Yuba College Academic SenatePresident's Unofficial Blog
YCAS Site
Yuba College Academic Senate

YC Council Meeting of 3/6/18

by Gregory Kemble

Despite a fairly long agenda, we spend the majority of our time (actually, we went half an hour overtime) on the first three issues:

Student Services Update

Delmy Spencer (Dean of Student Services) and Amandeep Kandola (Director of Counseling) tag-teamed a presentation about a number of important activities, many of which are in the process of impressive improvement:

  • Early Alert: 20 faculty participated in Early Alert, identifying 134 students. All of these students were contacted. We talked a bit about making sure that we don’t develop processes that won’t scale once EA becomes more widely used, but we were encouraged by the fact that Early Alert seems to be on track. We also talked about ways to make sure faculty understand not only the mechanics of Early Alert, but the types of situations in which EA would be valuable. Most encouraging: This process of intervention is helping to bring student services and academic programs together more.
  • Process Analysis: Yuba has retained the services of a consultant, the STRATA group, to help us analyze our “business process,” from student outreach to graduation. I suppose I’m not perfectly happy with the term “business processes.” But setting the terminology aside, the goal is to look at all the processes our students need to navigate–application, placement, orientation, financial aid, registration, application for graduation, and so on–and discover places where we are unintentionally putting barriers in front of our students. (A side note: at the first CA Guided Pathways Project Institute, they talked about how every “click”–every time we require a student to do something more–we lose a few students, who just shrug and give up. This process analysis is meant to help us identify those “clicks.” It’s another angle of being a student-ready college, rather than requiring our students to come to us college-ready.)
  • There was some discussion about Multiple Measures. (See my entry about the DCAS discussion last week.) It looks like we will be able to start applying the new state requirement a semester early, which will enable us to gather data that we can use to make data-informed changes to our process, if needed.
  • There seems to be some motion on Degree Audit, as well. (Degree Audit allows us, and if done right, students to determine where in their journey they are. We’ve had some software that might be able to handle this, but it’s one of a range of disparate pieces of software that don’t necessarily talk to each other (and that’s been one of the main complaints about YCCD tech). We’re taking another look at where we are and what we need. It’s important…

Quick Reg and other outreach efforts

  • Lots of students (~300 so far) participated in Quick Reg, with more to come.
  • 2600 letters went out to high school senior families.
  • Lots of things scheduled–Preview Day, placement testing, counselor appointments for abbreviated Ed Pans, etc.
  • Academic Integrity Committee has been reworking parts of the Academic Probationary process, making sure that we aren’t making it harder for students than is necessary. Instead of simply sending a letter and then, after the requisite time, placing their registration on hold, they have added levels of attempted contact to help avoid students ending up on hold.

Outreach Committee

I’m going to admit that I don’t even know how to report on this one. The Council has been struggling to figure out what the role of the Outreach Committee should be, if indeed it should be a committee (members disagree on this point). There was talk of maintaining a master calendar (that doesn’t need a committee); developing a strategic plan for outreach (that could be a committee or a workgroup); coordinating outreach efforts (but there is no budget that the committee could use to encourage or discourage activities). Etc.

We ended with the recognition that we need to continue the discussion.

(For a more detailed “play by play,” you can see the minutes once they’ve been approved. That won’t be until after our next meeting, but you’d find them under the Minutes tab at the Council web page.)

 

 

 

 

Guided Pathways Work Group Meeting of 3/6/2018

by Gregory Kemble

The majority of this meeting was spent (a) reviewing the results of the Guided Pathways Survey and (b) using those results to identify the Key Elements that we will place in “Phase 1” (the first 18 months) of the state’s work plan.

Jeremy Brown, the new Director of Student Success and Institutional Effectiveness (if I got that right…) presented a PowerPoint(PDF) that summarizes the survey. There was a surprising (to me, anyway) level of agreement regarding the “top” elements, which made the process of selection a little easier. But there was a lot of insightful discussion as we worked through the items.

In the end, we selected five elements (though we are only expected to select three or four) to focus on at the beginning of the process.

