District Academic SenateExec. Meeting

June 9, 2008

District Office

MINUTES

Members Present: David Beaulieu, Angela Echeverri, Alex Immerblum, June Smith, Tom Rosdahl, Kindra Kinyon

Guests present: Vice Chancellor GaryColombo, Deborah Harrington

1. Call to Order and Approval of Agenda: Meeting was formally called to order at 12:50 pm

when a quorum was achieved. Agenda was approved (Smith/Echeverri MSU)

2. Approval of Minutes: Minutes of 4/24/08 were approved (Immerblum/Rosdahl MSU.)

3. Public Speakers: None

4. Welcome to New Members: DAS President David Beaulieu welcomed the recently elected Senate president from TradeTechCollege, Kindra Kinyon.

5. Reassigned Time Concerns: Kindra Kinyon described her concerns about Senate reassigned time at Trade Tech. She stated that the Trade Tech president has been reluctant to provide D basis funding for the new Senate president and has requested a description of the summer activities that will be carried out by the Senate officers.

6. Contract Update: DAS President Beaulieu described several highlights of the ongoing the AFT Contract negotiations:

  • Adjunct voting in Department Chair Elections: The option of giving adjunct faculty two votes in departmental elections was removed. The AFT negotiating team will propose to allow adjuncts to collectively have one vote if certain conditions are met.
  • Pay increase: There will be no salary increase in the new contract.
  • Committee obligation: There will be no changes in the language specifying faculty committee obligations.
  • Faculty Evaluations: There will be minor language changes on Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs).

Beaulieu concluded that everything is settled except for the salary and benefit discussion.

He added that four candidates will be interviewed tomorrow for an interim replacement for Vice Chancellor and LACCD chief negotiator Sue Carleo.

7. Planning and Budget Development: Beaulieu stated that former DAS President Winston Butler signed an agreement in 1998 to set up the District Budget Committee (DBC). Title 5 states that the Senate’s prerogative is to make recommendations for processes for institutional planning and budget development. Beaulieu added that there is no official faculty co-chair of the District Planning Committee (DPC).

8. Project Match Update: A reception and first day of training for interns took place last Friday; 49 out of 50 interns attended. That is up from only 18 in past years. About 130 faculty volunteered to be Project Match mentors throughout the LACCD. Thirty of the mentors came to the reception. LACCCD Trustee Angela Reddock and Vice Chancellor Adriana Barrera also attended.

9. Ed Plan Updates to BOT Committee (Colombo): Colleges presented their Educational plan updates to the DPC on May 28. Colombo is preparing a synopsis of the updates, which he will distribute to DAS members. It will include a rationale for update and enrollment projections for next 5 years (range from 2 to 10-20% growth per year). Some of the projections are based on enrollment trends; others are based on aspirations. Under new program development colleges had to show that there was some planning process behind the facilities development (e.g.: service, teaching , business, sustainability, logistics, health). He mentioned that three colleges have engineering proposals. There is a small section on basic skills, which summarizes top proposals. There is also a section on technology. Colombo questioned whether it made sense to have local Distance Education (DE) proposals if there is no necessary fixed location. He suggested that the LACCD could create a shell DE program, call it LA Colleges online, and market it worldwide. Each college could still have its own DE program.

10. Strategic Plan Reporting to BOT in 08-09 (Colombo): This item has been on the DPC agenda for a long time. The proposal is that there will be an hour and a half session with the Board as a whole on each college’s progress in achieving its strategic plan. There are some concerns about this proposal. He will present the DPC’s proposal and may suggest an alternative plan to have the Board review three colleges at a time, in accreditation groups (Valley, City, and Seaside colleges).

11. Sustainability Project Update (Beaulieu): Don Gauthier and David Beaulieu have been working on this. Over 50 people throughout the LACCD are now on the Sustainability Project mailing list. East, City, Trade, Valley and Pierce have been the most involved. This is a growing issue; we are trying to get reassigned time for curriculum development in this area. Many LACCD administrators and faculty don’t know much about sustainability. On the Career and Technical front a lot is going on; will start student to student teaching in noncredit classes in the fall, if funding works out.

12. Summit Plans (Beaulieu): Would like the Summit to focus on sustainability and to meet at the MetropolitanWaterBuilding, a Leed-certified building. The building is usually closed on Fridays. At the Marina location we have been restricted to 120 attendees (6 faculty and 6 administrators per college).

13. Vice President’s Report (Bimber)

  • -Hiring Denials: 120 adjunct faculty that have been employed by LACCD through regular hiring processes have been denied continued employment. Around sixteen were cases of incomplete documentation; the remaining lacked minimum qualifications. Department chairs are hiring hourly faculty relying on resumes, and deans and vice presidents are not checking their transcripts. It takes up to a year for Human Resources (HR) to find out that some of these individuals lack the minimum qualifications to teach. Qualifying companies can be used to evaluate transcripts of foreign degrees. Need a list of alternate titles for department chairs. Immerblum stated that many campuses don’t have orientations for new department chairs. The issue is who should be reviewing the minimum qualifications before people are hired. He added that East developed a process in which the dean and committee chair review the application materials before people are interviewed; but the process has not been approved by the local senate. In 2000 the LACCD revamped its hiring policy and all campus policies should be in accordance with this.
  • -Provisional Equivalency Process: The process has been cleaned up after Bimber and Beaulieu addressed this issue last summer.

14. Summer Meetings: President Beaulieu distributed a handout with proposed dates and stated he would e-mail DAS members to establish meeting dates for the summer. He added that for the next academic year (2008-09) we should try to avoid having the same colleges host and pay for lunch.

15. Announcements and Indications of Proposed Future Actions: None

16. Adjourn: Meeting was adjourned at 1:40 pm.

Minutes respectfully submitted by DAS Secretary Echeverri