Second
FTLA
Class Completes
Training
The
second annual Faculty Teaching and Learning
Academy completes its semester-long program
on May 14. The thirty-one faculty involved come from all nine LACCD
colleges and represent a wide range of disciplines. They will
receive certificates of achievement from the Board on May 26 at West LA
College. The presentation will be followed by a celebration for FTLA
participants from both years.
Laura Berry, City
College.
The purpose of the FTLA is to engage a community of faculty in exploring
new methods of teaching and learning, in increasing their skills in new
technologies, and in helping them form
partnerships that advance these practices. Laura Berry,
a nursing faculty member at LACC, talked about changes she made in her
instruction, letting go of rushing to “cover the content” and
allowing students to discover what they needed to
learn. “It’s always a leap of faith when you step back
from hurrying to ‘get it all done’ to making (students) kind
of actively learn, and I think it’s working for
me.” Adds Betsy Manchester, chair of LACC’s
nursing department, “For the first time everyone passed (not only
Laura’s exam but also) the PEDs
exam….I can’t help but think that the techniques that Laura
is giving the students are really carrying through…There really is
a significant change."
An integral element of this year’s FTLA is a classroom action
research project. Many of them focused on collaborative learning,
especially the use of social media such as Facebook,
as an instructional tool.
The FTLA is a key
component of our Student Success Initiative and is a joint effort of the
District Academic Senate and district administration. The next class
will begin in January 2011, so watch for applications in the
fall. Questions or comments should be directed to Deborah
Harrington, dharrington@email.laccd.edu.
--Brad
Vaden and Daryl Kinney
College News
We just had our
follow up visit from the ACCJC and the exit interview was glowing. Dr.
Judy Miner, the team chair, and Professor Virginia May, now a member of
the commission, both said they were extremely impressed with both the
amount and quality of the work that had been done by the college. They
were particularly impressed with the work done on program review. This
incredibly successful visit was the result of a clear commitment from the
college to not only address the specific recommendations of last
year’s report but to put in place systems that will allow the
college to fully engage in the process of “continuous quality
improvement.” We could not be more pleased with the outcome of the
follow up visit. Whew!—Ken Sherwood
We have engaged in
the design build process for our new Student Success
Building, which
will house English, Speech, Foreign Language, Chicano Studies, and
others. Three finalists have been selected to compete for the
project. Faculty, administrators, and staff have met with the firms
for two all-day initial interviews, a new and exciting approach that,
I’m told, has not yet been conducted anywhere else in the
District. A final interview and selection should be completed in
June.—Alex Immerblum
Los
Angeles Mission
College is hosting the very
rewarding Faculty Teaching and Learning
Academy this
spring. Ten of our faculty members, including myself, are participating.
The college submitted its Accreditation Midterm Report to the ACCJC this
March. We hope to have a short respite now until our next self study is
due in 2013. For the 2010-11 academic year, LAMC will be hiring a
Learning Center Director as well as faculty in several disciplines,
including counseling, ESL, Dev Comm, Food
Service Management, Music, and Sociology. Finally, Vice President of
Administrative Services Karen Hoefel will be
retiring in June. We wish her luck in her future endeavors.—Angela
Echeverri
LASC is enjoying a
period of exciting change, even in light of our budget problems. Faculty are more involved than ever and this is helping
the college move forward by leaps and bounds. We are gearing up to
prepare our accreditation self-study for our spring 2012 visit and we are
excited about being selected as one of the three pilot institutions for
the Bridging Research Information and Culture Project, a technical
assistance project to help us develop a culture of inquiry. Construction
is proceeding at a rapid pace and the campus is expected to be completely
built out within the next five years. Also, in an effort to better serve
campus needs, LASC is going through a structural overhaul; beginning July
1st we’ll have one executive vice president instead of
the standard three vice presidents. While it has been a difficult year,
we feel optimistic as we end it and prepare for the start of the
next.—Allison Moore
Valley
College
continues with an ambitious reconfiguration of its shared governance
structure, which includes our budget, planning, and other committees. The
Big Picture Committee, which includes faculty, administrators, and staff,
completed an initial concept which was then approved by the Senate in
April. Ongoing efforts to inform faculty continue, with our goal to
complete the effort by June 30. On the Measure J front, our Master Plan
Committee and many of the Builder User Group leaders met with Steinberg
Group, our campus architects, to review the design build process and the
development of a campus criteria document. Two town halls last week
provided faculty and staff with the latest news on projects and progress.