Two were foundational:

  • Cross-functional inquiry – We saw this as (a) close to being “full scale” already, and, more important, (b) foundational to all the other work. (This was also one of the Top 5 and shared by 3 of the four groups.)
  • Integrated Technology Infrastructure – This one was not one of the top 5, nor was it one that at least 3 groups agreed upon. But (a) it turned up often in the written comments; (b) we saw it as foundational to much of the rest of the work; (c) it is one of our “pre-adoption” elements, which means we are almost nowhere on this; and (d) it requires cooperation and collaboration among both colleges and the district, so we wanted to get a move on with it.

Along with Cross-functional Inquiry, we selected two more from the Top 5 list (they were also both on the “Shared by 3 or more groups” list):

  • Clear Program Requirements – This involves program mapping and, if we decide to go this route, “metamajors” (that’s a horrible term… more on these in a future post, I’m sure).
  • Proactive and Integrated Student Supports – One of the values of Guided Pathways as a framework is that we can build on our strengths. We have already started working on some things (Early Alert comes to mind most quickly) that fall under this category, so leveraging that work made sense to us.

We also selected one that didn’t turn up in either list:

  • Improved Basic Skills – AB 705 is forcing our hand on this one anyway, and we decided–after a lot of discussion–that we should add it to our list. It extends beyond AB 705–one of the topics under this issue will involve challenging discussions regarding math requirements (this has proven true across the state, by the way). But the majority of it is already underway thanks to the new legislation.

From here, the Guided Pathways Leads will contribute to the work plan; shortly after that, the workgroup will refine that work. A rough draft will go, along with the survey results, to the Senate for a first look on 3/15, and then a much-closer-to-finished draft will appear before the senate for approval the following week (3/22). (Why so fast? The work plan is due at the end of the month, but the last week of March is Spring Break. The last Senate meeting before the due date is March 22.)

 

 

 

DCAS Meeting of 3/1/18, and then some

by Gregory Kemble

We had our regularly scheduled DCAS meeting on March 1, the morning of last week’s Senate meeting. The last item on the list below spilled over into an afternoon meeting, which had originally been scheduled as a meeting among the chancellor and two senate presidents.

AP 4230, Grading Symbols

AP 4230 has been before the Senates before, but since the last approval the state has added a new grading symbol, EW — “Excused Withdrawal.” Here’s the Title 5 Section 55024(e):

(e) The governing board of a district that decides to provide a withdrawal policy shall also adopt an excused withdrawal procedure based upon verifiable documentation supporting the request.

(1) “Excused Withdrawal” (EW) occurs when a student is permitted to withdraw from a course(s) due to specific events beyond the control of the student affecting his or her ability to complete a course(s) and may include a job transfer outside the geographical region, an illness in the family where the student is the primary caregiver, when the student who is incarcerated in a California state prison or county jail is released from custody or involuntarily transferred before the end of the term, when the student is the subject of an immigration action, or other extenuating circumstances as described in (a)(2), making course completion impracticable. In the case of an incarcerated student, an excused withdrawal cannot be applied if the failure to complete the course(s) was the result of a student’s behavioral violation or if the student requested and was granted a mid-semester transfer. Upon verification of these conditions and consistent with the district’s required documentation substantiating the condition, an excused withdrawal symbol may be assigned at any time after the period established by the governing board during which no notation is made for withdrawals. The withdrawal symbol so assigned shall be an “EW.”

(2) Excused withdrawal shall not be counted in progress probation and dismissal calculations.

(3) Excused withdrawal shall not be counted toward the permitted number of withdrawals or counted as an enrollment attempt.

(4) In no case may an excused withdrawal result in a student being assigned an “FW” grade.

If I read this correctly, since we have a withdrawal policy, we’ll need to adopt this new grading symbol–though I’ll admit that it sounds appropriately student-centered to me, especially since students are limited to failing and/or withdrawing a total of three times within a district. This helps that 3-strikes-style rule for students who have to withdraw for extenuating circumstances.

The issue is on the March 8 agenda.

AP 4231, Grade Change

This AP had a few changes being proposed. One involved extending the time to appeal a grade to one year (up from one semester), which was a request from Yuba’s Senate [Correction: I misremembered this. YCAS requested that the time be increased, but we did not recommend a specific time frame; DCAS has been discussing the one-year time frame]. The other involved the grade appeal process. In review changes around that process, I became uncomfortable with parts of the process. It seems that my discomfort made sense to the others, so that part of the AP will be reviewed by the Vice Chancellor and brought back for further discussion.

