Mathematics Division Meeting Minutes
June 5, 2007
SG 376, noon – 1 PM
Present: Mike Allen, Shogher Baghdasarian, Ashot Djrbashian, Kim Foong Chong, Sarkis Ghazarian,
Yvette Hassakoursian, David Hassett, Kathy Holmes, Sid Kolpas, David Jones, Dinh Luu, Steve
Marsden, Gary Massion, Narineh Movsessian, Larry Newberry, Carol Paxton, Lynn Pomeroy, Liz
Russell, Isabelle Saber, Charlotte Schulten, Bill Shamhart, Peter Stathis, Pete Witt, Andrew Young.
1. Approval of division meeting minutes of May 8, 2007. MSP
2. Ongoing (see attached Standing Committee reports)
A. Senate (Andy)*
B. AMP/MASTER (Sid)*
C. High School Collaborative (Kathy and Pete)*
D. Science Academy (Gary)*
E. Carnegie Grant (Liz)
Common final exam is this Friday.
Carnegie grant will continue in the Fall 2007 semester
3. Curriculum Groups (see attached Standing Committee reports)
A. Developmental (Liz and Dave)*
B. Calculus (Larry)—No Report
C. Precalculus (Carol)*
D. Statistics (Andy)*
4. Basic Skills Projects (see attached Standing Committee reports)
A. Non-Credit Articulation (Andy)*
B. Retention (Pete, Bill, Narineh)
Our new retention officer, Nairy, who started working for us in May, is getting some feedback
from students in order to build the data. She is currently working on the data for the following
group of students:
o students who passed some developmental math classes in Fall 2006 but are not enrolled in
any succeeding math classes in Spring 2007;
o students who dropped math classes in Spring 2007 were asked to give the reasons why they
decided to drop;
5. Enrollment Ideas
o The division was not enthusiastic about classes that meet both on Friday night/Saturday
afternoon (weekend college).
o Add more classes on Friday night.
o Try Math 135 in Winter.
o Open enrollment for a longer period.
o Add more sections in Math 103 and Math 136.
o Add one more self-paced class between the afternoon and morning sessions.
6. Updated Math Sequence
Changes were made in the Math Sequence chart—Math 135 is UC transferable now. Approval of an
updated Math Sequence chart. MSP.
7. Math Science Center new name (Dave H)
“Name the Math Science Center” contest took place in May. After selecting the finalists the
following names were presented to the division:
 The Math Connection




Math Space
Math Discovery Center
The Rational Route
The Math Center
After discussing and voting, the division made the decision to select the “Math Discovery Center” as
the new name, suspecting in their hearts that there might be a better name out there, somewhere.
MSP.
8. Van Lunch dates for Fall 2007: September 24 and October 30.
9. Adjunct interviews had been scheduled on June 20 and 21 in the afternoon. Volunteers needed to
create committees of three for each of the curriculum groups.
* See attached Standing Committee Reports.
Standing Committee Reports
For Mathematics Division Meeting
June 5, 2007
Ongoing Business
A. Senate (Sid & Andy)
Sid’s last Senate meeting is June 13. Then John Queen takes over. Andy Young will give his
complete Senate report.
Research Across the Curriculum –PFE will be funding the RAC program for next year with a goal
for the program to clearly define and communicate its mission, structure and activities so it can
reapply to RT/EP for release time.
Electronic Device Policy – The Senate passed a motion to approve an Electronic Device Policy
stating, “each faculty member is encouraged to include his/her Electronic Device Policy in the
course syllabus.” Though vague, this is apparently the strongest statement on which agreement
could be reached, even after weeks of tack force meetings and an extended discussion in the Senate.
Syllabus Disability Statement – The Senate passed a motion REQUIRING the following statement
be included on all GCC course syllabi: “Glendale College welcomes students with disabilities. All
students with disabilities requiring accommodations should contact the Center for Students with
Disabilities to make arrangements. It is the student’s responsibility to follow up with the instructor
as soon as possible.”
Individual faculty members may include additional information, such as the location of phone
extension for the Center for Students with Disabilities, but exact wording was opposed due to the
fact that these may change over time.
The primary issue unresolved by this motion was determining how disabled students in the noncredit program will obtain the accommodations offered by such a statement.
Due to the large number of agenda items which we did not get to, there will be an extra meeting of
the Senate on the last day of Finals, Weds. 6/13 from 3 to 5PM.
B. AMP/MASTER (Sid)
82 applications. We are verifying citizenship/permanent residency, and FAFSA. So far, 20 of the
70 qualify for $1500 per year with MASTER, 43 qualify but we have not yet determined the amount,
and 19 have not yet filed FAFSA (they are driving me crazy). The welcome banquet is June 22 at 6
pm for those mentoring. The summer bridge is June 25 through July 23.
C. HS Collaborative (Kathy & Pete)
Since the last Division Meeting, the following Math Collaborative actions and/or events have been
done:
1.
Held the last Math Collaborative Meeting of the year on Thursday, May 25 at Marie
Callender’s
2.
Post-testing of high school seniors is still being done
3.
Spent time trying to resolve assessment and field trip issues.
a. Students being post-tested are usually given applications to fill out so that they will get a
GCC ID#. This has not been happening this year for a number of reasons, including the
fact that the college ran out of applications.
4.
5.
6.
b. Field trip requests seem to have fallen through the cracks with the changeover in
Outreach.
We attended the May Math Curriculum Study Committee (CSC) of the GUSD. This is a
monthly meeting of department chairs of the middle schools and high schools, basically a
C&I for mathematics. It was the last one of the year.
