Bristol Community
College
Faculty &
Professional Staff Senate Meeting
Minutes of Monday May 5,
2014
B101 3:15 p.m.
Senators
in attendance: E. French, T. Grady, J. Grandchamp, S. Lygren, H. Tinberg, A.
Rolfe, R. Worthington, G. Heaney, C. Leonard, S. Pero D. St. George, R. Clark
(substituting was K. Garganta), J. Duponte, J. Constantine, J. Corven, S.
McCourt, J. Pelletier, K. Woldegiorgis, J. Myles, R. Weisberger, J. Boulay, C.
Poore-Pariseau
Excused
Absences: Sil Ferreira, Paul Robillard, JP Nadeau, M. Williams, S. Gabb
Absences:
T. McGarty, D. Warr
Three
guests.
Special
guests Professor Debra Anderson, English, Division I; and Dean of advisement
Steven Viveiros.
Meeting called to order 3:19
Minutes from April 7 2014 voted on
and accepted with emendation: Jean Myles
was present. One abstention.
Meeting
began with a brief update: due to the
NEASC team visit, Senate elections were delayed and will begin online tonight;
following results of these general elections, the Senate officers election will
be held next week. As per last elections, these will be accomplished using a secure
survey tool. Constituents will receive a secure link via email; survey will
include a space for write-ins.
Prior Learning Discussion:
The
Senate’s first guest, Professor Debra Anderson offered some background on the
changes to PEL. The college is retooling PEL, which will now be called “PLA—Prior
Learning Assessment.” (PEL/PLA is a concept long-accepted at BCC and nationwide
that allows students to obtain credit for life experiences.) At BCC, this
program was once very decentralized and departments would handle their own
granting of credits for prior life experience. Military training etc. would be provided
credit by national guidelines or by individual BCC department guidelines,
whichever appropriate. Often there would be department exams or credit by
portfolio. Professor Anderson has been asked to help centralize this process,
and she indicated that this has proven more time-consuming than she had first
anticipated. In effect, a person
assessing outside work for credit receives a new set of information with each student applicant to PLA.
Currently, there is no clear process to follow and we need this and faculty compensation
is inconsistent and the manual needs updating. Prof. Anderson is trying to get
an ad hoc group together, including representation from the Senate, workforce
development, MCCC, Student Services, administration, and the Grants area.
(Debra’s position is funded by a grant.) Prof. Anderson wondered if there are
there any other recommendations for membership for this ad hoc group to insure
all constituencies concerned are considered. Members of the Senate asked her to
add one or more program coordinators and a transfer person. Someone to think of
long-term impacts would also be a good addition to the group. Another
suggestion was a person who has been active in Distance Ed. Among the questions
raised by Senate members: will we look at testing out of the college’s technical
literacy requirement—perhaps a challenge exam based on outcomes outlined in the
BCC requirements for demonstrated
technical literacy? Senators were asked to email Debra Anderson with
questions or issues or if interested in serving with this ad hoc group.
Advisement Center
Discussion: Dean
Steven Viveiros joined the Senate to offer an update on the implementation of
recommendations made by the Joint Administration/Senate Committee. With him, he
brought an updated document (see second attachment) and indicated that the implementation
group had met once in fall 2013 and once in spring 2014. Dean Viveiros decided
to tackle what would impact students directly first, postponing some of the
faculty-related pieces. He expressed his
concern that he hadn’t had a year to learn about BCC before the expectation
that he would jump right in to implementing the recommendations. First up was
the institution of a first year advising program. (See first attachment.) The first
workshop contact affords students career assessment, a look at their goals...do
these line up with the program in which they are enrolled? They also learn to
use catalog and make class decisions on their own own, with one-to-one help,
are advised to enroll in learning communities and combo English 091/092
classes, etc. They also select other basic/gen ed, first semester courses. They
are then registered for their first semester. Three more meetings occur in their
first semester. In the first of these three meetings, GPA calculation, reading the
catalog accurately, preparing for advisement, using map works, etc., are
accomplished. Students also do a self-inventory survey regarding the effort and
hours put into their work at BCC. The plan is ultimately to get this Mapworks
self-inventory survey to faculty too and let faculty give input to students
through this page on Mapworks. Those at risk and self-reported or reported as
such by faculty will be brought into The Student Success Center (B120) for
extra coaching. In the next workshop students are taught to use Degreeworks to
develop a plan based on their programs and ultimately to have something solid
in the way of semester planning to show to their advisors. The third workshop
involves picking courses by time and campus based on the students’ plans made
in the previous workshop. The goal is to
get students in to see their advisors WITH a plan for the next semester and
courses picked so that advisors can use the time to check the plan, then talk
with their advisees about long-range plans, success of the current semester,
etc.
In
semester two, freshmen will have a choice of a career or a transfer workshop. A second workshop will help them update their
academic plans and get ready for priority registration. There is a rolling
model, so students enrolling in Fall or Spring can get the first year workshops
in either semester. There are distance elearning workshops online. These are
used for elearning students but also in cases where on-campus students can't
attend in person. Dean Viveiros sees ways for Advisement to partner with CSS
instructors and is working on that now.
Each
freshman advising workshop has an active
activity; students directly from high school will likely expect this. Older
students often say they know this workshop material and ask if there is a
challenge exam for the workshops. Steve is concerned that students don't
realize how much they don't know about college.
Currently, the Advisement area only eliminates those who have been in
college here or elsewhere before. Dean
Viveiros indicated that he would personally like to speak with students who
don't feel they need the advisement workshops. Students now coming in learn
about all of the workshops, though when they were first instituted last
semester students didn’t always know these workshops were required. Next year, Dean
Viveiros plans to partner with faculty and improve advisement by building professional
development for faculty by
faculty. Steve Viveiros’s extension is
2871 and his email is steven.viveiros@britolcc.edu . He requested that Senators with further
questions or suggestions contact him directly.
Update/Questions Joint
Senate/Administration Closed-Loop Governance Initiative: The question arose
about grants and whether proposed grants will be part of the shared governance policy/procedure.
The answer: yes. The following were discussed on the Senate floor as
appropriate for all academic proposals going through the policy/process: 1)
proposals should come through the Academic Vice President and Senate President;
2) there should be initial notification of the Senate and the entire college;
3) when the initiative has been through the process set in the policy, signatures should be limited to the Academic
Vice President and the College President, and it should be strongly suggested
that a Senate response be included. It was also discussed that 4) a new
committee be formed for insuring continued assessment/evaluation of the
policy/process for shared academic governance. A motion was then made from the
Senate floor that the proposed process be implemented, with these four changes (1-4 above) inserted. Motion passed.
Further
discussion brought out the suggestion that we not pick one thing to test this
policy/procedure, but that instead we begin to use it with every academic
proposal, then evaluate the process again and again as we go along.
It
was also mentioned that the college must get to a set kind of “dashboard” approach
to apply to all projects going through the process, for the sake of
consistency, fairness and clarity of process.
A
request was made that the new associate Vice President be met with by the executive
committee before summer in order that she might be brought up to date on joint
Senate and Administrative initiatives.
Meeting adjourned 4:10 p.m.
respectfully submitted, Jeanne P. Grandchamp,
BCC Faculty & Professional Staff Secretary
FOLLOWING ARE DOCUMENTS SUPPLIED BY DEAN STEVEN
VIVEIROS…
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