Articulation Officers

I forget the AP, and I’m too lazy to look it up right now, but we have decided to split the discussion of the AP from the discussion of Articulation Officers. This will involve, on the one hand, Matt and I getting the AP so that it accurately reflects current practice, allowing us to have the AP approved and in effect. Separately, we’ll continue discussions around AOs. I’ll admit that I’m a little confused on where we stand on this issue–I think we’ve been told that the colleges are responsible to find resources to fun AOs, though it’s not clear how we’re going to free up those resources. But a first step will be for the two colleges to work together to identify what an AO’s duties would be, ideally; understanding the scope of the position will help us to figure out what resources are needed.

Multiple Measures

The agenda listed this as “AB 19, the California Community College Promise,” but it would have been more accurate to list it as AB 705. AB 19 does have a minor Multiple Measures component, but the real difficulties arise from AB 705.

As a reminder, AB 705 requires a few things that are designed to get students through college-level math and English more quickly. One of these requirements is to use high school grade information as the primary measure for placement into college-level math and English. (I should mention that “multiple measures”–the requirement that no single measure, such as a placement exam, be used to place students–has been in the regulations for years; however, when people talk about Multiple Measures now, they’re referring to this required use of high school data as the primary measure for placement).

We were discussing a couple issues: one, we realized that we (Matt and I) weren’t clear about where decisions made by math or English would go. What would make them official? How would they get implemented? And, two, we weren’t sure how to handle a situation where the two colleges recommended different measures. Do they need to be the same? (The tentative, and most likely, answer is yes.) The math departments at the two colleges have long worked together, so it’s not likely for them to come up with different standards. But the English departments have not done so and, indeed, were considering different recommendations. (Since this meeting, the two English departments came to an agreement, partly as a result of these discussions.)

There were a couple other things on the agenda, but we didn’t get to them–and they were just status updates anyway.

VIDEO: Pillar 3 – Stay on the Path

by Gregory Kemble

Here’s the fourth in the series of videos that our Guided Pathways Leads commissioned. This one looks at “staying on the path,” the second of the “Four Pillars” of the Guided Pathways framework.

If you missed the first three videos, you can find them on my blog (here’s the first video; here’s the second; here’s the third). They are also on the college’s Guided Pathways page, which should be accessible from a number of places on the college web site.

As before, the video is closed captioned. And as before, I’ve also included a transcript below the video for those who prefer to read.

My apologies for the pun toward the end. It was completely unintended, and it hurt when I discovered it.

Transcript of Video 4: Stay on the Path

Hey, Greg Kemble again.

This video looks at the third of the Four Pillars of the Guided Pathways framework: helping students to stay on the path. This pillar builds on the work of the first two pillars—clarifying the path, and helping students enter the path. I guess that’s the strength of the metaphor: all four pillars work together to support student success.

This pillar focuses on systems and tools that allow students and the college to monitor students’ progress, and to reach out to encourage them to continue making progress—to stay on the path—or to intervene if they fall off their chosen path.

Except for those students in selective programs like nursing—and this is not just true at Yuba; this is true across the state–we generally don’t monitor our students’ progress. Counselors are always available, but we don’t do much to get students seek them out. This often means that students have to figure things out on their own.

And as a result, students either quit—we saw evidence of that in previous videos—or they end up graduating with far more units than they actually need. So, at Yuba last year, the students who earned a degree did so with an average of around 93 degree-applicable units. That’s a full year of classes—assuming they go full time. And of course, many of them don’t. So 30 units could be more than two years.

There may be good reasons how some students meander–we’ll talk about one of these later in the video. But according to the research behind Guided Pathways, one of the main reasons that students end up with so many units is that they’re too often being left to figure things out on their own.

And when you add the fact that we don’t give them the information they need to figure things out—if the catalog is wrong, or if we don’t offer a course when they need it–and that was a complaint we heard in the focus groups—well, figuring things out on their own is likely to mean they’re going to end up with more units than they need.

So one point of this pillar—helping students stay on the path—is to offer systems and tools that help our students monitor their progress and plan their future courses. Degree audit, electronic ed plans—the RP Group, who did the student focus groups, seemed a bit bemused to learn that we still do Ed Plans on paper—these are tools that we’ve been talking about for some time but, for various reasons, we haven’t managed to get them in place. My expectation would be that implementing a Guided Pathways framework would allow us to focus our attention more effectively in areas like this by making it a priority.

