Spring

Resolution 13.04, “A Document in Support of an Academic Culture,” adopted at the Fall 2007 plenary session, asked the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (Academic Senate) to “create a document that sets out the basic elements of a higher education institution, particularly within California’s community college system.” Addressing this resolution prompts a wider reflection on the role of educational institutions within their historical and social contexts.

This paper responds to Resolution 9.05 Fall 2007, calling for an update of the Academic Senate’s 1996 paper Program Review: Developing a Faculty Driven Process in the light of recent accreditation changes and other emerging issues. This paper has been written to expand on the best elements of the 1996 paper and to stand on its own without requiring that readers also review the earlier paper. Program review has evolved substantially since the development of that paper. Individuals and institutions engage in program review for a variety of reasons.

This paper considers noncredit instruction in the California Community College System. Noncredit students pay no enrollment fees and normally receive no college credit or official course grades. State apportionment funding is provided for noncredit instruction in specified areas (see Appendix A). The paper identifies three related concepts: a state need for increased levels of education that noncredit instruction is well placed to supply, several changes that begin to facilitate that response, and additional changes that are needed to ensure success.

The following report offers California community college faculty a closer look at contextualized teaching and learning (CTL) as a promising set of strategies and practices that can be expanded through the state’s Basic Skills Initiative. The report is relevant to a range of instructional and counseling faculty, including academic and career and technical education (CTE), Mathematics, English and English as a Second Language (ESL) instructors, as well as to basic skills staff and administrators.

This position paper of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) examines issues of educational technology that involve policy and implementation matters important to local academic senates. In particular it includes current information regarding separate curriculum review and instructor-student contact. In general, this paper summarizes and updates three earlier ASCCC papers on technology in education. It suggests a variety of effective practices in educational technology and considers appropriate college governance structures that will facilitate planning.

Assigning grades to student work, both during the academic term and as a summation of a stu-dent's mastery of subject matter, is a longstanding practice in all levels of education, from kin-dergarten through graduate and professional studies. Recently, a variety of factors have brought the criteria for assigning, and the resulting distribution of letter grades under heightened scrutiny.

In 2007, the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges adopted the paper Sabbaticals: Benefiting Faculty, The Institution, and Students. Based in part on survey results, it reiterated the fundamental value of the sabbatical leave concept, but uncovered wide disparities in implementation among California's community colleges.

Curriculum is at the core of any educational endeavor, and the course outline of record plays a central role both internal and external to the California Community College System. This update to the original Academic Senate paper Components of a Model Course Outline of Record also incorporates material from the previously published Academic Senate papers Stylistic Considerations in Writing Course Outlines of Record and Good Practices for Course Approvals.

Sabbatical leave has a long and distinguished history in academe, both at universities and community colleges. By virtue of its traditional benefit to professors, institutions, and students, sabbaticals may appropriately be considered as a "right" by the professoriate. Even so, during statewide budgetary crises, sabbatical leave was temporarily suspended at some California community colleges. This situation prompted a resolution instructing the Academic Senate to develop a document in support of sabbaticals.

This Academic Senate paper is in response to two resolutions from Fall 2005 concerning academic dishonesty. One resolution, 14.02, "Student Cheating," sought clarification on a System Office legal position that limits the ability of local faculty to fail a student for a single incident of academic dishonesty, and pending the result of clarification, to seek an appropriate Title 5 change.