INSTRUCTIONAL DEPARTMENTS
Program (a/k/a Department or Service Area):
DEPARTMENT FACULTY/STAFF INPUT
An important part of the Program Review process is the consultation and input of all
members of the department. Please have each member of the department both fulltime and part-time sign below to acknowledge that they were consulted with during the
process and were able to provide input.
NOTE: This signature does not indicate necessary approval of the data or the analysis
or evaluation of the information contained inside this document. It is an indication that
you had an opportunity to provide input in the process.
Please make sure you send a copy of your program review to each of the following
committees:
Academic Senate – Lisa Harvey
Finance and Budget – Deedee Orta
Facilities – Dave Hollomon
Institutional Effectiveness – Marc Skuster
Vice President of Instruction – Mark Zacovic
Your area Dean
Name of Faculty or Staff Member
Signature
PART I. ABSTRACT (EXECUTIVE SUMMARY) In one page or less, include any pertinent
information on your Department you find important for the reader to know. Highlight new
achievements and accomplishments over the last year. Please also describe any goals you
have for the department for the next 2 to 3 years.
A review of the available data indicates that the English department is comparable to the rest of
our campus in terms of enrollment, retention, student success. In the production of FTES, we
are second only to the Math department. We have been able to increase the variety of transfer
level courses, and we appear to be below average, fortunately, in the number of sections we
have lost over the last five years. While this is very positive, we must turn away at least half
again as many students who are in need of English classes for transfer, jobs, or remediation as
the number we enroll. We submit the following review based on need, not on the budget,
despite the current financial crisis.
Accomplishments:
The English Department serves about 3,330 students per semester. Almost half of these
students are in remediation (English 6, 8, 50 or 59), and require a great deal of assistance from
both instructors and tutors. Given our limited resources, the ancient technology in some of our
classrooms, 43 adjunct teachers, a department divided between two buildings, with classes
spread around campus, and our declining numbers of full-time faculty, we are proud that our
student success rate equals that of the campus at large.
Working with Virginia Moran, and implementing the WritePlacer, we have refined the process by
which students can challenge their AccuPlacer scores and placement in English classes.
Directions are clearer and the process more objective.
We have developed a three year schedule for offering literature and creative writing courses
and are committed to offering these courses regularly. We must present students with the
opportunity to explore the richness and variety of English language and literature beyond the
scope of basic composition courses. Counselors were given copies of the schedule to share
with students.
We have initiated a closer working relationship with our many part-time instructors by inviting
them to meet with us informally at least once a semester to discuss matters relevant to teaching
English. So far, we’ve had a very positive response.
In addition to tutorial services, our Writing Center now offers nine workshops per week on a
variety of writing strategies. Students benefit from reviews of material commonly presented in
composition courses and extra practice in a small group setting.
Our English Honors classes have sent more than 20 students to the Honors Transfer Council of
California's Undergraduate Student Research Conference over the last three years, and through
the HTCC, we have made a closer connection with other transfer universities, such as UC Irvine
and Riverside. Also, one of our students won honorable mention in a national short-short story
competition hosted by Phi Theta Kappa.
Goals:
We must hire more tenure-track faculty members. By the end of spring semester 2011, we will
have shrunk from the 15 member department we were just a few years ago to an 8 member
department. That’s almost half the number of tenured faculty members to serve an increasing
number of students and to meet the demands of our many sections of composition.
We must establish either a graduation requirement for reading ability or set prerequisites for
reading levels on transfer level courses so that students improve their ability to read college
level texts and increase the likelihood of success in college level courses and in the work place.
We must adopt a more accurate method of assessing students for placement in English
composition classes.
We must establish the Writing Center as an integral part of the English Department, with a
permanent, full time English faculty member assigned to it.
We must increase the number of sections offered to meet the increasing student demand.
We must increase the number of short term sections (summer or winter sessions) to promote
further student success and retention.
PART II. Departmental Needs Please emphasize your department’s need for supplies,
equipment, facilities, staff and any other budgetary considerations.
Faculty: We need six new faculty members to replace those who have or will have left or retired
by the end of Spring Semester, 2011. At least one of these faculty members should be a
reading specialist. Cost: approximately $495,318.00 annually.
Facility: We need two more dedicated classrooms on upper campus. We need space to
expand the Writing Center. The Academic Commons would accommodate faculty offices, four
of our six classrooms (with some alteration), additional space for the Writing Center, a reading
lab, a workroom, bookroom, and contact with the adjunct faculty members and the dean’s office.
Please see copy of proposal draft, attached.
