Minutes of the Academic Senate Meeting
Tuesday, March 8th, 2011
Members present: Nancy Schur, Kelly Locke, Jennifer Fellguth , Janet Pessagno, Larry Adams,
Sunita Lanka, Mark Weber, Millicent Madrigal, Chris Moss.
Guests: Suzanne Flannigan, Carole Bogue Feinour
1. The meeting was called to order by the President Nancy Schur and the Agenda was
unanimously adopted.
3. Approval of the Minutes 2/8/11 and 2/22/11 : The minutes of 8th and 22nd February
senate meetings were approved by the senate members.
4. Public Comments (non-Senators): a) Suzanne Flannigan talked policies that are being
reviewed in Academic Affairs. One example, the Academic Freedom policy, should be
reviewed by the Academic Senate.
b) Elsa adjunct faculty member introduced self, and said she was interested in Senate,
but hesitates due to there only being one adjunct position. The president indicated that
the meetings are open, although there is only one designated position for voting.
The President’s Report: Nancy Schur, President :It was agreed to pass this and move on
to the action items.
Action Items
1. Jennifer motioned to adopt the policy for equivalency to minimum qualifications,
seconded by Larry. The motion was unanimously adopted by all members except for
one abstention from Millicent Madrigal.
2. The forms to accompany the Equivalency document were looked at separately.
Nancy talked of the H.C.C.District form which had components to determine
equivalency listed, but the form is often “signed” to state equivalency, without the
candidate submitting the requested supporting documents. The Napa forms
matched with those of our newly adopted Hartnell policy, but the same issue was
apparent. The MPC form was more specific than the Napa, but was used as an
example, but would require alignment with the HCC policy. There was consensus to
defer the motion to the next senate meeting and Kelly was delegated with the task
to merge the two documents.
Discussion Items
1. SB 1440 and transfer degrees :This was a legislative requirement which gives priority
admission to the “local” California State University. Kelly explained to the members
how to access the 16 slide power point presentation on the R drive. There is a group
at the state level in the process of developing the Transfer Model Curriculum (TMC).
Math curriculum was close to being completed. It was explained that when accepting
for an AST in place of our current Associate degrees, we cannot ask students to take
more than the required courses for the AS-T. The legislature requires that each school
adopt at least two Transfer Model curriculum degrees that students can earn. We can
adopt more, TMC is good, but the general education will not match with local
criteria. For Hartnell, this would mean not requiring an “ethnic studies in the United
States” course. Carole suggested that we could keep the degrees we have and adopt
new ones – we could do both, i.e., we could have two degrees in a discipline (The AA
degree and the AA-T Degree). Some advantages to AS-T and AA-T is the priority
placement to CSU, but the disadvantages is forgoing local requirements. Faculty
participation in the Transfer model degree development can occur by being on the
list. serve. Millicent suggested that it would be very beneficial to invite counselors to
this discussion. (The web page for counselors or any faculty that wish to be part of
the discussion is http://c-id.net/)
2. Accreditation progress
Plan and timeline: Suzanne gave a detailed account of the Accreditation Program
and timeline for writing our self-study report. Cheryl O’Donnell, Gary Hughes and
Suzanne Flannigan are members of the Steering Committee. There is much to be
done in the coming 18 months. Involvement of many members on the campus is a
necessity. Reflecting on evaluation of our work and our performance we need to
focus on the two purposes: a) To assure the quality/standard of the institution. b) To
assist in the improvement of the institution. Self Study report: A number of power
point presentations are available for people who will train to participate on a writing
team for the self study report. Suzanne walked the members through the report
from 2006 to the next one due in 2012. She elaborated on the 4 standards to be
addressed in the self study. Kelly questioned on how the Organizational structure
with the Deans fit into the writing plan. Suzanne responded that the Deans would be
responsible for the materials/reports – setting up website and posting updates on R
drive. The process may have up to 11 writing teams consisting of leaders, writers
and contributors.
3. Proposed Administration Structure:
http://www.hartnell.edu/documents/Academic_Affairs_Organizational_Char
t.pdf
Suzanne provided the latest draft of the new administrative structure and explained
rationale for some of the design, which included content areas and function areas.
Green positions are still unfunded. Two positions are funded by vacant Dean
positions, one funded from areas where there is currently release time, that would
no longer be given when the positions are filled. Kelly had questions on what kind of
support staff would be needed in order to execute this plan, additionally how the
restructure would affect current staff positions. In the past there were occasions
when people were moved without sensitivity – especially classified staff. Kelly urged
and accentuated the importance of planning and reorganizing carefully. Suzanne
agreed that the questions were on target. The reorganization scheduled times for
review of the progress made, the people and their roles. Nancy said that the Senate
would stay involved. The intent, Suzanne said, was to get a feedback in the coming
two weeks. If anyone needed further clarifications on job descriptions, they could
contact Lourdes and set up an appointment.
Faculty Development: Nancy suggested to table this for the next meeting.
Reports from Senators: Jennifer mentioned updates to the Library website that she
has completed.
The meeting adjourned at 5:05pm.