ACADEMIC SENATE
COLLEGE OF SAN MATEO
csmacademicsenate@smccd.net
Governing Council Meeting
May 13, 2008 minutes
Members Present
Jeremy Ball
Diana Bennett
Lloyd Davis
Rosemary Nurre
President
Vice President
Secretary
Treasurer
Teresa Morris
Brandon Smith
Kathleen Steele
Library
Language Arts
Language Arts
Others Attending
Mike Brandy
Joe Chapot
Dan Kaplan
Maas Co.
San Matean
AFT
Jeff Kellogg
Teeka James
Anne Stafford
Maas Co.
Language Arts/AFT
Language Arts
CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order at 2:24 pm. MSU to approve the agenda.
Approval of the minutes of April 8 and April 22 was postponed to a future meeting.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT Jeremy reported we must do summer work on accreditation
recommendations to meet the October deadline. At Mike Claire’s request, the Board of Trustees has
assured funding is available for faculty participants. Committee members include Jeremy, Andreas Wolf,
Ernie Rodriguez, Mike Claire, and Stacey Grasso.
Teeka expressed concern that faculty are disengaged. Faculty need to hear an authoritative (but not
authoritarian) message from union, senate, and administration leadership to participate more. Jeremy said
the technology plan needs action steps and deliverables, and must be tied to the educational master plan.
Today we will discuss program review, to get some direction for work over the summer. We also need to
work in summer on assessment and on Fall ’08 flex activities. The accreditation oversight committee has
identified other things we’ll need help on. Rosemary asserted this is serious business, and we need more
people involved. Brandon called for stronger leadership, perhaps a call to arms at an all-college meeting.
Jeremy said we may not be taken off warning status in October. We will have made tremendous progress
by then, but the accreditation team will want to come back and check our follow-through. For example,
program review changes will not be implemented until April. Teeka said we were told at the last meeting
don’t worry, we’re taking it seriously, we have a consultant, and we are moving ahead. The likelihood
that we will stay on warning needs to come out. Kathleen warned tranquility will set the faculty up for
major freak-out if we are not taken off warning. Jeremy added the warning is for two years. If we don’t
get off warning in that time, we lose accreditation. The letter we got indicates that’s a possibility. They
are playing hardball and have changed standards dramatically, which makes it hard to make predictions.
Dan remarked what is so odd is at the same time we get the threatening WASC letter, there is a huge
debate in Washington DC which could take SLOs out of the hands of accrediting agencies. An article by
Paul Basken in the 5/9/2008 Chronicle of Higher Education indicates a conference committee is meeting
to reconcile the Higher Education Reauthorization Act. Both the House and Senate versions say SLOs
can no longer be in the domain of accrediting agencies. Colleges have the responsibility to assess
effectiveness. When the conference committee comes up with a new act, it will not continue to allow
accrediting agencies to use SLOs. Jeremy said the safe option is to proceed. Most people think we’ll get
off warning, but he, Sandra, and Susan do not. Anne said it will be a rude shock we don’t get off.
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Dan recalled Cathleen Kennedy and Bill Rundberg put together a very sophisticated technology plan for
the district. Diana added she and Tim Karas produced a CSM technology plan, but when Tim left and
Diana moved on to other things, it was not pursued. Jeremy said we now have people working very hard
preparing documents which just sit, as opposed to documents which are accessed during planning and
prompt people to show how what they do at one level ties in what others do at other levels. Jeremy said
our two year old technology plan is way out date, especially since it is not linked to the facilities master
plan. We were dinged for our plans not being linked, and for not assessing their success. The new
process is a shift from meeting-based planning to document-based planning. We have a lot of meetings
but rarely write things down or have long term follow-up. Jeremy said he expects something dramatic at
the end of this. We hear a lot about shared governance, but how is the faculty voice actually articulated
and carried forward? That will be built into the planning process, with a clear dynamic.
Kathleen said these things are great, but how will faculty have enough time to write up documents and
talk to each other? We’re at a crisis point in all departments. Every year our count of full-time faculty to
participate in these things goes down. We may need to negotiate a solution, possibly a schedule change
so we have a week out of instruction to do such things as SLOs and program review. The cost is it takes
us away from the classroom and our students. We can’t continue to do more and more. Anne asserted
getting off warning shouldn’t be on the backs of faculty. Dan said SLO workshops can accomplish a lot
in one day, and part-timers can participate.
