Welcome
Welcome to a new academic year especially to those of you who joined us as new senate presidents at the summer leadership institute in June. We hope that you are enjoying a successful start to your term and that you will rejoin your ever growing support network at our 2006 Fall Plenary Session. Mark your calendars to be in Orange County on October 26 thru 28 at the Fairmont Newport Beach.
We will feature our usual rich mixture of activities and topics: keynote speakers and breakout sessions for beginner and expert. You can talk with colleagues from around the state as you craft resolutions for Saturday s voting session where we debate and adopt policy. We will also hold elections for two vacant positions on Executive Committee.
Our session theme is based on the observation that there s an interesting category of issues in our system and at our colleges call them challenges, call them problems, call them opportunities. But they never quite go away. You may think you ve tinkered with them enough that they ve been solved but then suddenly they re back. Sometimes you ll be having a conversation when a radical new viewpoint will appear and you wonder if a completely different type of solution is possible. And then you wonder if you could possibly convince all your colleagues to give it a try or you fantasize about creating the political environment to get approval for a statewide regulation change that all the constituency groups support.
In New Possibilities: Radical Solutions to Perennial Challenges we ll explore some of these issues, some of the potential solutions, and what it would take to make them happen. We ll try to avoid the out-of- the-box cliché and the management marketing mantra that all change is always good, just for its own sake. But we ll try to ignite a conversation that will resonate throughout the year in the same way that Principles and Pragmatism focused our attention a year ago. As usual the theme will be reflected in our choice of keynote speakers as well as in our breakout sessions.
I m sure you can identify many local issues that behave in this way. Let s add them to the list of statewide examples such as 50% law or 60% law and explore them together.
I encourage you to participate personally in this exploration and to recruit several colleagues from your campus. Share the pre-session materials that will be sent out to you and are also available electronically on the Academic Senate s comprehensive website (www.asccc.org). Discuss issues at your local senate meetings. Meet with regional friends and colleagues at the Area Meetings scheduled for October 13 or 14. Attend the Fall Session itself preferably in the company of others from your campus. Remember that scholarships are available to ensure that every local senate is represented by a voting delegate (contact the Senate Office for details).
On behalf of the Executive Committee I can say that we are all eagerly looking forward to joining you in Newport Beach.