Equipment for present facilities: We need to create fully equipped smart classrooms in Liberal
Arts 4, 5, and 9. At about $6,000.00 each, this would come to $18,000.00. We need curtains,
shades or blinds on the windows of these classrooms so that we can see the projection screens
clearly. (There’s too much glare without them.) Coverings, installed by M&O, would come to
$200.00 per room, for a total of $600.00.
Staff: We need a part-time department or division Office Assistant specifically to assist faculty
and students. At entry level step 1, about $28,000.00 per year.
Supplies: Our budget of about $4,000.00 barely covers the basic supplies we need each year.
An increase of $1,000.00 would allow funds for a departmental membership in an organization
such as ECCTYC, a journal, and any additional supplies we may need.
Supplies for Writing Center: Presently, all supplies for the Writing Center come from the English
department budget. However, students with writing assignments across the curriculum use the
writing center printer, as do an increasing number of students who cannot use the ATC Mall
printers because they are now dedicated to math. Consequently, the Writing Center needs a
larger printer to meet the demand. We also need additional funds to buy printer cartridges.
(Perhaps departments such as Basic Skills and EOPS could help, among others.)
Travel Budget: A limited travel budget campus-wide limits professional development. Any
increase would be helpful.
PART III: Review of Prior Requests Provide information on requests made in previous
program reviews that have never been addressed. Include pertinent information such as date of
the request and whether the department still needs what was requested.
We have been requesting more full-time faculty members for the past several years. Our
department has been reduced from 15 members to 10, but by the end of Spring 2011 we will be
down to 8 members. (Presently, 43 part-time instructors teach in our department.)
We remain one of the few community colleges in California without a reading requirement for
graduation. We lack administrative support to establish either a level of reading ability for
graduation or to establish reading prerequisites on appropriate courses required for graduation.
We still encounter problems when too many students are placed in incorrect levels of
composition classes. We want to implement a writing component to the assessment test.
WritePlacer would suffice as a beginning place.
All three of these issues were addressed in parts I and VII or last year’s Praise Report and are
addressed in the summary above and in Part V below.
PART V: Student Learning Outcomes “Student Learning Outcomes” are the knowledge,
skills, abilities, and attitudes that a student has attained at the end (or as a result) of his or her
engagement in a particular course or program. “Assessment” is the documented process of
measuring student achievement of intended learning outcomes, reviewing and analyzing the
results, and using the results to plan for the improvement of teaching and learning.
Please explain how your department has implemented assessments for classes, certificates
and/or programs. It is important to talk about any and all assessment processes. These would
include embedded assessment.
If a course, certificate or program has been assessed please explain how the assessment was
used to help improve student learning. Examples might include implementation of clickers in
the classroom, adding essays to an exam, changing a written assignment for better student
understanding, etc.
The process of writing student learning outcomes, performing assessment and making changes
to improve student learning is referred to as “Closing the Loop”. So please explain how your
department has successfully closed the loop in classes, certificates and/or programs.
To my knowledge, no further studies have been made to determine our success in “Closing the
Loop” since those reported last year. Each instructor addresses the SLOs and measures
success according the methodology and assignments outlined in his or her syllabus.
PART V: ADDITIONAL EXPLANATIONS Include any additional information necessary to
support your department’s needs.
We’ve reached the critical point in our need to hire more tenure track English teachers for both
composition and reading. As noted above, our department has been reduced from 15 members
to 10, but by the end Spring 2011 we will be down to 8 members. Presently, 43 part-time
instructors teach in our department. With more full-time faculty members to share the work-load,
our department will be more equitably represented in campus-wide committees, at the Senate
and CTA, and more faculty will be available to help facilitate programs such as the Writing
Contest, Honors, Study Abroad and student creative writing clubs. Additional full-time faculty
members will increase the variety of teaching styles and methods available to students, and will
ultimately further student learning, retention and success rates.
Conversations with counselors and faculty who teach courses such as history, philosophy,
psychology with substantial reading components will verify that student success rates in these
classes (not to mention English) would be higher if students could read better. To address this
campus-wide problem, we’ve been trying to re-establish our reading program since about 1990,
when our specialist transferred to another discipline. When we finally hired another reading
specialist in January, 2001, Ron Krimper, then Vice-President of Instruction, told us that VVC
planned to set up a reading program. However, a lack of subsequent support and funding has
held us back so that we remain one of the few community colleges in California without a fully
developed reading program. (See attachment.) To begin to develop such a program, we need to
hire at least one more full time reading specialist, set aside space for a reading lab, and
establish a graduation requirement for reading ability or set prerequisites for reading levels on
transfer level courses. Ultimately, the goal for VVC would be to establish a separate Reading
Department.
