January 27, 2025

I. Call to Order

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Welcome

Erik Woodbury reminded representatives to complete their report out. He requested that they put “Nothing to Report” in the box for their area if they do not have anything to report. This document is a tool to share and communicate what is new and important to the college community.Lorem

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Approval of Agenda and Minutes from January 13th, 2025.

Shagun Kaur moved, Bob Singh seconded to approve both minutes and agenda. No objection. Agenda and minutes approved by unanimous consent.

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Public Comment 

Shagun Kaur shared the dilemma expressed by international students who are also legal residents. They have been shunted from one counseling office to another with no one able to help them navigate college. Where can these students go for help?

All F1 visa holding students go to the International Student Office ISP. Everyone else should go to general counseling. However, there are other visas that don’t qualify for ISP. If they are legal residents and they go to general counseling, a general counselor is not equipped to handle questions about international degrees. These students are in no man's land.

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II. Consent Calendar

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Consent Calendar: ((Attachment)

Tenure Review Committee: James Adams, Librarian

Cecilia Hui replaces Alex Swanner on this committee.

Alicia Mullens moved to approve, Mary Pape seconded. No objections. Consent calendar approved.

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III. Needs and Confirmation

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District and College Needs (Attachment)

Hiring Committee for VP of Finance and Administrative Services

1 Faculty Representative needed.

See attached document for the tentative meeting and interview schedule.

Those interested should fill out the request to serve form.

The goal was to approve this position next week.

RAPP Representative – PT Faculty preferred for winter and spring 

Daniel Solomon, the part-time faculty will be stepping down. If no part-time faculty applies, it will go to all faculty.

Senate Events Committee

3-5 members from the executive committee or the campus at large. 

A new committee to identify, plan, and facilitate events sponsored by the Academic Senate. Past events include year-end retiree reception, staff appreciation coffee hour, Senate community building events. Ideas for new events include lecture series.

Senate Nomination and Election Committee 

3 members from the executive members, excludes current officers and those running for office.

Form committee by week 6, February 10. The committee will establish the timeline that will include the call out, collect the interest statements, put together the ballot, hold the election in early May, and verify the result.  

The positions up for election are president, vice-president, and at-large part-time representative.

Sherwin Mendoza chaired this committee last year. There was only one open position. He estimated 15 hours of committee work.

Other oncoming needs:

• COOL Committee
• Tenure Review At-Large Representatives
• EO Representatives

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Confirmations

None

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IV. New & Continuing Business

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Quick Notes:

Accreditation: Letter and Report

De Anza has been accredited for the next 7 years; Foothill for the next 18 months.

FHDA Board Update (see report out)

January 13th, Regular and Organizational Board meeting. Peter Landsberger was elected Board President with Pearl Cheng serving as Vice President.

Public comments and a related agenda item was passed supporting undocumented students.  

The Board also approved moving funds into the Creative Arts Center Measure G Project budget and approved employing a design-build approach.

Courses into Disciplines

Every three years the Senate reviews the disciplines assigned to courses. The work was assigned to the executive secretary. When they reorganized the bylaws last year they moved that work to the curriculum committee. Erik Woodbury will be working with the curriculum chair this year to complete that work. Erik has been working on disciplines as they migrate into eLumen. The work will involve confirming with department chairs the disciplines and FSA, faculty service areas, for the courses.

Campus Safety Resolution Available for Review

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Approval of Funds for Faculty travel to Academic Academy on AI

Sal Breiter sent a call out to encourage applications to attend the Academic Academy on AI. President Torres initially identified money to send two people to the conference. They got 20 applications for the 2 spots. After reviewing the applications, they would like to send 4 to the conference. The funding for 2 will come from the president, 1 from the district, and the final 1 from the Academic Senate, if approved.

The request from the Senate is $1300, the estimated cost for registration, hotel and travel.

According to the financial report from last week, this expenditure will not impact the Senate’s ability to cover the cost of the proposed budget for the year.

