President's Update | September 2018

Dear Colleagues,

The ASCCC Executive Committee hopes you had some time to rest and relax this summer before returning to the full swing of the fall term.  During the summer, work at the state level did not slow down as the Executive Committee prepared for the 2018-2019 academic year. We identified four areas of academic and professional matters on which to focus our attention this year:  the implementation of Guided Pathways, the implementation of AB705, the last of the Strong Workforce Program recommendations regarding equivalency to minimum qualifications and credit for prior learning, and the diversification of faculty.  These four issues will be placed as standing action items on our Executive Committee agendas, which can be reviewed here.  As the summer progressed, we engaged the chancellor and the Chancellor’s Office staff in discussion of these four areas.  We asserted the Academic Senate’s role regarding each topic and requested that we collaborate and consult collegially to serve the needs of our students.  We expressed concern that failure to collaboratively address each area will result in harm to our students.  The chancellor and his staff agreed to collaborate and consult collegially on all of the four areas.  

Given the magnitude of changes and pressures working on the community college system, we urge you to examine and strengthen the collegial processes of your colleges as we attempt to ensure collegial processes are engaged in and respected at the state level.  Many of us sometimes have difficulty letting go of the final outcome of collegial processes and trusting the collective wisdom of stakeholders with a variety of viewpoints and ideas.  However, our system of shared responsibility among all stakeholder groups, with particular reliance upon faculty, is integral to successfully implementing institutional change in our collective effort to improve service to our students and our communities at large.  In fact, models of shared governance are making their way into health care facilities as a mechanism to improve patient outcomes and employee engagement, retention, and satisfaction.  Trusting to collective wisdom and ensuring that we have clearly defined and regularly reviewed processes enables us to serve students as fully and effectively as possible.

This update is intended to provide you with information on several items we have worked on during the summer as well as topics to keep on your radar for the upcoming academic year.  Please forward this message to all faculty and perhaps all constituents of your college.  As always, academic senate presidents should feel free to contact us at info@asccc.org should you require any assistance or have questions.  We are here to serve the 60,000 faculty and 2.1 million students in all academic and professional matters.  On behalf of the Executive Committee, I wish you and your students well and a successful fall term.    

    Respectfully,

        John Stanskas, President

California Budget, New Funding Formula and an Online College

The state’s 2018-2019 budget was passed with significant implications for the community college system, including an expansion of financial aid, support for the OEI, $50M for full-time faculty, money for C-ID, and an open educational resources initiative both to be administered by the ASCCC.  

The budget includes $100M in one time and $20M in ongoing money to support a new online college in a separate 73rd district administered by a subset of the Board of Governors.  The ASCCC and most of our system partners vigorously advocated for a different outcome than the one signed into law.  Our focus has now changed to ensuring the role of faculty in the governance of and curricular design for the new college.  The ASCCC is committed to ensuring that full time faculty are integral to the new college and intends to attend the new district’s board of trustees meetings in the absence of a local faculty senate that could advocate on its own behalf in academic and professional matters. In that role, the ASCCC will work to ensure the best service to potential students possible within the structure of the law. 

The budget was also used to change the model by which colleges are funded from an apportionment system based on students served to a model that allocates apportionment based on three factors:  Full Time Equivalent Students (FTES) at 60%, Pell and Promise Grant recipients at 20%, and performance metrics at 20%.  The ASCCC has advocated that a task force of stakeholders should be assembled to evaluate what behaviors are and are not incentivized in the new formula and to determine whether guidance to the field is necessary to ensure that the behavior of colleges focuses on the best interests of students.  With this new formula in place, local curriculum committees and academic senates must evaluate the efficacy of new certificates and degrees and how they serve students as colleges are pressured to maximize their share of the performance metrics funding.  
 

Summer Events

The ASCCC held three institutes over the summer. We kicked off the summer in June with the Faculty Leadership Institute, which provides senate leaders with the knowledge and skills they need to be successful in their roles. In July, we held the Curriculum Institute—our largest to date—with over 600 faculty, classified staff, and administrators participating in breakouts and general sessions. Finally, in August we held our second annual Part-time Faculty Leadership Institute with more than 200 faculty in attendance. The ASCCC wishes to express our appreciation for all who had a hand in making our summer events successful, including our ASCCC Executive Committee members, the ASCCC staff, and our faculty, classified, administrative, and Chancellor’s Office colleagues. As always, we are grateful for all those who attended and participated in our events.  Thank you.

