STANDARDS AND MANAGEMENT COMMITTEE
THE PERALTA COLLEGES GOVERNING BOARD
Thursday, May 28 2009
Present: Trustees Withrow, Gulassa, Alton Jelks, Deborah Budd, Karolyn VanPutten,
and Joseph Bielanksi.
1.
Review status of the implementation of the Campus-wide Strategic Planning
Process (Dr. Wise Allen)
Just to review, each campus has an Educational master plan to help to drive the district
Strategic Plan. Program reviews adhere to our district Strategic Plan, and unit reviews
flow into this. The implementation matrix has been updated, which was distributed.
Research and IT are part of this formula. The strategic plan is 50% of Ed Services’ job.
Trustee Withrow feels all of our mission statements are poorly written and need
improvement, as they are very general, which is true for all community college districts.
Other states have better examples, which he will try to secure. Our functions are so
diverse, serving high school students, transfer students, returning students, continuing
education, adult education, basic skills, etc. He also wants us to be in sync with the
business market and trends, and what future employers are seeking. We also need to
train students to improve people skills/customer service, and to become bilingual in
Spanish. We have a huge nursing program, and now the market has a glut of nurses,
which we should be tracking. Trustee Gulassa shared that the mission statement is like a
Board policy and needs to be global, but also needs to include how the elements
interrelate. The strategic plan is supposed to include the goals and implementation of the
District’s grand strategies. The California master plan presents five tasks to track and
about which to provide data, such as getting students into transfer level classes. Other
states don’t have as many functions and challenges as we do. Trustee Withrow feels we
should state our set of needs in our mission statement, which he will draft. He’d like for
Peralta to take a leadership role all the way down through K-12 schools in our service
area. We need to better market to teachers the function of community colleges. No
matter what we do, there will always be some community ignorance about our functions.
We need better ways to market Peralta on the state and national level, and the value
community colleges play. Lifelong education, “wherever you are and whatever you’re
doing”, is valuable information to communicate. The Chronicle for Higher Ed talked
about a renaissance for community colleges due to Martha Kantor’s appointment.
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v55/i32/32a00103.htm A retreat was suggested to formulate
these goals and marketing options. The Foundation might be able to assist with retreat
funding. Businesses look to such efforts as a reason to fund the Foundation.
2.
Review status of the IT Master Plan. (Tom Smith)
Trustee Withrow is concerned that the education part of the plan may not be driving the
IT Master Plan. Once a CIO is being hired, the IT master plan can be fully adopted.
Janet Cragin and her staff have worked on this draft, as well. Emerson Whatley is our
CTO, Chief Technical Officer, and he needs to increase his help with PeopleSoft. The
CIO is supposed to understand the applications and communicate it, and increase
operations productivity. Debbie reports that PeopleSoft is terribly slow and laborious,
and that Legacy was much easier to use. Enterprise is a process control system, and not
an information system. This one is currently inefficient, as all of the components can’t
talk to each other. IT staff has decreased in this area, and so Ed Services researchers are
Board Standards’ Committee Meeting: May 28, 2009
now doing IT work. Emerson helped with the BI system. The system wasn’t purchased
to conduct all of functions that we currently perform, but needs to be reprogrammed to
meet our needs. The warehouse wasn’t loaded properly, and once it is installed properly,
then it will be accessible within the next 2-3 weeks. We have consulted with other
districts that have used PeopleSoft. UC Berkeley has a standardized system throughout
all of their sites. We aren’t yet uniform in our applications. Legacy was an information
system. We’ve never had a process control system. The system is not intuitive in its
operations, which is a problem to access information. Gauges need to be created in stepby-step processes. An “Assistants” folder on the W data drive has some information
available for all assistants to access “how-to” and check-off lists.
3.
Discuss issues related to the high cost of text books, including the status of a
pilot project action plan. Discuss status of the consortium for OER as a
source for textbooks and progress achieved to date at The Peralta Colleges.
(Dr. Wise Allen and DAS Representative)
The major challenge is to how to get faculty excited around this issue, and staff
development has been suggested. A survey needs to be conducted to see who is using
open source textbook resources. Stipends can be offered to review open line resources.
