Academic Senate Executive Meeting Notes

Academic Senate 1000 E. Victoria  Carson, CA 90747  WH-A420  (310) 243-3312

Academic Senate Executive Meeting Notes

September 30, 2015

WH 420

In attendance: Chair Jim Hill, Vice Chair Jerry Moore, Parliamentarian Caroline Coward, FPC Chair - Pat Kalayjian, EPC Chair - Sheela Pawar, Kate Esposito and Thomas Norman – Statewide Senators, Susanne Walker – Senate Admin Coordinator

Chair Hill began the Exec Committee meeting by letting everyone know that the GE Committee now has a chair – John Wilkens

Senate Rep to the GE Committee is still vacant - question has come up, does it need to be a Senator. The reply has been yes.Coward said the point of having a seat on the GE Committee is to represent the voice of the Senate to the GE committee but also to report back and have a secondary voice besides the GE Chair back to the Senate. Hill asked is it reasonable and possible that the Senate representative need to be a faculty member? Staff representative on Senate is not on the GE Committee and knows what goes on. He said it’s not about endorsing or supporting the idea it’s about addressing the constitutionality of the idea. It was suggested approaching GE from a different perspective (not rooted in the status quo). The regular GE Committee vacancies include the Senate appointment, the Social Sciences appointment and the student representative appointment. The Area F Humanities representative is Anne Choi. Ken Ganezer is Natural Science and Ivonne Heinze-Balcazar is SBS. The GE Committee owes a person to service on the GE AdHoc Committee. Hill asked if it is constitutional to have the Senate rep to the GE Committee be someone who is not faculty. Coward said According the letter of the current GE charge, the answer is yes, it doesn’t specify must be a faculty member. It just says representative from the Academic Senate. Pawar said be cautionary – that could also include administration. Hill said if we’re going to be revising the charge – maybe we do want to clarify it for the future. Coward said it actually doesn’t even said it has to be a Senator, it says a representative from the Academic Senate. It’s “from” not “of” and from would suggest that it’s a Senator. Preference would be for it to be a faculty point of view. Hill said while it’s unclear, it does appear that it may be constitutional. Moore suggested it could be addressed by having a nominee put on the floor of the Senate to confirm or disconfirm. Because GE Courses are going through their program review and their student learning outcomes review, it is a significant position and probably not the best to put an untenured or part-time instructor into that job for that reason.

Hill reported that GE suggested a change to their charge that would identify a Vice Chair, so that if they ever had an issue with the chair again, there is someone who can step into the role of chair. Pawar said the problem with Vice Chair is the assumption of becoming chair when the chair steps down, but the chair should be elected. And what if the Vice Chair is not elected. Or is it an assumption that the Vice Chair would become the chair. Hill said any time there’s a change to these documents, charges, constitution, by-laws may have unintended consequences. Pawar said that could be determined within the committee without having to write it into their charge. Kalayjian said the GE Chair gets a course release, and I’ve heard there are not any course releases to spread around. Coward said the idea of Vice Chair – they could have an informal chair just to run meetings, but if the Chair is out for more than half the time, it could run into other problems. It was agreed they would have to spell out what Vice Chair means. The language in the covers the Vice Chair becoming Chair of the Senate in the main by-laws could be applied to this situation. Kalayjian said the idea of a Vice Chair is a good one, but they don’t need to change the charge.

Land Development Taskforce – it’s not yet a formal call, but several faculty members stepped forth

• Charles Thomas – he knows contracts
• Yan Abdourazakou would be great – he’s studied sports stadiums
• Terry McGlynn was mildly interested
• Cynthia Villanueva also expressed on interest

Academic Affairs Strategic Planning Committee – the idea of putting forth names isn’t working. We need to do a formal call and open it up to those we may not be thinking about.

Statewide meeting of campus Senate Chairs on 10/8 – Hill asked what should be brought forth?

• Presidential Searches should be open – there’s an effort to get all of the 23 university Senate’s united to demand that we return to open Presidential searches.
• One of the things that was done a few years ago when there was a similar issue, was someone drafted a letter to be signed as Senate Chairs as individuals who are academic leaders rather than as Senate Chairs.
• Moore said the resolution we did pass might still be standing.
• It was agreed that if there’s a standing resolution that reflected the campus opinion voted on by the Senate that would sufficiently represent where we stand today.
• The importance of Institutional Stability and how troublesome not having that stability can be. Hill recalled that Kalayjian and Gasco had written out a list of all the instability there was amongst Deans and how disruptive that was. And in terms of Provosts, it had been for some time practically an annual position.
• Best practices for shared governance is one of the topics that will be coming up at the Senate Chairs meeting
• It was suggested to speak to best practices for academic freedom but then it was said that it was more at the statewide senators. Hill agreed if it came up at the Senate Chairs meeting, he would speak to it.