Guided Pathways

The ASCCC Guided Pathways Task Force was hard at work over the summer, planning the 2018 Academic Academy focused entirely on Guided Pathways. This event will be held on September 14-15 in South San Francisco.  If your college has not yet assembled a team to attend, please do so and register.  In addition, Guided Pathways Resource Teams were busy visiting colleges that requested local support through their academic senates.  Information about the resource teams can be found here, and resources created to serve senates are available here.  

AB705 Implementation

In order to help colleges comply with the legal requirements established by AB 705 and to serve students as effectively as possible, the ASCCC engaged the Chancellor’s Office to develop guidelines that provide a framework within which each college can assess its community and curriculum and determine the best way to serve its students through the lenses of assessment for placement practices, curricular design, co-curricular support structures, and noncurricular support structures.  That guidance is encapsulated in one document for English and mathematics/quantitative reasoning, one document for ESL, and a Frequently Asked Questions page.  The law as written can be reviewed here.  These three documents created in partnership with the Chancellor’s Office, reflect a structure through which academic senates, curriculum committees, and institutions can innovate. 

A tremendous amount of information regarding AB 705 has been circulated to colleges framed as support and advocating for a particular path that colleges should or must adopt.  Some of the advocates producing this information may work for colleges or be official representatives of organizations that work within or with the community college system, and some may not.  The ASCCC trusts the collective wisdom of local processes and faculty to rely on the documents created through the collaboration of the ASCCC and the Chancellor’s Office, consider available models and options, and design a structure that best serves each individual college community.  
 

Strong Workforce Program

The ASCCC is working with the Chancellor’s Office to produce a toolkit and professional development activities for local senates and equivalency committees in spring 2019.  This work is called for in the Strong Workforce Program recommendations and by several ASCCC resolutions, including SP17 10.05.  The work encompasses considerations of equivalency to the associates degree, the use of subdisciplines, and tools for human resources and college administrators regarding connecting with local industry talent and evaluating the application process for those who may need to apply for equivalency.  

In addition, the ASCCC is working with the Chancellor’s Office to evaluate how best to advise colleges on effectively granting credit for prior learning.  We have several resolutions, including SP16 7.02, calling us to create effective practices for awarding military credit as well as several legislative efforts.  
 

Faculty Diversification

The ASCCC has a long-standing resolution stating that we should take a leadership role in promoting the diversification of faculty at colleges. The statewide data clearly shows that the workforce employed by the California Community Colleges does not reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the state of California.  We are partnering with the Chancellor’s Office, the California Community Colleges Chief Instructional Officers, and Community College League of California—which represents chief executive officers and trustees—to encourage colleges to examine and address the structures and processes that may unconsciously limit their ability to attract and retain individuals that better reflect the students and communities they serve.  The first set of workshops related to this effort are occurring this month through the IEPI Division of the Chancellor’s Office and are called Building Diversity (Part 1) – Using Data for Hiring, specifically targeting human resources managers, researchers, administrators, and department chairs.  Phase two and three of this endeavor are currently being planned.  Watch for information at the fall plenary sessions and conferences for the ASCCC, CCCCIO, and the League, and expect more workshops in February.  

Upcoming ASCCC Events

• Sept. 14-15 Academic Academy:  Guided Pathways, South San Francisco
• Nov. 1-3 Fall Plenary Session, Irvine
• Feb. 21-23, Part-Time Faculty Institute, Newport Beach
• Apr. 11-13, Spring Plenary Session, Millbrae
• Apr. 25-27, Career and Noncredit Institute, San Diego
• Apr. 30-May 3, ACCJC Partners in Excellence, Burlingame (cosponsored by the ASCCC)
• June 13-15, Faculty Leadership Institute, Sacramento
• July 10-13, Curriculum Institute, Burlingame

• Sept. 7-8, Executive Committee Meeting, Gavilan College
• Sept. 28-29, Executive Committee Meeting, San Diego

• Oct. 12 or 13, Area Meetings, Various locations

• IEPI Building Diversity (Part 1)  - Using Data for Hiring
      Sept. 5    Fresno
      Sept. 11 Riverside
      Sept. 19 Irvine
      Sept. 24 Sacramento
      Sept. 28 San Jose

• AB705 Implementation Regional Meetings, TBA

*Note: More events will be posted as soon as they are confirmed.

The ASCCC is always happy to provide assistance or guidance on any senate-related topic.  We also make visits to local colleges to connect directly with academic senates or other faculty bodies when appropriate.  Please feel free to contact us if you are interested in these services. More information may be found at www.asccc.org.