In the past, the Senate has sponsored the year-end retiree celebration, the staff appreciation coffee hour, meet-and-greet Senate gathering. The Senate has supported the annual spring SLO convocation and other special requests. There was a suggestion for sponsoring or co-sponsoring a lecture or workshop series. 

A solution to maintain the Senate reserve funds will be to recruit more supporting members. The increased income will enable the Senate to support more worthwhile requests. 

There was interest in subsequent discussion on how the Senate should spend its funds and how people can request Senate support.

There were suggestions for conducting a survey and putting something on the Senate webpage

Representatives were encouraged to reach out to their constituents to come back with funding requests and ways for the Senate to support and co-sponsor college events.

Mary Pape motioned to approve up to $1300 to send another person to the Academic Academy on AI with the stipulation they will report out to the academic senate upon their return. Alicia Mullens seconded

Shagun Kaur suggested a friendly amendment to add that “...they will do a presentation or workshop…” Mary Pape accepted the amendment.

Amended motion: “To approve roughly $1,300 for travel to the AI conference in San Diego in February with the understanding that people report back and or give a professional development workshop on campus.”

No objections. Funding approved.

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Discussion of FW Grade Assignment

• Use of FW vs F? Do we want both?
• Requirements or guidance around Ws

This was the second discussion on the assignment of FW grade. 

Erik Woodbury reviewed last week’s discussion with a timeline.

From week one to the beginning of week three, faculty should drop students for non-attendance. The drops will not appear on a student's academic transcript.

Between week three and week nine, after census through the end of the withdrawal period, either the student or the instructor can withdraw the student from the course. That W, when it happens, comes with the date that it occurred.

If they don't drop, but they stop showing up and they stop participating in the class, they would get an F.

And if they get an F, the F shows up on a student's transcript. If a student gets a certain number of Fs, financial aid will review if this is an earned F? For an earned F the student actually did all the work, participated but did not succeed in the class. Or, did they get an F because they stopped participating at some point? And if so, what was the last date of their participation? And if it was early enough, then it can impact financial aid. The students might be asked to pay financial aid back, and may affect their availability for future financial aid.

Between week nine and the end of the quarter. If a student disappeared and stopped participating, the instructor may assign them an FW with the last day for attendance/participation. Attendance and participation are different.

There was still confusion over the use of FW. Faculty wanted clarity on how W, F, and FW impact students and the college. People also expressed the need for guidelines.

Nazy Galoyan joined the Senate meeting to explain:

How does W or EW or FW affect financial aid? All three might impact financial aid. 

W's is based on the date a student withdraws from the class. Based on that date financial aid will calculate if a student may have to pay back some of the financial aid money based on their last date of participation.

EW is done retroactively. Students may be able to keep the grants depending on the date of withdrawal.

Lisa Mandy, financial aid explained:

FW with the last day of participation helps financial aid to calculate if a student has to return the federal grants and how much. Without the FW, financial aid will need to send notifications to faculty for students with a high failure rate to determine their last day of participation in their classes. If they were working on verification of attendance for 251 students that would be 753 notifications they have to send out to instructors to determine the last time a student actually participated in their courses for them to do the calculation.

It is not just the calculation but also a compliance issue with Title IV audits.

F is an earned grade, while FW is not earned. The student has not completed their work and did not finish the quarter.

For compliance, financial aid has to verify that if a student attends after the 60% mark, they will also need to verify over 50% participation in the course.

If a student gets passing grades, technically Ds, they would not be subject to automatic reviews. If a student gets many Ws and Fs, financial aid will have to start the review and calculation for compliance.

Some faculty still had confusion about when to use FWs and how to use FWs and what the impacts on students.

Nazy Galoyan: If even one instructor grades a student with FW and the student drops all of the classes or receives F, the college will be compliant. That's why it's very important to have FW on the records. It also saves a lot of back and forth work between the financial aid office and the faculty.

