Glendale Community College Faculty Senate

Meeting of September 27, 2007

Approved Minutes

 

(Please note:  General interest issues or meeting and notifications are listed below in bold to allow them to be located more easily.)

 

I.                   General

 

A.    Call to Order:  A quorum being present, Executive Councilor at Large (ECL) Jim Reed called the meeting to order at 2:30 P.M. in the HiTec1 Teleconference Room. Senators present included Secretary Robert Reavis, Treasurer Alicia Ottenberg, Jose Aguiñaga, Ruth Callahan, Susan Campbell, Phil Fernandez, Fernando Garcia, Emily M. Gwinn, Susan High, Steve Kadel, Johnnie C. May, Michele Parker and Laura Schuett.

 

B.     Introduction of Guests- Including but not limited to: Matt Ashcraft, Joseph Bednorz, Erik Gergus, Chuck Jeffery, Dave Jenkins, Mary Lou Massal, Carlos Nunez and Lyle Walcott.

 

C.     The proposed meeting agenda was adopted.

 

D.    The minutes from the August 23rd meeting were approved.

 

E.     Treasurer’s Report: Treasurer Ottenberg reported two items: $1,090.82 was spent on the All Employee Bash, and $5.91 dividend was accrued to our Savings account. Our overall account balance is $8,932.51.

 

F.      President’s Report- President Daugherty submitted a written report:

 

Attended:

·         FEC Aug and September meetings

·         Governing Board, Aug and Sept meetings

·         September Department Chairs Meeting

·         2 New SIS meetings

·         Campus Conversation

·         2 GoalQwest meetings

·         2 meetings with Dr. Green

·         2 meetings with VP Abel

·         1 Meeting with Dean Kimmons

 

Also did FEP presentation for FYRE\

 

Removed Ex Treasurer from Signature card and added new Treasurer Alicia Ottenberg to signature card.

 

Today President Daugherty is attending the FEC media spokesperson Training with 4 other faculty members at the offices of our Public Relations Firm in Tempe.

 

G.    FEC (Faculty Executive Council) Report-

ECL Reed reported Chancellor Glasper attended the meeting as a guest.

 

Chancellor Glasper expressed his concern with the negative press reports about himself and the district. ECL Reed responded that Faculty needed stronger support from the Chancellor and noted how new Risk Assessment procedures have placed Faculty at greater personal liability in the case of problems. In fact, the increased risk to faculty led ECL Reed to resign his longstanding position as Advisor of Student Government. The Chancellor responded that faculty involvement with student groups was still important.

 

Regi Munro asked what happens to the interest money that accrues from bond money? It is not reported to the faculty anywhere on campus budgets.

 

John Seims proposed a company to provide faculty e-mail accounts independent of MCCCD for a cost of $150 per month for all district faculty. These accounts will allow faculty to communicate on their own computers free from district regulations. The effort to move the Faculty Association office to a private site has not moved forward, in part due to the large cost.

 

A Blue Ribbon Panel will be formed by FEC to investigate the district’s Blue Ribbon panel and how it is implemented.

 

Faculty reported students have been called by the office of Sheriff Arpaio with questions of their enrollment and reasons for withdrawal.

 

Meet and Confer will request science laboratory instruction be loaded the same rate as other instruction. There is growing concern the Administration treats Department Chairs as managers rather than faculty. FEC will resist this trend.

 

H.    Governing Board Report- No report.

 

II.                Old Business

 

A.    Formula for remuneration of on-line Instructors-

Senator Kadel handed out the committee recommendations. Senator Kadel reported two priorities were used to make the recommendations:

1) Payment for online instruction should, as much as possible, equal the pay of traditional, face-to-face courses.

2) Flexibility to allow for small classes to be taught.

A written justification (Appendix I) and pay matrix were included in the report.

 

Senate applauded the work of chair Senator Kadel and the rest of the committee and forwarded these recommendations to President Medrano.

 

Additional discussion focused on coordination of online courses on campus, with Rio as a possible model. Senator Kadel supported the idea of an Administration position at GCC to coordinate online courses. ECL Reed noted Senate had prevented the administration from taking such a role in the past.

 

Student Information System- Information Item (Information Item A)

At this time guest Matt Ashcraft informed Senate that implementation of the new Student Information System had been delayed until February 2008. When tested, the new system crashed with only 2,500 users. Senators asked  several questions including:

 

What is the expected load needed to crash the system? Mr. Aschraft answered: 10,000.

