Los Angeles Mission College
One of the nine Los Angeles Community Colleges
Educational Planning CommitteeUnit Assessment Review Meetings
Guiding Questions for Department Chairs
Law/Paralegal Program
1. Please highlight any changes since you submitted your unit assessment (e.g. enrollment trends of the units as of Fall 08).
Answer:
Enrollment in the Paralegal Studies program continues to grow. Two weeks before the start of classes on 9/2 we had 95% enrollment in our classes, with an average of 35-40 students per class.
New Faculty - Since our unit assessment we have added two new law faculty – Valerie Lopez and Kevin Koch – both practicing attorneys and trained through the LACCD Project Match program. We have 3 of our current faculty (Prof. Walker, Gudino and Jackman) trained through Project Match which ensures our law faculty are well trained as Community College instructors.
New updated Course Management System - On June 30th we updated our course management system (moodle ) to the new version 1.9 which provides new features including a new gradebook and which improves the delivery of content to our online law classes.
Paralegal Certificates - We continue to graduate and award paralegal certificates to in excess of 40 students from our program every year – see http://pbwiki.lamission.edu/spring-08-grads
This is double the rate from 5 years ago when our average was 20 students per year.
Eportfolios – The Paralegal Studies program has used an eportfolio to collect written research papers from our Legal Research and Writing classes – see http://pbwiki.com The Paralegal Program is also participating in the CCC Eportfolio Project – see efolioworld and will implement the use of eportfolios in assessment of SLO’s in the program.
Possible new Law Certificates – The Paralegal Program has participated in the new CTE Innovation Funds Proposal process and submitted the proposal for 4 new law certificates – Legal Nurse Consultant, Patients’ Rights Advocate, Special Needs Legal Advocate and Legislative Research Analyst – see http://abogado.pbwiki.com/cte - These new proposals, if accepted, will bring new law classes and certificates to the college, and provide training for entry level paralegal jobs in the fields of Allied Health, Green Technology (Legislative Research Analyst) and Advocacy for Children with Special Needs.
Court Internships – The Paralegal Program has collaborated with the Van Nuys and San Fernando Court managers in developing a new Court Internship program for our on campus and local paralegal students – see http://court-interns.pbwiki.com This is an excellent opportunity for our students to get “hands on” experience and to help them add this experience to their resumes and make these students “more marketable” in the paralegal field once they graduate from our program.
2. What do you see as the strengths of each of your units?
Answer: Our online faculty are all highly trained, practicing attorneys who are very effective online instructors. Our online paralegal certificate is unique and the only such completely online paralegal certificate in the Calif. Community Colleges. We have also developed all of our curriculum using the moodle course management system (starting in Summer 2006) and upgraded it to version 1.9 in Summer 2008, an improved and faster system. We have also established Student Learning Outcomes for all of our 12 law classes and we will begin assessing the SLO’s in Winter/Spring 2009. Our discipline is forward thinking and innovative and we have submitted 4 proposals under the new CTE Innovation Funds – they are, Legal Nurse Consultant I and II, Patient Rights Advocate, Legislative Research Analyst, and Special Needs Legal Advocate – see http://abogado.pbwiki.com/narratives
What do you see as the challenges?
Answer: We need to grow our program, at the same time ensuring we maintain our excellent instruction, and curriculum. We need to employ a student worker to upload materials and to keep the online web pages current. Prof. Jordan currently is the webmaster of the entire program, but as the program continues to grow and to add additional online law classes and certificates, more of his energy will be directed to these areas, and the enormous time required to upload materials and classes each semester needs to be handled by a student worker. Also as the program reaches 1000 students (estimated to occur within the next two years), the Paralegal Program will need another full time faculty. We also will need a student worker who will act as a tutor to our growing online law program.
3. How does your unit planning support the mission of the college?
Answer:
The Paralegal Program supports the mission of the college by offering a certificate and AA Degree in Legal Assisting-Paralegal needed and required for students who want to become certified paralegals in California. The program also provides classes (Bus. Law I online) to meet the growing needs of our business students to take online classes due to their “busy” schedules.
4. What are your visions for changes, revisions and growth?
Answer:
The Paralegal program needs to develop a Strategic Plan for ensuring its growth. In this Strategic Plan we need to develop a marketing plan and obtain resources for marketing our program, increased support for our online students, increased support for online tutoring.
5. What resources are needed to support as well as to build the programs in your Answer: Department?
· Facilities? We can participate in the new Business Technology classrooms which are planned for the former Culinary Arts, and Cafeteria.
· FTEF? To meet student demand, the paralegal program will need at least an additional 1.2 FTEF in Fall 09 over the Fall 08 (including new sections in Fall/Spring, and also in Winter/Summer sessions
· Staff? The Paralegal Program needs a student worker (with skills in Technology) to assist in uploading and managing the online course shells and the course management system.
· Technology? The Paralegal Program needs to adopt the lexis-nexis legal research system for its students. This will require some resources to support and pay for this system.
· Other? None
6. What is the status of SLO assessments in your department?
On 11/22/08 the law faculty will meet to select a rubric to follow in making the assessments, and plan the assessments to start in Winter/Spring 2009, and then to aggregate the SLO Assessment results at the end of the Spring 2009 semester, and implement any changes in teaching, instruction, curriculum, etc. to address the results of our assessments.
7. What is the status of the course outlines of record and course updates in your department?
Three courses need to be updated, Bus. Law I and 2, and Law 19. These courses will be submitted to Curriculum for updating either in Fall or Spring 2009