Dean Team Meeting
September 28, 2010
8:30a.m. – 11:00 a.m.
Present:John Backes*Susan HoyneDavid Cunningham
Norma Goldstein*Gillian Lewis*Yvonne Terrell-Powell*
Kenny Lawson*Joe Duggan*
(*) Members Present
Guest:Gary Parks, Stephen Smith
MINUTES
Postponed.
NEGOTIATIONS
The Federation President will join the Deans for an informal conversation to establish how we want to approach issues and where we want to go. Administration is driven by the contract. The contract is forcing administration to cut full-time faculty lines in order to meet the terms and conditions of the contract during these economic bad times. It is administration’s wish that the Federation President and Executive Board understand we want to work to massage the contract to save faculty positions. The purpose of the meeting is to examine mutual areas of interest.
Deans discussed in detail among themselves various areas of the contract including workload, evaluations, leaves, class capacities, assignment of classes, accountability, eLearning, online advising, duties and responsibilities, 172 day contract, summer salary, summer advising, extended days, etc.
Gary Parks joined the meeting and confirmed this is an informal discussion to bring up recurrent problem areas. It is not a negotiating step. We need to decide as an institution whether we are going to extend the current contract or reopen it in some areas. He said there are areas he has heard about: Evaluations, Affiliate Status issues, and scheduling, which is an issue he thinks needs a little more attention at the Dean level. There is a part of our contract he wants to show Deans that indicates there should be discussions how full-time faculty are scheduled at the division level. These are topics that come to Gary’s mind. We are going through budget cuts now and that topic may come up. Other than that, Gary did not come with an agenda or handout. It is his understanding we are talking about recurrent problems. The Deans and Professor Parks concluded their discussion agreeing that Gary could release the general areas of interest to the Federation Executive Board.
UNDER ENROLLED CLASSES
Deans reviewed the report of under enrolled classes. In another week the numbers will be different, as in some cases it is obvious why the number is low, i.e. students forgetting to sign up for the seminar portion or lab portion of a class. One of the Deans rationalized one lower enrolled (required) class stating the department faculty have over enrolled in other areas.
Most under enrolled classes can be rationalized, but there are some that could be difficult to rationalize. John asked Deans to show the report to their faculty and have a conversation about it. If faculty are aware a discipline is struggling for enrollments, they would be able to help by advising students toward that area.
There is one 40 capacity class with only 18 students enrolled. The schedule was unfortunately over built, but the faculty have taken overloads elsewhere. They learned from this mistake. The Dean was reluctant to cancel 18 students. Kenny pointed out 18 is one student shy of the 75% cap. He will volunteer to do an analysis to find exactly where the breakeven point is in terms of absolute numbers of students we need to pay for a transfer class. Norma agreed that when you have 28 students with a cap of 40, she is not going to cancel the class because it has 28 students, which is more than most other classes.
Norma reported that her faculty receive an email from her with a computation of their percentage and how it contributes or contracts from their program percentage. If she has any under enrolled classes, you will see how much her faculty have over loaded. For some faculty, this information has been a wakeup call, and they have put more effort into recruitment.
Nursing is short one faculty member so they had to shuffle schedules. They won’t allow people back into that cohort, so it is low. They have to break down to clinical groups of 8 now.
For Social Sciences where most caps are at 40, the reality is we are not filling those classes. You can bump the class to 45 and it won’t make a difference. There may be select areas to bump the caps. To be realistic about which classes to offer, 75% of enrollment isn’t always that helpful. That raises the issue, are we overbuilt? Do we have too many full-time faculty? If we are not at 75% capacity all across the division, maybe it is too big to support the number of students we do have. Bear in mind, if Norma’s faculty are filling all their Humanities classes, they are taking students from another class. Kenny’s point is we may have too many full-time faculty. It doesn’t matter how much anyone recruits for their particular class, unless we get more students in the door.
Are key classes conflicting with other classes? If Deans or faculty can scrub the schedule around times, that might open up more opportunities for students. English and Math should coordinate more.
The Deans agreed Diana Sampson and Joyce Fagel should review the English and Math issue as far as scheduling goes for better coordination.