Senate Exec agreed having regular VP update at Senate meeting – having Fenning be the first one to present at the Senate. Also could include having Deans speak perhaps once a year so that we know what’s going on around the colleges.

Budget - Senate Exec discussed what is known and not known about where administration is with the budget.

There was discussion about getting some sort of update on the Science building through a town hall of sorts for public input and people who might be interested in it and that the Senate Chair could request it.

Call for Service Update – Parliamentarian Caroline Coward

• GE AdHoc Committee – Lisa Hutton from COE, Dale Mueller from CHHSN have stepped forward. There are still four vacancies from USLOAC, GE, and CBAPP, and NBS. Hill said he will email to John Wilkens requesting representation from GE. Coward said she would speak to Carrier directly.
• Coward said we’ll put forth Tracey Haney to see how the Senate feels about a non-faculty member representing the Senate on the GE Committee. It was recommended that Sherry Berkowitz could be a good person to contact being she had volunteered for another committee and didn’t get it. John Keyantash he might be someone to ask.
• Academic Affairs Strategic Planning Committee – David Hoops and Kim Trumble are unconfirmed volunteers. Coward said we’ll
• AVP Marketing Communication Search – Polk and Bender
• Student Grade Appeals – Dale Mueller and Lili Sarmiento stepped forward in the past few days. We need NBS, CAH, the Library and CBAPP. Kalayjian and Pawar said they thought was that it was a college election, not the Senate. Coward said that changed in 2014. It was suggested that Coward contact Sam Russo for Student Grade Appeals as they believe the college elected him. Senate Exec also recommended that Coward reach out to the department secretaries to see if there was anyone else who had been elected. The Writing Competency call got one response.

Steve Filling Visit - Senate Exec discussion re. visit from Steve Filling, it was agreed that Hill, Norman and Esposito should send him an invitation to come address CSUDH Senate at his earliest convenience.

Reports:

Vice Chair Jerry Moore – presented a draft resolution for EXEC 15-14 Establishment of a Council of Department Chairs and Program Coordinators. Moore said campuses that have something like this are San Jose and East Bay. As a chair he believes it is an important thing to add to the structures of shared governance on the campus. Unevenness of expectations and inequalities among chairs across the campus. Moore said he believed there needed to be a place where these are aired out outside of the confines of college meetings. He said he’s only recently come to understand how varied the expectations or the resources that are allocated to different chairs doing different sorts of task. It’s not that everything that needs to be identical, but there does need to be some leveling. There are chairs that have different levels of reassigned time, there are some that have several meetings a week. There also seems to be an increasing workload creep. Coward said with regard to makeup and attendance, do you expect all chairs to attend all meetings. Moore said none of our meetings have an attendance requirements. When writing the resolution, an every other month meeting might be possible. It will include all current department chairs and program coordinators. Moore asked from Coward some language having to do with librarians. Senate Exec discussed the appropriate languaging for the resolution. It would read, all current department chairs and program coordinators from all the colleges in the University, one faculty representative from the University Library, and one elected representative from the College of Extended and International Education. “Recommend” was also suggested to be used instead of shall. In terms of implementation, a 5th resolve was suggested on how to convene the first meeting of the academic year.

EPC Report – EPC Chair Sheela Pawarpresented a draft of an EPC Charge - EPC borrowed from Long Beach’s charge in creating a draft of an EPC charge for Dominguez Hills. However Long Beach’s committee is very different in that it is headed up by the Provost and the committee is called a Curriculum and Educational Policy Committee. Senate Exec hashed out the languaging of the resolution. EPC does not have a free hand to make policies about GE unless there’s an Executive order. Hill suggested a phrase such as will make policy consistent what’s allowed in appropriate Executive Order. Pawar said it seems that that would be understood. Kalayjian suggested changing from formation to formulation of policies pertaining to the universities general education requirements. The Senate Exec webpage does say the EPC makes policy regarding General Education. Pawar shared that people have come to her to complain about GE’s assessment plan and suggest that there needs to be some kind of resolution about assessment. The committees shall have initial jurisdiction with matters not specifically designated to the colleges or other standing committees of the Senate. Pawar said EPC would not have initial jurisdiction to go and tell GE, “You’ve got to change the way you do your Area F subcommittees.” Moore said it is the, under normal circumstances the decisions of the GE committee are binding unless there is a problem and then those decisions go back to EPC for review. Hill said that’s one part, and there is more. The rewriting of the GE charge is not specifically delegated to them. Another is the charge itself goes to the full Senate. The idea may come out of EPC but it goes to full Senate for jurisdiction. Strike the last piece and just end with “delegated to the college.” It was recommended to strike the resolve regarding subcommittees. Senate Exec discussed membership for the EPC committee and said while the idea of choosing your own committee members, but in reality it’s been difficult to get people to be on it. Kalayjian said it’s great to have these membership parameters but it’s very difficult to fill. Changing “shall” to “should” in terms of the committee make up might be better.

