Present: Marilyn Dyer, Betsy Boze, Farhat Iftekharudin, Doug Ferrier,
Jim Holt, Wayne Lewis, Ray Rodrigues--presiding
Guest: Joe Binder
1. University Experience Course Update: Joe Binder was present to review
the history of the University Experience Course, discuss its current
status, and discuss future directions.
The course began in 1992-3 with Ethel Cantu leading the faculty.
Typically, 14 or 15 courses are offered, with a budget of about $48,000
a year. We have typically had about 350-400 students, with 25 per
section. One or two sections have been offered in the summer. The course
has been optional for students.
Originally, we had a 3 hour course and a 1 hour course. The 1 hour
course was dropped when we lost the one faculty member teaching it.
The
State will only reimburse us for one hour, regardless of how many
credits the course is.
This year, we intended to require the course of all developmental
students who had to take three developmental courses. But this process
failed because we were unable to install the blocks required to
accomplish it. The blocks we did have in place kept other students
out
of the course, and even though we removed them when we realized what
was
happening, we dropped by 130 students this fall. For the spring, we
have
no blocks. We still need to have blocks installed appropriately if
we
intend that developmental students take this course.
Textbooks: We abandoned the best-known text by Gardner because its
reading level was too difficult for our students. We are very pleased
with the current text, in part because it has excellent supplementary
materials.
STCC requires the course of all their students, and they use community
members to teach the sections, paying them their adjunct rate. They
invited our instructors to their training session taught by the
publisher of the textbook, the same that we use. Two of our faculty
(Vivian Permenter and Julie Larsen) attended, as did 7 other instructors
of the course. Joe described it as excellent training.
Has the course been effective in retaining students? Ethel Cantu's
report, with Chris Vinger doing the research, was inconclusive. The
immediate retention of students was better, but there was not long
term
retention difference.
Can we require the course for all incoming students? Can we use
administrators as guest instructors who might not be available at all
times? Joe reported that they have used guest lecturers, but no one
knew
whether having different instructors who came in at different times
would be beneficial, since the main benefit is having one faculty member
that the students could rely upon. So we still might need one faculty
member per section.
Ray asked Joe to work with Carolyn Green to determine what scheduling
and funding would be required to have the course required of all
students in the Fall.
2. University Plan Cohort Registration and Retention: Sylvia and José
were out of town on various assignments and so could not report on
their
cohorts. Farhat reported that, in Fine Arts, 5 of the 15 students had
registered. 5 had financial aid blocks, 1 had a TASP block (unknown
how
that was allowed to happen), and one had a block for a loan. 4 students
had disappeared from the count because they did not enroll in cohort
classes. The Financial Aid blocks seem to have occurred because course
fees were not billed when the students enrolled, but were applied after
they had registered.
Farhat reported that Education cohort students were returning 21 of
the
30 students. Ray will ask the other deans for more details on why the
students who are not returning are not returning.
3. Evaluation of Department Chairs: Because the Chancellor had indicated
that we were a school that did not evaluate department chairs, Ray
had
asked Permian Basis for their evaluation procedures. The members
reviewed the materials that Permian Basis provided us and decided that
they were not appropriate for us. However, they did believe we should
have faculty evaluate the department chairs, and so Betsy will work
with
other deans to develop a proposal and methodology. We intend to
correlate this with the HOOP on roles and responsibilities of chairs.
We
will also continue our investigation of developing department heads.
3. Revision of TSC Endowment Scholarship: Ray reviewed the revised
requirements and informed the members that Student Affairs would hire
a
person to promote the Endowment Scholarship using a Counseling Center
line.
That led to questions about what Institutional Advancement was doing
to
raise scholarship money and questions about what Institutional
Advancement was working on in general. The deans requested that
Margarita Roque be invited to the Deans' Council to discuss
Institutional Advancement goals, projects, and proposed ways of working
with the Deans.
4. HEAF Requests: Wayne Lewis distributed the current draft of computer
needs that could be met by HEAF. The deans made recommendations on
how
to improve the priority listing.
5. USA Today Nominations: Ray requested that faculty nominate students
for the USA Today awards for outstanding students.
6. Palo Alto Battlefield Opportunities: Jim Holt noted the opportunities
for internships for our students and encouraged the deans to contact
either him or Superintendent Vela to work out internships with the
National Park Service.
A ribbon-cutting ceremony will be held at the Palo Alto visitor center
site on December 5 at about 11 a.m. Everyone is invited.