Notes - February 27, 2006

De Anza Academic Senate
Notes for the meeting of
February 27th, 2006

Senators and Officers present: Argyriou, Bryant, Chenoweth, Cole, Dolen, Dunn, Guevara, Jensen Sullivan, Fox, Hearn, Joplin, Osborne, Winters, Capitolo, Fritz, Goodwin, Kramer, Moreno, Setziol, and Zill
Senators and Officers absent: Annen, Barney, Cordero, Logvinenko, Mosh, Olsen, Rodriguez, Sheirich, and Ujifusa,
Curriculum Co Chair: Khanna,
DASB: Saleha Pirzada and Menglan Fan (Susan)
Classified Senate: Olivia Patlan
Administrative Liaison: Christina Espinosa-Pieb
Guests: Brian Murphy, Rich Schroeder

The meeting was called to order at 2:31, a quorum being present.

I.  Approval of Agenda and Notes: Agenda  -  The agenda was approved as written with the correction of Item II to indicate the Action nature of the item and the addition of Setziol’s name as a presenter of itemVIII.
Meeting Notes – Hearn distributed a later version (1.3) of the draft notes than the version (1.1) distributed electronically which were then approved as written.

II. Needs and Confirmations: There is an ongoing need for  faculty at large representatives for phase two tenure review committees. Beth Grobman was confirmed for service on the Distance Learning coordinator Search and Selection Committee.

IV.  Tenure Review Training: As per the Senate tradition, the item was taken up out of order due to the presence of a guest presenter, in this case Rich Schroeder.  Schroeder emphasized the fact that he and Marcos Cicerone (the two primary tenure review process trainers) would like to get all tenure review committee members trained before the end of this academic year which will be, in some cases, before faculty are hired.  This may enhance objectivity.  Training is required for each service.  The Senators were asked to link all of this to this year's hire(s) in their divisions.
He also reminded everyone that the normal make up of a committee is one faculty member from the specific department, one faculty member from another department in the division, one member at large (for phase two only), and the division dean.

III.  Academic Calendar - Summer Session Update: As it turns out, there isn’t time to go through the necessary processes to change the starting day.  The Summer 2006 session will begin on Monday, July 3rd as originally announced.  Students and faculty may be receiving messages about the possible effects of the start date (July 4th being the day after instruction is to begin), including a warning to students that they may be dropped if they do not attend July 3rd.

VI.  Shared Governance – Retreat: Hearn presented a proposal for a retreat Friday, March 24th probably late morning and including lunch.  She already had commitments from Brian Murphy, Judy Miner, and Jeanine Hawk and hoped to have a commitment from Robert Griffin in the near future.  She suggested that some planning include a goal statement prior to the retreat.  In addition to it being the sense of the Senate that this would be a high priority event, a clear majority of  the Senators indicated that they would plan to attend.  Brian Murphy was in attendance and indicated his strong support for the event.  Some number (yet to be determined) of classified staff and, possibly, students will be invited as well.

V.  Senate Priority List: Hearn distributed a document indicating the collective agenda topic priorities of individual Senators and Officers.  The document also listed the top six priorities in order and whether or not each item was said to be appropriate for a subcommittee (existing or not).  There was said to be reluctance on the part of some Senators to indicate as a priority that which Hearn had previously listed as proceeding with or without being a priority for the Executive Committee.  An exception to this was said to be the Student Learning Outcomes topic which cannot legitimately proceed without Senate involvement since it is a primary reliance item.

VII.    Spring Teaching Conference: Hearn announced a tentative title of “Engaging Our Students Engaging Ourselves:  Transforming the way we teach and learn”.  She asked for Senate sponsorship.  The Office of Instruction is prepared to co sponsor.  A date has been selected, April 28th, tentatively from 8:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.  Several people questioned the title of the event which Hearn graciously and immediately agreed to change to something like “Celebration of Teaching”.  Others questioned the time, saying that a later start time like the 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. Part Time Faculty Development Workshop series time would allow more people to attend.  It was MSCU (Fritz/Winters) to sponsor the event as modified.

VIII.    Procedure for Adding Programs/ Degrees /Certificates: The procedure for adding, curtailing, consolidating, or eliminating programs in the District was said by Hearn to be unclear.  After discussion, it became clear that it is not even clear that there is a process for adding programs – at least at De Anza.  Although there were concerns expressed about giving one campus veto power over the creation of a program at the other campus, it was the sense of the Senate that some level of oversight with a role for both colleges was needed.  Further discussion revealed that there were even instances within De Anza where the creation of a program had a substantially negative impact on a very similar program.  The Curriculum Committee is charged with taking such things under consideration when approving new courses and programs.  Understood as a classic centralization versus decentralization situation, it was suggested that, at a very minimum, significant information needed to be in hand to determine whether centralization, for example, was appropriate in one case and not in another.  
Included in the discussion was the creation of a position of Director of Civic Engagement, a title which assumes the creation of a program.  Hearn will make sure that approval of that position goes through the IPBT regardless of the source of funding for the position because Educational Program Development is one of the areas of Senate responsibility.

IX.  ETS Service Level Agreement: The group decided to recommend an ETS emergency response time of fifteen minutes.   Access to support whenever classes are in session should included staffing proportional to the number of classes being held (i.e. if half the classes requiring technical support are held between 5:00 p.m. and 10:00 p.m., approximately half the support staff should work between those hours.).  Regular maintenance, including the use of a faculty informed checklist, should occur.  The Technology Taskforce  was asked to take the lead on this.  The delivery of special equipment should be dependable with 24 hour notice.
Setziol, as co chair of the IPBT, brought up the fact that several divisions had asked for staff dedicated to their individual divisions for just these kinds of things and asked for guidance from the group.  Hearn promised it as an agenda item on the March 6th agenda.

X.    Good of the Order: -  Christina Espinosa-Pieb said that she had intended to ask for more than one faculty member to serve on the  Distance Learning Coordinator Search and Selection Committee.
-   Student Jeffrey Johnson has been nominated for the statewide Jonnah LaRoche Scholarship as a transferring student.

The meeting was adjourned at 4:33.

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