CHAPARRAL

The pace of action by the Academic Senate picked up dramatically in the latter part of the fall.  Decisions affecting faculty from hiring to firing and from their syllabi to their relationship to the Board of Trustees have either been acted upon or will be shortly.  A summary of the main decisions and proposals follows below.

     The adjunct hiring policy which the Senate and the Academic Affairs committee agreed to in the spring of 2007 was also approved by Campus Executive and became Administrative Regulation 4110.1.  (Board policies and administrative regulations may be found online at www.glendale.edu/policies&regulations/index.htm)

  This new policy regularizes the selection process of adjunct faculty primarily by means of Adjunct Faculty Hiring committees at the division or unit level.  The structure of the hiring committees, the screening of applications, the interviewing and selection process, and emergency hiring are all addressed.

     Also incorporated into the current Administrative Regulation 6141.7, which covers the course overview or syllabus that faculty are required to hand out to all students, are two new statements which faculty must include on their syllabi.  The first is the syllabus disability statement.  Syllabi must now include the following statement:  “All students with disabilities requiring accommodations are responsible for making arrangements in a timely manner through the Center for Students with Disabilities.”  The intent here is to place the responsibility for such arrangements with students, rather than faculty. 

     The second addition is the specification of the student learning outcome(s) for the course.  The accreditation standards require the college to maintain a record of the SLOs for all courses.  This left us with two choices:  put them on the official course outline or on the individual overview/syllabus.  The Senate opted for the latter, since the whole idea behind student learning outcomes is to experiment with them and adjust them after analysis.  Such changes are more easily accomplished on the syllabus than on the official course outline (changes for the latter have to go through the Curriculum and Instruction committee.)  It was also hoped that by putting them on the syllabus, the notion that SLOs should be firmly in the hands of faculty actually teaching the course would be reinforced.

Both the syllabus disability statement and the student learning outcomes specified for the course should be on faculty syllabi by the summer term of 2008.

     Other recent actions or considerations include:

· A contribution was made to the scholarship fund established in the memory of Sally Black, professor of nursing and a senator.

· The Mutual Gains document was revised with regard to accreditation.  The Mutual Gains document is an agreement between the Senate and the Academic Affairs committee about the division of labor between the two groups in academic and professional areas.  The amendment, agreed to by Academic Affairs, assigns primary responsibility for overseeing accreditation to the Senate.

· The Senate continues to give input to the many new or revised Board policies that the Board of Trustees has been considering.  Before the policies go to the Board they are first examined at meetings of the Campus Executive committee.  They then appear on the Board’s agenda, which may be found at www.glendale.edu/boardoftrustees/meetingschedule.htm

· A possible revision of the timeline for the tenure process is being explored.

· The Senate will be discussing possible changes to this year’s commencement exercises, including the presentation and timing of the awards to faculty.

· The Senate voted to re-establish the College Services Hiring Allocation Committee, which prioritizes faculty hiring in Student Services.

· A joint committee with Academic Affairs was established to explore an enhanced role for the Senate in the curriculum process.

· The Senate endorsed changes to the Flex procedure.  You can find the revised Flex Manual at www.glendale.edu/staff-development/

     In the near future, the Senate will be considering the following:

· Approving the proposed chairs of the four Accreditation Standards committees.

· Defining the Senate’s relationship with the Board of Trustees in a new Board policy.  This policy will probably also define the relationship of the Guild, CSEA, ASGCC, and the administration to the Board as well.

· Reconvening the Core Competencies task force to define institutional student learning outcomes.

· A motion urging the district not to cancel a class with at least 10 students until the class meets in the first week.

· Considering a report on Environmentalism across the Curriculum.

· Taking up the Division Chair Strengthening task force report once again, which includes a proposal to create an evaluation instrument for Division Chairs.

     There is bound to be something on this list that gladdens your heart or makes your blood boil.  Hopefully that will move you to some kind of action, whether it be bending the ear of your senator or running for the Senate itself.  Spring semester will see elections for division and at-large senators.  The quality of representation in the Senate is crucial for our college, so give serious thought about who best will represent the faculty. And that might even be you. &

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