2016

On August 22, 2016, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges lost one of its former leaders when Leon Baradat, ASCCC President in 1978-1979 and ASCCC senator emeritus, passed away.

At the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges Spring 2016 Plenary Session, the delegates approved the paper Ensuring Effective Curriculum Approval Processes:  A Guide for Local Senates.   This paper was created to assist curriculum committees, faculty, and other interested stakeholders in streamlining local curriculum approval processes, and it contains a number of effective practices colleges can implement.

(Note: At the Spring 2016 Plenary Session, delegates approved the paper Equivalence to the Minimum Qualifications[1].  This article is adapted from the executive summary of that paper, with edits.)

While all curriculum in the California community colleges is created and approved through the same general process, career technical education faculty face numerous special circumstances with which general education faculty may be unfamiliar.  Many CTE courses lead directly to certification, employment, licensure, or registration. Creating a new CTE course, certificate, or program requires labor market data and approval of the regional consortia. CTE programs regularly hold advisory committee meetings with industry partners and are subject to program review every two years.

For years, many faculty members have relied on proprietary materials provided by publishers.  Ancillaries in the form of overhead maps, test banks, homework labs, and other supporting documents have been crucial for faculty in disciplines ranging from anthropology to women’s studies.  Recently, however, questions have begun to arise regarding the use of proprietary and publisher materials, especially those that seem to supplant the role of the faculty member in the creation of course content.  This issue became a topic of discussion for the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges’

Understanding the differing but sometimes intersecting roles of academic senates and collective bargaining units, or unions, can sometimes take some work, but doing so is essential to developing and maintaining a productive and collegial relationship between the two. Both bodies represent faculty—supporting, furthering, and protecting faculty interests. However, all too often the two bodies find themselves at odds with each other, disagreeing over purview.

Late in September, a piece of legislation became law with little fanfare but with great implications for the humanity and dignity of some of our most at-risk students. Governor Jerry Brown signed into law Assembly Bill 1995 (Williams), which opens the doors, literally, for homeless students to use on-campus shower facilities. Prior to this legislation, students could only use college shower facilities if they were enrolled in a physical education class.

In a recently published policy statement by the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA), the authors admit that despite three decades since “the assessment bandwagon began rolling across the landscape of American higher education the term ‘student learning outcomes assessment’ is still not familiar to either policy makers or to the public.”  The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges, in its 2010 publication Guiding Principles for SLO Assessment, warned about “confusion” and “frustration” felt among faculty resulting from the SLO assessment mandate in

Over the last ten years, many California community colleges have received a sanction of warning, probation, or show cause from the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC), which can create varying forms of panic on college campuses. A sanction from ACCJC means that the commission has determined that the college is not meeting all of the accreditation standards and that at least one issue must be addressed within two years.

On December 19, Long Beach City College President Eloy Ortiz Oakley will begin his tenure as Chancellor for the California Community Colleges. President Oakley has a long history with California community colleges, beginning as a student at Golden West College after serving four years in the United States Army. He then transferred to the University of California, Irvine to complete a Bachelor of Arts in Environmental Analysis and Design and a Master of Business Administration.  Oakley returned to Golden West College as a part-time faculty member in the environmental technology program.