And while these can help students monitor their own progress, we can also leverage them to reach out to students. We of course have already begun, and are ramping up, Early Alert, which allows counselors to contact students whom faculty have identified as being potentially at risk.

But we could also contact students in other situations. We could encourage them to stay on the path, for example, by sending an email to them when they are within a semester of their degree. Or we could intervene if they fall off their path; we might have student mentors reach out if they don’t reach a milestone, or if they register for a course that isn’t on their path.So one of the concerns I’ve heard expressed about Guided Pathways is the fear that we’re limiting students’ choices. I plan to address this issue in a later video, but there is one aspect of this that is worth addressing here.

The question is: What happens to students who decide they’ve chosen the wrong path? Aren’t we taking away their opportunity to change paths when they discover, for example, that they prefer science to literature?

Well, we’re talking about helping students to stay on the path, not forcing them to. More important, the tools we’d develop to help students stay on path would also provide support for students to navigate these types changes.

So, for example, if our system generated an alert when a student signed up for a class off her path, a counselor could reach out to make sure this was intentional, and to offer advice when it is most useful. In some cases, this might be supplying information she needs in order to decide if she really does want to switch majors—it could tell her how much extra time it’ll take to reach her goal, or what effects the change would have on her financial aid.

And if she decided she really did want to change paths, we’d be able to get her to enter, and stay on, her new path much more efficiently.

Guided Pathways are meant to guide students, not to railroad them. And the third pillar is meant to provide systems and tools that support students both on and off their path, and to give counselors the opportunity to reach out to them before they make decisions that delay their goals or, worse, before they quit. And it’s meant to provide a tool for students, to allow them to monitor their progress and to make informed decisions as they navigate the college.

The next video will look at 4th pillar. I will see you then.

DC3 Meeting of Feb. 27, 2018

by Gregory Kemble

DC3 met Tuesday afternoon (which is why I missed the Guided Pathways Leads meeting). Aside from a few minor questions of clarification about the Board agenda, there were a few interesting discussions:

AP 3721 (Electronic Communication)

There were two main issues raised about the email lists. First, we requested that a series of additional, district-maintained email lists be created: one for classified staff at each of the sites, one for part-time faculty at each of the sites, and one for students at each of the sites. I think there was also a request for a list of counselors at each site. Devon, the new CTO, will investigate the viability of making such lists.

A quick bit of background: when we (a sub-group of DC3 that was called “Team 2,” of which I was a part) recommended the lists we did (all employees at each site; all faculty at each site; I think there are a couple others), we made the recommendation on the assumption that list maintenance could be automated. We did not want to saddle already overworked IT or HR or whoever employees with maintaining these lists. So the trick with these requests is that–at least, at this point–IT would need to be able to pull information from Colleague to create these lists. Currently, the lists are being created by pulling primary locations, but that will not work with students or part-time faculty, since they may attend/work at multiple sites. (Thus, “investigate the viability…”) More as we learn more.

The second issue involved the at times contentious emails, often involving politics, that have been sent out over the lists. The presidents have received some complaints from some members of the college. There was a suggestion–I’m not sure whence it came, but I think it was floated in the Chancellor’s Cabinet–Chancellor, Vice Chancellors, Presidents (and maybe Chief Officers?)–that we could create a list specifically for non-business discussions that people could opt out of, if they chose.

I myself am a “more speech” kind of guy, and rambled a bit along those lines. But the more precise version would be that I thought the most recent examples of political speech seemed to be fairly considerate. Certainly, there was nothing like how things were in the good old days.

But we agreed that it would be a good idea to get a sense of how wide-spread the dissatisfaction is. And since we had already committed to a survey that would help us evaluate the effectiveness of the new communications policy, we agreed to include questions that would allow people to address the issue of non-business communications through email lists.

The Travel AP

I forget the number, and I’m too lazy to look it up. But the AP that deals with travel was revised awhile ago, but never formally adopted. So we adopted it, with few changes. The most notable one: beginning March 1, I believe, the per diem meal allowances will be a little higher.

AB 19: The CCC Promise Program

So this is kind of complicated, and it’s getting late. But I’ll try…

The recently passed AB 19 creates a “promise” program, which seeks to provide a free first year to new full-time students. (Note: This is not to be confused with the Board of Governors (BOG) Fee Waiver, which they recently decided to call a Promise program as well. Sigh.)

