Announcements
- Census date is today (Tuesday, September 7).
- WLDC: Fridays will be online only. We also talked about the benefits of bringing your class into the Center; it guarantees that they know where it is, and many students feel more comfortable when they’ve met the tutors or IAs.
- DE: If you missed the email from Laura Shrettner (sent Fri., Sept. 3, Subject: “Submission of DE Courses,” be sure you read it. If you want to teach online after June 30, 2022, you’ll need to submit your course (or courses?) to the DE Committee for validation by Dec. 31, 2021. We’re not fully clear about whether having one course fully validated will cover other courses (and the policies have recently changed), so if you have any questions, contact Laura at lschrett@yccd.edu. (In my experience, she responds quickly.)
Schedules and staffing
Spring 2022
Once I get the finalized Spring 2022 schedule, I will able to begin the process of assigning classes to faculty for the Spring semester.
If you’re a full-time faculty member, expect the usual spreadsheet to circulate starting late this week or early next week.
If you’re a part-time faculty member, expect the usual survey to gather information about your availability, possibly by the end of this week. I’ll use that information to assign classes to you, based on the usual criteria (which I will list in the email I send out with our proposed schedule).
The schedule goes live to students early in October, so the sooner I can get this to Walter, the better.
Summer and Fall 2022
At about the same time, I’ll be working with Walter on the Summer and Fall schedules. These are due mid-October.
Basically, we look at the previous summer’s and current fall’s schedule and decide what we need to adapt, mostly in response to our best guesses at enrollment trends. Walter said he has access to a new enrollment database that goes back six years or so, which might help. I’m considering cartomancy, though.
An email that Carla (our VP of Instruction) sent out seemed to suggest that I’m supposed to staff these classes (full- and part-time!) at the same time. That’s just silly. No one knows what summer and/or fall look like at this point. And, anyway, the schedule itself should be approved before we assign names to the classes. Walter has told me not to worry about that at this point. I would probably not worry about it regardless.
General Thoughts and a Request
Before I set up a schedule, I work with the dean (Walter, in this case) to discuss the direction we want to go. That discussion includes assumptions about enrollment, instructions from above, our own sense of the State of Things (esp. problematic in uncertain Covidiot times), and so on.
From there, I adapt the schedule and give it to the dean to get approved by what used to be the scheduling committee, but which is now, as I understand it, Carla.
While developing the Fall semester, I want expand what we consider a little bit. That leads to my request: If you have any thoughts or observations about how the schedules have or have not been working up to this point, please let me know (gkemble@yccd.edu).
For example, Brian J noted that he had an early morning 1B at Sutter canceled; Michael has taught numerous 1B courses at Sutter in the afternoon that all made. Observations like this could help us as we balance offering a range of times for our students with filling our classes (or, at least, avoiding having them canceled for low enrollement).
Course Rotation Status
I presented Walter with the course rotation proposal that the English department developed last year, including the rationale. When I spoke with Jeremy about my frustration with a lack of a clear process for making these changes, he seemed to suggest that Walter and Rita have access to the rotation and could make the changes directly.
Walter, understandably, is a bit reticent about just jumping in and doing that without verifying that this is the correct process, so he’s working to find out the best way to handle this.
I’ll continue to hound him on this. I’d like this solved before the Fall schedule is taken to Carla so that we stop getting the “This class isn’t in the rotation” comment on the schedule.
SLO Inquiry Group
Shawn, Carrie, and Cassandra are heading up a serious inquiry project into the question of the best way to norm our SLO assessment.
They’ve submitted the proposal to the LEAD (Equity) committee so that part-time faculty can receive a stipend for participating. They’ve not heard back yet, so it’s unclear if that proposal was accepted. I would expect it will be, but I’m not yet fully adept with Tarot.
Shawn sent out a Doodle poll to see who would like to participate; if you missed the invitation, or if you think you might be interested, please read the proposal (PDF).
The group will meet every other Tuesday starting next week (Sept. 14).
Program Review
I was pleased to learn that we are not up for a full Program Review this year, as I’d feared; we only have to provide an update.
However, we are moving the process to eLumen. I am waiting for instructions, which will mostly likely arrive later than is useful, with the update due at the same time as the abovementioned schedules.
As I did last year, I plan to send a survey out to gather information we want to include in the update. The survey will be cumbersome, but you won’t have to respond to every damn question — you can just jot notes in whichever questions you have information or insight or recommendations about.
I’ll do my best to compile this into a document that everyone can look at before discussing it. I’m not sure this is doable by the next meeting, so I may ask to schedule an extra meeting at some point. But I’ll play this a bit by ear.
COVID Exposure
We had a brief discussion about when we should report that students have let us know they’re staying home for COVID. Generally, according to Walter, the names of such students are forwarded to Dalexh (Dr. Hunt, our VP of Students Services), who will contact the student and work out when the student would be safe to return.
Walter mentioned, as he has in some emails, that the admin would appreciate seating charts so that students who were in closer contact with such students can also be contacted. (I need to start making them, though it’s challenging when we do so much group work.)
Also, if a student mentions that she is staying home because someone at work or in the household has COVID, we should report that to Dalexh, too, so that he can determine if other students were exposed. (It’s a little fuzzier if students report that a close contact has been tested, but they don’t have the results yet. I think we agreed that the student would be wise to stay home, but that we wouldn’t report it until we had word of a positive test.)
Post-meeting Survey
I was impressed with a survey that Kiara started to give to LEAD committee members after each meeting, and decided I would start following that example. So you should have received an email with a link to this short survey.
As the email explains, it’s meant in part to capture ideas that, for any number of reasons, might not have come out in the meeting. So please, if you have something you’d like to say about anything that we talked about (or in these notes), put it in the survey (though, of course, you can always contact me directly).
It’s optional — it’s not meant to add to our workload. But it’s short and, if you have something you’d like heard, or emphasized, or whatever, please fill it out.
The Usual
If you have any questions, or if you attended the meeting and notice that I missed something or got something wrong, please let me know.