Institutional Planning and Budget Council
Meeting Notes
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Present: Sally Jahnke, Melinda Matsuda, Jane Church, Bob Curry, Clara McLean (first half), Laurie O’Connor,
Rachel LePell, Chad Mark Glen, Ron Taylor, Tom DeWit, Rachel Maldonado-Aziminia, Carolyn Arnold (note
taker).
1. Review of May 11, 2005 Minutes
Melinda Matsuda called the meeting to order at 3:15 p.m. She asked IPBC representatives to review the draft
minutes from Math 11th. Minutes were edited to clarify the Tier 2 discussion, correct some of the sentences,
and some spelling. Minutes were approved as edited.
2. Convocation Week Planning Group
Rachel LePell, Clara McLean, and Carolyn Arnold reported on the progress on plans for convocation week. See
handout. Feedback was positive on the overall schedule and ideas. The proposal to share the cost of the speaker
between IPBC (PFE funds) and Staff Development was also agreed upon.
The subgroup will continue to meet to refine the plans further. The subgroup consists of Rachel LePell, Clara
McLean, Carol Baumann, Kari McAllister, Rebecca Otto, Tom DeWit, and Carolyn Arnold
Chad Mark Glen asked if he could share these plans with the District planning group, and he was encouraged to
share these plans with them, so they would be somewhat coordinated.
3. Unit Plan and Budget Reviews
The next group of unit plans and budgets was presented by Carolyn Arnold, who presented for herself and
Marge Maloney, who could not attend.
Carolyn Arnold presented a written and verbal description of the units of: Business, ESL, Library, DSPS, Office
of Student Life, and Math/Science Office (see handout). She had several recommendations for more funds for
some of the units. Questions were asked about several of the units, and discussion ensued.
Tier 2 recommendations were once more discussed. We had decided to Email any recommendations to the
Melinda for discussion on May 25th. Rachel LePell suggested that we set aside the Tier 2 task until IPBC has
decided what its role will be in reviewing budgets. It was agreed that we would table the Tier 2 discussion, but
that we could still collect recommendations by 5/23. Then, if IPBC wants to discuss them during the summer
after the budget issue is resolved, we will have them collected.
Several people asked why IPBC’s role in budget decisions was being questioned, since the charge was to
integrate planning with budget. This discussion was tabled until the next meeting.
4. Election of New Chairs
Sally Jahnke and Rachel LePell, who had expressed interest in being chairs of IPBC, each spoke about what
they would do as chair or co-chair. Sally Jahnke passed out a handout called “Initial Thoughts on IPBC
Leadership for 05-06, ” which listed six areas of focus and many tasks within those areas that she would like to
carry out as chair. The areas of focus were: 1) Focus on Strategic Planning, 2) Focus on Environmental
Scanning, mostly internally, 3) Focus on other committees’ functions, 4) Focus on Unit Plans, 5) Focus on June
05-Dec 05 meetings, and 6) Focus on January 06-June 06 meetings. People expressed support for these ideas.
Carolyn Arnold also expressed support for the ideas, and asked how Sally planned to have IPBC carry out such
an ambitious list. Sally replied that we might need to meet longer or more often in order to accomplish these
goals. Rachel LePell stated that she had decided to be “Vice Chair” rather than Co-Chair, which would allow
her to be in a role of support, feedback, and backup to Sally without having to coordinate on planning every
meeting. Everyone agreed that Sally and Rachel would be good in these roles, and they were adopted as Chair
and Vice Chair by a unanimous vote.
5. Grants Update
Carolyn Arnold reported that the Difficult Dialogues grant discussed and approved last week had been
successfully completed by Kip Waldo and Kathleen Schaefer, and had been sent out on time.
Melinda Matsuda reported that we need to gear up for the next TRIO grant, Talent Search. She reminded the
group that when we started applying for TRIO grants, we always intended to try and get all four of the TRIO
programs. We applied to TRIO Upward Bound in 2002 and did not get it, but we got the TRIO Student Support
Services that we applied for in 2004. After you obtain one TRIO grant, it is easier to get the others, and it is
more efficient to have all four programs. Talent Search helps local high school students apply for college and
financial aid, so it would fund needed outreach services to our targeted high schools. It is due sometime
between August and October, so we may need to get it started before the new grant writer arrives.
Carolyn Arnold reported that there are three different state and federal initiatives to increase the nursing
program success and/or capacity, and one might support other vocational programs as well. There is an
immediate deadline of July 25th with a May 31st training for the first state nursing one, which could be used as
a template to apply for the others to support the nursing program. This grant is a response to 1) the statewide
nursing shortage, 2) the strategic plan goal of offering occupational programs that are needed by our community
and 3) the high costs of the nursing program, which would help the college budget. This also may need grant
writing attention before the new grant writer arrives, so we may be either contracting with Kathleen Schaefer,
hiring another temporary grant writer, or both. There were some questions about whether Nursing wanted to
increase their capacity, and Carolyn agreed to confirm this. [She later confirmed this with the Director of
Nursing and the Dean of Health.]
6. Student Learning Outcomes Taskforce
Carolyn Arnold briefly discussed the reading she had been doing on introducing student learning outcomes
assessment cycles (SLOACs) to a college, which is what we are doing at convocation. She pointed out that we
have two whole academic years before we write our Accreditation self-study. This is a sufficient amount of time
to begin to address the accreditation requirements of assessing learning and having college-wide “collegial, selfreflective dialogues about the continuous improvement of student learning and institutional processes.” She said
that major SLOAC trainers recommend using a committee or taskforce to create the SLOAC implementation
plan and timeline for the college, and that it should be led by faculty. Since there is no time in IPBC meetings to
do this, Carolyn recommended that we form a taskforce consisting of faculty from IPBC, Faculty Senate, Staff
Development, Institutional Research, Program Review, and Curriculum Committee. The group agreed, and
Rachel LePell volunteered to convene this group and start in June.
A discussion ensued about how to keep the group representative of these different groups, but not too big to
work with. In addition, other constituents were suggested—Administration and Student Services. Someone said
that it might be more important to have people with the right functions and expertise, regardless of constituency.
To resolve this, Rachel identified and accepted as volunteers a small group of people who overlapped
constituencies to form a small steering committee to get the project started. This group will develop a timetable
for implementing and assessing student learning outcomes at the college, program, and classroom level. Tom
DeWit said that eventually, SLOACs will be part of program review, but that during this first year of program
review, SLOACs and program review will be on parallel tracks, and that they will partner with this taskforce.
Rachel said that her goal was to keep program review and the SLOAC project connected. A meeting will be
called for June 1st.
The meeting was adjourned at 5:20 pm.
Respectfully submitted by Carolyn Arnold.