Jeremy reported on District and CSM Academic Senate elections. Jeremy opted not to run for DAS
president this year. Current DAS president Patty Dilko is willing to run again. Diana is testing the online
ballot for CSM Senate officers and by-laws. It will be up by the end of this week. We have two
candidates for vice president: Lilya Vorobey and Eileen O’Brien.
The retirement party for CSM’s eight retirees will be Tuesday, May 20, in 18-206.
FACULTY APPOINTMENTS One faculty member is needed for the Policy Trust Committee.
Carolyn Fiori has agreed to serve.
When Tim Karas took a job at Mission College, we decided to hire a replacement for his full-time
librarian position rather than add a position to the pool of open positions. The library serves the whole
campus, and only one full-time librarian was seen as too few. Soon librarian David Gibbs will be leaving
us for a job at Georgetown, and we are faced with a similar decision. Rosemary and Jeremy spoke in
favor of filling the librarian position. Dan pointed out there is another full-time librarian, but with John
Kirk retiring, there will be no full-timer in economics, and the number of full-timers in political science is
way down. We just eliminated the only full-time German position. Lots of departments have no fulltimers. We have so many unmet needs. Jeremy reported the instructional deans have set the hiring
priority list for this year. We need to decide as soon as possible on the library position.
Teresa said the library can function with adjuncts, but without a second full-timer would have to cut back
on its committee representation. Teresa, whose responsibilities include orientation for 400 students, will
confine her committee work to program viability. Anne said she is nervous about this decision being
made by a small number of people. Jeremy said we just make a recommendation. In the past, we have
concluded the library is core to our academic mission and serves many departments, and it says
something about our commitment to academics if we have only one librarian. It is also shameful to have
no economist. Dan noted Canada has no librarian. The lack of full-time faculty will negatively impact
shared governance. Kathleen said there are such problems everywhere. Jeremy wants to recommend to
Susan we rehire the position. He said the alternative would be a devastating loss. Teeka reported DSGC
is considering communicating to bodies whose representatives are frequently absent that they aren’t being
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represented. Jeremy reminded Governing Council members to get information to faculty in their
divisions. MSU (Nurre, O’Brien) to recommend filling David Gibbs’ library position.
NEW BUSINESS – EDUCATIONAL MASTER PLAN UPDATE FROM MAAS COMPANIES
Jeremy reported he and Andreas Wolf were made co-chairs last fall of the CSM Steering Committee, a
group whose work includes putting together an educational master plan. As they identified the documents
we need to prepare, and as the seriousness of the warning because more clear, they decided to call in
professionals from the Maas Companies. Maas has done more than 90 educational master plans. Clients
include Foothill, Skyline, Evergreen Valley, City College of San Jose, and Peralta Jeremy invited Maas
team members Mike Brandy and Jeff Kellogg to today’s meeting to let us know what they do and the
direction they are headed, and take our questions.
Mike and Jeff outlined their backgrounds. Mike Brandy recently retired after years of community
college administrative experience at Long Beach and Riverside and most recently as Vice Chancellor of
Business Services in the Foothill/DeAnza district. He has served on eight accreditation teams, consulted
on educational planning, and earned an MBA. Jeff Kellogg’s background is in real estate investment and
financial advising, he has 20 years of public policy experience, and has been working specifically on
educational planning for the last few years.
Mike said the goal is to get us off warning by this September. They will focus on the educational master
plan and integration of our planning processes, and will produce documentation for the accreditation
commission, as Maas is doing for Canada. The report must get to the commission by Oct. 10. The final
review will happen in mid-August. Maas is working with the CSM planning committee gathering data,
describing planning processes, and identifying links and holes. The team is asking how, for example, the
District Technology Plan, the District Strategic Plan, and the District Facilities Master Plan are linked, not
how they should be linked, at both the college and district levels. After being here only a month, the team
has some ideas about what can be done to strengthen connections among our plans and our abundant data.