TEACHER PREPARATION AND ENDORSEMENT CLASSES
The State Board will allow us to offer teacher preparation and endorsement classes (ESSSB 6696). If Deans or faculty have an interest in doing this during summer or evenings, let John know. Norma suggested eLearning would be good for this, and we have a great program at SCC. She would like to do a needs assessment at the high schools. John thinks there are possibilities for CEUs for Education and Multicultural Understanding.
ACCREDITATION: PROGRAM GOALS ALIGNED WITH CORE THEMES
Norma emphasized that we must align everything under the core themes. Each program needs to have program outcomes. Because it is difficult to measure student learning, particularly in transfer areas, what we do measure is the ability to achieve those outcomes. They need to be smart outcomes where they are measurable. An easy example is: Programs should have reference to the use of the Library. To prove achievement of that outcome, look at your course outcomes to see if students are getting Information Literacy through your curriculum. That is how you validate students met the outcome.
Norma said you have to think about alignment with all your plans. Even the Evacuation Plan should be Core Theme #5 – College Stewardship. We need to start doing this automatically. To help make this second nature, every office and classroom will receive posters of the core themes. Norma is working with PIO. For instance, every story about a student will be tagged visually with the Education Attainment and Student Success Core Theme. We got to have this mantra until we get to where we need to go.
Norma shared her disappointment that not everyone has read Standard 2 or responded to her requests for information. Although Standard 2 is the longest standard, it is the easiest because it is just facts. People need to read it.
TRANSFER STUDENT REPORTING/PROGRAM REVIEW DASHBOARD
Joe passed around examples of data he is attempting to shrink down to something more manageable:
Completion rates by program degree/certificate
Class completions by discipline (either passed or 2.0)
Annualized FTEs by discipline
Deans need to give Joe feedback on anything they see in these charts. Joe can give more details how he calculated these numbers. John said we need to land someplace and stick to it, unless it is radically wrong.
Yvonne confirmed with Joe that we have the capacity to look at data and drill down for diversity. Yvonne will talk to Joe about that kind of information which will be needed for a Title III grant.
STUDENT GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT INVENTORY-ASSMT & ACCRED
Joe tried to explain that he has no reason to pull information because he has no objectives we can pull information to come to a core theme. He provided a handout related to Bob Biesiedzinski’s email stating that is the closest thing he can come to. The benchmarks make no sense at all. Norma explained there will be a DAAG story out soon to get an accreditation/assessment committee together whose primary task will be to take the existing matrices and reduce them down. They will frame those objectives. They will formulate and craft the actual objective. Joe’s role will be to tell them whether or not we can get the data for that information. If not, it will have to be modified to fit what he is able to get. Every objective does not necessarily require Joe to do a database and research. Some data the faculty are able to get even if it’s anecdotal. How do we deal with anecdotal information for accreditation? Every time a student tells faculty a story, they put that in a file. If you have to produce a document about student employment, they would have it. Much of the information (because of coding issues) won’t be Joe’s responsibility.
Gillian’s accredited programs are hit with this every time. Reporting completers and student employment is not adequate, but they do have that information. It’s just not reported to a central place. They have it within the programs. There is no good way to track student employment unless you have an Alumni Association. At least they have some means to tracking some information.
Wenatchee Valley was commended because their completion and retention rates were indicators of student success that might help the student get them to transfer. Transfer was the goal, yet the measures were completion and retention. In the accreditor’s world that is part of the ladder to get to transfer.
John said objectives do have to be measurable. He believes the commission will cut us a bit of slack, but it still has to make sense for us to find objectives where we have data available. Data sets that work at the institutional level are just starting points for certain monitoring reports and for program review. We have to start with general data sets to set the foundation for more specific pieces as they come up.
Norma and Joe will work on data sets that support information about the core objectives.
CREDIT FOR PRIOR LEARNING
Norma said the Policy on CPL is okay, but the procedural part needs finalizing. The question is where is this housed? Where should students be directed if they have questions? Norma believed CPL is an Advising or Student Services assignment. Yvonne reminded the Deans advising is now their responsibility. Where do students go to get the information? We want to make it easy for students.
TO DO:Yvonne will ask VPSS Tonya Drake where the initiation point should be for students who inquire about Credit for Prior Learning.
OTHER
John reminded Deans that the Budget Survey recently posted on DAAG is not the College’s budget reduction plan.
Meeting Adjourned 11:24 am
MinutesRecorded by Kerry Fondren
1