California State University, Dominguez Hills



Academic Senate 1000 E. Victoria Carson, CA 90747 WH-A420 (310) 243-3312 Academic Senate Meeting MinutesFebruary 20, 2019/Extended Education/2:30 – 5:00 PMVoting Members Present, Andrade, Benavides Lopez, Chhetri, Deng, Dixon, Evans, Gray-Shellberg, Heinze-Balcazar, Hirohama, Johnson, Kalayjian, Keville, Kitching, Krochalk, Kulikov, Ma, Macias, Mendoza Diaz, Monty, Naynaha, Nicol, Park, Pawar, Phan, Pong, VPrice, Radmacher, Sanford, Sharp, Silvanto, Tang, Taylor, YiVoting Members Not Present: Bono, Cutrone, Ernst, Fortner, Jarrett, Laurent, McGlynn, Morris, JPrice, Skiffer, StillVoting Ex-Officio Members Present: Celly, Esposito, Gammage, Joseph, Ortega, Ospina, Pinto TalamanteVoting Ex-Officio Members Not Present: Norman, ParhamNon-Voting Ex-Officio Members Present: Avila, Costino, Davis, Franklin, LaPolt, McNutt, Peyton, Spagna, WenNon-Voting Ex-Officio Members Not Present: Brasley, Driscoll, Goodwin, Manriquez, O’Donnell, Poltorak, Sayed, StewartGuests: T. Caron, J. Hill, A. Kawakami, L. Hutton, D. Parker, D. Roberson Simms, L. Wilson 2018-2019 Academic Senate Executive Committee:Laura Talamante – Chair, Kate Esposito – Vice Chair, Justin Gammage – Parliamentarian, Dana Ospina – Secretary, Enrique Ortega – EPC Chair, Katy Pinto – FPC Chair, Kirti Celly and Thomas Norman – Statewide SenatorsRecorded and Edited by SEW and the Executive CommitteeMeeting Called to Order: 2:30 PMApproval of Agenda M/S/PApproval of Minutes 02/06/19 M/S/PAcademic Senate Chair Update:CSU Senate Chairs MeetingMPP Review - We discussed CSUs MPP review processes. Several campuses are updating their review process. Those reporting noted the existence of committee structures to evaluate MPPs. CSUSB rejected having no committee structure, reasoning that the committees provide accountability for those charged with MPP oversight. The committees summarize and make a report, which at some CSUs is only available to the Senate Exec and to the administrator in charge. Pomona keeps these reports in their library’s special collection. Cal State Maritime, similar to President Parham’s proposed changes, is using a survey with quantitative and qualitative commentsShared Governance – We discussed shared governance discussions and statements at various CSUs with a faculty consultation document created at one CSU, and with no explanation not signed by the President. Similar to our fall retreat another CSU had a spring retreat on shared governance and they included a guest speaker. Others spoke of the difficulty of coming to agreement with administrators. We were reminded of the importance of the role of senates in policy development and execution as part of shared governance. At Stanislaus there is resolution signed by their President GE Task Force Report – We discussed the GE Task Force Report and our initial reactions with many criticisms but some support of reducing units. Some of us brought up the problem with process employed by the task force and its exclusion of voices such as the Council of Historians of American Institutions. There was critique of the lack of citations for data informing the arguments/reasoning of the task force. It was agreed that each Senate chair would solicit broad feedback from their campus stakeholders and that each Senate should send a response and that the Council would also organize this feedback into agreed upon themes across the CSUs and submit a letter to the statewide Senate chair. Chair Nelson of the ASCSU was in attendance did try to assure us that there would be long and broad consultation and no changes recommended by the Statewide Senate, but many in the room remained skeptical.Free Speech WeekPresident Parham, ASI President Christian Jackson and I have all signed a memo in support of CSUDH’s first Free Speech week. The topic of free speech on campus has been part of Senate discussions and the idea for Free Speech forums was proposed in our fall 2017 Senate Retreat. Since that time we have worked with the Offices of the President, the Provost, Vice President of Student Affairs, and the ASI President and Vice President to create the foundation for these forums. Last year President Hagan signed our Time, Place, and Manner policy, and this year President Parham committed to supporting a Free Speech week. We know ask that senators, deans, and student leaders communicate broadly and seek participation in the organization of Free Speech week this spring from April 8th through 12th. Dr. Brooke Nelson will be coordinating the week and is looking for members to join the organizing committee. Please contact her at (bnelson@csudh.edu) or by phone (657) 238-8491 CFA Request - Senator Cutrone’s CFA report on 2/6 asked that Senate address the following topics:Continued support for TT positions for lecturersA confirmation statement on the inclusion of non-full-time faculty at department meetings and their voting rightsA confirmation statement on funds for travel to present at conferences for non-full-time facultyRequest for the publication of the task force report and a discussion on the current state of its implications.We will have an update from the NTTF Implementation co-chairs Kirti Celli and Ken O’Donnell at the April 10th meeting. We are asking that they address the issues brought forth by Senator Cutrone as part of the update and discussion.As for faculty voting rights in the nomination of department chairs, we currently have PM 2017-02 , which addresses faculty voting rights in chair selection: “In the department chairperson/coordinator nomination process, departments/programs will allow ALL full-time and part-time faculty to vote on an equal basis.”University Writing Committee, Siskanna NaynahaNaynaha reported that a survey was conducted last semester of all faculty regarding the Writing Intensive Course policy which is the graduation policy at Cal State Dominguez Hills. The reason they conducted that survey is because the current policy is not implementable on our campus, based on the courses that are offered and the various programs in which they exist. There were about 120 responses. Two faculty forums will be held on two different dates. The same information will be discussed but to gain broader participation, it was being offered on two dates. The purpose of the forum is to communicate the results of the survey to the campus community, to answer any questions that folks might have about the existing policy or the results of the survey; and to gather additional input from anyone who may not have been able to participate in the initial survey. These will be held on Thursday, March 7th and Wednesday, March 13th both from 2 – 3 pm in the Faculty Development Center. Light snacks will be provided. Parliamentarian Update, Justin GammageAcademic Affairs requested two faculty to serve on the Data Governance Committee. Gammage asked the Senate to confirm the following: Matt Jones – confirmedHeather Butler – confirmedGammage announced two search committees for whom they’ll be looking for faculty to serve on. AVP of Enrollment Management and AVP for Student Life. The Election Committee will be putting a request out for someone to serve on it as the elections will be coming up for the Senate. University Writing Committee continued – Q&ASenator Gray Shellberg requested time to address the comments made by Naynaha of the University Writing Committee. She asked when is the Senate going to discuss the writing intensive course policy that Naynaha referred to. She wanted to make sure that faculty may not be able to make the Forum and believed it to be important that the Senate hear it. Naynaha responded that they’re still in the information gathering stage. They just closed at the end of last semester the actual survey. They began the analysis of the actual results and will begin to report those out to the campus community, understanding once they report those results out there are likely to be additional questions, input or feedback that folks may wish to offer. After the Forums they will make actual policy recommendations to the FPC. Those recommendations would then be brought forth to the Senate. It won’t move forward until its been vetted to the entire campus community. Gray Shellberg said during the information gathering, she would have preferred also gathering feedback from the senators. Naynaha said she is happy to develop a questionnaire that is specifically aimed at the Senate body. Gray Shellberg said she took the survey and thought it was very good, however, she gains a lot from Senate discussion and hearing the different perspectives of Senators. Naynaha said perhaps after the Forums have been concluded and they have the additional input or questions or concerns people may wish to serve, before they move on to discussions with the FPC, they can make time for a brief presentation to the Senate body. Talamante said we’ll work on timing for that and we actually do have presentations scheduled throughout the end of the year. We’ll have to see what can be done, and program it either at the end of this year or the beginning of next fall. Naynaha said she can produce a report of both the survey and the Faculty Forums and Senate can have access to that.Senator Heinze Balcazar asked if as Chair of the Committee, is Naynaha trying to make the program implementable? Naynaha