Another obvious need is to place students in the proper level of composition courses. The only
way to do this accurately is to require students to write an essay as part of the assessment
process. Ideally, faculty members would be paid to evaluate the essays; as a second best
choice, a tool such as WritePlacer could be used in addition to the AccuPlacer we now use.
When students are placed in the wrong sections, they prevent qualified students from entering
the class; they become frustrated and drop; and they can impede the progress of the rest of the
class.
We need a full-time faculty member to facilitate the Writing Center full-time. This could be a
permanent position, or it could be assigned to a qualified department member as his or her
teaching load. 1300-1500 students make use of it each semester with an average of 6,000
visits, all on a drop-in basis, and including students with writing assignments across the
curriculum. Too many of these students would not succeed in their classes without the one-onone assistance by the writing center tutors. These tutors must be trained by a professional
writing teacher, who must be available to oversee their work and to offer on-going instruction.
We also need more space to increase enrollment in our English 50 lab, to add similar lab
components for English 6 and 101, and to further develop the popular new workshops.
Traditionally, we offer fewer sections in spring than in fall. The difference varies between two
classes in 2005-6 to 20 classes between fall and spring of 2009-2010, and 9 classes between
fall 2010 and spring 2011. While it is true that the retention and success rates are marginally
higher in the fall than in the spring, the variance is only about 2% in each case. Given this
information (based on the data available), and the fact that we turn away at least half as many
students as we enroll in all levels of composition courses every semester, we should increase
the number of sections we offer in the spring to match the number we offer in the fall.
According to the available data, student success rate and retention rate in summer school and
winter session are consistently equal to or better than that of both fall and spring semesters.
This is a clear indication that we should increase our number of short term classes, not
decrease them.
District-Adopted Goals
The goals of Victor Valley Community College are to:
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create sustainability and environmental stewardship for our colleagues, our students,
and our community.
become an agile learning organization consistent with the needs of students and the
communities that the college serves.
offer educational programs that lead to meaningful and measurable student learning and
success through seamless transfer opportunities to colleges, universities, and careers.
increase the number of students served through recruitment, persistence, and retention
strategies.
provide affordable and attractive options for members of the community seeking a post
secondary education, which includes an environment in which diversity thrives.
develop and deliver enriching courses for community members and businesses seeking
additional training and development.
Survey of College Reading Requirements and Prerequisites
College
Number of Sections
Requirements and Prerequisites
Allan Hancock College
7 sections
No prerequisite
American River College
50 sections
Reading advisories/Reading grad requirement
Bakersfield College
12 sections
Reading Advisories/Reading graduation requirement Reading
classes are part of study skills program
Butte College
23 sections
Reading Competency Graduation requirement.
Cabrillo College
32 sections
Reading Corequisite at lowest level. Advisory at middle level.
Canada College
12 sections
Prerequisites placed on English courses
Cerritos College
53 sections
Reading Competency Graduation requirement
Cerro Coso College
22 sections
Reading advisories on English courses. Reading requirement for
graduation. Half of sections are lab.
Chaffey College
24 sections
Reading Competency in graduation required.
Citrus College
35 sections
Strong recommendations on English courses. Reading requirement
for graduation with reading class.
Compton Community Center
30 sections
Reading Prerequisite on English 1A
Consumnes River College
12 sections
Reading advisories/Reading grad requirement
El Camino College
67 sections
Reading Prerequisite on English 1A
Mt. San Antonio
35 sections
Rio Hondo College
37 sections
Reading Graduation Requirement
Sacramento City College
36 sections
Reading Advisories/Reading grad requirement
San Diego CC District
45 sections
Reading Prerequisite on English 101. Advisories on earlier courses.
Santa Barbara City College
42 sections
Prerequisite on English 110 (101)
Victor Valley College
3 sections
No requirements.
Proposal for Academic Commons
Purpose: A remodel of the Academic Commons for the English department would lend
cohesiveness to a department which presently has faculty offices divided between the Liberal
Arts building and the ATC, and classrooms scattered between lower campus and Administrative
Services. Moving the English Department to the AC would also allow our 42 adjunct faculty
members whose office space and mailboxes are in this building to become more fully integrated
into our department.
The AC’s proximity to the Learning Resource Center would encourage students to move easily
from the theory and practice of writing in the classroom to research and response in the library.
The central space designed as a computer lab would allow us to expand the number of students
we serve in the Writing Center by raising enrollment in the English 50 Lab course and adding an
English 6 Lab course of the same design. It would allow space to develop a Reading Lab to
complement English 8 and 59 as well. In the future, we would also be able to accommodate an
English 101 Research Lab component. Students could use the computers for writing and
research, since many of the computers in the mall of the ATC are now dedicated to math.
