COLLEGE OF MARIN
ACADEMIC SENATE MEETING MINUTES
FOR Feb. 5, 2009
12:45 p.m. – 2:04 p.m.
Student Service Building, Conference Rooms A & B
Senators Present: Derek Wilson, Sara Mckinnon, Ron Gaiz, Joe Mueller, Blaze Woodlief, Michael
Dougan, Yolanda Bellisimo, Eric Dunmire, Patrick Kelly, Erika Harkins, …
Radica Portello
Senators Absent: Arthur Lutz, Meg Pasquel,
Guests: Rinetta Early, Nick Chang, Connie Lehua, Paul Costello
Minutes
I. Approval and Adoption of the Agenda: Agenda accepted
II. Reading and Approval of the Minutes of Jan. 29, 2009: Minutes accepted as amended to
include discussion of COM’s pending population growth
III. Officers’ Reports
President: In writing. Attached
Vice-President (Derek Wilson): If IT cannot relocate curriculum and other important databases
to more reliable on-campus servers by next Monday, they should be moved to an off-site server
at a cost of $15 per month. Memos should be sent to appropriate parties, including President
White. This is an ongoing request and the district is irresponsible in its lack of response.
Also, we should receive follow-up status reports on who is managing the server and what
they are doing to protect us from virus attacks and other problems.
Sen. Gaiz recommended all this be shared during the next meeting between Academic
Senate officers and the college president and vice-president.
Treasurer (Ron Gaiz): Money has been moved to the correct location in the district account.
Our balance is now $19,171.95 through the end of the last meeting.
Also, Sen. Robert Kennedy should consider using the Senate hard-drive to back up his
research on various issues of importance to the college. All agreed.
IV. Committee Reports
Curriculum (Derek Wilson): The committee held its first meeting last week, reviewed about a
dozen courses and discussed the TBA lab-hour issue. Further discussion was held regarding
confusion over the requirement (or lack of requirement) on key forms. It was decided to indicate
that reviewing deans could attach their signature, but this was not required.
The issue of maximum size for a class was raised on behalf of Becky Brown, whose biology
course enrolled more students than could be physically placed into a classroom with a cadaver
present. Yet the UDWC would not approve the course if class size was changed. Sen. Bellisimo
asked for other examples where a class size maximum isn’t appropriate for the course. She said
she would include those in a letter to Pres. White. “We need an answer,” she said. “Why are they
not allowing us to change class maximums?”
Academic Standards (Rinetta Early): Bob Ballistreri insists that the policy in banner is correct, which
permits students to repeat a course with a substandard grade three times. Also, Bob not requires students to
petition to take directed study classes and when he thinks it’s appropriate, he’s denying it. It may or may not be
a union issue. Sen. Bellisimo said she will investigate. In the past no petition was required, simply a contract
with the student.
Also, the college has received four petitions from elementary school students seeking to take classes here. No
policy or procedure for handling this is in place. While we do have a policy for admitting high school students,
the issue of junior high and grade school students has note been addressed. Sen. Bellisimo said it is important to
first look into Title 5 regulations.
Community Education (Erika Harkins): Enrollment in some classes has reached between 30
and 50 students, which is good, although we have also received a few calls from students
cancelling their enrollment because they lost their jobs. That’s a first. Last week’s discussion
about switching to a quarter system generated some concerns regarding Community Educations
budget. Some officials fear that a change would cause problems in paying their teachers.
V: Governance Committees:
Budget (Derek Wilson): Co-chair Al Harrison has repeatedly demonstrated disregard for the
governance process by cancelling meetings. Academic Senator should write a letter to the
college president, vice-president and GRC asking that if Mr. Harrison isn’t capable of functioning
in a transparent and collaborative manner for the budget committee, somebody else from his
office should be present at mee5tings. Also, Sen. Wilson has formally requested, in his role of
Budget Committee co-chair, that a copy of the budget by account be distributed to all members
or printed on Banner for all members to read.
Sen. Bellisimo said that if this issue is not resolved by next week, it will be put on the agenda. “We’re running
out of good people to put on that committee and everybody I put on there ends up resigning,” she said. “It’s a
problem with a common denominator.
VI: Discussion Items:
a) Guest Nick Chang told Senators that state law on TBA use in lecture/lab courses is
“pretty muddy.” COM is fairly liberal in its use of TBA, which is applied to one-third of all classes.
Deans must review their courses to determine where TBA is a valid system, and make revisions
where needed.
Sen. Wilson said some courses appear to use TBA validly. For example, 22 are
directed study and TBA is valid. Twenty are on-line courses and TBA is valid. Six are offsite TBAs
for nursing classes etc.
But we are left with about 300 courses where the use of TBA may be invalid. In some
cases, instructors are being paid for TBA hours that are never held. In other cases, staff
(including Instruction Specialists) are filling the TBA hours for the instructor, which
they are not supposed to do. Corrections need to be made by fall.
b) Sen. Bellisimo addressed the problem of emergency hires, a bureaucratic
misnomer. We cannot have people in the classroom who have not signed a contract or
been hired properly and that has happened. We should have a continuous flow of
incoming resumes and an on-going interview process. The purpose would be to keep
an active file of potential hires.
