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Committees, Hiring, Appointments: A busy mid-April missive

Appointments to campus-wide committees – one year mark

Your ASC is trying to improve communication about faculty service on campus-wide committees.  Remember that the idea of participatory governance is that we believe decisions affecting our college’s work for students are better made when perspectives from all of us are considered.  If faculty voice is missing – important information is missing.  If students are not involved in the conversation, their experience cannot be well-understood.  When classified professionals aren’t included, their deep understanding of how our systems actually work and impact students directly is wasted.  If decisions are considered without management perspective, their birds-eye view and resource stewardship expertise is lost.   Let’s make sure to do our part as faculty.  One of the ASC’s roles is to appoint faculty to committee positions, and we formally made 2-year appointments to all of the campus-wide committees. Of course, this was based on your participation in whatever committee you’ve been a part of for probably quite some time!  You should have received a 1-year thank-you note last week, along with a request to verify that you will finish out the 2 year appointment. 

The idea the ASC has here is to set a clear time for transitioning between committees.  Next spring (2022) will be the time for sharing your interest in being on the committee you’ve always wanted to be on, but it was always full! It’ll also be your opportunity to finally leave a committee you’ve been sticking with out of duty because you didn’t know a good way for someone to take the faculty seat!  We know this is new, so please see how it is working and offer feedback. Also know that committee chairs were just asked by Dr Bell to clarify their committee charge, membership, and voting procedures for next fall, so you might be asked about your intentions there, too.  Look out for updated information about ALL of our committees on the college website very soon (i fervently hope!).

Release time committee chair-ships update

Speaking of appointments, a number of release-time committee chair-ships appointments have been made. Thank you to those who have stepped up to provide leadership in these places.  I know (!!) it’s not easy to make the brain shift between teaching and these more administrative roles. It’s not like adding a class to one’s schedule, but I think the extra effort is worth it professionally.

  • Brandy Gibson, SLO-AUO committee chair (2 years)
  • Vanna Gonzales, Student Success committee co-chair (1-year)
  • Elizabeth Schwarz, Council of Chairs co-chair (2 years)
  • Katie Krolikowski, Planning committee co-chair (2 years)

Guided Pathways Flurry of Activity

There is one really fantastic release-time position yet to be filled!  The co-chair of the Guided Pathways Programs, Pathways and Pedagogy Workgroup will be vacated by our wonderful Leslie Alexander.  This committee focuses on the changes we’ll be making in how students are presented with coursework decisions.  The spring forum last week was led by this committee – so the discussions of General Education and Metamajors is a great indication of the current work.  I was so excited to see that well over half of the folks at the forum were faculty, and that nearly 50% of our full-time colleagues showed up to dig into this work.  I just KNOW that someone among that group got excited and wants to apply for this position

This first GP-PPP-WG workgroup focus has been on the “DEFINE THE PATH” pillar of guided pathways.  This group also has the responsibility of leading our discussions about pedagogy, so that our students “STAY ON THE PATH” and we “ENSURE LEARNING” (the 3rd and 4th pillars of the GP framework).   Look out for an email on Tuesday morning reminding you of this opportunity 

Hiring committees for management positions – even more faculty needed

By my count.  CCC faculty have been part of hiring committees for 16 management positions during my time as ASC president (July 2019-now).  As for campus-wide committee service, the ASC has the responsibility of appointing faculty to hiring committees.  We have a system in place that intends to form committees that are diverse by all types of measures, makes sure committee members are appropriate for the position being filled, and ensures all faculty get a chance to participate in hiring over time.   We have a few more requests for faculty this month, which are Director of Gateway to College (formerly filled by Karl Debro) and permanent Director of Admissions and Records. These are such important positions for our campus work with students, so if you haven’t been on a hiring committee recently, please step up and share your professional expertise.  Note that committees to hire the permanent dean of AACE and permanent VP of Student Services are still to come. 

PART TIME voting position on Academic Senate Council 

This is important so i saved it until last!  The ASC began work on this recommendation in the fall, and the mechanics of making the change have been slower than I’d like.  We are just about ready to ask you, the full faculty, to vote to change the ASC by-laws to add a part-time voting seat to the Academic Senate Council.  Please look out for the ballot soon.