With so much occurring throughout the state of California, faculty leaders may wonder how to stay up to date on current matters and how to keep other faculty informed. The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges (ASCCC) provides a number of newsletters and listservs to help faculty stay connected and informed. Such resources from the ASCCC provide ways to connect other faculty to information on statewide academic and professional matters.
Staying Connected: Newsletters and Listservs
The ASCCC has a number of services to keep faculty and colleagues informed. One may sign up on the ASCCC newsletter and listservs webpage. Anyone can sign up for any of the categories or topics. Good starting points are the following:
- President’s Update: Members receive periodic messages from the ASCCC president that are also archived on the ASCCC website.
- Senate Presidents Listserv: Messages of interest to all academic senate presidents and leaders are sent to this listserv.
- Area A, B, C, or D Listserv: These listservs receive less frequent messages more focused on events within each specific ASCCC area. The ASCCC Area webpage, also houses the area map and college listing. Another way to find out which area each college belongs to is to use the ASCCC Directory. Clicking on any college in the directory will provide more details about that college, including the college president, academic senate president, curriculum chair, liaisons, and more.
The ASCCC also offers discipline-specific listservs, some that address part-time faculty, some geared towards career technical education, some related to the Open Education Resources Initiative, one related to curriculum, and many others.
All listservs are available to anyone who wishes to join. For example, one need not be an academic senate president or even a faculty member to sign up for the Senate Presidents Listserv. All local senate presidents registered on the ASCCC directory are added to the senate presidents and appropriate area listservs.
ASCCC Executive Committee members, including area representatives, do not have administrative access to these lists and are unable to add and remove individual members or check whether someone is actually subscribed.
Connecting Others
Academic senate presidents are encouraged to forward messages from the ASCCC to the faculty they represent in order to help keep all faculty informed of statewide activities, actions, and opportunities. Another way to keep others informed is to encourage them to sign up for the newsletters and listservs. In that way, individuals are able to tailor the information they receive by picking and choosing particular listservs.
More resources are available on the ASCCC website, with many highlighted in the April 2023 Rostrum article “Resources for Academic Senate Leaders”.
All faculty are also encouraged to consider statewide service on ASCCC committees and to encourage other faculty to do likewise. [1] Statewide service is a great way to learn more about academic and professional matters in the state-level landscape and to meet other motivated faculty across the state.
1. The form used to volunteer for ASCCC committee service.