On the surface, that sounds great, but there are a few catches. First, there are four requirements in order for colleges (districts?) to participate:

  1.  Colleges need to articulate pathways with “feeder” high schools. (Yuba does some of this–probably enough to qualify–though, interestingly, this would probably be something we’d want to focus on if we commit to Guided Pathways.)
  2. Did I mention Guided Pathways? Colleges need to commit to Guided Pathways. Currently, neither Academic Senate has committed to this, though Yuba’s senate will be voting in mid-March.
  3. Colleges must commit to multiple measures assessment. I find this one weird; by law, we’ve always been required to use multiple measures. And now that AB 705 has passed, we’re required to use “multiple measures” (which has become short-hand for “use high school transcripts”). So this seems unnessary.
  4. Colleges must participate in the federal student loan program. This is the toughest one: we withdrew from the federal student loan program because the feds hold us accountable for defaults (by students who drop, or graduate, or otherwise move on, but who don’t pay their loans). If a district reaches a certain level for a couple years, all federal financial aid can be cut off. We were approaching that limit, so we stopped offering the loans.

There are a lot of subtleties around that last point, too. I won’t try to list them all–I’d probably mess them up, and there are too many–but just to give one example: if a school exceeds that level, they are allowed to petition the feds for a waiver. However, (a) they are not allowed to petition until after they exceed the limit, and (b) there is no guarantee that they would receive the waiver. Our Board voted to discontinue the loan program to put the brakes on our rising default level, in part because if they didn’t, all federal financial aid (including PELL grants) would be at risk–and the waiver program is uncertain.

Nonetheless, my sense, from listening to the chancellor explaining the various issues, is that the Board will support reinstating the loan program. The chancellor has been working with other schools in the same boat as us, schools who discontinued their federal loan programs and who find themselves facing the same decision re: AB 19, and those schools have been trying to get clarity (and perhaps changes in policy) from the feds.

One other wrinkle: AB 19 has been passed–it’s law–but it hasn’t yet been funded. It’s listed in the governor’s budget, but there are a lot of steps to go through before the state budget is finalized. And until it is, nothing is certain.

It seems that some of our neighboring colleges may be advertising Promise programs already. It’s unclear if they’re advertising “Promise” in the sense of AB 19, or if (for example) their foundations are providing the funds for now. Either way, if our neighbors are advertising free college, and we’re not… well, I’m sure you see the problem.

As I understood the discussion, the colleges are authorized to get the word out about the AB 19 Promise program. There is some risk: if the state’s final budget does not fund the program, or if we were not able to fulfill the criteria, then we’d have made commitments that we might not be able to keep. But there are also risks of waiting–losing students (and, I would think, political capital) to neighboring schools, or being so late that our students simply wouldn’t know of the opportunity.

Finally, a note on board meetings: The next Board meeting, March 8, is in Lake. I won’t be able to attend that for personal reasons. The following is April 12 (at Yuba), and I won’t be able to attend that, either–that’s state Academic Senate’s Plenary session.

CA Guided Pathways Workgroup Meeting of Feb. 27, 2018

by Gregory Kemble

[A quick note: there was also a GP Lead meeting in the afternoon, but I was unable to attend because of the DC3 meeting.]

I attended the CAGP Workgroup meeting on Tuesday morning. As it is a workgroup, much of the time was spent working on the homework that came out of the third California Guided Pathways Project Institute. (This is the national project, which is working with 20 colleges in California, including us.) Most of the work involved taking a “gap analysis”–a list of things that we do, compared with a list of best practices and/or things we feel we should do–and coming up with general ideas of ways to bridge those gaps. This type of information will help inform the workplan that is due to the state (for the state’s GP Initiative) at the end of March.

We also had a student join us, which was great. We’ve reached out to students to some extent–Daren has presented to ASYC and invited them to join us (they are somewhat short-handed and over-committed this year, unfortunately); we held the student focus groups last semester (and are inviting some of them back to help with specific parts of this project); a couple of the leads have had discussions and asked questions in their classes; and, of course, there’s a survey that just went out to everyone–but it’s been difficult to get students to attend our meetings. It was nice to have one with us, to get a sense of his experience at the college. (It was also nice that he’s a former journalism student of mine.)

