Chabot College
Basic Skills Committee
MINUTES
September 13, 2011
Attendees:
Rani Nijjur – Faculty, Psychology
Hisako Hintz – Faculty, ESL, Language Arts
Jane Wolford – Faculty, Social Sciences
Jennifer Lange – Faculty, Biology; Center for Teaching and Learning
Marcia Corcoran – Dean, Language Arts
Patricia Shannon Faculty, School of the Arts, Chair
Carolyn Arnold – Coordinator, Institutional Research
Katie Hern – Faculty, Language Arts
Becky Plaza – Faculty, Counseling
Homeira Foth – Faculty, English/WRAC
Motion to approve the minutes: Moved: Carolyn Arnold, Seconded, Katie Hern
Accept minutes with minor edits, approved unanimously.
1. Good of Order
Report on Carlos M’s visit – date mix-up; 2nd meeting with Trish, Katie, Dr. Railey, Jane, went
very well. Second follow-up teleconference today, focusing on how do we use data, cross
disciplinary collaboration.
Carolyn – attending BSI reporting conference in Sacramento (to ensure we complete October 10
report correctly)
We have many attendees at the Student Success Conference: Marcia Corcoran, Tram Vo
Kumamoto, Katie Hern, and Jane Wolford—all presenting, and Caroline Arnold who is
attending. Conference is being held at the Airport Hotel in Burlingame. There may still be
room for people to attend.
2. New Learning Assessment Coordinator is Christine Park ESL
3. Marcia Corcoran brought up the ongoing conversation in CEMC, and the expected next
round of cuts to offered courses. A proposal has been brought forward for how to achieve those cuts,
which included, excluding P.E. and SOTA, all disciplines with more than 5 sections, cut one, and
across-the-board cuts to Basic Skills and Psychology-Counseling. Our work in the past few years has
taught us that basic skills are the pipeline for college-level courses, as the majority of our students are
not ready for college-level mathematics or English, and our research shows that students who complete
English 102 will do significantly better in most of their classes than students who do not. The
committee discussed the many ramifications of needing to make additional cuts to the schedule and
how to bring forward the
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Money problem – adjunct FTEF
Spring cuts – how to make decision about those cuts?
Basic Skills Committee – mission statement – will have to fight for Basic Skills
Taking funding issues to district level – administrators and faculty
Formulating talking points to take to committee – how to make arguments to support basic
skills funding
Tutoring support – Math lab, WRAC, Learning Connection coordination
Strategic plan statement
o Focus on 102 – skills early for students – success ripples through rest of academic
causes – how to decide what cuts to make?
Introduction to 2011-12 FIGS
1. Change It Now – Carmen Johnston, Coordinator – Modeled on Acc-102 class centered on social
justice issues – 75% moved on to her 1A – Counseling and library support – her succeed in 102
continue to show success in 1A.
2. Cohort with communication studies using social justice theme instead of race or language based
theme.
3. RA FIG – 16 signed up; 10 showed up – 3 CSN – Nika Hogan online – ask those who can’t do
Friday training – Becky and Rani interested in online
4. Identifying pathway ESL→English
5. Ellie Hoffman – online assessment – success, persistence – basic skills students. Past practices
and sharing out with other online faculty
6. J. Lange – Success rates are consistent between online and regular students – much higher
withdrawal in online
7. Katie – effective issue – hard to build community self-efficacy
8. Sara Parker
a. renewal of student research with Pedro
b. College-wide learning goal of civic
9. English faculty as they look at 4-pronged
a. Assessment
b. Placement
10. Math – develop pre-stat class instead of 2 core instead of 6 core sequence.
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11. Veronica Martinez – comm. Studies
12. J. Jange – Making visible video on student experience as they enter Chabot
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