Office of Instruction and Student Development Update November 1, 2013
I wasn’t able to send out the Office of Instruction and Student Development Update yesterday since
I was in southern California attending a gathering of community college Chief Instructional
Officers. We covered topics such as the proposed revisions to the accreditation standards, solutions
to distance educator challenges, hot to support for our student veterans, updates on the CCCCO
student success scorecard, the potential impact of K-12’s common core standards on community
college curriculum, and the state of California’s education system from the Legislative Analyst
Office’s perspective. There were a lot of good and forthright discussions and I hope to provide you
with a summary of what I learned in a future update.
Yes, San Diego was sunny and warm, but it’s great to be back.
Anyway, here’s the Friday update—sent on Saturday.
Assessing the Reorganization
The administration worked with the leadership of the academic senate and CRFO to implement a
reorganization that aligned our instructional and administrative structure to support student success
and to achieve our mission, vision and goals outlined in the strategic and education master plans.
Our intention was to enhance our ability to deliver the current services and curriculum, foster
collaboration across units and disciplines, enhance student success, and create efficiencies in the
allocation of human and financial resources to serve students effectively. The administration and
faculty leadership understood from the outset of the reorganization that internal and external factors
would inevitability occur that may affect the shape of our organizational structure and how it
functions.
I think it’s important for you to know that we are continuously evaluating how we can make
improvements in the structure we implemented on July 1, 2013. In the coming weeks the
administration, CRFO leadership, and the Academic Senate Co-Presidents will meet and identify
the strengths and challenges in our current structure and talk about how we can improve it to
enhance support for students and faculty. During these discussions we will compare notes and
evaluate comments we have collected from all our respective constituencies so that everyone's
concerns can be considered.
Alternative/Accelerated Courses
The accelerated English 102 class that I described in last week’s update and the coming noncredit
and accelerated initiatives in the math area are going to help CR take a giant step toward meeting
the college’s annual planning goal of implementing alternative basic skills curriculum (e.g.
acceleration, noncredit) and giving students alternative pathways to accomplish their educational
goals. Several math department faculty are developing noncredit Math 372 and 376 equivalent
courses for implementation sometime in spring semester. They’re also working together to revise
and condense Math 380 curriculum to prepare students for the Math 15 statistics class—essentially
creating an accelerated “path to stats” class for the district. By the time this update is sent out, Todd
Olsen would have attended the 3CSN Professional Development series on Mathematics
Acceleration at Yuba College.
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Kudos to the English and Math departments!
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