 

Why did the system crash with such a small number of users? Why was 10,000 picked as the number rather than 30,000? What are the costs and benefits used to make these decisions?

 

Mr. Ashcraft responded that he had asked these same questions of Associate Vice Chancellor of Information Technology Huish and his colleagues at district, but few answers were provided.

 

ECL Reed stated the district office of Information Technology had lost all credibility and lamented the years of funding lost to their efforts. He suggested that we should no longer budget campus funds to the district.

 

Mr. Ashcraft noted that funds are also allocated to other aspects of a new student system, such as conversion of ‘bad’ data from all the campuses to a single, coherent data base for the district. For example, students may have records under various names, at multiple campuses.

 

Senator Callahan asked how the MCCCD PR firm was responding to this latest failure.

 

Carlos Nunez stated that faculty had erred in its attempts to appease the public earlier this year. Instead, we are appalled by this latest failure and call for accountability.

 

ELC Reed noted that reporters were already asking questions in apparent preparation to report on this issue. He also stated that the Faculty Association had its own PR firm.

 

Senator Kadel noted that GCC allocated most of its budget to the new SIS system.

 

Mr. Ashcraft noted that GCC had been prepared to implement the new system. He had expected to provide an update of implementation at today’s meeting, rather than discuss the failure that had occurred.

 

More Old Business (II)

 

B.     Constitutional Amendment-

Treasurer Ottenberg submitted new language to describe the methods we use to count votes from preferential ballots. The new language comes directly from and is required by ‘Robert’s Rules of Order’ (Appendix II).

 

Senator Gwinn moved to accept the recommendation. Senator Kadel seconded the motion. After brief discussion the motion passed. It will now be placed on the next ballot for faculty ratification.

Campus Signage- Information Item B

At 3:50 PM Vice President Jeffery addressed Senate in response to earlier questions about campus signage.  $35,000 of bond funds have been allocated to buy and install 6-7 kiosk-like directional signs around campus. A consultant’s recommendationsfor sign placement is due tomorrow (September 28). A committee of students and faculty should also provide input (to be arranged) – volunteers are needed. Several design options were shown around. Three criteria will be used in the final assessment. Signs must be: 1) legible, 2) easily cleaned, and 3) well lit. The goal is to have these signs in place before Spring 2008.

 

Other ideas for signage were mentioned, including grounds crew carts, solar panels to light signs, special colors to identify information.

 

VP Jeffery noted that the current effort is one of six levels of signage on campus; other levels also will be addressed in the future. The levels are: 1) Street side marquee signs, 2) the new kiosks mentioned (above), 3) building plaques, 4) interior signs, 5) emergency signage (government mandates in part), and 6) event signage such as sandwich boards.

 

VPJeffery then addressed construction issues. He reiterated campus efforts to prevent any closures along 59th Avenue. Initially the construction was scheduled to be done before August. The campus has since fought to keep the entrances open, with some success. Construction has gone well and should be completed ahead of schedule.

 

Construction on campus continues to outperform expectations. Over 600 parking spaces were added this year, the new Student Union opened ahead of schedule and below budget, similarly construction at GCCN and on the new Life Science building are ahead of schedule and under budget.

 

VP Jeffery also explained the ‘dead-end’ corridor in Humanities was used by the janitorial crew and would not function as a student corridor.

 

Senator Callahan restated the need for signage at the southern door to the O5 building. Many delivery trucks, students, visitors and others approach the campus via that portal. Directional signage is needed to direct these individuals to campus points of interest rather than have them enter the wrong building and need to ask for directions.

 

VP Jeffery noted the problem of emergency communication on campus and finally informed Senate of the many environmental efforts of campus staff.  A 5-6 page magazine about these efforts ‘Live Green’ will be available shortly.

 

 

 

More Old Business (II)

 

C.     Retention and Recruitment: GoalQuest

Senator Callahan reported on a meeting with GoalQuest representatives. GCC has entered into a two year $95,000 per year contract with GoalQuest. Their service provides a series of portals with prompts to direct students and parents to the information they need to clarify the processes of enrollment, financial aid, etc. GCC will be responsible for content. Add-ons can be purchased that discuss possible campus problems (e.g. binge drinking, sexual activity). The company will not collect data nor sell it.