I mentioned the survey, which I will remind people of elsewhere. But if you haven’t done so yet, please do take the survey. It is open through Sunday night, March 5. (For more information about the survey, here’s a copy of Sonja’s and my email that went out last week. And if you want to see the original email, it was sent Feb. 22 from Sonja’s address [slolland@yccd.edu], with the Subject: We Need Your Input- Survey to Inform the College’s Guided Pathways Work Plan.)

Distance Education Flex Presentation of Feb. 23, 2018

by Gregory Kemble

I attended the morning half of the DE Flex presentation put on by Gaeir Dietrich, the director of the High Tech Center Training Unit. I had to leave to teach in the afternoon, but I got a printout of her PowerPoint, and I know Kyra plans to post a recording of this soon, if she hasn’t already done so. (I will update this post to include a link to it once it’s available.) (Also, a word on recording these at the end of the post…)

I don’t want to report on the whole thing, but I would like to highlight a few things. I knew some of this, but some was new (and frightening) to me.

  • Due to some legal history (see the video for the details), the expectation for colleges and instructors is quite high. Thus, lawsuits often end up awarding monetary damages, not simply “cease and desist” letters.
  • While a lawsuit would likely target a college or district, it can target individual instructors. And in certain cases–for example, if a faculty member had been warned by the college several times to provide an accommodation but simply refused–a college could assign the blame to that faculty member, who would then be held responsible. (It gets worse: since this relates to breaking the law, neither the college/district nor the union would be able to pay the instructor’s legal fees.)
  • The Office of Civil Rights, which is the organization that usually ends up dealing with any lawsuits from students who feel they’ve not received appropriate accommodations, has a really big hammer: they have the ability to cut off all federal funds. That would include federal financial aid for students. Fortunately, that’s not a first resort. But it’s a real threat, and they do use it when they feel they have to.
  • Just because a vendor says that their product is accessible, doesn’t mean it is. And saying, “They told me it was accessible” is not a valid defense in the case of a lawsuit. It’s our responsibility to ensure that our courses–every required aspect of them–is accessible. (Apparently, some vendors have some parts that are accessible, but others that are not. If we require anything that is inaccessible, we are liable for that.)
  • Yuba has a lot of work to do. A lot. (And not just in DE.)

It was a really good presentation–Gaier was well-organized and expertly knowledgeable. I wish I’d been able to stay for the second half… But I will catch it on video, once it’s posted. (Again, I’ll update this post with a link once I have it.)

That word on recording DE PD activities I promised above:

I know that a lot of people have requested that DE professional development activities be recorded and posted; I guess that logic is that, since we’re DE people, we should be able to do our professional development online. But there are three problems with relying on or demanding that:

  1. Our technology is not always up to the task. In the case of this presentation, it should work fine because the presentation took place in the ITV classroom. But past presentations have not been held there, so the tech isn’t set up to record either screen or voice. Why, you ask? That leads to #2:
  2. Many of these presentations are meant to be workshops, with participants working on their own courses in a computer lab. These labs  are not equipped for recording. But, more important, workshops don’t simply translate to online presentations. As DE instructors, we should understand that. (And that doesn’t mention the challenges of making a workshop discussion accessible.)
  3. It’s kind of a drag to be a presenter and speak to an empty room, which is the danger when we rely on recordings. Of course, some people can’t make the presentation (just as I couldn’t stay for the afternoon), and in such cases a recording is the only access available. But please, if you can make these presentations, do show up to support the presenters.

YC Council Meeting of Feb. 20, 2018

by Gregory Kemble

This was a meeting of reports and updates, primarily:

1) Amandeep Kandola (Director of Counseling) updated the council on progress they [update: “they” = Academic Integrity Committee] have made simplifying the petition process, removing things that don’t actually need to be petitioned (for example, students either qualify or don’t for “academic renewal,” so having it on the petition form confused and delayed decisions) from the form. There are other changes that they have identified and are putting into effect.

They also have reduced the time that students have to wait for a response to their petitions, and have improved the communication to the students, making it much more personal and understanding, rather than cold and bureaucratic.

2) Sandy Fowler, Director of CTE, updated the council on dual enrollment. There is some progress in getting agreements with high schools in the area, though the process can be slow. We are waiting for a recently developed contract to be looked at by the district’s lawyers, and we are working with local high school districts to determine which dual enrollment model would serve the schools best.

