CTE Committee Meeting Minutes
May 14, 2014
1:00 – 3:00 p.m.
Meeting Attendees: Ahmad Mansur (Merritt); Char Perlas (COA); Mark Martin (DSN – Laney, non-voting partner); PJ Shelton (DSN – COA, non-voting
partner); Leslie Blackie (Laney); Don Petrilli (Laney); Maeve Katherine Bergman (BCC); Linnea Willis (Merritt); Chancellor José Ortiz (District); Michael
Goldberg (COA – One Stop Career Center Manager); Karen Engel (District) – KE.
1. Electing a co-chair. The group introduced themselves and reviewed their roles and responsibilities as members of the Committee. The
election of a co-chair was postponed until more Committee members were present. The Committee should have 19 voting members – only 5
were present, 2 came late. The Committee also decided to delay deciding whether or not a Facilitator would be needed. In the meantime, KE
would help facilitate the meeting(s).
2. Meeting times. Committee asked KE to implement another Doodle Poll to determine the best meeting times for the Committee and to
establish a semester’s worth of meeting days and times.
3. Communication. While the Committee discussed their roles in representing and serving as a two-way vehicle for communications between
their campus and the Committee, they also discussed how KE would communicate on CTE issues more generally. In addition to communicating
with the Committee, KE will communicate with instructional Deans and CTE Department Chairs and Coordinators and copy Vice Presidents of
Instruction. KE will rebuild a global list of all CTE faculty, program coordinators, and deans. (KE will circulate lists of who these people are and
Committee members will update them ASAP). Student Services folks will also be added to the CTE Directory and included in emails when the
issue involves them. KE will also continue to liaise between the Committee and the DEC and DAS. KE will also create a password-protected online portal with grant information, deadlines, and calendars (see below).
4. CAA/TAA. The Chancellor joined the group to discuss and prepare for the June 4th regional meeting re TAA and CAA. LB mentioned that CAA
support of CTE counselors, tutoring support, and funding for books and equipment and “tools of the trade” were critical to student success and
should be continued. DP noted that CAA has touched so few programs but it does give us good models. AM noted that CAA’s used of
contextualized learning is a best practice which should be applied more broadly. MM noted that while grants are nice, we need systematic,
long-term, dedicated funding to help recruit committed faculty. Many successful programs are hampered because there is only one FT faculty
member and it is going to be hard to replace them as they begin to retire. LB noted that grants load a lot onto faculty and faculty need support
people to help them administer grants. Carmen Fairley is not enough. This is the biggest stumbling block to successful pathways. Right now
faculty have to: (1) teach; (2) cultivate and manage K12 partnerships and relation hips; (3) manage industry relationships and advisory boards;
(4) place their students into internships and jobs and manage both); (5) manage heaps of paperwork for ordering equipment, tracking data and
Berkeley City College
College of Alameda
Laney College
Merritt College
SLOs, and reporting quarterly on results. This is way too much and faculty is over-burdened. Hard to recruit new people to the positions. It
would be nice to have a liaison by broad industry sector:
a. To manage K12 relationships
b. Help recruit and manage industry advisory committees
c. Help place students in jobs and WBL experiences
d. Track student learning outcomes
e. Handle grants paperwork and equipment purchase paperwork, etc.
5. Re the WIBs. DP indicated that there is NO connection between the colleges and the WIBs. Need to improve that if they are going to align
with us in student support and job and WBL placement and tracking.
6. Priority Setting. The Committee asked if a survey could be administered of all CTE faculty to identify which District Services (by department)
they had the most difficulty with (or to rate them in terms of effectiveness for CTE). Possibly just survey department and program chairs. KE
will look into this.
To set priorities for the Committee in the near term, the Committee decided to go around the room and have each participant indicate their
top three priorities. These are in the attached matrix below. To summarize, the group articulated the following priorities:
1. Rebuild our capacity to help CTE students get jobs. While this issue came up after each attendee had already listed their top 3 priorities,
everyone agreed afterwards that this is a top priority. If job placement is done effectively, it will solve a number of other issues related to
outreach, enrollment and resources. This is, of course, closely linked with the Data priority in that we need to build systems for collecting
and tracking the placement and employment outcome data (tied to the Student Outcome Surveys).
2. Improve budget transparency and management. Faculty would like greater access to their budgets and better information about cut-offs,
deadlines, and how they can use their funds.
3. Improve human resource processes for CTE. Faculty and Deans would like to focus on improving contracting and hiring for CTE grantfunded and related programs and activities.
4. Improve procurement/purchasing processes for CTE. These processes are confusing and cumbersome and Deans and Faculty are spending
too much time inefficiently to purchase equipment and other related materials for CTE. How can we improve these processes?
5. Data. Committee would like to work with Institutional Research to understand how data tracking and requests are currently being
handled, discuss what improvements have been or can be made – especially with respect to corresponding data collection and reporting
and the necessary reporting colleges need to do to report SLO’s for grants and other funding streams.
6. Access to information. The Committee would like to see greater access to information about grants, grant deadlines, grant reporting
requirements. KE will follow up in putting this information on the District’s CTE website as a password protected function.
Berkeley City College
College of Alameda
Laney College
Merritt College
Top Three Priorities of Meeting attendees:
Mark Martin
Ahmad Mansur
Char Perlas
PJ Shelton
Katherine Bergman
Finance/Budgets
Human Resources
#1 Budgets. Being
able to see our
budgets and
understand them.
Carmen helps but she
needs help and we
need to see it
ourselves.
#1 Budgeting
#2 Hiring. Getting
ICC’s through the
process in a timely
way. Renewing them
every fiscal year.
#1 Budgeting. It’s
hard to know where
the money is. Get
different information
from the College and
the District.
#1 Budgeting.
#2 We do not have
enough faculty
#3 Timing of the
budget cut-offs. We
need to run programs
year-round. The fiscal
year cut-offs for
purchasing, contracts,
etc are a hindrance to
that.
#2 HR. Took them one
year to hire someone.
#2 HR
#2 HR
Data
#3 Data. MIS Data
Elements. For
tracking and
reporting.
#3 Procurement
#1 Budgeting
Linnea Willis
#1 Would really love
to have information
about grants ahead of
time. Not just hear it
by word of mouth
over a beer and realize
we’ve missed the
deadline. How can we
find out in time?
Laney College
K12 Relationships
Job placement also
key
#1 Job placement
support. If we start
here and word gets
out our students get
jobs, we won’t have
any problem with
enrollment, etc.
#1 Getting info on
grants is #1.
College of Alameda
Marketing/
Outreach
Job placement also
key
Job placement also
key
#1 Data. Really need
to be able to see and
manage data for
reporting, planning,
funding purposes
#2 Data support
Student Support
Services
Job placement also
key
Job placement also
key
Job placement also
key
#2 Purchasing.
Example: Tried to buy
Apple computers with
Measure A funds.
Trustees approved in
February. Finance
only approved it on
May 1st. Things take
too long and require
too many signatures.
#2 Procurement.
Don Petrilli
Berkeley City College
Grants
#3 Procurement
#3 Purchasing. CTE
programs run on a
different schedule
than transfer
programs and the way
the District functions
now.
Leslie Blackie
Michael Goldberg
Purchasing
Job placement also
key
Job placement also
key
Merritt College
#2 marketing
#3 K-12 relationships
Berkeley City College
College of Alameda
Laney College
Merritt College