Department Chairs Council
20 September 2012
Attendance: Carl Sjovold, Jory Hadsell, Ann Lewis, Chris Seddon, Angela Block, Shanna
Stein, Richard Yang, David Wyatt, George Fleming, Kris Janssen, Chris Daubert, Linda Nuss,
Mel Duvall, Jon Zeh, Craig Davis, Rick Woodmansee, Josh Roberts, Tom Cappelletti,
Gabriella Nuttall, Pam Posz, Tricia Warrell, Dianne Heimer.
I. Jory Hadsell – Distance Education Issues
II. Josh Roberts - Senate’s “Best Practices” subcommittee update
Carl distributed the “hiring calendar” as requested by the Academic Senate.
I. Distance Education – Jory Hadsell
Currently there are four distance education modalities and due to this era of shrinking resources (and the subsequent reduction in media resources) there will be a consequential reduction in Interactive and Television courses. The broadcast schedule is getting difficult to support. Any course that requires a broadcast will be essentially over after this spring.
This would affect approximately ten courses that are entirely televised – thus the cable TV portion will be gone. This is in comparison to currently having around 200 on-line courses with recorded video. These courses will continue to be supported and the dwindling resources will be utilized for these on-line courses with recorded video.
II. Best Practices SLO Subcommittee – Josh Roberts
There is a big gap between what we are contractually obligated to do and what the
Accreditation Process requires. Hence, this subcommittee was formed to try to bridge this gap. Two Deans, Albert Garcia and Deborah Saks, have been added to this subcommittee.
Josh handed out “minutes” associated with the subcommittee meeting from 6 September
2012. This is included with these minutes (see pages 3 and 4 below). These minutes provided a process for reporting SLO data to accreditation. On this process – Number 3, subsection c – it states that “Individual faculty will send their data directly to their division dean....”. This is currently being worked out because it appears that there may be difficulties with doing this. The question is whether Deans will accept this responsibility.
The way the process is written, the process is essentially a “data dump” to the Dean and the
Dean then prepares the report. This may not be the final process and each Division may treat things differently to accomplish the reporting process. For the SLO testing or evaluation methods, we need to keep the actual tests/assessments for at least one year
BUT we must keep the spreadsheet of past years’ evidence and results.
One question about the Deans being responsible for preparing the Annual Course SLO
Assessment Report is whether they are the best person to do this. The faculty are the people that understand the SLO and results for each of their courses so it might be better to have the report prepared by the faculty. Carl put out a proposal that a small stipend be

provided for the faculty-member who will be responsible for preparing the report (this is only a proposal at this time).

Senate SLO “Best Practices” Sub-Committee Meeting Minutes:
September 6, 2012
1:00 – 2:25 – BUS 222
Present: Josh Roberts, Richard Erlich, Carl Sjovold, Connie Zuercher, Rick Woodmansee, Annette Barfield
The question of whether or not admin should be a part of the Senate SLO Subcommittee was considered, and a unanimous decision was reached to include admin.
The following determinations were made during the meeting:
The following process is recommended in the understanding of the following:

SLOs are always being measured through the traditional academic assessments such as but not limited to, grades, exams, tests, quizzes, essays, oral discussions.

SLO data capture for reporting to accreditation need not occur for every course, every semester.
Reporting SLO data to accreditation will follow this process:
1.
Department faculty will create a list of all their courses offered and the semesters in which they have decided to capture SLO data to report to accreditation.
2.
That list then goes to the division dean and SLO coordinators.
3.
Faculty in the department determines methods of assessment for each course, gathers, and reports data to dean and SLO coordinators.* a.
Faculty in each department will determine both the scope and methods of SLO capture for their courses. However, it is understood that a full representation of the sections will be captured (evening, morning, and weekend classes; online, hybrid, etc.). b.
Individual instructors who teach the courses that the department has determined will have SLO data reported are responsible for participating in the departmental
SLO data reporting process (part of accepting the teaching assignment of that course that semester is accepting the SLO data capture process). c.
Individual faculty will send their data directly to their division dean who will ensure that all sections of all courses that are on the “list” for that semester have captured and reported SLO data.
4.
The collected data is compiled and presented in a report.**
5.
Department reviews data/report and dialogues about the implications (most likely in department meetings).*
6.
Campus-wide data and reports are compiled to assist in the campus dialogue regarding
SLOs.
* SLO Sub-Committee will provide examples of “best practices” of the methods for meeting 3 & 4.

** We did not determine who will be responsible for creating this report. If the dean is collecting the data, is it understood that he or she will create the report? This seems like something I wouldn’t want my dean doing especially when one considers that the information in the report most immediately benefits the instructors who taught the course (and one might argue that it can only truly be understood by the instructors who created the assessment and taught/teach the course). If you ask me, this could be a sticking point. We may want to have a solid recommendation in place before the next DCC meeting.