Anthropology Department Instructional Planning Report 2011
April 20, 2012
I. Background, Evaluation, and Analysis
A. Program Description
Anthropology is the broad, holistic study of all that it means to be human. Anthropologists study
the origins of humanity and the processes of cultural change in a global context. The Cabrillo
College Anthropology department offers courses in three of the four main subfields of
anthropology: biological anthropology, archaeology, and cultural anthropology. Currently we
offer a total of 64 sections per year and eight courses (as well as online and honors versions of
existing courses): Biological Anthropology, Biological Anthropology Laboratory, Cultural
Anthropology, Archaeology, Forensic Anthropology, Archaeology Field School, Peoples and
Cultures of Nonwestern Tradition, and the Anthropology of Religion. Students in these courses
acquire skills in scientific reasoning, research methodology, and cross-cultural awareness. All of
these courses address the core competencies identified by the college, including critical thinking,
effective communication, global awareness, and personal responsibility. These classes crosscut
many disciplines in social science, the humanities, and natural science and prepare students for a
variety of courses of study including cultural resources management, environmental planning,
nursing, medicine, teaching, public health administration, business, public relations, law, social
work, community development, and international relations.
B. Relationships
The Anthropology department prepares students to transfer as Anthropology majors at CSUs like
San Jose State and San Francisco State and at UCs, including UCLA, Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz,
and UC Davis. Several students in recent years have transferred to private colleges (e.g., St.
Mary’s College and Santa Clara University) and international universities (e.g., London School
of Economics). Our courses also help students fulfill general education requirements. Biological
Anthropology (ANTHR1) and Biological Anthropology Laboratory (ANTHR1L) meet the AA
degree and transfer requirements for Area B-2 (Area 5 for IGETC). Cultural Anthropology
(ANTHR2), Archaeology (ANTHR3), Peoples and Cultures of Nonwestern Tradition
(ANTHR7), Anthropology of Religion (ANTHR8), and Forensic Anthropology (ANTHR17) all
meet the AA degree and transfer requirements for area D (Area 4 for IGETC) and with the
exception of ANTHR3also fulfill the multicultural requirement. All of the courses being offered
now articulate with CSU and UC programs. ANTHR2 and ANTHR8 are also writing factor
classes which directly address the core competency of effective communication.
The nursing school requires their students to pass either ANTHR2 or SOC2. The anthropology
program offers three online sections in both the Spring and Fall semesters of ANTHR1, 1L, and
2, allowing Cabrillo College students the option of completing a degree and/or the transfer
requirements entirely online, thus serving students with limited mobility or other constraints. In a
similar vein, our course offerings at the Watsonville Campus, particularly ANTHR1 and 1L,
make it possible to finish the degree or transfer requirements at that campus. This campus serves
many Latino students and the anthropology program provides an integral component to helping
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them complete community college. The anthropology program also offers ANTHR1H and
ANTHR2H, honors versions of these courses that each serve 35 high-achieving students. The
Honors Program helps these motivated students transfer directly to UCLA and other top schools
via special articulation arrangements.
Anthropology students and faculty regularly utilize the library and the learning centers. All of
our courses require research papers and most include computer-based teaching modules such as
quizzes, wikis, and online discussions. The Writing Center provides support to the students in
our writing factor classes by providing tutoring and guidance in constructing high-quality papers.
The Anthropology department was aligned with the now-defunct Archeology Technology
career/technical education program. We absorbed the faculty member who was once scheduled
half-time in that department and half-time in anthropology. He maintains the strong community
ties developed over many years in support of the archaeology and anthropology programs. This
faculty member also advises the DigIt! Archaeology Club on campus and continues to work in
the field in archaeology during the summer, and hosts workshops and speakers such as the
recent, well-attended Archaeology Night.
In coordination with the History department and the Honors Program, the Anthropology
department has also hosted a well-attended film-and-discussion night that we plan to offer each
semester. In addition, members of the department provided key support to the public Social
Justice Conference at Cabrillo for each of the past five years.