(There are two models: a traditional model, which requires that schools be open to outsiders; and a newer model, based on AB 288, which allows schools to close their campus to outsiders. In either case, there are a number of variables–teachers in the high school need to meet CCC minimum qualifications, or a faculty member from Yuba would have to teach the course, for example.)

So: progress, but slow.

3) Elena Flacks gave an update on the Program Review Committee, which is charged with two main tasks: to facilitate program review feedback, and to ensure alignment of program review questions to our (newly approved) EMP. For the former, Elena reported that the process went much better under the dedicated committee (last year, it had been under the already overworked CEAC). For the latter, we can expect updated questions to come before council and Senate before the end of the school year.

4) Karen Stanis updated us on the Child Development Center situation. (GH sent out an email earlier describing the issue. Karen also said this article in the Appeal-Democrat does a reasonably good job describing the situation; the vagueness surrounding some of the issues are a result of confidentiality requirements.) The short version: The CA Dept. of Social Services is seeking to revoke the center’s license.

This is a pretty scary situation, as it affects over 70 families, a good number of are students who would have difficulty attending school if the center closes down. There are also ramifications for some of our ECE students, though it looks like the department is confident they can find positions for the students to finish their work as needed.

We will be submitting an appeal (by now, we may have done so); from there, as I understand it, it goes before a judge within the next 90 days to make a decision.

5. We finished up by making an official record of formally approving minor changes in the Core and Guiding Principles that had already been approved in the EMP.

YC-AFT / WCC / YCAS meeting of Feb. 20, 2018

by Gregory Kemble

Matt and I met (via phone) with Elaine Robinson, the president of YC-AFT (the part-time faculty association). We covered a few issues:

  • We discussed the process that FAYCCD and the Senates had developed to coordinate work in cases where our purview overlaps.
  • We discussed the proposed part-time faculty evaluation. Since professional development, of which faculty evaluation is a component, is an area of overlapping purview, we used the above mentioned process to work to guide the discussion. We agreed to ask the workgroup that had developed the proposed part-time faculty evaluation to look at the proposed full-time evaluation forms and consider ways it would need to be adapted to better serve part-time faculty.
  • We discussed changes in the newly approved part-time contract, both to have a general sense of what the changes are and to target issues that might involve shared purview. The new contract isn’t posted on the HR site yet, so Elaine forwarded a copy of the latest draft she has to us for review.
  • Elaine alerted us to a concern about how canceled classes had led, in some cases, to full-time faculty bumping part-time faculty in order to make load, especially in cases where part-time faculty with seniority were being bumped while new part-time faculty might have a full load. Though this isn’t an area where our purview overlaps,  she wanted to make us aware of the situation.
  • We discussed the issue of official email lists for part-time faculty at each of the colleges. This is an issue that has been raised at DC3, though we haven’t come to a conclusion about this. The issue is that we have a handful of official lists that are drawn (as I understand it) from Colleague (or Ellucian or whatever it’s called now). The problem is that part-time faculty information is volatile–part-time faculty may switch sites, for example–which makes having up-to-date records difficult–or even impossible, since Colleague will only choose one college as the primary site, and some part-time faculty may teach at both sites. Matt and I will bring this to DC3 again (along with a similar request for classified staff lists).

VIDEO: Pillar 2 – Enter the Path

by Gregory Kemble

Here’s the third in the series of videos that our Guided Pathways Leads commissioned. This one looks at “entering the path,” the second of the “Four Pillars” of the Guided Pathways framework.

If you missed the first two videos, you can find them on my blog (here’s the first video; here’s the second). They are also on the college’s Guided Pathways page, which should be accessible from a number of places on the college web site.

As before, the video is closed captioned. And as before, I’ve also included a transcript below the video for those who prefer to read.

Hello again. Greg Kemble here.

In the previous video I talked about the first of the four pillars of the guided pathways framework: clarify the path.

When thinking about our institution through that lens–and yes, I’m mixing metaphors here–we create clear curricular pathways that help students reach their educational goals in a timely manner, and we simplify our processes as much as we can, removing obstacles that confuse or discourage students.