said yes. Heinze Balcazar asked how long did Naynaha believe it would take to which she responded, she predicted that it should be by the end of this year we would be able to have policy recommendations. She said based on those recommendations, and her assumption is that they would be able to take those recommendations and put them into the actual policy details into next academic year. President Parham Report, via Proxy Provost SpagnaPresident Parham asked Spagna to convey his heart-felt appreciation for everything that everyone did to advance the campus during the inaugural investiture week. Spagna highlighted his experience of investiture week, which included hearing from an alum who had attended the Distinguished Lecture Series with Attorney General Becerra. This alum had attended CSUDH 41 years ago and stated that this was an incredible experience. He thanked the President for having students participate in these kinds of conversations. President and a team from CSU will be headed to the annual CSU-wide Asia trip on 2/21. They’ll be visiting three cities, starting in Taipei, then to Hong Kong and then to Tokyo. The three functions of the trip are to greet and support our alums. Build relationships with our partnership universities. We have about ten universities across those three cities with whom we have partnerships with. Building larger opportunities for studies abroad, which will support our faculty going overseas and working with programs over there. Parham will be returning on March 1st. Talamante noted that the alum of 41 years ago wanted to emphasize that the values that he came to Cal State Dominguez Hills for were values that he saw still be enacted today, which made her exceptionally proud. Q&A/CommentsSenator Monty wished to express appreciation to President Parham, the Provost and anyone else who was involved in reorganizing people’s schedules to accommodate Panetta Internship Student Applicants. He noted that the screening of applications is completed and the initial interviews are underway. The students will now have opportunities for additional coaching before they move to the second and third rounds of interviews which will significantly increase their chances of finding a candidate who will be acceptable to Sylvia Panetta and the Institute. ASI VP Daylin JosephASI is getting ready to go up to Sacramento in March to advocate for the Cal State Dominguez Hills’s needs. Joseph encouraged the Senate to bring forward any concerns they see so that they can bring them up to their assembly members. ASI has received a CCAMPIS Grant which provides subsidized child care. The student needs to be PELL eligible and the childcare center needs to be accredited. Joseph encouraged faculty to share this information with their students. If there are any questions, please direct them to Rasheedah Shakoor @ rshakoor@csudh.edu. ASI started their budget call process for the 2019-2020. They received all of the proposals from clubs and organizations. They have $17,000 to allocate and $60,000 of proposals that has come in. A fellow student of Joseph had described her experience of an online class she was taking. The friend explained that their class is often required to listen to lengthy videos, and that many of these videos are not of the professor themselves, but a video of another professor giving a lecture. Joseph took the time to view the lecture for herself. She noted that one such video was over two hours long and the recorded professor from LMU took several breaks during the lecture to address her family, put food in the oven and then forget to address certain topics, which was all part of the recording. She noted that there was a part of the video where the audio cut out for about 20 minutes. She said that her peer was not only required to watch this video but was required to test on it as well. Joseph noted that this type of instruction was very distracting. Joseph requested of the Senate that when you do assign videos to please watch them through to ensure that students are getting a high quality of instruction. Talamante said that we do have an upcoming presentation from the Task Force on Hybrid and Distance Learning and she imagines that they will have a few recommendations that will help to avoid such potential pitfalls. Senator Celly thanked ASI VP Joseph for having the courage to address administrators and faculty. She said it will not be lost. Talamante requested that Joseph ask the student to give that information to the Chair of the Department that they’re taking the course in. She added that this is the kind of information that helping professors deciding on things that are ore fruitful. Gray Shellberg asked if the student has already spoken to the instructor. Joseph said no. She added that this is something that happens a lot where professors are in an out of the video. Students think that this is the norm. Gray Shellberg said its been her experience as a long term teacher on the campus that somehow we’ve lost where in conflict situations, you go first to the person you’re having the conflict with. She said this is a good character building kind of thing. She said then you miss a teachable moment, it’s important for all of the instructors to get direct feedback. Teaching evaluations are we after the fact and then you can’t do any mid-course adjustments. She believed that if students went to their professor it would be welcomed by and large and not viewed as adversarial. Provost Spagna said that VP Franklin and he have been having discussions about how do they support faculty. He’s heard from a lot of faculty that say students are acting in a certain way and their not sure what to do. And students are coming forth expressing their concerns. We need to address how do we navigate this so that we create a more effective teaching and learning environment. It’s going to require real support and the collaboration of Academic Affairs and Student Affairs. He commended VP Joseph for her courage to come forth. Talamante thanked VP Franklin for ensuring that faculty were included on the reconvened Student Conduct Committee, looking through practices and looking for teachable moments. She noted that she is on that committee as well as FPC Pinto. CFA Report, V. PriceMeet & Greet with Barbara Roberts in the FDC on 2/21 from 4 – 5 pm. Roberts is a playwright and actor and active in the Actors Equity Union, particularly in the EEO realm. If you’re interested in how other unions deal with inclusivity and discrimination, join us tomorrow.March 5th is the semester luncheon where we’ll discuss the issues we hear about in Senate and individual issues of people dealing with the Weingarten Rights, Academic Freedom. Some of our Senate and some of our active CFA members will be reporting back from the AAUP Conference on Academic Freedom. 11:30 – 1 in Ballroom B of LSU. We’ll be distributing cards that have the Weingarten Rights. Weingarten Rights are the rights that you have to call a CFA union representative to come with you if you feel that you’re going to be disciplined in a meeting with an administrator. CFA Elections are coming up this April. It’s a rewarding and enriching opportunity to learn about your rights and to become more active both here on campus and statewide. Talamante thanked CFA for inviting us to create a team to go to the AAUP conference. We have several senators going, several CFA members going, the Vice Provost is going. Talamante directed her comment to ASI VP Joseph saying that we did reach out to ASI to see if any students would have an interest in going and hadn’t heard, but that if there was an interest to let us know.Interim Dean Claudia Peyton gave a quick update to the Senate on the success of Student Research Day. She said that Terry McGlynn along with a whole committee of folks contributed greatly to its success. She noted that there were over 300 students, 70+ volunteers and countless judges who gave of their time and effort. She felt that the presentation quality was the best ever. She said their next activity is to determine the 10 projects to go forward to represent us at CSU Statewide.PresentationTenure Track Density, Provost SpagnaSpagna first spoke to the tenure density trend from 2009 to 2018 system-wide and then comparing it to the Cal State Dominguez Hills tenure density rate over the same time period. He highlighted that in 2017 at Dominguez Hills there was a further drop which reflects the same time that then President Hagan we stopped hiring. That factors in very importantly when we talk about implications of this. Student/Faculty ratio (SFR) is something we’re watching very carefully within all the academic programs. Spagna noted that it is not something that would give anyone any solace, particularly those in programs that have grown exponentially has not been how they’ve been experiencing the SFR. Senator Monty asked that the Provost to explain as he goes along how it was calculated. Senator Celly asked that the Provost clarify what tenure density means. Spagna explained that in slide #5, where you look at overall notion of how ratios the Students to All Faculty are calculated. He said that there are two breakouts, Student to Tenure Track Ratio are calculated are based on the student column; and if you want look at student to all faculty ratio, it will connect