Our faculty represent our greatest strength. They are active members of many community groups
such as the Secular Humanist Society, People Power, the Bioneers, and Transitions (a reskilling
network), campus clubs and initiatives (Leading Out: LGBTQIAA club, Occupy Cabrillo, AGS
Honor Society, the Black Student Union, the Sustainability Club), campus committees (CCFT,
Faculty Senate, the Sustainability Council, Honors Faculty, Faculty LGBT Alliance, ACE,
Distance Education, Bilingual Steering committee), and professional organizations (Society for
California Archaeology, American Anthropological Association, The Society for Applied
Anthropology, Society for the Study of Social Problems, Society for Medical Anthropology).
Several of our faculty regularly attend the annual meetings of the California Community College
Anthropology Instructors consortium where they share new ideas and pedagogical strategies.
The Anthropology department enjoys good relations with faculty at several nearby universities.
They regularly visit as guest speakers in our classrooms, provide internship opportunities for our
students, and collaborate with our faculty in anthropological research that keep us current in the
field. For example, two of our students volunteered in the forensic anthropology lab at UCSC
and one of our faculty members consulted on a few forensic cases.
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C. Costs
The average load in the Anthropology department approximates the college average. The
WSCH/FTEF ratio is slightly higher than the college as a whole which reflects a higher faculty
load.
Table 1. WSCH/FTEF
Fall
ANTHR
Fall
College Average
Spring
ANTHR
Spring
College Average
2005/2006 639.4
571.9
569.2
563.9
2006/2007 548.9
546.1
543.5
516.9
2007/2008 542.5
551.4
579.4
535.3
2008/2009 598.4
610.3
626.4
609.3
2009/2010 617.4
627
612.6
604
College expenditures for the Anthropology department are low when viewed alongside
comparably sized departments (in terms of number of sections offered) such as History.
According to Cabrillo College Datatel data, the average expenditure for the Anthropology in past
five years (2005-2010) accounts for 1.3% of the overall college base expenditures. The
department’s financial contribution to the college is higher than its cost to the college. The
Anthropology department accounts for 2.2% of the college FTES.
D. Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs)
Some of the faculty in the Anthropology department have been using SLOs to design their
curricula, assignments, and evaluation tools since 1999 but this process is just now being
formalized as a department-wide practice. The full-time faculty take the lead in developing the
SLOs but our now-monthly department meetings include everyone in the process of evaluating
our individual courses and our department as a whole.
The Anthropology department has yet to assess all course SLOs and we are working with the
SLO coordinator to ensure that we adhere to the Revolving Wheel of Assessment Plan for
ongoing assessment of course SLOs and the college Core Four. The SLO assessment process
was not completed in the last program planning cycle under previous leadership. To begin to
remedy this shortcoming, the Anthropology department held a workshop in December 2011 to
evaluate our program. We began the assessment of the Core Four by examining our assignments
and the data collected on student outcomes over recent semesters (2008-2011). We also
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identified two overarching SLOs that will inform the construction and assessment of coursespecific SLOs for all of our classes. We are beginning this process now. In general, anthropology
students should demonstrate the ability to:
1) Use anthropological tools (i.e., participant observation, kinship charts, fossil comparisons,
ethnographic interviews, archaeological fieldwork, assemblage analysis, or experiments,
and/or content analysis) to critically analyze theories of human behavior, cultural change,
and/or the origins of humanity using the anthropological perspective, an holistic approach to
observing humans as beings integrated by biology, culture, and language, in the past and in
the present.
2) Compare different cultural practices, biases, and perspectives--including the students’ own--to
gain an appreciation for cultural diversity and its role in shaping humanity.
In the Fall of 2011, we researched several California community college and university
anthropology departments to ensure that ours were comparable and current. Our dialogue from
the Fall 2011 workshop, as well as several informal conversations about the SLOs and program
planning led to the following recommendations and conclusions:
1) The anthropology faculty need to make more of an effort to keep our classes at cap rather than
over-enrolling them as many of us tend to do. We cannot effectively maintain standards for
instruction and adequate evaluation of the first SLO in particular without sufficient space to
work and time in which to provide substantial feedback in grading student projects.
