Assigned

Whereas, The bylaws of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges include procedures and criteria for conferring the status of senator emeritus for the purpose of recognizing the meritorious service of a faculty member upon or after retirement, and Wheeler North has satisfied those requirements as a faculty member of the California Community Colleges system whose service has well exceeded the required five years of significant service to the Academic Senate;

Whereas, AB 928 (Berman, 2021) presents unintended consequences for students in many disciplines, including kinesiology, health, physical education, dance and nutrition, within the California Community Colleges system;

Whereas, Selecting course instructional materials is part of the academic and professional matters listed under Title 5 §53200, and faculty have a responsibility to take into consideration the cost associated with those instructional materials;
 

Whereas, Resolution 13.01 F17 Recognition of Course Sections with Low-Cost Course Material Options established that the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges encourages colleges to implement a mechanism for identifying course sections that employ low-cost course materials and supports efforts to increase student access to high-quality open educational resources and to reduce the cost of course materials and supplies for students in course sections for which open educational resources may not be available to accomplish zero cost for students;

Whereas, California Code of Regulations Title 5 §41301 [1] and the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office Legal Opinions 07-12 [2] and 95-31 [3] promote academic integrity and aim to stymie academic dishonesty by outlining academic and professional ethics and disciplinary actions;

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges recognizes that the struggles of all higher education faculty across the country are the struggles of those in California and recognizes the immense value of general education, majors, and minors in and related to the fields of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility and Critical Race Theory;

Whereas, Resolution 17.05 F22 Adopt Student Senate for California Community Colleges Low-Cost Recommendation [1] encourages local academic senates to adopt $30 or less as their locally established cost threshold that must not be exceeded for a course to be considered low-cost for reporting purposes and designation in the class schedule;

Whereas, Resolution 9.03 F20 Ethnic Studies Graduation Requirement [1] and Resolution 9.04 F20 Clarify and Strengthen the Ethnic Studies General Education Requirement were approved by the delegates at the 2020 Fall Plenary Session, and in July 2021 the California Community Colleges Board of Governors approved Title 5 §55063 [2] to include the Ethnic Studies Requirement that “Courses offered from ethnic studies disciplines engage students in dynamic and rigorous instruction through discipline-specific theoretical l

Whereas, AB 1705 (Irwin, 2022) [1] goes beyond ensuring that students who have successfully completed prerequisite coursework not be required to repeat that work and requires that all students be allowed to bypass transfer-level prerequisite courses for calculus beginning July 1, 2024 for business calculus and July 1, 2025 for STEM calculus unless colleges are able to validate these pre-requisites using a metric that has not yet been determined as of April, 2023;

Whereas, The California Community Colleges Ethnic Studies Graduation Requirement, codified in California Code of Regulations Title 5 section §55063 Minimum Requirements for the Associate Degree, [1] was adopted upon action of the California Community Colleges Board of Governors (BOG) in 2021, and BOG President Pamela Haynes commented that ethnic studies serves as a means to help “break down barriers to equity” by placing “diversity, equity, and inclusion…and anti-racism at the heart of our work,” [2] and doing so