the tenure track column to the student column in terms of that ratio.Monty said he believed that the data their using in their college weren’t “real students” but full-time equivalents. Spagna said that it’s all FTEs, he said none of it is headcount. He referred to the CFA presentation at Senate, was based on headcount, which is another way of looking at this. He said it’s a very critical point to make which in order for us to think about what we want to do as a campus going forward, we need to interrogate both of those formula to figure out headcount vs. headcount because it will have implications on the decisions that we make. He noted that the next slide, the Lecturers to Tenure Track comparison show what our growth has been. One slide that Spagna said he wished to focus on was the Cal State Dominguez Hills Net New Tenure Track Hires (FTE). He said notice how in 2013 and then in 2016-17 they drop, and we had our highest year in 2018 at 26.4 as measured FTE tenure track faculty hires. What’s the reason for this drop-off, it’s the year we hit the brakes in terms of hiring. He said the cautionary tale is if we have a year where we do no hires, where we significantly go under a limit, you’re going to affect the overall outcome for what we’re going to do on the campus. Spagna then spoke to the slide on CSUDH’s Approximate Cost of Net New TT Hires. He said if you total the number across the board, it represents $8.7 million in base budget that we’ve added on faculty. In summary:Spagna commented that on his 2nd bullet point, that we’re only 1 of 6 CSUs using this formula that has experienced an increase in tenure density. He said when you look through the report, you should look at all of our sister campuses, and look at where tenure density has either increased or decreased and there are only 6 that have increased tenure density. One campus has taken one of the biggest hits in terms of tenure density. Interestingly enough, of the campuses that have experienced real increases in tenure density, very few in the LA Basin. He noted that Cal State Dominguez Hills has one of the highest tenure density increase in the system since 2013. We’ve successfully hired 68 net new TT faculty since the low of 2012 – 2018. This converts roughly to an $8.7 million in dedicated baseline resources since 2012. More important thing is that there is still more work to do:We still among the lowest in tenure density in the entire system. At our highest tenure density in 2009. Something we’ll be talking about through the course of this semester and beyond is how do we develop models to continue upwards trajectory of how do we reach these increased tenure density models. The balance will be, how fast can we do it, how much money is involved, do we take a three, five, ten year plan, what does that look like in terms of success. A multi-year hiring plan is critical to what we do in terms of hiring, if we don’t it’s harder to make a larger university commitment. We have to continue to champion efforts to support and encourage NTTF at Cal State Dominguez Hills (54.8% of all faculty). Q&A/Comments:Senator Naynaha said she would like to see numbers on retention of those new faculty in relation to the hires we’ve made, particularly in those “feast” years vs. the “famine” years. Spagna pointed to the report on Faculty Recruitment and Retention Survey. It gives you the data on retention. We looked at the faculty that were hired in 2017, 0 faculty resigned. Senator Price said if you look at headcount vs. FTE, the last figures say that non tenure faculty are 54.8% of all faculty. That sounds like we have 46% of faculty are tenured, when it’s actually that 28% of all faculty are tenured. You have to be very careful about what you’re expressing. Spagna agreed, it’s important to have those figures side-by-side, and we also have to look at it from a third angle. What’s going to politically position us with legislatures that are going to be compelled to give us money. How we look at those figures and say tenure density is low at Dominguez Hills no matter how you look at it and we’re going to need some support to get us up to a certain level. The interrogation, whether it’s headcount or FTE, we’re going to need more support. The important element that comes out of it is what are the assumptions behind of the numbers and what do they reflect in terms of the campus. It was well said by the CFA rep at our last meeting, in that FTEs are parts of faculty, and faculty does not exist in parts, so how does that work? Gray Shellberg asked if in addition to the year that we had no hires, where a relatively new president took back tenure track position when hiring was almost to a close. 2008 according to Senator Monty. Spagna said, that was during the economic downturn. Starting in 2009, the year after, you start seeing the bottom drop out. He said the element here, you have to be very careful administratively if you’re going to keep on this course, you’ve got to keep on course. If you step on the brakes, it sets into dynamics all kinds of other things. Senator Radmacher said she had heard that in the future we might be utilizing enrollment prediction in terms of essentially using that for allocation of tenure track lines. Where we hire a new person, but we gain a significant number of new students each year, so that gain is pretty much lost. When that might play into play, how it’s going to be utilized, are we going to look at it from a more holistic perspective. She noted that in her department they’re just educating the students in their program, whereas a department like history is doing a lot of service work to the entire university, they’re going to have a lot of those GE Course students taking courses and maybe fewer majors students that what they have currently. She said those are the kind of differences which she would like to know are going to be looked at in terms of the influx of students and FTEs, and the number of tenure track faculty that will be needed. She wondered if that was the plan of the university to take those different factors into effect. Spagna said we can’t do multi-year hiring plans unless we’re able to drill down to the program and department level. These numbers obscure what does tenure density look like within departments and programs. You’re going to hear the AVP of University Effectiveness Planning & Analytics in terms of her commitment and our commitment at the university, to build dashboards that will drill all the way down into departments and programs to be able to interrogate this kind of information. You can combine that with some other factors, especially within some of your fields, you have accreditation requirements. Spagna said he would love to see us put workforce factors in terms of opportunities, and it’s the convergence of those that really should dictate how we’ll be hiring faculty. What you’re kind to find when you drill down to the department and program level are some areas where the tenure density is 45.2, but some where it’s 70% and others where it’s 10%. Then will be the conversations of how to we support to get to that and how do we do that for thresholds. Spagna said it won’t be an overnight decision, but the good news is the help is coming. He said he’s seen a dashboard used by a colleague of his at Humboldt has put together a dashboard, that we’re also using, that allows you to drill down 24/7 so you can look within your program to see how you’re doing and it does historical trends as well. Monty said that he agreed with what Senator Radmacher said and that is why every year, if not every semester, we should be reviewing the tenure track breakdown by college and department which would show that the CHHSN is the most underserved or under resourced college at the university by far. Secondly, not only do we need to keep going, but also we need to keep going and accelerate the pace of hiring. If enrollments continue to grow the way that they have, we can hire as many new faculty as we wish, but tenure density won’t increase. Heinze-Balcazar asked is this a report or is this a conversation that will continue through the semester here at Senate with you [Provost Spagna]. Spagna said this needs to be an ongoing conversation. It cannot be a periodic conversation, it needs to be part of our life. If we’re going to set up dashboards that are 24/7, we’re going to have to look at that at a regular basis to make more fluid decisions. Talamante asked if when we do the projected tenure track hiring rollovers and the other category, perhaps at that point and time we can see information across the college and that will probably help us put the projections together. Spagna said that’s what we’re working towards. He said he wants it out of the domain of the Provost’s office and out of Faculty Affairs. He said he wants it to be empowered at the department/program level to give us that feedback and to have that kind of discussion.Spagna moved on to the Advancing Faculty Diversity part of his update. He noted that all received the report, and that he would want to share some highlights from it. He said that former Interim AVP Hill and Vice Provost O’Donnell had worked closely with the Chancellor's Office in consultation with the Deans, Academic Affairs and the Senate Executive Committee. Where do we feel we would get our