2) We need to update collections in the library and the department to incorporate the latest
research in anthropology. This amounts to acquiring new ethnographic films, replacing
damaged classics, and purchasing more ethnographies and fossil collections. The library
budget will help pay for some of the materials. Department faculty members are also training
one another in how to access digital resources such as free online documentary films. The
existing classroom and laboratory materials need to be taken care of which is incredibly
difficult to do without a lab assistant. The part time faculty use their own time to help
with this task but they are not compensated for this extra work. We hope to remedy this
problem in better fiscal times. We plan to apply for grants from the Student Senate and the
Cabrillo Foundation next fall in hopes of acquiring new materials.
3) The anthropology faculty also concluded that our students are doing a great job at achieving
the outcomes we set forth. We suspect that grades are high and retention is high in
our department because our primary method of assessment involves students doing original
research and they become engaged and committed in this dynamic learning process. Some of
the students present their work at the annual Social Justice Conference held at Cabrillo in the
Spring and at least two students have submitted their anthropology projects for the California
Community College Honors Symposium to be held at Berkeley this Spring.
4) During our faculty meeting on SLOs, we decided as a group that student presentations should
illustrate the depth of their research. Presentations tend to be too cursory and several of the
faculty brainstormed ways to make our higher expectations more clear to the students. One
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suggestion is to highlight research quality in our assignment sheets and grading rubrics. We also
discussed reading load. The faculty who require online quizzes in advance of reading discussions
in class reported that more students were doing the reading. As a result, the other faculty
members requested a tutorial on how to construct these quizzes; the meeting took place in March
2012.
5) Our department evaluated the college “Core Four” competencies: communication, global
awareness, personal responsibility, and critical thinking (see attachment). We think we are doing
an excellent job in all of these areas. The biggest challenge, we agreed, is fostering personal
responsibility among the students. We decided that requiring original research helps student
practice responsibility but we also need to: 1) enforce strict due dates and clearly communicate
these, 2) educate students about plagiarism, 3) require major assignments to be turned in in parts
(i.e., rough drafts) to help students learn about revision and about time management. Some
faculty members reported good results with well-designed peer evaluation rubrics.
The Anthropology department will have a department meeting during the Fall 2012 Flex Week
to further discuss our SLOs. It is difficult to garner full participation in the SLO process, mainly
because adjunct instructors have disparate schedules and competing responsibilities. Replacing
our retiree with a full time instructor would go a long way to helping the department fulfill the
college mission.
E. Student Success
Cabrillo students tend to be quite successful in anthropology classes. The number of
anthropology majors has steadily risen in the past five years; there were 67 in Spring 2010. As
evident from the tables below our success rates are 5% above the college average, though in
some semesters, our success rate is as much as 11% higher than that of the college. Similarly, we
retain students in our classes at 4-6% higher rates than the college average. In the fall of 2010,
we boasted a 91% retention rate. The Anthropology department does a good job of helping
students succeed in our classes. Our student success and retention rates dropped in Spring 2006
and Fall 2007, partly due to college-wide trends and partly due to the sabbatical of one full time
instructor and a leave of absence by the other. In order to foster student success and retention, we
need to hire a fulltime faculty member to replace the 2010 retiree as soon as the budget allows.
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Table 2. Student Success Rate
Table 3. Student Retention Rate.
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F. Student Survey
The Office of Planning and Research collected 80 student surveys from anthropology classes
during Fall 2010. Of these, only about 9% were majors and 90% of those surveyed were taking
only one anthropology course that semester. The students, who were surveyed from classroom
settings, overwhelmingly prefer in-person classes over online classes. Although almost half
(49%) of the students enrolled in the class because it was required or because it fit the necessary
time slot, a telling 21% chose the class because of a friend’s recommendation or because of the
department’s reputation. It is clear that the department has a good reputation among students as
38% plan to take another anthropology class at Cabrillo College and a surprising 94% would
recommend the department to other students. Most of the students’ written comments reflect
students’ appreciation for the high quality teaching that goes on in the Anthropology department.
Others point out the value of what they are learning. One student commented, “I learn new things
everyday that reshape how I think about the world.” Another noted that a major strength of the
program is that it is “opening people’s minds to other opinions and to be less judgmental; also to
realize [that] all people are not exactly like us.”