FPC Report – FPC Chair Pat Kalayjian–Clare Weber would like to present at the Senate meeting briefly the idea of WPAF E-Portfolios and then would like to take a Sense of the Senate vote to determine if the faculty is interested in having her pursue this. IT will take time and money and don’t want her to pursue it if everyone isn’t behind it. Kalayjian felt it would be better for the process if the Senate has endorsed the idea.

Should have a similar version of a charge for FPC that could be presented at the 10/7 Senate meeting. For 10/21 – we’re going to propose a change in the constitution about defining faculty. There is a definition of faculty in the Collective Bargaining Agreement and it’s broader and includes part-time faculty as well. Kalayjian asked if anyone had any ideas of unanticipated consequences to please let her know. In early November going to try to have a resolution about Ethical Behavior. Kalayjian said she needs to look more deeply into HERA, Title IX, the Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Chancellor’s office Executive Order on Nepotism and some of the other campuses policies include consensual relationships between faculty and students. The other thing FPC will be looking at is updating the policy on office hours.

President Hagan joined the meeting, he said what he thought might be useful is to let Senate Exec know some of the things he’s been up to and what they’re trying to accomplish.

• Cuba trip – there were three CSU presidents there with 70 other presidents from around the country. A number of folks from this campus helped him prepare, especially Jose Prado because he has some programs over there. Hagan said he actually met with some of the people from Cujae University that Prado works with. Hagan said he mentioned to the Chancellor that the CSU as a whole might wish to do more in Cuba, the issue of partnering with them is high on their agenda as well as increasing faculty, and student exchanges. There would be no revenue opportunity for recruiting students, but it would be very good from an academic standpoint. Education and healthcare are their strong points. The systems engineering is also very strong. Hagan said he will be supporting any efforts on the Provost’s area to work with our faculty to do more exchanges with faculty and students and working with the Chancellor to see if there’s anything that can be done on a system wide level. It’s worth the exploration.
• Update on Philanthropic Board – we’re working hard to build the membership on it to generate dollars and connections. Some of the people we’re either in conversation with or have already agreed to be on the Board are:

-Martha Kanter – former undersecretary of education and Distinguished Professor of Higher Education at NYU

-Michael Rouse – President, Toyota U.S.A. Foundation – they’re working to get us a million dollar grant for fabrication labs. They cannot guarantee it, but it’s coming real close.

-Marilyn Sutton – Emeriti faculty from CSUDH

-Alberto Meir Y Teran – Executive Vice President, Univision

-Towalame Austin – former President of the Magic Johnson foundation and current Executive Director of Rock Nation and a manager of BEYONCE

-Ken Button – very tied into logistics industry

-John Tracey – SVP of Engineering and Operations at Boeing

A lot of meetings still going on. Believe it will turn out very well. A base gift fund and a plethora of connections. We’re talking to a number of other people. We want to get 20. The people we want are already heavily sought after on other boards, but we know that – that’s who we want.

Recent Meetings:

-Bill Allen (son of Steve Allen) who is CEO of Los Angeles Economic Development Group. We spoke to him about being on the Board. He brings a lot and want very much to find out his recommendations on what we can do to build and improve our programs to be stronger for the entertainment industry.

-Danny Bakewell – one of the largest African American development companies in the U.S. and his office is about 6-7 miles from here. Talked about what we’re doing in the community and he asked what can he do for us. I asked him to help tell our story. Right now we’re just building a relationship.

-Cookie and Kim Parker – founders of KMS Software, Cookie is a retired systems engineer. Kim, her daughter was the press secretary for Obama in 2012 and has her own Entertainment PR firm representing people like Leonardo DiCaprio, Barbara Streisand and other big names. It’s not necessarily about being on our board, it’s also about asking them to get involved in what we’re wanting to do on this campus.

-Herb Trawick – Executive Director of Pensados Place, a cable channel that just focuses on audio. Any audio engineer in the world. It’s a cable channel that focuses on audio. Pensados Awards is like the Oscar for the digital audio award. They know we’re looking for opportunities for our students.