At the 2005 Spring Plenary Session of the Academic Senate, in the spirit of the themes of the Session, show and tell and accountability-one of the many breakouts addressed two perennial concerns of community college faculty. How do we help more of our students to reach their goals? And, how do we prevent them from taking shortcuts by cheating?
At the recent Spring 2005 Plenary Session, the Occupational Education Committee sponsored a breakout titled "The Forgotten Ones: Whom Do You Represent?" The premise for discussion was that often on our campuses, certain programs and services can be left out of campus discussions, because they are unique in their needs, because they are smaller programs or because the representatives at the table are not informed about the variety of program and faculty characteristics across campus.
The Academic Senate's Legislative and Governmental Relations Committee had two opportunities at the Spring Plenary Session to inform attendees of legislative issues affecting faculty-a breakout on legislative activities and a breakout on Senate Bill 5 and its impact on academic freedom.
As the discipline of Counseling runs to keep up with technology and meet the needs of a growing population of students that "come to college" by logging onto the internet, the Counseling and Library Faculty Issues Committee has been contemplating where we are as a system on this matter.
Ironically, it seems that the ability to survey our colleges and to present current information is the most difficult part of the task. As soon as we send out surveys, we hear of changes and find ourselves behind in reporting the activity of the field.
The unfortunate truth is that faculty generally do not think about administrative retreat rights or administrative evaluation until something goes wrong. This reactive approach is the wrong one to take with either issue because it generally compounds an already bad situation. At the Spring Plenary Session, the Relations with Local Senates Committee presented breakouts on both issues from a proactive perspective rather than the reactive stance that we too often take.
With WASC's activation of the 2002 Accreditation Standards last year, questions arose regarding the definitions of various accreditation and assessment terms as well as with the appropriate roles for faculty in the accreditation process. Though the Academic Senate was (and remains) opposed to the new standards for reasons that are enumerated in resolutions, papers and articles, the Senate has simultaneously accepted the challenge of helping the field to work constructively to achieve positive accreditation reports.
Three 2005 Spring Plenary Session breakouts illustrated once again that the successful development and implementation of sound educational policy involves both principles and pragmatism.
TEXTBOOK ISSUES
So you're on a tenure committee and you have to observe a class being taught online. The question is, how does one "observe" a class that's out there on the Web? What do you look for? When do you observe it, and for how long? What if your own web skills are not particularly stellar; will you know what you're seeing when you see it?
For most people summer is a time to spend with family, to rest from busy schedules, or to enhance professional skills. However, finding an event where you can accomplish all three of these objectives is at times difficult. We have an idea that might help! Each year the Academic Senate holds our summer institutes-the Faculty Leadership Institute and the Curriculum Institute.
Waning hours of officedom for academic senate leaders usually involve bittersweet moments: to tossing of redundant files and other housecleaning chores, the final bits of wisdom to savor or to share with successors, the enumeration-sometimes in formal reports-of what was accomplished and what could not be accomplished despite one's best efforts. Most poignant of all, we consider the promises we made.