April

It has been ten years since changes in the California Education Code authorized faculty to have a meaningful contribution to the evaluation of administrators, and eight years since the Academic Senate published two important papers on the evaluation of administrators, Administrator Evaluation: Toward a Model Academic Administrator Evaluation Policy [1992] and Chief Executive Officer Evaluation: Toward a Model Chief Executive Officer Evaluation [1993].¹

I want to thank the Joint Committee for their invitation to testify and to engage in a thoughtful discussion about high quality education.

The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges represents the local academic senates of all 108 colleges. We provide expertise in academic and professional matters to the Chancellor and Board of Governors as well as to the Legislature and Governor's Office.

After his first two years of attention to K-12, we had hoped that Governor Davis would turn his attention to the community colleges. And his January budget was an indicator that he would do just that. It was a great start; the best we've ever had: an increase of $228.8 million, or 8.1% in state general funds alone. But shortly thereafter, the state's energy crisis hit. All other issues have been eclipsed in Sacramento as the Governor and the Legislature have scrambled to respond.

California's Master Plan for Higher Education is being revised for the third time since its original adoption over forty years ago. Each revision reawakens the hope that the promise of the original Plan will finally be actualized: a tuition-free quality college education for every citizen of the state who might benefit from it. The community colleges are at the heart of that hope, but they have never been able fully to deliver. Elitist attitudes and hierarchical thinking have so far consigned the community colleges to third-class status in terms of their funding and support.

As summer approaches, the Academic Senate is working on several training experiences for faculty and others. These summer institutes are a valuable service provided by the Academic Senate and, we hope, at least one of these opportunities may interest you-yes, YOU, not just your senate president! On tap are the Faculty Leadership Institute, the Student Leadership Institute, the Technology in Teaching Institute and the Curriculum Institute. Details on all these institutes will be available on our web site as they develop.

Serving on an evaluation team for the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges (ACCJC) can be one of the most rewarding experiences of your professional life. This conclusion is reached by most of those who serve on teams visiting ACCJC member institutions regardless of whether they are veterans of the process or "rookies".

@ONE is a grass-roots, faculty-driven project, which last year conducted interviews with California college faculty practitioners who are effectively using technology to enhance or deliver instruction. Their uses of new technologies (multimedia, the web, E-mail, or computer simulations) prompt them to revise the structure of a course, alter assignment design, and to reconsider the ways in which students approach learning. TMI offers very flexible teaching media.

The issue of global education and how it has been approached at the system level has been a concern of the Academic Senate for some time. This article will attempt to put those issues in perspective, at least from my point of view.

Cooperation among the statewide organizations that represent faculty is at an all-time high. The results of this unified faculty voice in Sacramento have been stunning. With several challenges on the horizon, it is more important now than ever to keep this spirit of collaboration alive.

In the Academic Senate paper, The Future of the Community College: A Faculty Perspective,¹ the authors maintain that computer-based distance learning is inherently inferior to traditional classroom instruction. This position is not so much argued in the paper as it is merely asserted. "Teaching is the `business' of creating epiphanies," say the authors, "and this will always be best accomplished through the power of personal presence." (Future, p. 14)