 

Senator High attended one of these meetings and reported that GCC would be responsible for all input of data, a large task. Other senators voiced concerns that included:

·         The cost and source of funds

·         How will the program be evaluated?

·         How was this program chosen?

·         Why has not Senate been more informed?, and

·         Is GoalQuest the Administration’s answer to our request for an enrollment czar?

 

Senator Gwinn suggested we invite President Green to come to the next Senate meeting to address Senate’s questions and concerns. ECL Reed stated he will invite President Green to the next Senate meeting, October 25.

 

D.    Nominating Committee Report

Senator Gwinn reported the committee consists of herself, Senator Schuett, David Rodriguez (Librarian), Joann Paderi (Mathematics) and Stephen Williams (Biology).  Currently, two candidates have been nominated for the vacant Senate post: Doug Brenner and Erik Gergus. ELC Reed is the only candidate for Vice President at this time.

 

It was noted that if ELC Reed were elected Vice President, someone would be needed to replace him as Executive Councilor at Large. After some discussion, Senator May volunteered to take his position.

 

ELC Reed noted that Faculty Association membership is down, while district attempts to fire faculty is at an all time high.

 

At this point, Senator Kadel noted that a quorum was no longer present. Therefore, the meeting was adjourned.

 

 

 

III.             Next meeting will be Thursday, October 25, 2007 at 2:30 pm in SU 104BC.

 

 

Appendix I. GCC Online Course Loading ad hoc Committee Recommendations

 

November 19, 2007

 

 

Please find below a set of recommendations regarding online course loading and pay for consideration by the district Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) Committee for inclusion into the District RFPs. 

I.       Rationale

The currently utilized “Wage Formulas for Special Projects, OE/OE, and Internet Courses” formulation is subject to pay inequities for online vs. face-to-face instruction for classes of the same size.  It also has a multi-sloped/non-linear pay scale per student, which results in an inequitable (and undesirable) financial incentive for both very small and very large online class sizes.  Our recommendations are intended to correct these situations and make online classes as equitable with respect to face-to-face classes as possible.  To that end, the loading matrix/table presented near the end of this document has been designed to achieve several goals with respect to loading of online classes for faculty.

II.     Maximum Class Size

Because of the highly interactive student/instructor relationship required by the online course delivery format, we propose a maximum online class size of 24 students, a common size for face-to-face semester-based classes in a broad range of disciplines.  Larger enrollment numbers make keeping up with correspondence and discussion threads exponentially more impractical for student and instructor alike.  Should more than 24 students register for any given online section, we propose a new section be opened, subject to the same 24-student maximum and the loading guidelines listed in Table 1 below.  For class loading purposes, we propose enrollment numbers be determined as of the end of add/drop week for all semester-based online courses.

III.   Minimum Class Size

Because of the interactive and group study nature of online courses, we propose a 6-student minimum for any semester-based online class, in order to facilitate proper and sufficient student/student and student/instructor interaction and discussion.  In order to ensure a maximum guaranteed schedule for students (i.e., minimized cancellation of course sections due to insufficient enrollment), we propose sections with 1-5 students enrolled, at departmental discretion, be run as Independent Study or Open Entry (OE) classes.  This should provide maximum flexibility and educational options for students in critical, but lightly utilized courses.

IV.   OE Online

We propose that there be no minimum number of students for running an online OE class section, again, in order to provide maximum flexibility and educational opportunities for students in critical but lightly utilized courses.  This option will further facilitate the goal of providing a guaranteed schedule for students.  Loading for OE courses should follow the common loading matrix for all online courses presented in Table 1.  We propose the maximum enrollment limit of 24 students be optional for online OE courses, but with additional students above 24 counted (for pay loading purposes) in the same manner as if a new section had been opened.  We also propose enrollment numbers be counted for OE classes (for pay loading purposes) as enrolled plus withdrawals (not final class completion numbers).

