ACADEMIC SENATE
COLLEGE OF SAN MATEO
csmacademicsenate@smccd.net
Governing Council Meeting
Nov. 13, 2007 minutes
Members Present
Jeremy Ball
Lloyd Davis
Rosemary Nurre
Martin Bednarek
Teresa Morris
President
Secretary
Treasurer
Counseling
Library
Eileen O’Brien
James Robertson
Brandon Smith
Kathleen Steele
Huy Tran
Student Services/Counseling
Social Science
Language Arts
Language Arts
Math/Science
Others Attending
Dan Kaplan
George Kramm
AFT
Language Arts
Yaping Li
Jeff Mosher
Kate Motoyama
AFT
San Matean
Language Arts
CALL TO ORDER The meeting was called to order at 2:20 pm. The agenda was approved, rearranged to
allow Kate Motoyama and Yaping Li to leave early after presenting the Speech department resolution on
concurrent enrollment. The minutes of Oct. 23, 2007 were approved.
PUBLIC COMMENT Kate Motoyama asked that minutes be made available promptly, by email of either the
minutes or a link to them. Kate said faculty get agendas regularly, but not minutes. Secretary Lloyd Davis said
problems with getting minutes posted were resolved very recently. The link for both agendas and minutes is
http://www.collegeofsanmateo.edu/academicsenate/meetings_minutes.html. They can also be found through
CSM Internal > Committees > Academic Senate Governing Council web site > Meetings & Minutes.
NEW BUSINESS – SPEECH DEPARTMENT RESOLUTION ON CONCURRENT ENROLLMENT
Kate Motoyama and Yaping Li presented a resolution in opposition to the district concurrent enrollment plan
from the Department of Speech Communication. The resolution cited both faculty primacy and pedagogical
concerns and called on the Senate to oppose the plan and to exercise its rights to collegial consultation. Kate
said she was surprised to receive notice from the Chancellor about the expansion of concurrent enrollment, and
wondered how the proposal got so far without our knowing about it. On Opening Day, she heard presentations
by Chancellor Galatolo and the Opening Day speaker, articulating an agenda she doesn’t agree with – online
education and targeting the high school population to increase our enrollment. When Kate crafted the resolution
she focused on asserting faculty primacy in academic and professional matters, and our concern that the changes
were being made. Most of us, when we prepare our courses, assume we are working with adults, not high
school students. The high school students here are special admits, here for a purpose. Middle College High
School (MCHS) students are sometimes successful, but sometimes a disaster affecting themselves and their
partners in assignments. The resolution is to express the Speech Department’s concern. It says nothing very
controversial, except that faculty oppose expansion of concurrent enrollment. She distributed an article about a
Columbia University study showing students who took college courses in high school were more likely to attend
college and to stay enrolled and have higher GPAs, but that study was directed at career and technical education
and showed mixed results. Kate noted that community colleges are no longer junior colleges. We want to
strengthen our ties to both high schools and universities.
Jeremy said each department has the authority to make its own decision on whether to proceed with concurrent
enrollment. This was described in a front page article by District Academic Senate (DAS) president Patty Dilko
in the October, 2007 Advocate. The memorandum of understanding (MOU) empowers us to choose how to
proceed, and our position is that departments should decide. For English, concurrent enrollment makes no sense
because four years of high school English are required before college English. It might work in other areas.
DAS is working on the parameters. DAS has officially taken the AP model off the table, and is now wrestling
with using qualified high school faculty to teach CSM courses on high school campuses.
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We have done forms of concurrent enrollment the faculty agrees with, including Middle College High School,
whose mission is to shape high school students to be productive college students. MCHS has a strong
counseling component, and its students take a number of high school courses as well as CSM courses. Students
are monitored by CSM faculty in the latter. Jeremy said if we are to move forward on concurrent enrollment at
the high schools we would want similar monitoring in place.
One of the Board of Trustees’ Goals for 2007 states “In response to direction from the Board, Chancellor, the
San Mateo County Grand Jury and growing national trends, the District will encourage the Colleges to form task
forces with their feeder high schools to address high school-college curriculum articulation and devise strategies
for offering college classes on high school sites.”
Kate said the Board may be overlooking our role in collegial consultation on student success, and not using our
expertise with students. Jim said he sees that as too restrictive a reading of the goal. The faculty has the
prerogative to identify appropriate college classes to offer on high school sites and leave it up to departments to
opt in or out. There is a long consultation process with high school faculty. As a body, we don’t want to rule
anything in or out. Department faculty have the right to say no if they have curricular reasons. Kate agreed, and
added under the MOU this year is a period of investigation and study, not of implementation. It is not clear how
many conversations with high school faculty will occur.