Jeremy is working with Maas on details. Our planning documents identify who does what. Maas will
have a rough draft before summer and will refine it over the summer. We will have four weeks to look it
over before it is submitted Sept. 30. It seems doable.
The external scan of our area includes high schools, the general population, employment, and state
funding. Those influences are similar to what Maas has seen at Skyline. The internal scan gathers data
on our students, including age, gender, and ethnicity demographics, and our instructional programs in
both career tech and general education, including enrollment by program.
The instructional planning process takes the most time, since it pulls together all the other planning
processes. A lot is going on in both program review and SLOs, which are at the base of planning. Much
of program review is now retrospective but not prospective. We should build in FTES projections and be
sure the process carries information up to the college and district levels so institutional researchers can get
a sense of where things are going. After the college gets its share of funding from the district, what is the
internal process for allocation among and within divisions to hit FTES targets? Could some areas be
strengthened? Be sure we articulate this clearly. Also, what progress are support services making in
program review and SLOs, and are those also among the building blocks of college-wide plans?
We need to link our plans to district plans. For example, the district has a facilities master plan. How is
it linked to the college facilities plan? Does the college have an executive steering committee for
facilities, to put focus on the campus for monitoring and managing bond money, taking program review
data into account? Maas wants to be sure the district’s new resource allocation model is working, that
the college budget committee is in synch with its district counterpart, that the local plan pulls from
program reviews, and that budget requests move in an orderly way through the system. The District
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Strategic Plan will go to the Board of Trustees in June, with final review in November. Is the college
linked into the district planning process, and is that reflected in the college educational master plan? The
District has directions for instructional technology and provides infrastructure support. We want to be
sure CSM is linked into that policy-making. What is CSM’s technological focus? How is technology
used in the classroom, and how is its use evaluated? Where it is not working, what is in place to fix that?
The planning process should be transparent. We need a planning cycle chart, including, e.g., the
educational master plan, SLOs, program review, and staffing. Maas is examining our committee
structure, including the composition and goals of each committee at both the college and district level, in
the light of what we know from internal and external scans. How do they relate timewise? How
frequently do they interact? Examination of the effectiveness of our planning process will take at least
another year. We will demonstrate to the commission we know we’re not perfect and are addressing that.
Whether enrollment forecasting belongs in program review will not be resolved before September.
Jeff said Maas will make broad recommendations but the Board of Trustees will make the decisions.
Sample plans from Irvine Valley and Long Beach may inform discussions here. The strategic plan is
what you would like to be. The educational plan is what you are, based on your instructional and support
services. It has to pass review by the State Chancellor’s Office. Maas uses numbers the state is
comfortable with and will acknowledge. The goals of the plan are to incorporate everything and allow the
college to become stronger. It is a working document which will help secure funding in the future when
the demand is there. The strategic plan is the highest level plan, and has goals which could be applied to
any California community college. Lots of strategic objectives rely on the educational plan, but there
may be some, e.g. in facilities or technology, which are district driven. Right underneath the umbrella of
the strategic plan is the educational master plan, which drives and synchs everything else, from the
departmental program review level up, not from the top down.
Maas recommendations will be broad, not detailed. Details are local. For example, program review
FTES projection and data on district demographic changes (e.g. aging population, declining high school
population) might be used to reexamine FTE allocation at the division level. Who will take the place of
young students? Vocational education programs at the three colleges are competing. Be sure such
programs are well coordinated. Give thought to the interests of older adults. If we continue on our
present course, our population is likely to go down.
Simplify the planning process. Do we have the right committees, with the right composition? Many
institutions plan and implement but are not good at evaluating the planning process itself. Maas will look
at strategies to systematically evaluate our planning process, e.g. retreats and surveys. Those are early
recommendations. Maas will make specific recommendations later.
Dan asked about baby boom two, which has bypassed San Mateo County because of our housing prices.
Mike said we have good demographic data by zip code. There is a disparity of markets within our service
area. Many of our potential students go directly to CSU or UC, or don’t go to college at all.
Mike said we need citizen groups like the Bond Oversight Committee for the technology plan and for
institutional research. Our external scan looks at where our students come from and where our marketing
opportunities are, and is not limited to San Mateo County. Teeka noted some students bypass CCSF to
come here from San Francisco. Maas will look at trend data and identify groups to target. If the high
school population continues to decline, that’s a big concern.