The second pillar–enter the path–builds on that work. It encourages us to think about ways to attract students and get them on these paths. This may involve shifting resources to outreach. It may involve making sure our website is informative and accurate and simple to navigate. It may involve finding ways to give our counselors more time to guide students as they explore their college or career options to choose the path that interests them.

And then, once they’re here, it might involve making sure these students feel supported–getting them into courses in line with their interests as soon as possible, getting them connected with tutors, or reaching out to those who struggle through programs like Early Alert.

Now why would we want to focus on this? Well, this graphic–I’ve shown this before–suggests that we might have a problem getting students to enter the path. About 2100 potential new students filled out applications to attend Yuba college for fall 2009. But only about a thousand of them–less than half–ended up enrolling in classes that semester. And then, even when we got them here we lost another half or so by the second semester.

I’m going to admit that, before I started investigating Guided Pathways, when I was faced with statistics like this, I would just explain them away.Maybe these students went to a four-year college, or joined the Air Force, or went to jail, or got a job, or got married, or whatever.

Or I wanted to know how this compares to the rest of the state, and when I learned that most community colleges struggle in a similar way, I’d throw up my hands and say, “See?”

But now that I’ve started learning about Guided Pathways–and I’m speaking for myself here, though I know others who feel the same way–I can’t be satisfied with that anymore. As Darren Otten says, I can’t unsee what I’ve seen. The Guided Pathways framework has brought into focus how many ways our college is not as student-centered as it could be–as we claim it is, and as I want it to be.

And it’s not just me. As I mentioned in the first video, the state has been unhappy with the limited progress that a number of initiatives have had–the Basic Skills Initiative is most often mentioned–and so they’re now pushing us in the direction of Guided Pathways. In order to participate in the College Promise Program–AB 19–we’re required to be a part of the California Community Colleges Guided Pathways program.

And so the latest initiative, more or less, is AB 705. I mentioned it before. It has several components, but I want to talk about two.

First, there is the multiple measures component, which requires that we use high school transcripts as the primary measure for placing students in English and math.

Now, why? Well, the research has shown that the cut scores on placement tests, such as the ones we’ve used at Yuba College, are poor predictors of success in college level math and English. So, if that’s true, we’ve been placing too many students into developmental classes that they don’t actually need. And we know the longer students are in school–especially in classes that don’t contribute toward a degree–the more likely they are to quit before they reach their goal.

But AB 705 goes further. It also demands that we give pretty much all students the opportunity to complete their required English and math courses in their first two semesters. So, I’m an English teacher,
so I’ll talk about English. This means that we will only be allowed to offer one course below the college-level course.

There’s a lot to complain about here, especially since the law technically went into effect at the beginning of this year.
But if we want to make these changes work for our students–
if we’re not going to just let them sink or swim according to whether or not they are college ready(or one-level-below-college-ready), we’re going to need to figure out ways to support them. We’ve got to find ways to be student-ready–to offer the kinds of support that will increase their chances to succeed.

In the last video I mentioned a distinction between an initiative and a framework. AB 705 Is an initiative–it’s a law and even if we’re convinced it’s the wrong play, there’s little we can do to resist it.

But Guided Pathways is a framework–a way of organizing the institution around our students’ experiences. So when the state lays an initiative on us, like AB 705, we don’t have to find a way to just tack it on to what we’ve been doing That’s what we’ve done in the past and it’s the main reason we’re “initiatived out.”

Instead, the framework gives us a structure to analyze how the initiative will impact our students–how it will impact the aspects of pathways as represented in the four pillars–and to adapt to it in a coherent way.

Now, both of the things that AB 705 demands can be incorporated into the Guided Pathways framework. We need to clarify a path–in this case, we’re perhaps talking about accelerated developmental courses.

We need to help them enter the path–making sure students who pass their developmental classes don’t put off their college-level English or math, for example. Instead, we encourage them–we guide them–to take those classes right away.

And, as the third pillar demands, we need to help them stay on the path, providing the type of support our students need, whether it’s supporting our instructors as we adjust to teaching new accelerated curriculum with students with a wider range of abilities, or embedded tutoring, or more proactive connection with tutoring centers.

Guided Pathways gives us a way to break down what we’ll need to do to serve our students when we’re faced with new and even problematic initiatives from the state.

All right. In the next video, I’ll talk about pillar three–helping students to stay on the path. See you then.