Ventura College Academic Senate
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Campus Center Conference Room

I.	Call to Order
This meeting was called to order at 1:35 p.m. The following senate members were present:
	
Chen, Albert - Social Sciences & Humanities
Guillen, Guadalupe - Student Services
Haines, Robbie - Math & Sciences	
Hendricks, Bill - Social Sciences & Humanities
Kolesnik, Alex - Math & Sciences	
Lange, Cari – Senate Secretary
Mitchell, Nancy – Career and Technical Education	
Morris, Terry – Health, Physical Education & Athletics
Pollack, Deborah - Senate Vice-president
Reynolds, Andrea - Social Sciences & Humanities
Schoenrock, Kathryn - Communication & Learning Resources
Sezzi, Peter – Senate President

The following guests were present:
	       Ortega, Monse - Associated Student Body Representative
              Valenzuela, Arthur - Associated Student Body Representative	 

II.	Public Comments
There were no public comments at this time.

III.	Approval of minutes
Motion to approve the minutes from the previous Academic Senate meeting was made by Reynolds and seconded by Morris. Motion unanimously carried.

IV.	Acknowledgement of Guests
There were no guest presenters in attendance for this meeting.

V.	Announcements
a.	One Act Plays
Ventura College’s One Act Play Festival begins on Feb. 3 and will run through Feb. 13. Faculty are encouraged to attend in support of our students in the theater department. 

b.	SB 1440 Degrees
All California Community Colleges are required to have at least two disciplines with transfer degrees by Fall 2011 in order to be in full compliance with SB 1440. Sezzi feels that since VC offers the six programs that SB 1440 is targeting in this first round, we should strive to have all six of those programs updated and compliant. He stressed that this process of selecting which courses for the VC SB 1440 Transfer degree in X or Y discipline should happen at the department level. There will be webinars offered to help interested faculty and department chairs understand the process.

VI.	Study Sessions
a.	Ventura College WASC Accreditation Report
Sezzi reported that the state accreditation team’s official report would be released within a week’s time. 

b.	Structural deficits
The senate reviewed the proposed structural deficit budget model. This new portion of the budget would set aside money for expenses that are not currently a regular budgetary, state funded line item such as scheduled maintenance and capital furniture, library materials and databases, technology refreshes, and instruction/non-instructional equipment. Sezzi proposed that the money to seed these proposed accounts would come from budgetary surplus, or growth. This is the money above normal budgetary allotment from variable revenue sources such as our local share (2%) of student fees, state lottery proceeds and county property tax income. Another income source would be growth funding from the state, which s only accounted for the year after it has been generated and the regular budget has been approved.

The district would divide the structural deficit money among the three colleges based on various mechanisms, e.g., funds for library materials would be disbursed on FTES and funds for scheduled maintenance would be allocated based on assignable square footage, etc.  The benefit is that while this money will then not go into unallocated reserves (as in our current model both any overage/breakage from our adopted budget and growth dollars currently do), it will be available to each site to use or roll over each year at each site. In effect, this change will allow each campus to use the money when and where it is most need for these currently unbudgeted items. 

There was a round table discussion of the pros and cons of this proposed budgetary model. As the pros far exceeded the cons, a motion to approve this structural deficit resource allocation as specified above was made by Haines and seconded by Guillen. Motion unanimously carried, with Hendricks not present for the voting.

c.	Multi-Term Registration
At their last meeting DCSL discussed keeping multi-term registration. Our EVP Ramiro Sanchez was in favor of continuing with our multi-term registration, while the other two EVPs were not. It was agreed that the district would keep multi-term registration for the next year, but would seriously consider dropping this registration model for the following year. 

Senate discussion about multi-term registration revealed several benefits, such as allowing students to plan for their fall semester before leaving for the summer, and drawbacks, such as making classes more difficult to add later in the summer. Kolesnik brought up a seat allocation model occasionally employed for certain math courses where a number of seats are held back to accommodate students currently enrolled in the prerequisite course. The senators generally agreed that if multi-term registration is to continue, such a model for all classes would be of obvious benefit. 

Since DCSL will not be voting on either of this issue at their next meeting, Sezzi suggested that we look into multi-term registration models and vote on this issue in late March or early April.

VII.	President’s Report
a.	VC Faculty Satisfaction Survey – 2011 edition
Sezzi ran a study session to aid in the development of a new VC faculty satisfaction survey for 2011. The survey will be sent out to faculty prior to Spring Break.

b.	Textbook Rentals report
Sezzi announced that Dave Keebler has approved a small pilot study involving a few courses for fall 2011 to test whether a textbook rental option would be a viable way to market and distribute text books at our campus bookstore. 

c.	Administrative Council report
A disturbing proposal was revealed at Administrative Council when Sezzi asked about multi-term registration: it was that there is discussion about changing the deadline for students to pay their registration fees be moved from seven days to a mere 24 hours. All of the senators and associated student body representatives in attendance were befuddled and appalled by this suggestion. Sezzi was asked to make it known to the Administrative Council that we are not in support of such a change.

d.	Consultation Council report
The Alternate Text Production Center (ATPC), which is a State Chancellor’s Office function that is presently housed on our campus, will most likely no longer be housed at VC. The State Chancellor’s Office desired to have the ATPC stay here, but our district has not applied for the grant for various reasons, while other campuses did place a grant bid. The state wide impact of this decision is unknown. 

e.	DCHR, DCSL, DTRW
i.	DCHR: BP,AP and Forms/Processes for Hiring Student Workers 
Beginning summer 2011 student workers must now apply through the online application pool. Unlike the hiring process for faculty and staff, a potential supervisor may ask to review the applicant pool at any time and does not need to interview multiple candidates. This item will be a second reading at the next senate meeting on Feb. 17, 2011.

ii.	DCSL: Early Alert Letters
The early alert forms and process have been altered some. Sezzi asked the senators to share the new forms with their colleagues and to ask how valuable a tool instructors think this is. We will discuss this further next senate meeting.

VIII.	Campus Committee reports
a.	Curriculum Committee report
Last meeting focused on SB 1440 (see discussion above).

b.	Student Learning Outcomes Oversight Group report
Department chairs have been given instruction on how to guide their faculty members through the process of individually assessing one SLO for each section. There is a mid-March deadline for the collection and compilation of data for each program.

c.	Task Force on Learning Communities report
Sezzi was pleased to announce that the Task Force on Learning Communities has been nearly fully funded to travel to Evergreen College this summer to complete the workshop retreat on learning communities. 

IX.	Action Items
a.	Student Learning Outcomes (SLO) Toolkit (Third Reading)
This item will carry over to the next senate agenda. 

b.	Instructional Calendar Task Force Membership
The following names were carried forward as members of the newly formed Instructional Calendar Task Force: 
Kammy Algiers – Math and Science
Marta Frexis – Math and Science
Cari Lange – Math and Science
Steve Palladino– Math and Science
Andrea Renyolds – Social Sciences

Since this task force is Math and Science division heavy, it was asked that membership be kept open and that meetings be publicized. Further, Sezzi asked that this task force develop a survey to be sent to all faculty and staff members asking for input on the instructional calendar. 

A motion to accept this membership was made by Haines and seconded by Guillen. All members approved. 

c.	Ventura College Strategic Plan and Integrated Planning Manual (First Reading)
This item will be discussed at the next senate meeting.
X.	Adjournment
The meeting was adjourned at 3:37 p.m.