Although 92% of students answered that the workload in the classes was appropriate, other data
indicate that typical students are only spending 0-3 hours per week studying for their
anthropology class. These data pose a concern for the anthropology faculty. Students should be
spending an average of six hours per week preparing for their anthropology classes. We need to
revisit our workload standards if we are to ensure that our courses meet standards of academic
rigor.
When asked how the program could improve, students suggested updating equipment and taking
more field trips. They are also concerned about overcrowding; several asked for bigger
classrooms. Faculty need to take into consideration this concern for the safety and comfort of the
students before over-enrolling their classes. If larger rooms are not a feasible solution, we might
accommodate more students by adding a section of a course in better budgetary times.
G. Curriculum Review
The anthropology faculty reviewed our curricula, including the catalog descriptions, course
outlines, recommended texts, SLOs, syllabi, methods of evaluation, and online components for
currency and appropriateness. Our courses fully articulate with CSU and UC and they are
comparable in format and delivery to anthropology courses at other California community
colleges. As mentioned above, we might do well to consider keeping to our enrollment caps as
the classrooms are not large enough to permit allowing extra students to add to our rolls.
The anthropology faculty also chose to examine our use of digital resources in our classes. We
excel at providing online links to relevant articles, videos, syllabi, and handouts. These
additional resources for students conserve money at the college by reducing the need for
photocopying, enrich the course quality, and provide students with easy access to all course
materials from anywhere. At the same time, we need to replace damaged hands-on laboratory
materials and update our collections.
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In 2010 our faculty updated the introductory archaeology course (ANTHR3)--previously crosslisted as a core course in Archaeology Technology--to reflect current trends in this subfield,
refocusing the curricula toward the theoretical basis for methodology and analysis of
archaeological materials and thus aligning the course with the ones taught at California
universities. All of our other courses are up-to-date with the exception of ANTHR7, which is
currently in the process.
In light of budgetary constraints and despite great student interest, we streamlined our core
offerings beginning in Spring 2011 to include more of those classes that meet general education
and transfer requirements. We no longer teach the Anthropology of Wine, Sustainable Cultures,
California Indians, the Global Perspectives of Food and Culture, and a host of other electives.
The model program for the AA degree now includes ANTHR1, 1L, 2, and 3 and a choice of two
preferred electives ANTHR8 or ANTHR13. We continue to offer Peoples and Cultures of Nonwestern Tradition (ANTHR7) and an archaeological field school once every two years. The
summer field school attracts a number of university students as well as Cabrillo students and the
students pay a stipend to cover the cost of this additional program.
The program added two honors versions of our existing courses which mirror the course outlines
except that they require more student research and three additional hours per week of student
study time and homework outside of class. The Honors Program committee meetings provide an
excellent opportunity to review the curricula and how it is working with that cohort of students.
Lessons learned carry over into our non-honors classes as well. In the same vein, three of the
faculty members in the Anthropology department have participated in the ACE training which
provides additional skills in reflective teaching and all of us have reported improvements to our
curricula and student success and learning outcomes as a result.
Anthropology will be integral to the new SCCCC model program in which a cohort of 30
students majoring in our discipline will be fast-tracked through community college and on to
their transfer universities. We are working closely with the Director of Workforce Development,
and the Director of Marketing in developing ways to ensure this program’s success. We are
providing information about the discipline in order to recruit eligible high school students and we
are planning events such as field trips, film nights, and extracurricular talks for these students to
help them gel as a cohort.
II. New Directions
Our program evaluation reveals that we excel in teaching. The faculty in the Anthropology
department continue to participate in pedagogical training via the ACE program, the consortium
of Anthropology instructors in California community colleges, intra- and inter-departmental
dialog, FLEX week activities, and professional organizations such as the American
Anthropological Association’s section for Anthropologists in Community Colleges. The
development of our departmental SLOs has guided our syllabi development and the faculty focus
on assessing students via hands-on original research in all of our classes. We see these as
valuable teaching tools that mimic the experience of real anthropological research while also
giving students a chance to put their critical thinking skills into practice on real-world problems.