One of the issues was that at the community colleges and De Anza instructors are not required to take attendance.

There were further discussions and questions over when to use FW and its impact on students. Some people would like further clarification and documentation. Also, these have to be written down, accessible and explained to students.

FW and F are not the same for students. FW impacts the full time requirement student visa and it also impacts veterans. FW, for veterans with GI bill benefits, they will have to pay it back.

Nazy Galoyan stated federal law and state Title IV are not synchronized. The De Anza FW policy implemented in 2018 was based on a proposal to comply with the state Title IV.

Lisa Mandy gave this example. For this winter quarter according to the college policy, from the financial aid perspective if students stop attending after February 28th, they have not earned that F. They should be assigned an FW. If financial aid sees all W's after February 28th, they will think that there's a problem with that student because someone should have recognized that the students have stopped attending.

There are two different regulations that financial aid is dealing with. Erik Woodbury asked for volunteers to join his meeting with Lisa and Nazy to understand and clarify the guideline and implications. Erik and the group will bring this back in a clear timeline 

Patty Guitron, James Adams, Kevin Glapion, and Shagun Kaur volunteered for the group.

Lisa shared the link on financial aid repayment:

https://www.deanza.edu/financialaid/thingstoknow/titleiv.html

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RAPP Update

Erik Woodbury sent an email to faculty to update the current RAPP work to finalize their recommendation on personnel hiring to the College Council.

This year, there are likely funds for 11 positions- 9 instructional, 2 non-instructional.

RAPP has reviewed and ranked the positions into high, moderate, and low categories. They will put the high instructional positions into 3 buckets of 5 per bucket, the high non-instructional positions into 1 bucket 2-3 to advance to the College Council.

Erik Woodbury asked the Senate representative to look at these positions for feedback to RAPP faculty representatives to deliberate on the positions to advance.

Senate members took turn speaking for specific positions or areas

LK for Biology. They have many classes, increased enrollment, transfer requirements. With recent faculty retirements, there are only 2 full time faculty. The work cannot be done by part-time faculty.

Victor Pham, student rep, a biology major was frustrated over not having enough available bio classes for his degree

Lianna, one of 2 few remaining full time faculty to support students for transfer. Need additional full time faculty to maintain the level of instruction and the growth demands. They will need additional faculty to establish a biology cohort with NASA to support underrepresented students in STEM.]

Viviana: for music, she feels for that department, it is an important department. There is no faculty in that department ; they need to replace that position; 

Music has gone from over 10 full time positions over 15 years to 1 position. Starting in spring quarter, it will have no full time faculty. The classes and activities have not decreased. It has been run by mostly part time faculty.

Julie: Creative Arts desperately needs a sculptor hire. There are programmatic matters requiring full timers. 

Cynthia reminded people of the resolution the Senate passed in support of undocumented students. The full time HEFAS counselor position will serve the 1000 undocumented students on campus

Faculty has 5 rep on RAPP. They are Erik Woodbury, Tim Shively, Daniel Solomon, Simon Kang’a, and Alicia del Toro. Erik will summarize the faculty feedback for the faculty representatives.

Shagun Kaur pointed out the situation created when a faculty must choose to work for the college on committee and administrative or their work to the department by teaching. These needs have been considered temporary since the faculty will return. These are very troubling messages for people who want to step and serve. 

Viviana and Alicia both spoke for the challenges for one person departments that must fulfill teaching requirements and campus involvements, like curriculum, program review.

There was more support from Ishmael for music, as well as other small departments, as the college experience, and what is available in the college community. 

There are several departments in that situation, clearly music, geography, visual arts and design

James asked how positions end up in different buckets?

Erik briefly explained the RAPP evaluation and ranking process that is outlined in the RAPP website. 

Erik acknowledged that all the requests are important but they do disappoint people every year. Unfortunately, they don't have enough money to hire all the positions.