The first project may be a new parking structure.—Don Gauthier
West
In a spirit of open dialogue, the Senate organized a series of Faculty
Forums this year. Our April event featured a review of the success of our
student athletes. Seventeen received scholarships to four-years
colleges last spring, with six more transferring with scholarships last
fall. I welcomed the faculty, and Steve Aggers,
our Athletic Director, and Jawell Samilton, our Athletic Counselor, made the
presentation. The two of them were the key to turning around our athletic
program. The forums have proved a popular way for faculty to mix. Yvonne
Simone, Senate Treasurer, serves as the host.--Rod Patterson
|
The
Year Downtown:
Bond Problems
Dominate
Big questions about the
district’s future remain, but our key person is now in place. Our
new Chancellor, Dr. Daniel LaVista, will begin
on August 1, bringing to Los
Angeles a wealth of educational experience and
knowledge. I look forward very much to working with him. Interim
Chancellor Tyree Wieder will continue in an
advisory capacity into the early fall and possibly beyond. Meanwhile,
Vice Chancellors John Clerx and Gary Colombo
are retiring at the end of June. Their permanent replacements will not be
selected until Dr. LaVista has determined how
he wants to organize his senior staff. The new president at Harbor will
be announced in a few weeks, however, with the Pierce presidential
selection following a short while after that.
In
March I wrote about the three major issues district leadership faced this
year: accreditation, the state budget crisis, and problems with our bond
program. As for the first, the visits to City, Trade, and East went well,
all report, and we're waiting now for the reports from ACCJC in June.
There's much more to say about the latter two issues.
The
budget situation hasn't changed very much in the last two months. We've
had no significant news from Sacramento,
with all now awaiting the Governor's May Revise, due out this week. The
latest word from our lobbyist is that community colleges are likely to be
offered funding close to his proposal in January, which included 2%
growth. There are several reasons to doubt this will stick over the long
hall, however: 1) the state deficit is still around $20 billion, as
anticipated tax revenue did not materialize; 2) there will be no federal
stimulus money this year, 3) the state can't borrow any more funds, and
4) Democrats are loath to agree to further drastic cuts in health,
welfare, and K-12, after all three were hit extremely hard last year.
As a district, we will still have a healthy balance at the end of this
year, some $60 million, or 11% of our operating budget. This is due to
cutting 6,000 sections district-wide and to the switch in health plans.
But it is also due to colleges cutting deeply into categorical programs,
far more than was anticipated last summer. In fact, they've cut some $20
million (30% of the total). Whether or not we will restore some
of these cuts remains unclear--there are competing pressures--though
they have had a devastating effect on our student success efforts.
Student success is the whole point of our work, so we need to think long
and hard about this.
At this point, we do
not have a detailed plan in case we take a further hit. We are committed
not to offer any summer sessions in June, and we know that we don’t
want our enrollment to go beyond base, which is 102,000 FTES. This year,
however, we set a similar target, and we ended up at 108,000. This is
being accomplished largely through your willingness to fill your
classes far beyond the norm. Our district class average is up from 33 in
2006 to 41 this semester.
Persistent problems
with the bond program, dealing mostly with consultants and energy
proposals, have preoccupied the Board over the last several months.