Members asserted we must make a clear distinction between transfer and non-transfer classes. Vocational
education requires people and facilities. We need to decide as a body whether we will allow transfer courses to
be taught at the high school level. Jeremy pointed out we already teach high school students here, we hire high
school teachers as adjuncts to teach CSM courses, and we offer CSM courses on high school campuses. The
Chancellor is suggesting combining these: offer CSM courses on high school campuses, taught by high school
teachers. The argument that this is only a way for the district and the high schools to make money is weakened
by the fact that ASCCC just passed two resolutions in favor of exploring concurrent enrollment models. Their
idea is to explore, not necessarily to do. The senates have the ability to choose. Teresa said the ASCCC vote
supporting exploring concurrent enrollment was close, with a serpentine stand up count.
The CSM speech department resolution has two parts The second, on collegial consultation between the Senate
and the board, we have achieved. The first, in effect opposing having high school teachers teach CSM courses
in high schools, should be left to the judgment of each department.
Jeremy said there is a gap between the performance level of high school students and what is needed to succeed
in college. How do we engage our high school counterparts so they understand our expectations? The benefit
for us is the dialogue, so the high schools understand our expectations and we understand their constraints.
We’re losing lots of students in that high school/college gap. DAS isn’t taking a position on whether to do
concurrent enrollment. Language Arts faculty noted only one of about 400 local high school teachers has oral
communication training. Most students’ first exposure to an oral communication professional will be in college.
Members thanked Kate and Yaping.
Kathleen said she has read state law limits the number of high school students who can participate in education
at CSM. Jeremy said lots of high school students can’t get up to our campus, and offering college courses in
high schools provides access. Rosemary asked how realistic it is to have departments making the choices.
Personnel in departments will change and with them, the views of their departments. Kathleen said if we claim
it’s wrong for the Chancellor to mandate yes, we can’t as a group mandate no. Faculty primacy in this case
means only experts in each discipline know what is best. Jeremy said we are still determining how we would
use high school faculty. We will probably table concurrent enrollment and look at the high school/college gap
from the Cal-PASS direction. Most people who engage in concurrent enrollment do address that gap. High
schools aren’t aware of our expectations. They are motivated by the Spellings Report (the report to U. S.
Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings from the Commission on the Future of Higher Education) and by exit
exams, and have moved away from teaching for success in college.
Eileen warned offering our courses in high schools could reinforce our “high school on the hill” image, but it
might show high school students we’re good. Jeremy said as a father he appreciates the chance for high
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schoolers to pick up some college credit to take a little pressure off when they enter college. As a faculty
member, he is worried about quality and image issues. Kathleen expressed doubt we’ll get more students here
through that program. Students ready for college courses in high school are likely to go directly to top schools.
Yes, high school teachers would be more likely to teach to college prep, but we want programs teaching directly
to the students we’ll be getting. We want to go to high schools to recruit students and prepare them for the CSM
curriculum. Jeremy agreed the use of high school faculty doesn’t help with that. He likes the learning
community model. He requires college level papers, and consults with high school faculty. Close proximity to
college courses could remind high school faculty of their college prep mission. Jeremy is posing this as a
possible model with some potential. Kathleen says the main problems are first, high school English teachers
have way too many students in their load, so they can’t require the amount of writing they need to be requiring.
It is unfair to expect them to be able to address that. Second, they don’t have composition training. This won’t
make a big dent in that either.
Jeremy said the Board of Trustees has laid out a concurrent enrollment goal echoed by ASCCC. We are
empowered to make our own choices, and are moving slowly but consistently forward. We are being rational,
looking at evidence, trying to get more information. The next step is dialogue, where appropriate, with high
school faculty. Rosemary asked what is driving this at the state level. Jeremy said K-12 is now responding to
tests, shifting their educational focus from college prep to No Child Left Behind and exit exam prep. That’s
how they get their funding. If we can put college level courses into closer proximity with high school faculty
we can remind them where they want to be sending their students and be a countervailing force to reawaken
their professional standards so they work more toward those goals. Dan said as long as the law doesn’t change,
both the district and the high schools can get funding for concurrently enrolled students. Our MOU puts the
faculty in the driver’s seat, but only for one year. At end of the year, do we want to renew or change the MOU?