Is data accessible to people who need it? Ideally we will get a data warehouse we can access, so we don’t
have to rely on others. Jeff said Maas tries to give general directions and options and ideas on trends, but
then shared governance takes over. Maas has been involved in enrollment management elsewhere. CSM
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is unique in having a facilities master plan and a strategic plan, but also a warning letter. Maas wants to
produce a working document to benefit us.
Mike and Jeff said Maas has had more quantified successes when working to get state or bond funding for
facilities than with internal recommendations such as on enrollment management. Turnover of
institutional leadership makes it is hard to get continuity of focus. We want to maintain enrollment, by
attracting new students and keeping the ones we have, or else we will always be in a potential layoff
cycle. We need to protect our base through bad years. Maas has not worked with districts on warning.
They expected few warnings, but as the accreditation commission has changed, placing emphasis on
educational planning and SLOs, lots of warnings have been issued. We should learn from our warning
and get beyond it. We will submit to the commission a technology master plan, a facilities master plan, a
district strategic plan, and connected dots. Staffing requests on both the teaching and nonteaching sides
will be subject to an orderly process, with prioritization based on program review. Jeremy said on hiring,
we are in good shape for faculty but not for administration. Thanks were exchanged with Mike and Jeff.
NEW BUSINESS – EDUCATIONAL MASTER PLAN AND BASIC SKILLS INITIATIVE James
Carranza distributed the planning matrix for the Educational Master Plan, and the ESL/Basic Skills
Expenditure Plan. James shared the matrix with the deans this morning, and asked for feedback on
organization, types of plans, monitoring, and who to report to. Jeremy said it has lots of good ideas, and
was a spectacular job done under very adverse conditions, tapping into many voices on campus. We want
to develop its good ideas into a doable plan, and identify focal points and set priorities . Typically Jeremy
signs documents on behalf of the Senate only with Governing Council approval. Because he got this
document the day before it was due, he signed it without that approval. The Senate can change the
document, but it must be on file so our efforts can be funded through the Department of Finance. James
asked for a two week extension, but the state said no, it is on a deadline too.
The expenditure plan for its $100,000 Basic Skills Initiative (BSI) funding covers several areas, including
coordinating academic services and professional development. $10,000 is for a professional development
coordinator. The committee also sees the need for a developmental education coordinator who can work
with different disciplines and facilitate communication among departments, divisions, and upper
administration. The committee will talk about the duties of that position. Susan wants the position
institutionalized as soon as possible. If she will take up the slack, we can put our BSI funding elsewhere,
say professional development. The committee is now deciding how to put the initial assessment together.
The committee prioritized the list of duties, and the deans will prioritize what they find most doable.
James asked deans, working with faculty, to point out differences in perspective among departments and
administrators. People question whether we need another administrator, but James emphasized the
coordinator will be a faculty member. James sees one role of the developmental education coordinator is
to bring basic skills into division work plans. Another is to tie basic skills into the educational master
plan. Jeremy said we have very limited funds, some of them one-time funds, so we must make choices –
what gives us the biggest bang? A partially funded full-time position is untenable since it would obligate
the college in the future. Giving money directly to students would help only perhaps 100. Jeremy sees
training faculty to deal better with basic skills students as key to the success of the initiative. Often
people work on things which don’t go anywhere. The developmental education coordinator could be a
contact person who can be sure developmental education is considered.
On the educational master plan, James said each dean will identify action steps for their division. The
dean presents these to the division for feedback, then after adjustments builds a calendar and assigns
duties. The goal is a document-based planning cycle: here’s what we want to do and here’s how. Inform
and be informed by the program review document, and stay aligned with the educational master plan.
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Teeka called the basic skills plan carefully thought through. Jeremy said he was impressed with the plan
but was concerned about budget allocation. Can we request a basic skills coordinator when we have other
priorities? James reported the basic skills coordinator idea went back and forth in committee. The
committee understood that with temporary funds, it could not get a full-time position. It could afford to
allocate only $40,000, so is seeking a six unit position, but has not yet identified the position’s duties.