 

V.     Table 1.  Proposed Online Course Loading Schedule

Class Credit Hours

N = number of students enrolled*

Course Loading (semester-based)

Course Loading

(OE classes)

 

1

1-5

Independent Study**

(N/6) x full loading

6-24

Fully loaded

Fully loaded

>24

Open new section

Open new section***

 

2

1-5

Independent Study**

(N/10) x full loading

6-9

(N/10) x full loading

10-24

Fully loaded

Fully loaded

>24

Open new section

Open new section***

 

3-4

1-5

Independent Study**

(N/14) x full loading

6-13

(N/14) x full loading

14-24

Fully loaded

Fully loaded

>24

Open new section

Open new section***

           *Enrollment determined at end of drop/add week for on-line semester-based

             classes; enrollment plus withdrawals for OE classes

        ** Pay loaded same as OE classes of this size

      *** Opening of a new section optional for OE courses, at departmental discretion

 

VI.   Summary

This set of recommendations provides a situation in which online classes mirror, as closely as possible, face-to-face classes with full-load minimum numbers.  At the same time, this loading schedule allows for the running of online course sections with sub-full load numbers, as outlined above, with incremental pay consistently determined across the board.  Such an arrangement facilitates a guaranteed schedule for students, while preventing situations from arising where instructors are paid different amounts for the same number of students in equivalent course sections.  With sub-6 student semester-based online classes redesignated as Independent Study, no online student need have a course/section canceled in the future.  In addition, underloaded face-to-face sections could now have the option (assuming an instructor is available and willing) of going online, rather than being canceled, using the guidelines above.

 

Appendix II.

Article IV. Elections of Senators.

Section 1. The election of Senators shall be held prior to the second Wednesday in April, and the Senators shall serve from the time of their election.

Section 2. A Nominating Committee composed of two non-officer Senate members and three non-Senate GCC Faculty Association members shall be established by February 15 of each year. The Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer of the Senate shall select the members of the Nominating committee. The same method shall be followed for vacancies in Article VI.

Section 3. The Nominating Committee shall encourage submission of names of faculty members who have agreed to be candidates for the Senate. In March, the committee shall announce to the Senate a slate of candidates for the positions which will become vacant.

Section 4. The nominees receiving, the greatest number of votes cast for the existing vacancies will be elected. In case of a tie, which would cause the number of elected Senators to exceed the number of existing, vacancies, a run-off election will be required.

Section 5. In an election of multiple Senators, Representatives, or other delegates, the Nominating, Committee may choose to conduct the balloting by preferential voting, as described in  quoted from Robert's Rules of Order (Newly Revised, 10th edition) and adapted to local needs. below:

On the preferential ballot—for each office to be filled or multiple-choice question to be decided—the voter is asked to indicate the order in which he prefers all the candidates or propositions, placing the numeral 1 beside his first preference, the numeral 2 beside his second preference, and so on for every possible choice. In counting the votes for a given office or question, the ballots are arranged in piles according to the indicated first preferences—one pile for each candidate or proposition. The number of ballots in each pile is then recorded for the tellers’ report. These piles remain identified with the names of the same candidates or propositions throughout the counting procedure until all but one are eliminated as described below. If more than half of the ballots show one candidate or proposition indicated as first choice, that choice has a majority in the ordinary sense and the candidate is elected or the proposition is decided upon. But if there is no such majority, candidates or propositions are eliminated one by one, beginning with the least popular, until one prevails, as follows: The ballots in the thinnest pile—that is, those containing the name designated as first choice by the fewest number of voters—are redistributed into the other piles according to the names marked as second choice on these ballots. The number of ballots in each remaining pile after this distribution is again recorded. If more than half of the ballots are now in one pile, that candidate or proposition is elected or decided upon. If not, the next least popular candidate or proposition is similarly eliminated, by taking the thinnest remaining pile and redistributing its ballots according to their second choices into the other piles, except that, if the name eliminated in the last distribution is indicated as second choice on a ballot, that ballot is placed according to its third choice. Again the number of ballots in each existing pile is recorded, and, if necessary, the process is repeated—by redistributing each time the ballots in the thinnest remaining pile, according to the marked second choice or most-preferred choice among those not yet eliminated—until one pile contains more than half of the ballots, the result being thereby determined. The tellers’ report consists of a table listing all candidates or propositions, with the number of ballots that were in each pile after each successive distribution.

If a ballot having one or more names not marked with any numeral comes up for placement at any stage of the counting and all of its marked names have been eliminated, it should not be placed in any pile, but should be set aside. If at any point two or more candidates or propositions are tied for the least popular position, the ballots in their piles are redistributed in a single step, all of the tied names being treated as eliminated. In the event of a tie in the winning position—which would imply that the elimination process is continued until the ballots are reduced to two or more equal piles—the election should be resolved in favor of the candidate or proposition that was strongest in terms of first choices (by referring to the record of the first distribution).