6. Governing Board Oral Presentation regarding second Reorganization April 2009

Governing Board 04/15/09
Oral presentation in response to Reorganization

The Academic Senate is taking the opportunity to review the new Reorganization plan that I attained by logging on to the Southwestern College’s website. I believe and anticipate that the college leadership has intentions of staying in compliance with AB 1725 and the District’s 10 plus 1 agreement with the Academic Senate and the faculty represented in that policy, by projecting a model of a positive Shared Governance process, that others in the state can emulate. I appreciate the time and effort by the Cabinet in an attempt to promote a cost-conscience and effective organizational infrastructure for our campus.

I am considering that the Reorganization plan is a very rough draft that is being presented to you tonight as an initial work in progress and will be considered over a period time in our campus culture. Now that a plan has emerged, step two in a healthy shared governance process, input by constituent groups, academic programs and individuals impacted by a changed or increased workload can best be expressed by those that are living in those work environments. We, as faculty, welcome that opportunity to be a part of the solution, by the additional time and energy for shared input and decision-making at Southwestern College, and look forward in working with the Cabinet in refining their plan including impact analysis of key changes.

A change in administrative leadership, School merges, and/or a change in the status of classified positions do impact academic programs and the workload for faculty in many ways, especially as the Deans, faculty and classified employees must function daily as a team. Let me give you examples of the trickled-down effect on how academic and professional matters for faculty and academic programs are impacted on just this reorganization plan alone:



The merging of the School of Business & Information Systems to an already existing School impacts faculty in the following ways:

• Curriculum offering by the School of Business is certificate and program-intense, that relies on the current dean’s outside connections to private industry and business . . . a loss of institutional memory and constant communication, thus affecting course offerings and faculty workload.
• The new School title does not have Business included, and this school has multiple course offerings that according to the SANDAG research computer and business curriculum is two of the top 5 requests by our community, and according to the ASLANIAN marketing analysis 2008, Business, especially Business Administration, is by far the #1 choice for a major field of study by our students (that doubled the second choice)

Elimination of a classified position that will directly and immediately impact academic programs and a college/community connection in the School of Arts and Communication

• I quote from faculty in that School: “the position coordinates all of our performances here, including printing the tickets, advertising, manages the front of Mayan Hall for every performance.... that's a HUGE job; opens the doors, takes tickets, handles the money, coordinates the ushers and other ticket takers, decorates and cleans up the lobby, manages crises that inevitably crop up, etc.. We literally can't give any performances in Mayan Hall without someone managing the front of the house -- does the administration realizing they are not cutting an extraneous PR person, they are cutting the ability for our school to function? I'm not exaggerating”
• The faculty workload will be impacted and the performances for the community will be affected, thus, again an example of how academic programs are influenced by one re-organizational move

The loss of a web designer

• Major input and changes are occurring this spring for the Southwestern College website that faculty have a direct influence area in the midst of web projects in the websites of student learning outcomes, accreditation, academic program review, tenure review, academic senate and curriculum, just to name a few.

Grants are on a moratorium on our campus except for career & technical training and ‘green’ technology, eliminating the opportunity of faculty across the campus in a variety of disciplines to initiate grant writing to bring outside fiscal resources to our campus. The loss of a director of grants & development sends a message to faculty that we as a campus do not want additional money coming to our campus, unless it is biased to a specific area. We hope that a new Dean of Research, Evaluation and Planning will be hired soon, since that job has re-opened several times.

The Academic Senate is willing to be a partner with you in educational program development, curriculum development including placing courses within disciplines, district and college governance structures as related to faculty roles, institutional planning and budget development, all of which are stated in our 10 plus one agreement with the District in areas of rely primarily and mutual agreement. All of these that I just named are impacted by the current work in progress, the 2009 Reorganization plan.

Thank you.