CHAPARRAL

Of course, when Dr. Lindsay took over as president, this opened up the position of the Vice President of Instructional Services. As you no doubt know, Dr. Mary Mirch, formerly Associate Dean of Health Services, became the acting Vice President. (What’s the difference between acting and interim? I am told that an acting administrator is filling in for a temporary absence, while an interim administrator is in place until a new person can be hired.) The upshot is that of the top four administrative positions, three are filled on a temporary basis. While this is something new for Glendale College, around the state this is a normal occurrence.

The college’s leadership change of the past three years has exposed some problematic areas, to my mind. The first area has to do with the evaluation of the superintendent/president. We do not have a formal, systematic, and well-developed policy about how the president is to be evaluated. (Board Policy 4315 makes a passing reference in one sentence to the evaluation of the president.) The Campus Executive committee has begun to consider a new Board policy on evaluation. I will ask the Senate Executive committee in the fall to consider proposing to the Senate an administrative regulation to specify the process further, including faculty and staff input. Along these same lines, formalizing the leadership survey, which has been done for the past two years on an annual basis, may also be helpful.

Another area that needs some thought is the process for selecting the interim president. When Dr. Levy’s resignation was announced, a discussion took place in the Campus Executive committee about such a process. I brought a proposal to the Board of Trustees that would have created a committee consisting of faculty, staff, students and administrators. In the course of the discussion, it was apparent that the Trustees felt that, due to the urgency of the situation, they had to make the appointment immediately and declined to adopt the policy which we had recommended. However, the lack of input by campus constituencies resulted in considerable frustration. Indeed, the unifying thread for both the selection process and the evaluation of the president is the constituencies' desire for input into Board of Trustee decisions about the superintendent/president.

In a related vein, by the time the fall semester begins, the college’s response to the technical assistance report from last semester should be underway. You may recall that one of the recommendations of the technical assistance team was that we invite facilitators to conduct workshops on communications between the Board of Trustees, administration, faculty and staff. In August, preparatory meeting began, and it is likely that a campus-wide forum will take place in early fall to promote better understanding about governance roles.

Meanwhile the Senate will reconvene, with its first meeting September 3 (in Los Robles 105 at 1:15 p.m.). Items on its fall agenda include:

• Defining what a program is for purposes of developing Student Learning Outcomes
   

• Acting on reports from task forces on:
  - Enhancing the pilot training program
  - Quality in distance education

Later in the semester, we expect other reports including task forces on:

• A middle college high school on campus

• Graduation requirements

• Revision of the tenure track process

We are still in the formative stages of creating a joint task force with Los Angeles City College for creating an instructional services agreement for their Atwater Village campus.

The Senate will also continue to monitor the ongoing process of board policies and administrative regulations revision. In addition to pursuing policies on the evaluation of the president, it also is possible that the Senate will recommend incorporating the Governance document and the Mutual Gains document as administrative regulations.

This year’s Academic Senate Roster.

Feel free to drop in on the Senate, which meets the first and third Thursdays of the month at 1:15 p.m. at Los Robles.

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