Likewise, the Bond Steering Committee and the Energy Oversight Committee
have been deeply engaged in trying to find solutions. In March, our bond
counsel, Lisa Wells, surprised the Board by arguing that a number of
non-construction projects being paid by Measure J money, including PR,
outreach, and education, were not legal under the terms of Prop. 39. In
addition, Capstone Group, the firm hired in the fall to do an audit of
the entire program, made a number of recommendations, chief among them
that an Inspector General be hired and a
whistleblower complaint plan be established. The Board agreed, and bids
for the IG position are now being solicited. Capstone also suggested a
review of all bond expenses going back at least three years and a review
of hiring procedures, given that it is clear now that some consultants
have been paid exorbitant salaries, and others were not qualified. (For a
full report on their recommendations, see my March 10 Board Report, www.laccd.edu/das.)
The Energy Oversight
Committee was formed by Chancellor Drummond early last year out of
concern that Larry Eisenberg’s alternative energy proposals were
going to be extremely costly. After an extensive examination,
it concluded last fall that a number of them, such as hydrogen fuel
cell systems, are not appropriate for campus use. In recent months it has
focused on his financing projections. Eisenberg has persistently claimed
that with the full use of available leveraging opportunities we could
build some five times the number of energy projects than could be built
through outright purchase. That turns out to be wildly off base. Our
finance analysts have agreed that 40% leveraging may be possible, but
nothing close to 500%.
With the imminent
selection of an Inspector General, it would seem that the program will
now be brought under better control. Dr. LaVista’s
considerable experience with budgeting and construction will obviously
also be invaluable. It has, however, taken a great deal of time and
energy on the part of Chancellor Wieder and many
others to get to this point, time and energy that could have been spent
on academic projects. Don Gauthier and I have represented the faculty on
both committees. We felt that we had no choice but to get deeply
involved, given the stakes involved. We can't be wasting bond money, and
we can't have the profoundly important task of boosting sustainability in
the district made even more difficult due to the excessive
zeal of some.
Meanwhile, the LA Times reporters remain omnipresent, and they insist
their articles are still coming. I suppose they are, but after ten
months, we’re beyond thinking about that too much.
This is a bit of a grim report, I realize, but that's the sort of year
it's been. I hope yours has been more pleasurable, in spite of the packed
classes. Have a great end of term!
--David
Beaulieu
Some FTLA graduates with a shy Deborah Harrington.
________________________________
The District Transfer
Committee met in December and March with CSU representatives to explore
ways we can work together to assist our students in transferring,
especially given the recent changes in CSU admission policies. Five of us
also attended a May 3-4 CSU conference on reforming general education,
with an eye toward further collaboration with them in this area.
An ad hoc group of the
District Technology Policies and Practices Committee (formerly known as
the Instruction and Student Support Technology Committee) has been busy
since March drafting a district technology plan. It will go to the full
TPPC later this month. Given the $120 million set aside for technology in
Measure J, this is a crucial project. All colleges have faculty
representatives on TPPC, with Wendy Bass of East serving as faculty
co-chair.
The Distance Education
Committee, consisting of DE Coordinators and other interested
administrators and faculty, met for the fourth time on Friday, May 7. Our
primary mission is to address the academic and student support needs of
DE students. Improved counseling and library services are two main areas
of concern.
The Sustainability
Institute, mentioned last time, is up and running at long last! George Leddy (Environmental Science, Valley) and Alexis
Navarro (Architecture, East) were selected as faculty coordinators.
Assisting them will be Lisa Lewenberg from the Center for Excellence, a
CTE research program. All three began work in early April and will expand
their hours this summer. This will allow us to dramatically expand
sustainability education district-wide.
_________________________________________________________
For Further Information...
For the District Academic Senate home page (Academically Speaking past
issues, board reports, newsletters, equivalency, et al):
www.laccd.edu/das
For the District Budget Committee minutes:
www.laccd.edu,
click on Faculty and Staff Services, Intranet, DBC
For the Bond Steering Committee minutes: www.laccdbuildsgreen.org
(linked to www.laccd.edu),
click on About, Oversight...
District Academic Senate Officers
David Beaulieu, President
dbeaulieu@email.laccd.edu 213/891-2294
Kathleen Bimber, Vice-President
Angela Echeverri, Secretary
Alex Immerblum, Treasurer
2009 Project Match Interns, with a sleepy DAS presient.
A new class of fifty begins June 4. Over 400 applied this year.
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