best yields in terms of trying to increase our recruitment efforts in diversity. Spagna said this is in the recruitment area but we also have to pay attention to both support and retention. He noted it’s not enough to recruit, it’s more important to support and retain once you get the person here. Support early recruitment and conference travel. We set up a system with faculty ambassadors to go out to conferences to try to encourage people to apply to Dominguez Hills as part of our efforts.Once we went out and sent out these ambassadors, the expenses were in place in terms of how do we support travel and how do we expand efforts for bringing recruits to the campus. What we learned was that in some cases the recruitment efforts were thwarted. Some search committees would favor local candidates vs. people outside of the state because they thought that was too much money and we can’t recruit outside.Unconscious Bias Workshops is another area we expanded in which was about 2% of the budget we used. We wanted to do more but based on the availability of CFA workshops and the ability to bring people in, we didn’t have enough people coming in for it. Do we want to continue with the Unconscious Bias workshops or do we want to look at other models. Spagna said he would welcome other ideas in terms of how we support on this front to do the kind of work that’s necessary so that when you’re actually interviewing candidates you’re not saying or doing things that are turnoffs in terms of having people diversify the pool.Closing and relocation expenses: Once that we had candidates that we brought on campus, and we found that we were in a very competitive environment, were there closing costs that we could use, were there travel costs that would change the dynamic and would bring people to the campus that we really wanted. Spagna noted that there were Deans in the room if anyone had particular questions, but also there would be a part II to this report where Deans, Search Committee Chairs and talking more about how did this work?Spagna read aloud highlights from some of the deans Dean Avila, CAH: Funds improved competitiveness for all candidates resulting in 9 out of 10 searches being completed, a very high number. It also resulted in competitive to two candidates from under represented ethnic groups who had offers elsewhere but chose to come to Dominguez Hills instead. This year resulted in more active recruiting strategies with search committees traveling to conferences.Dean LaPolt, CNBS: The improved outreach and competitiveness of our job offers created a diverse excellent pool of applicants and yielded a variety of demographics of new TT faculty. [Spagna noted that in LaPolt’s email to him, LaPolt listed the different demographic groups].Spagna said that as a follow up, we would want to have those colleges, deans and search committees to let us know what their efforts were like. We did have follow-up from Margaret Merryfield, the Assistant Vice Chancellor. They are considering do this again. They’re possibly putting out $300-$350K. If we do get a call out for year two of this, I will be coming back to the Academic Senate to get your feedback of what are some things that we might also want to try. Two other things that are important to us in these efforts is the hiring of our Chief Diversity Officer and that we’re about to participate in the campus climate survey that will give us information to help us. Spagna concluded by saying that when we received all of the position descriptions this year, he said he asked Faculty Affairs to send it out to AS Exec and we had the position descriptions changed to favor more inclusive excellence within the recruitment documents. We felt that also played a factor going forward. Spagna invited past Interim AVP Hill to add any comments. Hill said based on those reports, the one strategy that was not very expensive that seemed to make a big difference was bringing a fourth candidate onto campus. There were at least a couple of people who were that fourth candidate who ended up here. Additionally, it is important to note that the unconscious bias workshops, although we took some ramp up on it and it’s not clear if we have direct quantitative evidence on its effect on these particular hires, that’s just a good thing for us to have in general. Spagna said that this is something that’s not a one shot deal. This is a much broader conversation and will require us to work with collaborate leadership styles and will require us to interrogate how are we doing, what’s our success? If you haven’t had a chance to see it, Spagna suggested viewing the report on Faculty Recruitment put out by the Chancellor's Office every year. In terms of our analysis, 60% of all new faculty hired were from under represented minority groups. How does that compare, how do we look at that, those are some things we’ll have to interrogate connect it to the campus climate survey and larger efforts we’re doing on this front. Monty said they had a new hire and it involved out of state relocation. This person was told that the university policy, which Monty said, may also be a system wide policy, would pay for airfare and such expenses to relocate a spouse, but not dependents. He said it’s quite possible that a candidate might not have a spouse or partner but has dependents. Monty said it seemed inherently discriminatory to him. He said he’d written several emails to address the situation, and as of today, this person has not been reimbursed. Spagna responded that we should not have that kind of slack in the system. One thing we identified is that not only do we have barriers for faculty who are highly sought after, we have a whole bunch of internal machinery that doesn’t work. Its important to bring those concerns immediately to us to see how we could solve them is important. We should not be losing faculty based on things that administratively we could correct. Senator Celly commented on the Tenure Track Density report the Provost gave. She said one of the things while working on the NTTF Task Force that they learned while doing their interviews and discussions with faculty and administration is that there is a big divide between the kind of recruiting that come in as tenure track and are supported and nurtured through tenure track into tenure vs. the part-time teaching. It’s somewhat easy to find that kind of labor in larger metropolitan area areas. She said we need to be mindful about who we hire and why we hire and whether in fact we value our faculty by growing and supporting them, regardless of how they come in. Related to that we need to be aware we have unconscious bias and implicit bias and we have to work on them. There could also be intentional biases which put us at risk. One thing that might be useful for us to study since this is going to be a process is whatever measure we use for diversity, compositional diversity is the most immediately measurable. It could be gender, it could be race, it could be ethnic, or by country of origin, whatever it is, let’s look at type of faculty. Part-time lecturer, part-time/full-time lecturer, tenure track and tenure. She said she believed we might surprised it’s often the most vulnerable that accept positions. Spagna said having spent several decades in CSU is the number one recruitment success he finds is having faculty who are engaged and love their campus. And if they can say that to people who are interviewing, that’s the number one sales pitch. But, in order to do that, Spagna said, we have a long way to go. Gray Shellberg said she said she finds herself wondering to what extent in allocating positions that the number of majors in the discipline is counted. Tenure track faculty advise. They are research mentors. If you have a very large group of majors, you can’t expect the part-timers, because they don’t get paid to do that, so it’s the tenure track faculty. Is the number of majors considered at all in any of this? Spagna said not in the larger reports but that is what the dashboards will enable us to do, to drill down to those levels. The AVP of University Effectiveness will need all of you as thought partners within programs to say, have you thought about this. These are the questions that will have to surface for us to then get to the right data to answer those questions. Chair Talamante asked what are we doing to think about our retention and promotion efforts and are we going to study where people are at in the tenure track as well as non tenure track faculty path to look at those aspects of diversity. Spagna said the needs of tenured track faculty at the system at both associate and full are very different. They’re very different across faculty. So how do you support them at where they are and what they need. Senator Sanford said with regard to the issue of having a large number of majors and whose going to advise them and whose going to mentor them. He said he has a Ph.D. and he can do mentorship and advising if he’s taught how to use the advising system. He’s not saying let’s not build tenure density, he too would like to be part of that too. When he was first hired here in 2012, he was sent to a “How to Use PeopleSoft”. It turned out that his login wouldn’t work because he was not tenure track. He asked why is it we are barred from doing mentorship or