We can extend it for another year, or not. Either way there is an assessment coming up. The Chancellor has
respected shared governance. He empowered us to make the choice, which Jeremy respects.
Jeremy said the MOU was a great job by the union, and he fully respects the position Language Arts has taken,
which they articulated very well. At every meeting the Chancellor heard from administrators that the idea
probably won’t work. Kathleen said it is good the conversation took place. It’s important that faculty and the
chancellor can communicate. Jeremy said there are forms of continuing education that we support, like Middle
College High School. Our position is not to get rid of concurrent enrollment altogether, just certain forms we
may find objectionable. As a group, we found the AP model objectionable. Our exploratory process is to find
forms that are meaningful and that we could employ, then to move in that direction.
Jeremy distributed an article about a Columbia University study showing students who took college courses in
high school were more likely to attend college and to stay enrolled and have higher GPAs.
PRESIDENT’S REPORT Jeremy asked about faculty reaction to the McCarthy design-build presentation
Nov. 5. He said he was initially relieved, then excited. Eileen said she liked the look, but was concerned about
the Career Center being located on the fourth floor of 10N. This will require hauling stuff up and down for
events, and will make it harder for students to find. Kathleen expressed concern about whether there is enough
room for the Integrative Learning Center (ILC), but Jeremy said the VPI got needs data from each user group,
all requests went into the bridging document, and all made it into the initial proposal. A few days before its
release, at the Chancellor’s request the ILC’s area was reduced by about 1400 square feet to improve the view.
The district says it would be no big deal to get that area back.
The plan calls for adding in 10N two-thirds as many offices as are now in 15 and 17. Faculty offices in 10N will
have windows onto corridors around the outside of the building, with glass exterior walls so views belong to
everyone. The building will be environmentally friendly, allowing daylight into all offices. Building 15 will
stay. The fate of building 17 will depend on the relative costs of renovating and maintaining it vs. tearing it
down. With classroom buildings on each side, it is not a good site for a parking lot. A probably binding choice
faculty will need to make is whether to have departments together in office buildings, or leave the choice of
office location to individual faculty members.
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Dan said the architectural design sounded very interesting. He noted this is the same group that designed
building 36, in which serious health problems emerged resulting in many OSHA citations. The district had to
make changes due to design problems. Jeremy said they’re aware of this, and are putting in a separate chiller
plant that will pay for itself in four or five years, avoiding humidity problems.
Jeremy said McCarthy was the only group submitting a proposal. Preparing it cost McCarthy an estimated
$450,000. They opted to submit designs for both new buildings, thinking it would help their chances, although
only one building design was required. The other two potential design-build teams knew they were unlikely to
win since we had a good relationship with McCarthy, so they saved their money, at least $300,000 each, by not
submitting proposals. Those teams endorsed the design-build process. McCarthy is a group we’ve worked with
before, and there is mutual trust. Hui Tran said Building 36 has a bad humidity problem in summer, but he likes
the new smart classrooms. Jeremy said for the heating and cooling systems to work, the new buildings must be
pressurized, so they won’t have operable windows. Eileen observed we never have any kind of fire or
earthquake drills. Jim said Al Acena used to draw up lists of emergency supervisors, people in charge of floors
of buildings in case evacuation was necessary, but the list went only to those supervisors.
Jeremy reported the Board of Trustees has asked him how the faculty is feeling about the proposed designs, and
he has drafted a letter to them indicating that for most faculty, it’s so far, so good.
NEW BUSINESS – ASSESSMENT AND SLO UPDATE Sandra Stefani Comerford reported the College
Assessment Committee (CAC) will deliver an assessment update right after Thanksgiving. CAC provides
support for faculty work on assessing SLOs. There will be a district-wide workshop Friday Feb. 29 in the South
Cafeteria, organized by Sandra, Karen Wong from Skyline and Ray Lapuz from Canada. Jerry Rudmann from
Irvine Valley College will speak on the nitty gritty of how to go about assessment. In the morning, the focus
will be on instruction. and in the afternoon, on student services. John Sewart has put together a short online
survey for students on their perceptions of how ISLOs relate to their classes. Departments can use the survey
for groups of classes, and individual instructors can use it for their own classes. ISLOs that do not apply can be
skipped. The results may not be useful at the institutional level if inappropriate ISLOs are queried. Interested
faculty should call John Sewart and ask him to email the students who should take the survey. It is really simple
to arrange. It is best to use it late in the semester. John will get results back to the faculty member who
requested the survey. We are not looking at this per faculty member or department. WAC classes do this
already, with results compiled for WAC. Rosemary said it is also really simple to do this thing on WebAccess.
