Bldg. 25 Conference Room

Senate Representatives: Lottie Bain, Richard Grotegut, Kay Harrison, Alan Kirshner, Bunny Klopping, Victoria Loukianoff, Susan Myers, Nancy Pauliukonis, Janel Tomblin-Brown, Marge Segraves, Heidi Story, Carolyn Strickler, Teresa Sutowski, and Barbara Tull.

Others present: Marilena Tamburello, Rob Smedfjeld, Jim Wright, Ron Travenick, Ralph Kindred

Announcements

Richard Grotegut apologized for not being able to attend some recent Senate meetings. He made arrangements with George Rodgers to take over for him for the remainder of the semester beginning with the next Senate meeting.

Approval of Minutes

No corrections to minutes. Minutes approved.

Directions for IT at Ohlone – Ralph Kindred, VP of Information Technology

Ralph Kindred was introduced as our new Associate Vice President of Information Technology. Ralph has been with Ohlone for about 3 months now. He presented a report on his activities to date. In the first 30 days, Ralph conducted interviews with many different individuals on campus. Through these interviews, he was able to identify some major themes about Information Technology on this campus. He wanted to assess “where are we?” as an IT Department before determining what direction they need to go. He wanted to get a true picture of all that Ohlone is expecting of the IT Department. He discovered that technology is viewed very strategically at Ohlone College. There is a high demand at Ohlone for technology through the Strategic Plan and through projects that are currently underway, such as Title III. Ralph wants to be able to transform the IT Department in order to be able to provide the services that are in demand.

During these initial feedback sessions, he spent two days focusing just on Datatel. He wants to look at whether we are using Datatel to its full capability. Some of the processes that were set up seven years ago were created by Datatel consultants, not by college employees. Ralph wants to look at ways to make Datatel work more efficiently at the college.

Ralph has some initial recommendations to improve the service delivery of IT. These recommendations include to internally re-align IT staff and to consolidate core IS processes into the IT Department. For example, Bill Duke will be brought into the IT Department. Other recommendations include the implementation of an IT governance process and committee, to form an IT Strategic Planning Process and Committee, and to conduct a Datatel Business Advisory Services Audit.

These recommendations are a starting point. Ralph is looking for feedback in order to continue to understand the needs and concerns related to IT at Ohlone.

One of the questions for Ralph was about the IT Staff. The responses from the Help Desk are always very quick, but many faculty do not know who the Help Desk staff are. Another question was about when wireless technology will be available on campus. Ralph cannot give us a definite date for this, but this is definitely a high priority.

If you have any questions, faculty should feel free to contact Ralph.

E-Portfolios & Update on e-learning options- Marilena Tamburello

We have a one year extension from CVC (?). We have a year to decide how we are going to host our online courses and what the costs will be if we choose WebCT. There are some other options right now that we could consider.

Marilena explained she is in the process of forming a focus group to review and evaluate e-portfolios. This group will include faculty and staff from IT. E-Portfolios are a tool that students can use to demonstrate what they have done academically. The college can also use these to look at whether students have met learning outcomes. Since there are many layers to e-portfolios, there will be a session in the future explaining what e-portfolios are and what they can do. There are many vendors that provide software and support for e-portfolios.

Impacts of the compressed calendar – Tull/Travenick

Due to time constraints, this item was not discussed. It will be left as a standing item on the agenda for senators to bring issues for discussion. Next week the Senate will return to the issue of commencement in spring, 2007.

Senate Goal Setting – Tull

One of the items for discussion is the health of the senate. The current president’s term is ending this year and there is no identified president-elect. The Senate also has several empty officer positions. A suggestion was to reexamine the structure of the Senate. Do we want to consider having revolving Senate terms for all faculty? Another important step is to set some dates to have the Senate meet with the College Council to discuss shared governance roles of each body. It was suggested to try to set up a meeting with them in the near future. Another idea is to have the President of the State Academic Senate come and do a workshop on shared governance. The Senate was interested in this idea. Another suggestion was to discuss how we view the future of the Faculty Senate and look at possibly revising the Senate constitution. For instance, there have been changes to which Division some faculty are in, which would change Senate representation of these faculty.

Another issue to look at is final exams. What is in the policy and what is actually practiced are sometimes different. Currently, it is required for faculty to give finals, however, some faculty are not doing this. We need to look at this and determine what role Senate should have in handling this issue. We may want to consider whether or not we want to change our policy, or at least allow for exceptions.

Another issue to consider is faculty responsibilities on hiring committees. If there are guidelines, we should find these and look at posting these on the Senate website.

Meeting adjourned 4:50 p.m.

Senators for 2005 - 2006

Building 1 & 5 Bunny Klopping

Building 2 & Hyman Hall Kay Harrison - Committees Chair

Building 4 & Smith Center Teresa Sutowski

Building 6 & 7 Marge Segraves

Building 8 Carolyn Strickler Rep to CCLC

Building 9 & NOC vacant

Counseling and LR&IT Susan Myers Secretary

Deaf Studies & Special Services Nancy Pauliukonis

Exercise Science & Wellness Lottie Bain Treasurer

Fine Arts, Business, & Broadcasting Janel Tomblin-Brown/Tim Roberts

Health Sciences Heidi Story

Lang. Arts & Soc. Sci. (English & ESL) Barbara Tull President

Lang. Arts & Soc. Sci. (other depts.) Alan Kirshner

Math, Sci., & Tech. (ASTR, BIOL, BIOT,

CAOT, CHEM, CS, & PHYS) Richard Grotegut/George Rodgers

Math, Sci., & Tech. (other depts.) Victoria Loukianoff