They are moving in a positive direction; listening to the constituents; making spaces for more voices and lifting them up. They are trying to get to a consensus model on their decisions

Elsa Jimenez-Samayoa: music is important, all departments and programs are important. Consider student demand to help them reach their goals.

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Curriculum Update: Course Sunset Policy Progress

Last year, the Academic Senate approved the Course Sunset Policy to streamline and maintain an active course catalog. The policy is straightforward: if a course hasn’t been offered in three years, it gets flagged for review.

With the support of Institutional Research, the Curriculum Office identified 400 courses that have remained inactive since the 2021–22 academic year.

In the fall quarter, curriculum reached out to department chairs and deans with a request to determine the future of these courses by choosing one of two options:

• Keep It Alive: Submit a concrete plan to offer the course within the next three years.
• Let It Go: Submit a deletion request in eLumen to permanently remove the course from the catalog.

While the original deadline for responses was set for November 25, 2024, it was extended to the end of Fall 2024 to provide additional time for thoughtful consideration

Honor courses and non-credit courses (where parent courses still exist) were removed from the flagged list automatically

For courses without a response to either option by the extended deadline, they were moved directly to the Curriculum Committee’s deletion list, as outlined in the policy.

Current Status

Responses Received: 150 Courses (Approximately): Departments have made clear decisions

Special Topics Courses Retained: 50 Courses (Approximately): These were reviewed and voted to remain in the catalog. No further action is required for these.

Pending Decisions: 200 Courses (Approximately): These courses are still awaiting departmental decisions and will be addressed during the February 4th meeting.

Action Items for Curriculum Representatives

Engage with Department Chairs: Kindly reach out to department chairs and confirm their decisions for the remaining courses.

Prepare for the February 4th Meeting: Finalized decisions (suspend or delete) must be presented at the meeting. Indecision is not an option.

This will be an annual process. Give feedback to Erik, Bob, and division rep for improvement.

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First Look: Equity Rubric

Felisa Vilaubi, undocumented student liaison counselor.

Shaila Ramos-García, Undocumented Student Support Program Coordinator, gave the background for establishing the rubric.

A couple of years ago, there was a career fair where Border Patrol was invited to campus. It had a big impact on our undocumented student community to the point where students literally left the college and never came back.That brought to their attention that there needs to be policy and processes.  They started working on this equity rubric, an equitable assessment tool to apply to events and decision making at De Anza College.

Felisa and Shaila shared in presenting the equity rubric (See attached presentation)

Alicia expressed her appreciation for the inclusion of disabled students, LGBTQ students, and foster youth.

Felisa explained that they started working on the rubric draft in the fall of 23. They finalized a version with campus leadership in summer of 24. Then consulted with district legal counsel for approval in fall 24. They are taking this to the shared governance groups.

There were many comments and questions. This will come back for more discussions and a vote.

Sam Bliss offered to schedule the presentation for a deans meeting.

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Good of the Order

Sam Bliss: This Friday, a group will be going to the Map training conference in San Diego. This is a state sponsored training to map and articulate pathways that include credit for prior learning. Out of the  5 programs, De Anza has chosen to focus on autotech and CIS.

Please review all report outs

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Attendance

In person

Erik Woodbury, Patty Guitron, So Kam Lee

Veronica Avila Acevedo, James Adams, Viviana Alcazar, *Deborah Armstrong, *Sam Bliss, James Capurso, Umar Douglas, Mark Hamer, Kevin Glapion, Lauren Gordon, Julie Hughes, Rusty Johnson, Cynthia Kaufman, Shagun Kaur, Sherwin Mendoza, Lisa Mesh, Alicia Mullens, Mary Pape, Victor Pham, Christian Rodriguez, Jayanti Roy, Lakshmikanta "LK" Sengupta, Sukhjit Bob Singh,  Leah Smith, James Tallent, Ismael Tarikh, Lianna Wong

Online

*Deborah Armstrong, Mary Donahue, Mark Landefeld, Ravjeet Singh

*Non-voting members