We would also have space for a work room, a Book and Resource Room, study groups, tutoring,
and make-up testing for students. We could dedicate space to the Journalism program. The
English Department is one of the two largest departments on campus, serving about 3200
students per semester. Almost every student who enrolls will take at least one of our classes, if
not three or four, as remediation or in preparation for transfer. We need a facility such as the
Academic Commons to serve them adequately.
If the Basic Skills/English classes are moved back into the department, classroom and lab. space
could also be used to accommodate these students.
Educational Master Plan/College Mission: The English chapter of the Master Plan indicates
that this department has consistently been the second largest FTES generating department for
at least the past 12 years. Even though the present financial crisis may not permit growth (we
could easily enroll at least half again, if not double, the amount of students we now serve), we
need a facility that would better serve our current student population. In addition, we must be
pro-active in planning for the future, when VVC will indeed be able to expand. The Master Plan
also emphasizes the English Department’s need to work in conjunction with the Writing Center
and Basic Skills to serve both remedial students and those who need tutorial assistance. A
facility such as the ATC would allow us more room to serve an increasing number of students in
need of remediation and support for their classes (124).
The English Department’s request for the AC furthers VVC’s stated mission in every respect.
More smart classrooms and additional space for the Writing Center and Basic Skills classes will
certainly “Inspire innovative teaching and service with imaginative uses of collaboration and
technology.” It encourages us to “embrace difference,” especially by accommodating more
individual instruction, and will help us to “cultivate intellectual growth” as we can encourage
and assist students more readily by providing easier access to tutors and faculty (VVC Catalog
2010-2011 6).
Program Review: This request is included in Part II: Departmental Needs and Part V:
Additional Explanations of the Program Review.
Technology: The Academic Commons already has the wiring and furniture needed for an open
computer lab. We would move the Macs from the classrooms where they are presently used to
the open lab. We would want to purchase about 60 PC s for a total of about 100 computers,
which is what the common space can accommodate. We would use AC-1 as a computer
classroom, but would want a configuration such as that in our ATC classrooms. We would want
AC-4 and 5 as smart classrooms, but without student computers. We suggest moving the
adjunct offices from room 1 to where Coop. Ed is currently located so that rooms 1 and 2 could
also become smart classrooms to seat at least 30 students each. We may have to move and
reconstruct two walls to accommodate this, and each classroom must have its own door. The
English department would need to keep ACT 125 and 133 as they are in order to accommodate
all of our classes. We would also maintain the present Writing Center. The Commons would
provide much needed additional resources.
Secondary Effect: We would expect the dean’s office and reception area to remain as it is,
along with Janet Long’s office. Most of the faculty with offices presently in the AC would be
displaced. They could move into offices vacated by the English faculty in either Liberal Arts 30
or the ATC. Cooperative Ed. could move into space vacated by English faculty in building 30 or
into Lower Portables 66-5. The classroom space in the Academic Commons is currently
underused, and we would certainly fill it from 8:00 am until 10:00 pm 5 days a week. We may
be able to accommodate a few of the classes currently housed here if they don’t conflict with
our schedule, assuming English keeps ATC 125 and 133. In addition, we would no longer need
30-4, 5, or 9, so these rooms should become available.
Implementation:
1. Move adjunct offices to area now occupied by Coop. Ed.
2. Restructure rooms 1 and 2 so that each becomes a separate smart classroom,
accommodating 28-30 students.
3. Secure a budget for hiring an office assistant to help manage the lab.
4. Increase the tutor budget to hire tutors to work in the open lab.
5. Install new computers in classrooms and in open lab area; convert 4 and 5 to smart
classrooms.
6. Assign a staff person to assist with managing the lab.
7. Assign or hire faculty member to oversee the lab.
8. Move faculty offices and reassign classrooms.
Efficiency/Maximization: Classes would be scheduled from 8:00 am until about 10:00 pm. The
open lab would be open for as many hours as VVC will pay for tutors and staff. Faculty office hours
will vary. The adjunct faculty will use their office space and equipment more frequently if their
classrooms are in the same building and if other faculty, staff and students are nearby.
Security: Equipment, supplies, books and property of staff and faculty would be as vulnerable to
theft as they are across campus. Security measures, including locks and alarms, such as
implemented in the ATC would be appropriate.
Cost:
Four smart classroom: $6,000 x 4 = $24,000.00
Sixty new PC’s and software:
Reconfiguring walls and doors for rooms 1 and 2 and adjunct faculty offices:
Moving current occupants to new locations and English dept. to AC:
Hire one full time office assistant: $56,000.00 per year
Expand tutor budget by
(I’m researching the cost and will provide complete information soon.)