advising, but he doesn’t think we are. He said he was allowed to mentor a student through a final research project. He said he knows of at least one of his non tenure track associates who has done advising. Why can’t we open those doors for non tenure track since we’re more than one half of the population of faculty? Sanford said let us do some of that while you’re hiring tenure track. Gray Shellberg said that tenure track get paid to do that work as part of the three unit course release. Sanford said that give us part of that three unit course release. Monty said he was chair of the Program Review Panel for six years and this was something he consistently advocated for that deans and chairs be given the discretion to give assigned time for service to non tenure track faculty to advise, to participate in program governance. We need the help. It’s also excellent professional development opportunity for those part-time faculty. If you’re on the market and you can say that you participated in curriculum modification and you have experience in advising students, that’s going to make you a stronger candidate. It’s a win win and absolutely something we should do. Sanford said he’s had students he’s had to turn away who are looking for an advisor which is really frustrating. He said he wants to stay at Dominguez Hills, he would like to eventually aim for a tenure track position. He said this is where he’s going to get his professional development and would like that kind of support for the NTT people on this campus. Spagna said that was then, this is now. How do we harness talent? He said he loves the fact that it was brought up. The notion of creating pathways for tenure among non tenure faculty he said he is very committed to. Advising and these other supports, in addition to the conference travel and all of that, but more than that, it’s about harnessing talent we have on campus. Talamante said in their last meeting, the Provost and she spoke about meeting with the NTTF Implementation Committee to discuss these kinds of issues and see where they can go. University Effectiveness Planning & Analytics Presentation, AVP Alana OlschwangShe said she’s been here since July and has been working to start building this University Effectiveness Planning & Analytics. IR: Institutional Research – Pete VanHamersveld is still in our office and is training a few new analysts. We’re looking to help with planning, help with data accessibility, and how our office can work with faculty in the committees, in different areas. Once the data is accessible, and once they start having these conversations, Olschwang asked how do we drive deeper and how do we become more systematic and how we’re talking about data so it can inform the decisions that we’re making. The philosophy for their office are looking at the integrity of the data and the integrity in their practice. Looking at what they do is relevant rather, that we deliver insights, not just dumping data. We’re looking at decision support as well, we want to be a partner with you in the processes and the procedures they’re going through which is the collaboration, and then the transparency, not just for the data, but so that they have greater insight into not just the data but what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. Olschwang said that when they consider their priorities, there are certain things that they’re mandated to do, such as Chancellor's Office reporting and external reporting. That’s they’re first rung. Census is going on this week and that takes over in terms of priority. The next rung is looking at helping things that do the most good for the most people. How can we focus on helping the university achieve its mission and how can we be partners in strategic planning. The next layer is looking at university programs and then working with faculty on projects. In December and January, we were able to work through a very large amount of data requests for grants and other types of projects. This past fall we participated in several program review processes and we’re looking at providing the regular normative data about student enrollment but we’re also trying to reach a little bit beyond what program review might have looked like before. We’re looking to provide information about student demand, looking at what other programs that are in the area that are offering the same majors as you are, what does that look like and how many students are coming; how have the trends changed over time so that we can situate ourselves in the region. Where are students going after they leave here, what is the market for them, what are the types of careers and occupations that your major feeds into; is that something you would accept. We have a relationship with an economic modeling company called EMSI and they just came out with a new report that is fascinating and has looked at labor market data for liberal arts majors in the context of the whole debate of the liberal art degree. Looking at tracking students and all of this conversation about students who are changing jobs and changing the types of careers they’re going to, so how can you as a faculty member prepare them for all of that. This report helps to inform conversations around that. The dashboards that we’re creating will not only allow you to look at race, ethnicity and gender, but thinking about historically underserved populations. What happens if we look at someone who if female, and Latina, and first generation and they have PELL, so probably they have a lower SES. We can dive down and look at subgroups and not just look at race or ethnicity as demography destines what’s going to happen to someone. GI2025 has been really exciting. We’ve been able to start up a cohort of 14 faculty, staff and administrators who are looking at ways we can use data to increase our 4 year completion rate. Right now we’re at 11%, we have to triple that to meet the GI2025 goal. EO1110 is another area we’re providing data and support and thinking about creating assessment plan. Student Affairs Assessment has been very busy, there are a few examples of that in later slides. We are also working with Academic Affairs on setting up the data infrastructure and architecture to be able to create a comprehensive learning record. We’ll be asking what are students doing outside the classroom that’s helping with their learning and how can we map that onto what they’re doing inside classroom and bring that all together.This Spring – Data Governance – thank you for the faculty support and getting us two faculty to serve on the Data Governance Committee. We are making great progress of crafting our data definitions, so that when we’re doing these different reports you’ll know exactly what we’re talking about and we’re all on the same page.Website Redesign – housing very old data. We’re working on our dashboards, we’re getting a new server, which will come live in a few weeks, it’s getting a whole new facelift. Survey Support – climate survey is coming at, as well as several other survey efforts.Business Process Design – we are finding ways we can evaluate our business processes and uncover some of those low hanging fruit and be thoughtful on how we might look at business processes in the future. Reporting Improvements – we’ll be reporting on some of these improvements so you can see what our office is doing. Student Success – looking at supporting student success and helping to define what does that actually mean. Key Questions & Metrics – taking both the qualitative and quantitative data and then hearing the stories from the faculty and staff who are working with the students.Telling the Story – putting that data together in a way that can help craft the narrative about our campus. When we talk about transforming lives that transform America, what does that mean? What are our proof points? What are some use cases of that for students on our campus? Who is it that we’re serving best, in what ways and with what programs? Olschwang shared the above diagram which depicts the kind of model they’re following as they develop her department. She said they want to be sure that they are a data lake, as opposed to a data swamp. She noted that a counterpart from another CSU spent the day here talking about what they’ve been able to create. She said that her and her team have taken several field trips to several of their sister campuses to learn some of their best practices.Olschwang then spoke to the slide on dashboards and some of the ways that you’re able to look at data. She discussed the three phases of gathering the data to inform the dashboard around student enrollment and success, expanding the data around application funnels and making sure to integrate across all data sources.Olschwang highlighted the above graph that helps to be able to see how students are using the Smart Planner, those who are eligible, how many students who have courses planned, those who partially planned and those who have no planned courses. Olschwang gave a quick mention to some of the faculty they are working with and the projects they are engaged in supporting.Olschwang talked to how they were able to work with the EO 1110 team, helping to understand how some students were impacted by the changes. She talked about the kinds of questions they ask that helps to inform the