This would not affect people already working here. (We have emergency hires who
have been here for up to five years with no legal protection.) We will suggest a sixsemester probationary period. Emergency hires already working here will follow this
procedure.
Sen. Dunmire said the new procedures should be “rapid enough that somebody could
be hired in a day.”
Sen. Bellisimo broached the topic of disciplines without full time faculty and the fulltime/part-time ration by discipline. She asked for a list a problem areas, including the halfdozen or so disciplines that don’t have full-time faculty members. “It’s pretty scary,” she said.
“It tells us we are desperate for full-time hires.”
c) A research report on academic pathways by Sen. Kennedy was postponed until next week
because of time constraints.
d) Sen. Kennedy presented information on projected impact of the state budget crunch at
CSU and UC universities and Santa Rosa Junior College and how all that will affect
enrollment at COM. In a nutshell, a student population explosion is likely to ensue.
And soon.
The transfer area is going to be most impacted by growing numbers of students. Key
courses, primarily in English and math, must be made top priorities in our plans to deal
with this influx. Areas that are already 90 percent full will be impacted the
hardest. Other disciplines at COM may have room to adjust to the larger student loads.
It would be a disaster if, when fall arrives, we must turn people away from these
classes. “It’s going to hit the paper and we’re going to look like idiots,” said Kennedy. He
said Pres. White must make public declarations that we will not turn people away from
English and math classes, period.
So we need to plan for this. Where are the rooms for new classes? What times and days
will they meet? These decisions need to be made immediately.
Also, resources need to be allocated quickly. Perhaps money to cover this should come
from our reserve funds. That’s what reserves are for. Ultimately, this is a marketing
opportunity for the college.
ADJOURNMENT: 2:04 p.m.
For questions or information concerning the Academic Senate minutes, please contact: Michael
Dougan: michael.dougan@marin.edu, X7336.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT
February 5, 2009
1.
Golden Bell Award
The Marin County Office of Education special recognition of teachers will take place at the Annual
Golden Bell Education Evening on Thursday, May 28, 2009 in Angelico Hall, Dominican University, at
4:30 p.m. We have been asked to nominate one full time and one part time faculty member for this
honor. We have to turn the names of our nominees in to Dr. White by February 26th. In the past, I have
put nomination forms in the mail boxes of all faculty members and asked that they return them to the
Senate mail box. The Senate has then chosen the faculty members with the highest number of
nominations. I have the nomination forms ready to distribute if this is the method you would like to use
for selecting nominees.
2.
Budget and IPC
Over the past two years the governance committees including Budget, IPC and GRC have discussed
the possibility of merging Budget with IPC. There are basically three options: 1) Select members of IPC
to serve as a sub-group similar to the unit allocation sub-group of IPC for the purpose of completing
budget recommendations in the spring of each year; 2) Keep a down-sized version of the Budget
Committee separate from IPC but as a sub-committee of IPC and have the co-chairs of Budget serve
as ex-officio members of IPC; 3) Merge the two groups so that all IPC members are involved in budget
recommendations.
The co-chairs of IPC and the faculty chair of Budget favor the second scenario (above). The work of
Budget is seasonal and does not require year-round meetings. It does require that the Budget cochairs be involved with IPC enough to know the thinking that goes into IPC’s recommendations and
enough to tell IPC what is possible and what is not.
We are working on resolving several issues around the Budget Committee and its function. Once
Budget begins to meet for the purpose of making recommendations, we will have a better sense of
whether the Senate should take up a discussion about how and if this committee is functioning the way
we expect it to. In the mean time, we will advocate with GRC to re-design the committee according to
option #2.
3.
I thought TR meant Thursday so I didn’t come to class on Tuesday…
Have you heard that one? Some of us wondered how many classes got cancelled because no one
showed up on Tuesday, thinking TR meant the class only met on Thursday. Wendy Walsh, who serves
on the GRC, followed through on this problem for us and discovered that Banner could only put in two
letters so it can’t say Tu/Th and god knows you wouldn’t want to re-design the technology to suit the
needs of the people who use it. So, Wendy got the next-best solution. In all future schedules there will
be a banner along the bottom of every other page explaining that TR means Tuesday/Thursday. Thank
you Wendy for making this happen!
4.
SLO Reprieve – Sort of
I took this from the SLO list-serve:
As many of you are aware, ACCJC had originally announced that colleges needed to be at the
Sustainable (fourth and highest) level in the Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs) rubric by 2012.
However, at the Accreditation Institute, it was announced that ACCJC will be looking for colleges to be
at the Proficiency (third) level regarding SLOs in 2012. This information was confirmed by Steve
Maradian Vice President of ACCJC. He has explained that the Commission felt that if a college was
proficient by 2012, it would be at the point of sustaining SLOs and assessment in its planning
processes.