Kathy went to department meetings at Hoover HS and GHS
Kathy and Pete went to Geometry Concept classes at CVHS to discuss their post-test
placement scores and what they mean.
D. Science Academy (Gary)
We have lowered the number of required courses in the Science Academy from 7 courses to 6
courses. A waiver process was also put in place for highly qualified students who can only feasibly
finish 5 courses.
Curriculum Group Reports
A. Developmental (Liz and Dave)
1. The bundling/price for the new McKeague texts were approved.
• Prices to the bookstore
Elementary Algebra package: $74
Intermediate Algebra package: $79
• Each bundle includes:
Custom textbook with supplemental sections
Student Solutions Manual
Word Problems book
Software (ThomsonNow and MathAssist)
2. The committee decided that for the time being the exit standards from the course outline would be
submitted to Larry Newberry as the SLO’s for Math 101.
3. Pete and Liz visited Santa Monica on May 25 to present to their Math Division information
regarding the two-semester versions of Elementary and Intermediate Algebras. Representative from
PCC (Grayr Andreason and their new Math Dean, Carl Mane) were also there talking about how
PCC does the two-semester algebras.
B. Precalculus (Carol)
1. Math 110 Placement Test Scores:
The new data from Ed Karpp was discussed. Although it looks like there may be a jump in
success at about the 26 to 27 range, we need to see a bigger picture of the success rates. It was
decided that we needed to look at Math 110 success by placement test scores over the individual
scores of 20 to 30 from fall 2003 to current. We will ask for data with and then without short
sessions included.
2. Student Learning Outcomes:
The committee approved the following SLO’s for Math 100:
i. Students will solve equations and inequalities.
ii. Students will graph various functions and relations (polynomial, rational,
exponential, logarithmic, conic sections).
iii. Students will find roots of polynomials.
iv. Students will solve systems of equations.
Lynn and Carol agreed to run a pilot this semester in the Math 100 using 4 multiple choice
questions imbedded in final exams. All Math 100 instructors will be asked to participate.
3. New Chair:
Ashot Djrbashian was elected new chair of the Pre-calculus curriculum group.
4. The committee will be surveyed to see when we are free for a last meeting of the semester.
C. Statistics (Andy)
Charlotte Schulten was unanimously elected the new chairperson.
I’m sure we did other things, but after the new chair was elected, I pretty much stopped paying
attention.
No, wait, I have notes.
There is a new edition of our Math 111 (Finite Math) text (Lial). Steve will work with Mike to see if
there is any significant difference from the previous edition.
Items discussed that will carry over to the next year include:
Possible change/addition to 136 topics/structure to meet as yet unknown new requirements
for articulation with UCLA Poly Sci, others?
Possible increase in hours and/or units for Math 136 to support any changes in course
content.
Rewriting Math 136 course outline to reflect changes mentioned above (if any)
Plan for SLO’s for Math 111, 115, 135, 136, 138, 139
Efforts to increase training in and/or utilization of technology in Stat classes
Basic Skills Projects
A. Non-Credit Articulation Update (Andy)
Non-Credit Student IDs: Progress is being made, but it is not yet clear if all issues have been
resolved. Supposedly student IDs are being issued to non-credit students now (starting last week)
and will be issued to ALL non-credit students taking classes this summer. The new ID numbers are
9 digits, so they are visually different from credit student IDs. Non-credit students will be issued a
separate ID number when they take credit classes and vice versa. The primary issue I am still
working on is making sure that there is a reliable way to link the non-credit and credit records for an
individual student. This was going to be done through SSNs, due in part to the way the IT people
were designing the data table for their relational database, but I pointed out that this would not work.
They are going to fix this, but they are still not sure exactly how. There will be a new credit
application form with a field in which the student is to enter their non-credit ID, if they have one, but
it is still unclear how it will be ensured that this field will be consistently and correctly completed.
Curriculum Alignment: I have closely compared the non-credit Algebra I curriculum to the credit
Elementary Algebra, and there seems that there may be some difficulties articulating between them.
Note: the non-credit course uses Brown, Dolciani et al, which is a very solid text. It includes (and
the students are assigned) exercises that easily meet or exceed the level of those in McKeague. There
are occasionally exercises that are NOT assigned, but these are generally at a level beyond anything
in the McKeague text.
That said, the first issue is that it will probably be necessary to limit articulation to those students
who have had both Algebra 1A and 1B through the GCC non-credit program. This is because,
though Algebra 1A and 1B together cover all of the major topics that we cover in Math 141, they are
covered in a substantially different sequence. It is not even just a rearrangement of chapters; the
topics are grouped differently WITHIN the chapters. Because of this, it is also completely unclear to
me that we can count on the split in topics to be consistent between high schools. Some students take
one of the two semesters at GCC and the other at their home high school. Unless we verify that all
the students in the GCC non-credit Algebra course are from schools which use the same topic
sequence (if not actually the same text), we probably should limit ourselves to considering
articulation to students who take both Algebra 1A and 1B through the GCC non-credit program.
Even then, there is an additional concern. The non-credit Algebra class does not cover all of the
material in our supplementary sections. Even when the topics is covered in the non-credit text,
sometimes there are NO exercises covering this material, and other times there are exercises, but
they are not assigned to the students. I assume that we articulate Elementary Algebra classes from
other colleges without verifying that they cover all of this material, but I have not checked that this is
so. Even then, we do not HAVE to apply the same standard to our non-credit class, since it is not
considered a college-level class.
More to come...