data, such as; Which combinations of class and community engagement matter the most, for whom? What type of support is essential in what format for whom at what time? Who leaves, why, and do they return? How does the campus support development of the whole person? Olschwang highlighted an article from EdSource that looked at just retention rates. Out of context, it doesn’t give any information about where our students come from or the fact that they are the most likely to come from the lowest quintile and they raise up after they complete higher quintiles and their socioeconomic status and achieve academic mobility in numbers that weren’t expected. We’re trying to get data on the table to have that narrative. These kind of stories don’t mention any of that. EDUCAUSE Survey – Olschwang noted that this week there’s a survey coming out which will help them understand what faculty need, what do they have, and understand students use of IT in learning. This will also help benchmark with other campuses across the country. All this data will help shape what’s going on. Q&A/CommentsTalamante asked what are the current dashboards and how do faculty and staff get training on what is already available? Olschwang said there are a set of dashboards that are already available that use live PeopleSoft Data. They’re available to TT and NTT faculty. If you’re interested in looking at that you can look by program, it tells you who is in your application funnel. If you want to send a note to the data request office, she will get faculty set up and provide some training. The other data based on census for program review are going to come live in a few weeks once the new server comes in. She said she will be sending out information about it in a few weeks. Celly asked how do they get access as faculty. Olschwang said because it’s PeopleSoft data it is tied to your role. She said she would provide a link to a form for faculty to be able to access. Senator Park asked for non-trained people, can they continue to receive the kind of support in terms of data analysis and aggregating certain data sets. Olswang said they’re working at creating infrastructures for that so that if you have a report you want all the time, they can look at producing it regularly for you. She said their office is in WH 363 across from HR. They’re happy to have regular meetings with faculty about data they may have, or reports faculty may want produced. They’re doing a certificate program and a data fellows program which would be a longer term thing where we can work with people on projects and get more comfortable with the data. They will be looking at workshop time down the line, where you could bring wherever it is you want support. Retreat Report Backs: GE Table, Pat Kalayjian, Chair of General Education Committee She reviewed the questions that were given at the Spring Senate Retreat including What is GE which elicited a few responses such as the components of a student’s education that adds breadth. Students need to take GE because it provides them with a wide range of perspectives and allows them to explore disciplines they may otherwise not sample. GE plays multiple roles, one is to produce well-rounded students and to develop universal skills and develop some over time. The following was a bit more of a controversial question, “how do departments determine which GE classes to offer?” People felt that GE was a little more flexible now than it was in the past. Faculty were feeling encouraged to propose new courses that allowed them to teach their passions. Also, people felt that departments differed in the way they chose what classes to offer for GE. In some cases, faculty felt that the GE courses were important to their department, and were given high priority in terms of who taught them. And in other cases, some felt they were really low priority courses for their departments and that they were there to get FTEs. Often these courses were assigned at a lower priority. Additionally, they’re often adjunct faculty who are taught to teach these classes. Connections between GE and major and minor courses. It was generally felt that the GE courses were really valuable to students. That they brought new ideas into major courses because students had taken classes in other departments and other fields. For Science majors it gives them the opportunity to explore the liberal arts and for liberal arts students it ensures that they have somewhat of a working knowledge of the basis of the sciences, scientific method and so on. Lastly, the question, why is GE important to student success on campus. General educational development was expressed, foundational skills, people talked about life long learning. This report put together the most commonly commented ideas. If you did not hear your view included, it may not be represented, as Kalayjian said she kind of went for the center. What she said she learned from these discussions. One was that faculty felt that student exposure to GE classes added enriched discussions. Students are exposed to a wider range of other students in their GE courses then they might in their major classes, it provides exposure to different perspectives and ideas. Kalayjian said that the last idea what was expressed is that faculty know pretty well what GE is for, but sometimes our student do not and we might find different ways to communicate it. There were some ideas on how we might better let students know about the value of GE, why they’re taking those classes and what they might get out of them. Gray Shellberg commented on the notion that you might have you’re least qualified in a department to teach. She said as a university we could do a better job about what front loading does and why it’s so important to have you’re most articulate and enthusiastic professors teach the general studies courses. In those courses, Gray Shellberg, there needs to be a recommendation that the professors talk about transferrable skills. Letting our students know that they may be changing careers, perhaps lots of times during their lifetime and the skills that they need most such as writing, will help them land on their feet if they have those transferrable skills. She said she would be interested in having some sort of effort to talk about the importance of GE courses as the foundation of their education and the pathway into where they’re going. Talamante said there will be some upcoming GE Focus Groups that are going to survey our students and ask them some similar questions that came out of the retreat. All of the things that Gray Shellberg are asking are happening to help us move forward.Statewide GE Task Force Report discussion: Talamante walked the Senate through some of the background of the report. She said as Senate Chair she was contacted last year about the work of the group and an interim report on their activities; questions regarding when they were going to do further consultation reaching out to different stakeholders. This was back in April 2018 and she was told them by one of the co-chairs, Christine Miller, and former CSU Senate Chair, that that was all in the plans and they would be doing so. Talamante said she contacted the current chair, Catherine Nelson, when the GE Task Force report came out, just forwarding the communication she had gotten last year about reaching out to the different campuses and stakeholders. Talamante read the response from Co-Chairs Olman and Miller.“The March 2018 report to the ASCSU solicit feedback and every instance of it was passed on to the task force no matter when it was received and in October 2018 they repeated the process, providing a report and soliciting feedback which was all forwarded to the Task Force. So when the March report said we anticipate repeating this process at several points in time, we did so in October and plan to do so and several more times. The Task Force had every intention of enacting its communication plan which included posting further updates if necessary up until the point of releasing our draft report, whereupon we were going to set up meetings with both individual campuses, consult widely and make adjustments to our recommendations report prior to releasing it. As you know those circumstances beyond our control intervened e.g. among other factors, campus responses to EO1100 revised slowed our work and it became clear that we didn’t have the capacity to enact our communication plan. So the rightful place for further consultation is ASCSU, and that’s where the situation stands.”Talamante went over the basic details of the report. She said she’s asked the Dean of Undergraduate, Kim Costino and the Chair of the GEC to chime in as well. Talamante referenced page 8 of the Task Force Report: She noted that it highlights that there is a reorganization of the categories which include written communication, oral communication, critical thinking, quantitative reasoning, what is referred to as the Golden 4, which are 12 semester unit. Then there are Disciplinary Perspectives which are 15 semester units, which are Areas B, C. & D. She said each discipline would get three units. Arts – 1 three unit class, Humanities – 1 three unit class, Life Science the same, and Physical Science and Social Science the same. Moving units into a new area called Cross Cutting Values which include Diversity