Sandra will email all faculty about this.
Sandra said although the general recommendation to continue work on SLOs was expected and is being given to
every college, she was upset with the accreditation recommendation on using SLOs for evaluation. She, Karen
and Ray made it clear that as faculty leaders they did not want assessment to be punitive. They wrote this into
their philosophy statement, and the administration agreed. They don’t want the new WASC position to
undermine the good work departments are doing on SLOs to improve courses and help students learn better.
We need to address the recommendation, or next time around it’ll get worse. Jim said some recommendations
require a response in a year or two. The ACCJC report will be out in January. We will have to do a midterm
report, probably an interim report, and perhaps have an interim visit. We need to focus on institutional planning
and develop on educational master plan as a guiding document. We must make clear how concurrent enrollment
will fit into it. Jim noted WASC recommendations are things we must do. Their suggestions are optional.
Sandra said all three colleges got this recommendation, and she, Karen and Ray had similar reactions to it. DAS
president Patty Dilko has called a meeting of DAS, the union, Sandra, Karen and Ray, for 2:15 pm Nov. 26. We
could say no to the WASC recommendation, for which we’d be dinged in the future. We could take steps like
those used at a handful of community colleges. Kern County District worked with its union and senate to bring
SLOs into faculty evaluation by having faculty include outcomes assessment in the self-assessment piece for
their portfolios. This was OK with WASC. Another school simply had a checkbox asking faculty whether they
have taken part in outcomes assessment. Dan said this sort of thing won’t work in the future. A good
discussion of all this is required. Ernie Rodriguez will bring it to AFT as an information piece. We’ll decide
together where we want to go. It is important, and we must address it. Jeremy said he hopes faculty groups can
deal with it without battling each other. We should be sure we’re comfortable and on the same page before we
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respond to WASC. Kathleen asked when SLOs were first proposed, wasn’t it explicitly said that faculty
evaluation would not be tied to SLOs? Jeremy said we’ve been working on keeping SLO assessment and
faculty evaluation separate.
Dan said faculty evaluation is a negotiated item, he is delighted about the Nov. 26 meeting, and he welcomes
today’s discussion as a preview of the conversation on it at the Nov. 14 AFT Executive Committee meeting.
The Executive Committee hasn’t yet taken a position. Dan has spoken with AFT 1493 lawyer Bob Bezemek,
whose analysis demands WASC respect negotiable subjects under the Rodda Act, and not interfere in the scope
of negotiations. The WASC rule which insists a particular variable (SLO assessment) be included in evaluation
is precluded by the Rodda Act since evaluation is part of the contract, and WASC policy to penalize colleges is
illegal under the Rodda Act. Los Rios is dealing with the problem by adhering to approved course outlines and
assessing SLOs as stated therein.
WASC has made it clear they will ratchet up their demands in coming years. Jeremy compared using SLOs to
evaluate faculty to assessing carmakers based on how well people drive the cars they make. Dan said being
proactive would entail a huge legal bill and take at least two years. Most CFT locals have not had to confront
this yet. He suggested taking it to CFT as a statewide issue. Jeremy said WASC could withhold accreditation
on this issue, but they won’t. They included it as a response to U. S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings
and others who don’t like peer review. Jeremy was surprised they came down with the recommendation. We
are assessed on how well our students perform, as with No Child Let Behind, or as Eileen pointed out, like the
high school exit exam. Teresa referred to ASCCC Fall 2007 Resolution 13.05, on the ASCCC website at
http://www.asccc.org/Events/sessions/fall2007/materials/F07_ResBethEdits_mwl.doc, calling for a public
awareness campaign on how efforts to standardize education and to eliminate regional accreditation are “an
egregious assault on the American educational system and academic freedom.” Spellings and Charles Miller,
chairman of the federal Commission on the Future of Higher Education, are actively pursuing federal takeover
of accreditation. Lloyd pointed out the federal administration is likely to change in 2009. Jeremy said the
Democrats may push to fortify peer review.
Treasurer Rosemary Nurre will write a check to Teresa Morris to cover Teresa’s ASCCC Fall Plenary expenses.
Rosemary can get reimbursement from the college.
Jeremy expressed appreciation for the work of the College Assessment Committee, and said we don’t want to
throw the baby out with the bathwater. Assessment is very useful. Members thanked Sandra.
ADJOURNMENT The meeting was adjourned at 4:00 pm. The next meeting will be Nov. 27, 2007.