Danita said we should ask for what we think we need. James said we will do that. If we provide six
units, maybe the college will too. Teeka said it is totally dysfunctional not to ask for what you need. It
sets you up for failure. Document the needs the state isn’t meeting. Kathleen said Teeka’s point is very
important in program review as well. Document needs even if they cannot all be met. James said his
committee will prioritize duties for the position next week, and cover as many top-of-the-list priorities as
we can afford – clear short term goals we can measure after a semester. A person focusing on
developmental education could find things we do that do not feed into anything else. There are ways to
make us more efficient, and to make the whole professional development process simpler and clearer.
Discussion points: Professional development has a funding level of 1% of faculty salaries. It is
administered by a committee named by the union, with three faculty members from each campus. One
serves as chair. There are different pots of professional development money. Maybe we can talk about
appropriate collaboration with the union. If basic skills should have priority, we could ask that they do.
Make it part of every hire. Brandon noted that is a listed effective practice.
Jeremy wants Governing Council to be more empowered. Administrators listen to Jeremy as senate
president. Council needs to tell Jeremy and Diana what we want them to say to senior administrators on
our behalf. Our senate has amazing power, and we are underutilizing it.
Jeremy said we can send our recommendations to Debbie Carrington in Human Relations. She could tell
screening committees to include a DSA (desirable skills and attributes) listing about basic skills. Dan
said our screening committees are responsible for writing job announcements, but sometimes
announcements come directly out of the district office. Diana said sometimes HR provides committees
with cut and paste job descriptions for the committees to check and rewrite. Kathleen called the April 12
Basic Skills Initiative workshop a model for what we should be doing with the initiative. Jeremy thanked
James and Brandon for their work.
NEW BUSINESS – NEW PROGRAM REVIEW TEMPLATE Jeremy asked for direction for the
program review subcommittee’s summer work. Changes so far include validation teams, going from a
one year to a three year cycle, and clustering departments with only one or two faculty members, or no
full-timers, into larger groups, as P.E. does. List data for each department, but do the program review as a
group. The collaboration and dialogue are good. The program review document is not an end in itself. It
is done for reasons, including planning. Currently Susan extracts the goals, full-time/part-time ratio, and
load numbers from it, and the rest becomes a shelf document nobody reads. We want to change that.
The accreditation team said the program review document must look at ways to improve, and be used in
planning. Validation teams can be part of this. CSU uses validation teams, outside people who get no
compensation, to get recommendations about how to improve programs. We hope CSM programs will
find such people. Teeka said outside validators should be from community colleges. We have
specialized services for students and we don’t want to empower CSU to tell us what to do. Jeremy said
the idea of including CSU came from Dave Danielson, who wanted input on our philosophy program
from CSU philosophy and English faculty. We believe CSU people are interested in reaching out to
community colleges to increase transfers. We will also ask vocational programs to validate their
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assumptions and ask people in industry for feedback. Are those programs serving community needs?
We get ourselves into corners where we’re far from community needs.
Kathleen said Language Arts has responded very positively to the new template, in terms of gathering
data and integrating assessment and planning. However she doesn’t feel comfortable approving it unless
we find ways to give people space to do it, such as released time.
Jeremy said programs should get teams with the right mix, not necessarily including CSU people. The
goal of feedback is to get ideas for improvement. Teeka suggested rephrasing “outside validation team,”
which invests too much power, with something like “reality check” or “consultation.” Anne said
“validation” sounds like “approval.” Jeremy noted we can ignore the team’s recommendations. Teeka
said it is problematic to get messages and ignore them. Jeremy called them feedback teams. Anne said
the template should spell out the size of validation teams, but programs should determine their
composition. How do we find people willing to work on an ongoing basis for several years? Diana noted
we refer to the document every year. Jeremy said for all our students, CSM is a step in a journey to
somewhere else. Get feedback from where our students go. Ask Here’s what we think we’re doing and
here’s our plan – is it the right direction? What can help our students?” Anne said work out how each
program will be held accountable for responding to recommendations. Teresa said program review needs
to state the recommendations, say how they will change our SLOs, and how we work with other groups.
Kathleen, Jeremy, and Teresa said program review should include a response to the validation team: what
did the team tell us, how did we respond, and later, how it affected other planning cycles.