and Social Justice, Democracy in the U.S. and Global Awareness and Civic Engagement. Part of the recommendations of the Task Force is that there be no university requirements that stand outside of GE, that everything should be built in to GE. American Institutions required by Title V, would have to move into GE and would now be called Democracy in the U.S. The report emphasizes, while Title V lays out what should be in U.S. History and learning about the Constitution, it never says an amount of units. But, we have traditionally across the CSUs had a U.S. History survey class and a Political Science survey class to cover the American Institutions requirement. That would now be Democracy in the U.S.. The cross-cutting values one of the areas in the report that they see individual that each individual CSU would have the ability to give these courses their unique character and values. The same with the integrative experiences which they would reduce to six semester units. The whole package would go from 48 units to 42 units. Some are in favor of this and some are not, as she learned at the CSU Senate Chairs meeting. The integrative experiences would no longer be by category. They encourage the use of those courses to create pathways for connections between lower division GE and kind of synthesizing those skills in upper division classes. One of the models that they used from the CSU was from Chico. The chair of that Senate was at our meeting last week. He said about 10% of their students follow the GE minor or pathways. It’s not that all students are following that model but that some students are following it. The inclusion of GE minors or GE certificate programs is that they would help students become more invested in GE and see more purpose in the courses that they’re taking. The Chair of Chico State didn’t know that if the minors were really what we would think of minors. She said a point of contention within their discussions is that the report seemed pretty clear that they don’t want to do any double counting. We discussed that last week in the Senate Executive Committee, and that goes counter to EO1100 revised which says you have to count everything. She said a lot of what she’s heard so far is we haven’t fully recovered from adapting to Executive Orders 1100 and 1110. There would be possibly rebellion should this be put upon the CSU campuses with a May presentation to the Board of Trustees and a July implementation. There were no Board of Trustees members at our meeting last week, but there was the Chair of the ASCSU. She reassured us from the ASCSU, that was not their plan at all and that this would be a very long process of getting feedback from the CSUs. Occasionally there were voices that said, that “you know if we don’t cooperate with these Task Force recommendations that the Chancellor's Office will say we tried consultation and now we’re just going to implement it. Talamante commented you can get the sense of some of the tensions that were at the meeting. Talamante asked if Senator Monty had been able to locate the original resolution that put the Task Force together. There has been discussion that this doesn’t actually fulfill what they were tasked to do. Senator Monty said he has access to it somewhere, but he’s not been able to find it. He said there had been a link within the report but the link does not seem to be working. Talamante said when they find it, they will share it. She said she’s asked the Deans and Associate Deans to send forward feedback on the proposed changes. She’s also asked the chairs of the EPC, FPC, the General Education Committee to look at the report and provide feedback. The Senate Chairs intend to gather campus-wide feedback and put it together to look at the themes across the system to strengthen their response. Q&A/CommentsSenator Monty said he will be speaking at some length about it and begs everyone’s indulgence. He encouraged everyone to read it, commenting that it is a disturbing document. He is recommending that this body pass a Sense of the Senate resolution rejecting this document and instructing the ASCSU to do the same. He said three general type that he has with the report. One is the process. He said it was his understanding that it included a very small number of CSU faculty, maybe 5. Therefore there was inadequate representation of all the campuses from different disciplines. Monty said he would describe the way they operated as a “star chamber”. The agenda and minutes are not available online. When a group of historians attempted to engage the Task Force with its work to provide them with assessment data for American Institutions United States history courses, they were told that the Task Force wasn’t interested in their data. Monty said they then submitted a public records request to the Chancellor's Office of which there’s been no response so far. The deliberations were held behind closed doors. After the public records request was filed, two Fullerton faculty attempted to attend the Task Force’s last meeting. They were forcibly removed from the Chancellor's Office. This is unacceptable, a total lack of transparency and a total lack of consultation. Monty said he understands that there was a plan to consult. He said the body was empaneled in November 2016 and began its work in March 2017. The message or the outreach to Chair Talamante in April 2018. That’s a full year of activity and they made no efforts to consult with campuses and no outreach efforts. The outreach efforts they refer to afterwards, he has no knowledge of it. The methodology of the report is very flawed. They claim to have made an effort to make data driven decisions, but there is no data. Instead, we’re faced with assumptions. The common prevailing assumption that GE is an obstacle to student success. That existing curricula programs and faculty resistance to innovation are the reasons we can move the needle on student success. No data whatsoever is provided to substantiate these claims. That GE in it’s current from in the CSU is not working. But that’s their starting point. Monty said that’s additional evidence of bad faith. He said he objects to it as well is the recommendations of the work of the GE Task Force if implemented would keep us running around in circles, examining and reexamining and modifying our curriculum, distracting us from the real problems that do limit the effectiveness of GE. Large class sizes; the fact that we do have to rely on contingent faculty who are not adequately supported; lack of needed student support services. As long as we’re debating GE, we’re not pressuring the Chancellor's Office on those items and those are more important. There are the recommendations themselves. They’re somewhat contradictory, they seem to contradict some of the stipulations in EO1100. On one hand, they want to cut units, on the other hand they want to eliminate double counting, which is also somewhat puzzling. They champion pathways, but then want to eliminate double-counting when double-counting, in its way, is a pathway. Monty exclaimed that additionally that they can collapse the American Institutions into one three unit requirement is laughable. 1061 EDCO is California law, saying that students must meet American Institutions requirements and show competence in local government and American history. They’re right that it doesn’t specify explicitly 6 units, but there are two subheadings. A. Courses in American history must satisfy the following criteria; and B. Courses in American and California local government must meet the following criteria. Pretending that they can change this without impacting EDCO is, Monty said, a slight of hand. Senator Macias noted that with the Liberal Studies, in her department they have a major concern with elimination of double counting. There’s two specific reasons. They do provide a pathways into a career for our students, is if they need a subject matter waiver through our program by doing this coursework? In K-12, it means they don’t have to take the C-Set which a daunting expensive test that is a barrier for many of our students. So they meet that requirement through coursework and eliminating the double counting would be a problem there. The other option that would be impacted is that we have a new integrative program that allows our students to basically start their credential log in as an undergrad which allow them a faster access into their career at lower cost. That’s a great option for many of our students that’s new and would be greatly impacted. Sanford said he wished to lend support to what Senator Monty described. We should reject this on its face. If people were forcibly removed from the Chancellor's Office because they wanted to find out a little bit about how this was being done; if only five faculty from across the CSUs were part of this Task Force, that’s enough to say that the best interest of our students and the faculty are not being considered. This is not about what the students need, this is not about what the faculty are trying to do. Sanford said as far as the recommendations go, if they’re going to keep us chasing our tails and not getting anywhere and giving the Chancellor's Office and other administrative bodies the ability to ignore the fact that both tenure track and non tenure track faculty need