April 20, 2016 AS Council Minutes
Taft College Academic Senate Council Minutes
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Cafeteria Conference Room
Members Present: President Geoffrey Dyer, Vice President Vicki Jacobi, Kamala Carlson, Bill Devine, Juana Escobedo, Tori Furman, Greg Golling, Dan Hall, Mike Jiles, Tony Thompson, Don Thornsberry, and Victoria Waugh.
Guests: Jennifer Altenhofel, Kelly Kulzer-Reyes, Michelle Oja, and Brandy Young
The meeting was called to order at 12:04 PM.
Public Commentary
- No public commentary was offered.
Approval of March 16, 2016 Meeting
- Melissa Thornsberry’s name was inadvertently added to the list of Council members present. Melissa was not in attendance at the March 16 meeting, nor is she a member of this council.
- Mike made a motion to approve the removal of Melissa’s name from the March 16th Don seconded the motion and the motion carried.
Administrative Procedure for SLOs (Jacobi)
- The board policy that the senate wrote received an approval of its second reading at the last board meeting. That document authorizes us to work in consultation with the Superintendent/President to create Administrative Procedures for Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs).
- Vicki took all of the feedback that we gave her at the last meeting and synthesized that and sent it back out to the Student Learning Outcomes Academic Steering Committee (SLOASC). The SLOASC made a few more small changes.
- In Administrative Procedures, the focus is on what the institution will do.
- Mike Jiles moved to approve this AP with the changes made to it, as is. Kamala seconded the motion and it passed. This will now go before the Academic Senate of the whole.
Open Educational Resources (Dyer)
- Colleges can apply to receive $50,000 in one-time funds if the adopt Open Educational Resources in at least 10 sections of Fall 2016 courses, designate a Textbook Affordability Campus Coordinator, ensure that paper copies can be made available for students who do not have access to the Internet. The plan for this effort would have to be passed by the Academic Senate by June 30th. Once in place, the college would have to prove that they saved at least 30 percent of the textbook costs for the students in the 10 sections that used the OER.
- Even though the statewide Senate passed a resolution last spring endorsing AB798, and even though this topic is near and dear to Geoffrey’s heart, and that Shoshana came to our AS meeting in December to seek our endorsement of this bill, Geoffrey, Terri, and Dan came to the realization that we will not be able to make the curriculum changes quickly enough to make applying for this grant feasible. In addition, many people who are teaching the courses that already have CID course resources available are also the people who are adopting Canvas. We would be asking these faculty to not only change the way they teach but to also change the curricular resources they use for teaching.
- At the area meeting that Geoffrey attended early in the month, Statewide Senate president, David Morris informed the local senates that there is a workgroup involving representation from the statewide senate, the League, and also students to explore other ways to help colleges transition into OER besides AB798 funding.
- Mike made the motion to evaluate the quality of existing OER while exploring possibilities to adopt OER in the future through the use of a taskforce from the senate. Tori seconded the motion and the motion carried.
Annual Program Review Documents (Young)
Identifying Programs for Program Review (Young)
Criteria for Ranking Faculty Position Requests (Aletnhofel, Kulzer, Oja)
Title 5 §53203(f): Committee Appointments (Dyer)
Academic Senate Faculty Recognition Awards (Dyer)
Respectfully submitted by Dan Hall.