Teeka said she is sold on the idea of feedback teams, but how are we going to find people with time to
serve on them? Faculty members are reaching a saturation point where they can’t absorb any more.
Diana suggested coordinators might get released time in the third year of the cycle, but Kathleen pointed
out released time is unlikely to happen. Dan mentioned a very interesting possible future proposal for
departmental reorganization: reinstituting department chairs with released time. The administration is
concerned about faculty not being involved in shared governance, and being overworked.
On item 3 in the Data Evaluation section, Kathleen asked for a more meaningful way to calculate fulland part-time FTE. Many full-timers have reassigned time, or teach in multiple disciplines. Maybe use
how many courses are taught be full-time vs by part-time faculty. Jeremy hopes item 4, productivity
(LOAD data and what it means,) will be articulated out of research and planning and go into the program
review field automatically. Different divisions have different LOAD targets, and we should set specific
LOAD targets for each program. The VPI has FTE targets.
Kathleen asked about streamlining redundancy out of item 5 (Student Success Evaluation) and part III
(SWOT – Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Jeremy suggested presenting the
data in II.5 and interpreting it in III. Teeka asked whether item 5 was asking for bullet lists of such
programs as EOPS and DSPS, or extensive analyses of their effectiveness. She also noted lower level
math and English courses relate to every job in the workplace. Anne suggested thinking of the program
review questions as essay prompts: tell people exactly what they need to do. Include language like “this
may be more relevant for some programs than others; discuss only what relates to your program.”
Kathleen said be very specific about what should be included, not open-ended.
Jeremy observed VI.b (Assessment) will change because department SLOs and department/course SLO
alignment are no longer needed. We do want some sort of narrative about the assessment we have done:
what did we look at, what did we find, and what did we do about it. We should link resources with needs,
and include a trigger to update course outlines.
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Members discussed reducing program review workload. The Senate addresses what we need to do. Not
all programs need separate SWOT analysis. Administrators can help, and we hope good planning
documents will result from dialogue among groups. The program review cycle could be six years instead
of three, but six year projections are hard to do. For annual position requests, we can collect only what
Susan actually uses, such as goals, full-time/part-time ratio, and LOAD. The ed code allows 15 flex days
per year. We could use five at the start of fall and five at the end of fall and/or the start of spring for this
work, and involve all full-timers. However, these big blocks of time out of the classroom would affect
our students. Flex days are part of the calendar, which the union negotiates at the end of fall semester for
the next year. Jeremy suggested having program review due every three years, with the minimum data
the deans need. Within each division, stagger the reviews so one-third are due each year. We need SLO
data by April 30. Collect it in the fall, but write it up in April when faculty workload is lighter.
Other discussion points: faculty have major concerns about increased committee work, including
workload issues. All this would be harder with a compressed calendar. The documents we have from
other colleges will help. ACCJC accepted Foothill/DeAnza’s template. If people totally underperform,
we could lose our accreditation, so we have to make the work doable. Providing extra support during the
first program review cycle would help create a culture that feels it can be done.
Brandon reported Bernard Gershenson and Madeleine Murphy will represent Language Arts in Fall 2008.
NEW BUSINESS – FACULTY APPOINTMENT PROCEDURES Teeka reported several Language
Arts faculty met recently with President Claire and the two vice-presidents to talk about faculty
appointments. A concern was there is no process when a faculty member goes to a top administrator with
a great idea and is told to do it. Administration support for our projects is good, but, e.g., the honors
program coordinator position should have come through the senate. A positive two hour meeting led to
the conclusion the Senate is and must be the vehicle for decision-making and appointments. We should
discuss changing campus culture to that end. Jeremy said even in case of urgency or special pots of
money, administrators should at least consult us. Anne suggesting putting improving communication on
the agenda in early Fall. and called for more open administrative decision-making. Also, we need better
ways to get faculty involved. Kathleen suggested the Senate president forward announcements of faculty
positions to the deans, who should pass them on to their faculty. Jeremy asked whether that is the role of
deans or of Governing Council representatives. Kathleen spoke of the practical difficulties in contacting
everyone, and the fact that the same people always get tapped.
ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 5:28 p.m. The next meeting will be Aug. 26, 2008.