Anthropology, with its focus on the effects of globalization and on cross cultural understanding,
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is the kind of discipline that will prepare students for work and life in the 21st century. We
expect that employers and universities are going to seek candidates who are problem-solvers and
broad thinkers, just the kinds of skills that we work on in our classes.
As a result of our program planning research and intradepartmental discussions, the
Anthropology department has the following plans:
A. Staffing
In order to best serve our students, we need to replace the full-time instructor who retired at the
end of 2009/2010. We also lost a long-time adjunct, further compounding the difficulty in
staffing our scheduled classes and having our department represented in campus committees
devoted to shared governance. We have excellent adjunct instructors but they cannot be expected
to fully engage in the ongoing work in maintaining our instructional materials, assessing
programmatic needs and SLOs, and participating in shared governance and student
extracurriculars.
We also need a Laboratory Instructional Assistant to help us maintain our valuable teaching
materials but it seems unlikely due to budgetary constraints and this hire takes a lower priority to
that of replacing the full-time instructor.
B. Curriculum Development and Course Offerings
As discussed above, we pared down our model program and eliminated many electives in light of
changing college priorities. Our core offerings include ANTHR1, 2, and 3 that fulfill
requirements for various courses of study. Our five transferable electives tend to fill to capacity
and also meet the needs of majors and non-majors.
C. Equipment, Supplies, and Classroom Space
We are woefully in need of new laboratory materials, particularly real human skeletal remains.
We plan to apply to the Cabrillo Foundation and Student Senate grant programs in Fall 2012 in
attempt to gain the funds necessary.
Room 432 has ongoing problems with the smart classroom set-up which cuts into instructional
time on a regular basis. We need to work with the college to ensure that this equipment functions
properly at all times. There are also poor-quality plastic chairs that frequently crack and break in
this room.
The ANTHR1L course requires a great deal of set-up and take-down time several times per day.
Adjunct faculty teach most of the sections but they are not fully compensated for the additional
work required to manage all of the materials and rearrange the classroom in addition to preparing
and evaluating the laboratory assignments. It is also difficult to restore the classroom to order in
advance of lecture classes during the short passing time between classes. Students often help
with the process but, in the rush, expensive materials often get dropped, dragged, damaged, and
lost.
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The previous program plan outlined a request to acquire dedicated classroom space for the lab so
that instructors would not have to continually bring out and return the materials each time. Room
429 is adjacent to our material storage area and would be ideal for this purpose.
III. Goals and Recommendations
Market projections for careers in Anthropology suggest that jobs will increase by 30% between
2010 and 2020. These include jobs as anthropologists, archaeologists, and social science
researchers. According to the American Anthropological Association, more than half of
anthropologists work outside the academic sector and this trend is expected to continue.
As revealed by our departmental SLO discussions, all of our students—majors and nonmajors—
excel in the Core Four competencies when we foster their abilities to conduct original research
using anthropological methodologies and perspectives. In order to better prepare students in this
way for transfer to universities we need the following personnel and supplies:
1) Replace full time instructor. Cost: $39,062 per year. Rationale: Number 5 cited in the SLO
dialogue of December 2011 discussed above.
2) Laboratory instructional assistant. Cost: $65,169 per year. Rationale: Number 2 cited in the
SLO dialogue of December 2011 discussed above.
3) Updated lab equipment and supplies. Cost: $6,000 one time. The department will apply for
grants to fund this need. Rationale: Number 2 cited in the SLO dialogue of December 2011
discussed above.
4) Obtain more up-to-date classroom maps. Cost: $2,000 one time. The department will apply for
grants to fund this need. Rationale: Number 4 cited in the SLO dialogue of December 2011
discussed above. The global awareness area of the Core Four assessment.
5) Room 432 needs better smart classroom maintenance. Cost: varies. We will work with IT on
this issue. Rationale: College Master Plan to provide smart classrooms.
6) Take over room 429. Cost: none. Rationale: Number 1 cited in the SLO dialogue of December
2011 discussed above.
We also want to encourage students’ personal responsibility and communication skills:
7) Share student peer evaluation rubrics. Cost: none. Rationale: Number 3 cited in the SLO
dialogue of December 2011 discussed above. The personal responsibility area of the Core
Four assessment.
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