Greetings Faculty

I would like to thank all those who contributed to our many successful activities last year. We completed all of our accreditation planning agenda items and had a successful site visiting by our accrediting team. The team praised the faculty and the entire college for their "outstanding" work in addressing all the recommendations and planning agenda items. The team will return in 2010 to evaluate our progress on everything from SLOs to Program Review and budgeting.

In addition to our work on accreditation, faculty participated in the study conducted by the Brain Trust on the efficiency and effectiveness of our college/district structures. We also participated in the implementation of some of the recommendations, particularly in regard to increasing efficiency in our courses and improving scheduling practices. We improved our efficiency from the mid 400s in Weekly Student Contact Hours per Full Time Equivalent Faculty to the high 500s which is a significant improvement. The Brain Trust indicated an optimum efficiency rate of 595 and we are approaching that number. We owe a great thanks to the Performance Goals Committee and the Division Chair Council for their work in reaching those numbers.

We also completed Program Review for all instructional and noninstructional programs. A big thanks to Mary Ashley and the entire Program Review Committee for this overwhelming accomplishment.

Another major accomplishment of faculty from the last academic year was to recommend to President Robles that we move from 10 Divisions to 6 Divisions for the next academic year. This recommendation was based on numerous forums held by the Academic Senate and the recommendation of the Division Chairs. This reduction will help save money and reallocate more reassigned time to Department Chairs who have had the practice of doing the majority of the scheduling and faculty supervision activities at Mission College.

The Senate also created an Educational Program Planning Committee to ensure the implementation of recommendations from the Educational Master Plan. This committee, under the able leadership of Cathy Cox, has been hard at work developing a new Green Technology Program which may be brought to the Academic Senate for approval in the next academic year.

The Senate also set up several Task Forces. One is on Textbook Affordability. Lydia Harris, faculty emerita, has done a tremendous amount of research on the topic and is leading the task force's work. The Task Force will bring recommendations to the Senate for implementation this year.

Another Task Force is the Organization Structure Task Force which has representatives from each of the entities: faculty, classified staff, students, administration. They have been asked to review all the restructuring proposals and conduct fact finding and return to the Academic Senate by mid October with recommendations on college structure on an ongoing basis.The Senate will use those recommendations to make its own recommendations to President Robles and Chancellor Hendrickson regarding longterm structure that will maximize efficiency and effectiveness.

Our challenges for the upcoming year are as follows:

1. To ensure the ongoing implementation of Program Review by having each program complete a one-year update to last year's review and to ensure the results of program review are used in the college budgeting and planning process

2. To ensure the ongoing implementation of Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment of each program and selected courses to satisfy accreditation requirements and help us in the ongoing improvement of programs and courses

3. To make recommendations to the President and Chancellor regarding long-term college structure

4. To conduct training and recommend new policy language on the textbook affordability issue

5. To discuss academic rigor and the Carnegie Unit and consider issueing guidelines on course scheduling and student homework load

6. To consider the issue of plus and minus grading

7. To consider standards for articulation agreements with high schools

8. To review local minimum qualifications

9. To discuss the issue of student retention and how it can be improved

10. To consider the issue of Makeup Testing and its need as a service by faculty and students

11.To ensure the coordination of noncredit/community education offerings and noncredit/credit instructional program offerings

12. To consider computer literacy as a graduation requirement

With the influx of students and the state budget crisis, there will undoubtedly be numerous other issues that arise. I look forward to addressing all of the issues within the purview of the Academic Senate in the coming year to support the success of faculty and students alike.

 

Stephanie Kashima
Senate President
Mission College Academic Senate