CHAPARRAL

Passing the baton

     My two years as Senate president have been a challenging, sometimes frustrating, ultimately gratifying growth experience.  Serving as Senate president has strengthened my faith in our governance process, and reaffirmed my conviction that our faculty and staff are a very professional, caring group. Despite my dedication to the Senate, and six consecutive years of service on Senate Executive, I have many other professional promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.  Amongst the new promises are our recently awarded NSF MASTER grant (www.glendale.edu/master), which will occupy much of my time the next four years as principal investigator, devoting more time to my deepest passion—teaching mathematics, and continuing as the Science Lecture Series coordinator.  While I will still be on Senate Executive as past president, and will serve the Senate as a senator-at-large, it is now time to pass the baton to our new Senate president, Dr. John Queen.

     When Arlene Guillen, our Governance Officer of many years standing, left her position in December of 2005 for greener and colder pastures in Denver, I was left without a full-time assistant for almost six months; it was relatively early in my Senate presidency and I still was not feeling very confident.  Those months were tough, despite Arlene’s remote assistance and the availability of quality student help.  I was beginning to feel that we would never find someone to fill Arlene’s shoes; fortunately, we finally did.  After months of interviewing governance officer candidates, we found the right person toward the end of the spring 2006 semester.  Frankie Strong, our new governance officer, more than fit the criteria for the job.  Her intelligence, wonderful personality, and strong work ethic completely filled the void left by Arlene.  I was amazed at how quickly Frankie got “up to speed” on the job.  Frankie, I’ll miss my day-to-day work with you; the friendship we cultivated will continue to enrich my life.

     I’ll also miss this year’s Senate Executive and Senate.  If I succeeded in guiding the Senate and helping it to accomplish significant goals, it was largely due to an incredibly hard working, dedicated, passionate Senate Executive and Senate.  First Vice President Mike Wheeler became our institution’s expert on Minimum Qualifications and Equivalences, and served as co-chair of C & I.  Mike did a stellar job making certain that our college hired only qualified individuals to fill teaching positions; in deliberations on equivalencies to minimum qualifications, Mike made wise, compassionate decisions.  Second Vice President Joe Denhart monitored the status of our task forces, served on a number of committees, and was the moral leader of Senate Executive; in heated discussions, Joe was always the voice of calm reason; a person like Joe comes once in a lifetime.  Deborah Moore, our secretary, constantly had the minutes done in a timely manner, and brought a number of academic and professional issues to the table; she was always passionate and informed about the Senate’s role in academic and professional matters.  Rob Mauk, our treasurer extraordinaire, kept our finances in order, helped to establish endowments, and was the most outspoken of our group; I always appreciated his candid responses to issues.  Elizabeth Fremgen, our budget representative, was our watchdog on the Budget Committee, working hard to keep the Administration fiscally honest; her good sense of humor and insightful comments were always deeply appreciated.  And John Queen, our president-elect, shared his wisdom from having previously served as Senate president. John’s calm demeanor and thorough deliberations on issues were always welcome.  I am genuinely grateful for the intellectual and emotional support I had from my Executive team. I will truly miss them.  And I am equally grateful for the hard work the Senate did the last two years.

     My fellow senators the last two years unselfishly gave their precious time and energy to debate important academic and professional issues, and formulate policies to make our institution a better place for faculty and students.  Despite the natural tendency to take parochial positions on issues, most senators took a global perspective regarding what was ultimately best for our institution.  I will miss the lively debates we had during Senate meetings.  However, I won’t miss the prevalence of “word-smithing” during meetings. I only hope that future senates are as hard working and dedicated as our senates the last two years.

     The Senate accomplished much the past two years.  Among the accomplishments were the Exceptional Adjunct Faculty Award, the Senate brochure, the Mutual Gains Document, Core Competencies, policies on college transition, distance and hybrid learning criteria, an instructional adjunct hiring policy, a document on ways to increase faculty sensitivity to cultural diversity and methods to recruit and retain a culturally diverse faculty, a Student Learning Outcomes task force and coordinator, a policy on mentoring adjunct faculty, a document on ways to increase faculty participation in shared governance, a task force on helping to transition non-credit students to the credit program, a task force on enhanced faculty orientations, and a task force investigating ways to streamline FLEX. We also established an interdisciplinary coordinator, whose task it is to help create a rich assortment of new courses. We also played a significant role in finding our new college president and vice president of instruction.

     I welcome John Queen, Professor and Chair of Political Science, as the new Academic Senate president.  John is not new to the job.  He served as Senate president from 1998-2000 and has many years of experience teaching at our institution.  We are extremely fortunate to have John take the Senate reins; he is a Senate president with wisdom and institutional memory.  Thus, it will be a smooth transition.

     I have bittersweet feelings about finishing my two years as Senate president.  Overall, I am gratified about what our Senate has accomplished, and that I have passed the baton to very competent hands.

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