October flex day could address this. Trustee Withrow would like to attend this. Career
advancement funds could pay CTE faculty to find textbooks. State level funds should be
invested to help all students statewide. Trustee Gulassa recognized DeAnza statistics
instructor Barbara Ulasky as a resource, and possible speaker to energize faculty. Joseph
asked the PACE program to pursue this, but they weren’t able to participate. Faculty
don’t have time to investigate these options. The Chancellor has an innovation grant
through the Foundation that could assist in this area. Trustee Gulassa asked if faculty are
given money for competitive innovation grants to conduct research. When he first started
teaching, one teacher with a stipend was in the process of writing a book, and other
instructors each received a new chapter to review each weekend. Then, the faculty
agreed to use that remedial reading book for their classes to save the students’ funds.
Someone could be given a grant or time-off to choose a textbook, and find a certain
number of faculty to agree to use it, to homegrow a free textbook. The districtwide
discipline meetings would be a good place to present this issue. We also need to review
amazon.com for their available textbooks, and to have individual faculty review that site.
The Kindle option to be able to download books is promising. Our Follett contract may
have stipulations to this use of other textbook vendors. A structure needs to be
established for people to purchase books elsewhere. A kiosk at a school could help to get
books. The Follett contract expiration date is requested.
4.
Review status of the ear mark, grant initiatives, and the staffing issues
associated with grant programs. (Alton Jelks and Jeannette Dong)
The DAS position on external money includes such as issues as 1) if faculty are asked for
their opinions for where monies are spent, and 2) if they are sustainable programs, with
available staffing. Staffing problems occur in the nursing program, where funding is
away from the tax base. Wise Allen and Tom Smith were delegated to investigate the
issue regarding staffing under categorical funds, so that the job phases out when the
funding ends. This issue is clear in the Education code. Constraints related to the grants
need to be fully understood and communicated. There is a problem when we advertise a
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Board Standards’ Committee Meeting: May 28, 2009
program geared for a specific age group, as we’re not supposed to do that, such as with
the Green program. A check-off list was suggested prior to awarding earmark funds.
How do fee-based classes and contract education help the campuses? Alton will launch
this to faculty in August. It needs to have a business plan before proceeding with feebased classes. The University of Colorado has a separate corporation within their
business school to include their consulting and fee-based programs. Cal State Univ. East
Bay will also be consulted, and their catalog reviewed. The experience at Chabot was
shared, where fee based programs were created, which Deborah Budd helped to develop,
with a differential structure for fee-based classes, where part-time faculty received added
work at a different contract level. Jeanette Dong will also work on contract education.
Trustee Gulassa shared that this shows flexibility for low-enrolled classes to proceed on a
different track. Alton shared that furniture making courses need a fee-based system, as
proprietary schools are charging so much more than we. Trustee Withrow feels we need
to be better at job placement for our students, and the individual programs need help with
that, too. We need a policy on contract education, and this issue is referred to the policy
review committee. This issue needs to be negotiated with PFT. One policy was
recommended, that encourages different opportunities be explored for income
production, and how we involve stakeholders, via a business plan (Foothill DeAnza,
CSU East Bay, and Chabot all have such business plans.) This is very similar to adult
education.
A trip to Washinton DC for Trustees was mentioned to meet with our lobbyists. If we
have unusual programs needing funding, Martha Cantor is a new contact in the Obama
administration, to whom we could make a special presentation. Stanford women are
tutoring others, for example, which need special funding. An agenda of discussion items
for a September trip needs to be developed by Alton, such as special programs for
prisoners, high school graduates, and green jobs. A conference call with Rick Spees
needs to be scheduled in advance of the trip to establish the agenda. A dialogue should
occur quarterly, as well, with his local legislative staff, discussing trends and new
opportunities available in the new administration.
Do we spend down all of the grant monies? Part of this equation is that the colleges can’t
always view their current available budgets on PeopleSoft. Some grants are in reassigned
time, which isn’t accounted for by the end of the year, or is charged to the wrong fund.
We’ve made progress in this area through budget control, which is a big priority.
5.
Discuss Board Resolution to convey priority of Student Learning Outcomes
and establish a goal of 2011 to achieve State Mandated objectives.
This process is continuing. Trustee Withrow would like a goal of December 2011 for the
program to be online. The committee inquired about a proposed DAS draft. A Board
resolution was requested, as the Board considers this to be a high priority.
Upcoming meetings in the Chancellor’s Conference Room:
June 25 4 – 6 p.m.
The committee will not meet in August.
Respectfully submitted,
Roxanne Epstein, Assistant to the Chancellor
repstein@peralta.edu, 466-7203
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