we get more baseline, and if we get more baseline, we can continue to grow the faculty. Junn said she’s been meeting with all the VPs and going over the budget before she presents to UBC. Junn said this is in our strategic plan and the President made a promise. Moore said everyone knows we’re not going to hit graduation rate unless we really implement these high impact practices and we can’t do that exclusively on the backs of our part-time lecturers. We’re back-filling, we’re dealing with two plus decades of lack of replacing full-time faculty.
Enrollment Management – Junn said this area President Hagan can fill in more on, however with regard to Course Access & Schedules, Junn said we need to commit to offering the courses so students can graduate and this also means that departments will need to go back and ask, why do we have seven strands, because if you have seven strands, chances are you won’t have enough students be in one strand, and reducing the number of strands means you can have enough students to sit in one class. We will be moving towards more Friday, weekend and night classes.
Advising & Support – we’ve got Bridget Driscoll here now and we’re planning a campus-wide ½ day conference to let the campus know what we’re doing and how to get involved.
Learning Lyceum (supplemental instruction)- Junn said she put in the budget for 200 sections spread over the fall and spring semesters mostly for English and Math where the students are having challenges. We’re going to expand it to upper and lower division GE classes.
Center for the Freshman/Sophomore Year/Center for the Junior/Senior Year – Junn said she would like some names from Senate Exec for people who might consider sitting on these committees.