more support than their getting. He said he’s repeatedly proposed programs and been told that they’re not doing that anymore, the faculty are supposed to do it all. Sanford commented that not every faculty on this campus is supposed to be an expert on how learning works. He said he is certified in coaching, he knows how it works. He said he’s repeatedly advocated for an academic coaching program to be tied to the teaching and learning center and been told that the Chancellor's Office is not interested in that. We’re not going to set up a different place for students to go, we need to create places for students to go with professionals that can help them. Senator Celly shared a narrative about her father’s reaction to a photograph she shared with him of a Board of Trustees meeting. What her father noticed was that there was an armed police officer with his hand on his holster. He wondered aloud to her, why there would be an armed police officer in the room where there are faculty and Trustee members engaged in dialogue. Additionally, Celly shared about her experience attending a conference at the AAC&U where Cal State Dominguez Hills was recognized for the work surrounding non-tenure track faculty. She recalled that another attendee there spoke about the importance of Liberal Arts. The question we need to be asking ourselves is what is the long term impact of making the decisions that we don’t know the result of. Celly said it is incumbent of us as educators to fight back and cling to academic freedom that comes with curricula decision making. More recently in May of last year, there was a day spent on the Tenets document, basically it came down to a lack of trust between the Chancellor's Office and the faculty at large across the CSU. Bad faith dressed up as consultation. The need for true consultation is vital for curricula decisions. This is a curricula decision. Celly said some members who are using the EMSI data that Olschwang was speaking to earlier, are actually able to work backwards from what EMSI is saying. These are the demands in the market and this is where you need to be preparing your students. It turns out, Celly said, transferrable skills are vital for employment, in the short-term and possibly the long term. Senator Nicol said she is very angry about this. She said they’re pretending that they want to get students out of here faster by reducing GE, while they still need to get to 120 units. She said she went to a high unit major of biology, at their highest, it’s 84 units to graduate. If you make this change to 42 units in GE, it would end up with 126 units to get done. If we kept the old system it would be 132. In effect, the student would still have to complete an extra semester of classes. There isn’t really a net positive. The other thing that really bothers her is under the disciplinary perspectives, the assumption in this is that students can choose either a lower division or upper division, and how do you scaffold if a student doesn’t take an upper division humanities as well as a lower division humanities. How are you teaching them to write at higher levels if they’re not expected to take classes at higher levels. The other thing is that really bothers her, is she takes issue with the notion that GE contributes to the equity gap. She said that is listed in the report. She said it harkens back to language used by the Chancellor's Office used to use and LAUSD used to use about culturally deficient students. We can’t admit them because they don’t have enough culture in them to make it. The whole idea that we can’t give them too much GE because they can’t handle it. Another thing that bothers her is what impact are these changes going to have on community colleges? They’re going to have to change their curriculum in order to keep up with these changes. Would that impact eventually transfer to our institutions? The report refers to a 2008 mandate that we do an assessment of GE. Where’s the data from CSU Fullerton? Where’s the data from these institutions siding that GE is fundamentally flawed enough to consider getting rid of this. Lastly, the integrative experience category boggles the mind. It doesn’t say in there whatsoever anything about integration of content. It says integration of skills. Where is the disciplinary content in there? This is going to become a free for all for everybody who doesn’t fit into the first three categories. It becomes a unit grab. Nicol said it bothers her greatly that they would come to us with and call it a data driven solution and they didn’t consult any of our data, there is data around the CSU. Senator Esposito recommends that rather than flat out rejecting it, why not state what we find that is positive in it. She would like to recommend that we identify how many majors on our campus use double counting. She said that the Chancellor's Office has invested a lot of money in the development of these I-tech programs. She said she has a hard time believing that they would like to see all of that work go by the wayside. We should present a unified force on this is what we don’t agree with, but then also say there are probably are some good things. She said since she’s been on this campus, all she’s heard about is that we do need to look at our GE package. She said there probably are some positives. She’s served on that committee and knows that they are very well intentioned and ethical so she would like to recommend that we identify what is good and identify how many majors use double counting and use that as a step forward. Talamante requested that everyone follow up on that in written feedback to the Academic Senate office so we can collate that and use that to represent the voice of the campus. Spagna said that the Dean of Undergraduate Studies and he are with us arm and arm on this. He noted that as he’s said on multiple occasions, our work has to be student centered and faculty driven. We’re here to support you. He’s never seen a Task Force Report that refers to data and there is no data here. He said there are unintended consequences all over the place and that there’s not even a connection with this that you would dismantle and increase the teacher shortage in this state by implementing this, as we’ve already heard from our colleague in Liberal Studies. Senate Retreat Report Back: PTEs, FPC Chair K. Pinto Pinto said this did stem from some of the PTE emails that we received from Faculty Affairs and mentioned that there was a report from Interim AVP Hill about that. Part of what the table on PTE’s thought they would do is discuss what are the goals of PTEs are. What inevitability did happen is they spoke about how people felt about PTEs. One of the things ideally said was that PTEs would be good to really learn about how to improve classes, and how to give feedback to faculty on teaching. What we know they’re really used for is evaluating faculty in the RTP process. Pinto noted that an ideal goal in evaluation would be to improve student learning. She noted what we have right now, isn’t really leading to that circle in assessment on getting feedback and then closing the loop on the feedback that they get back from the PTEs. She said they questioned how do those students benefit in assessing their learning experience and what questions might better facilitate such goals. Faculty suggested better questions they could ask. The feeling is that the PTEs don’t necessarily evaluate teaching effectiveness, more like what are the students feelings about a professor and their connection with them and their personality. She noted that they don’t necessarily have factual questions. Other feedback was how do we put PTEs back into departments so that departments might be able to generate questions that are a better measure what it means to be an effective teacher in that specific department. Another thing that came up in terms of closing the loop is, right now PTEs really work for tenure track faculty but not non-tenure track faculty who don’t have the same opportunity to discuss what these comments are that they get. They’re really isn’t a way for non-tenure track faculty to close the loop to address these comments. Finally, we did talk a little bit about what could be some possible solutions or next steps here and possible ways to improve response rates. – Incentives from the university for students to complete the PTEs. Maybe students could access grades after the PTEs. Or more positively, offering gift cards or raffles based on a high response rate. There was also discussion on some of the processes of how these PTEs are administered. How do we ensure that active students vs. inactive students are actually getting the PTEs. Some faculty mentioned that sometimes its students that may have attended the class once and then dropped out but are still on the roster. Lastly, how do we use the PTEs in the RTP process? A lot of the issues we discussed around PTEs really do matter in terms of where you are in the tenure track process. Assistant Professors right now are really affected by this followed by Associate Professors and then everybody else that is using these to evaluate their colleagues and trying to use them in ways to give their colleagues feedback on their teaching. Meeting adjourned. ................
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