Faculty Senate Meeting Minutes
November 7, 2007
Senate members present: Ruth Frickle, Glen Avantaggio, Gloria Rose Koepping, Chris Gan, Sherri Chun, Jack Harton, Patricia Haggerty (for John Dunn), Dusty Wilson and Darryl Brice.
Guests: Kate Bligh and Gwen Spencer
The meeting was called to order at 3:07 in room 411 of the Library.
As a quorum was present, the amended minutes from October 17th, 2007 were approved.
Ruth confirmed that Ruth Windhover and Allan Walten will attend our November 28th meeting to discuss DL caps. Kathy Oberg and Allison Green will attend our Dec. 5th meeting to discuss the Faculty Resource Center.
Ruth then asked for responses or reports from each division on the Testing Center’s provision of services for Faculty.
Jack Harton from the Arts and Humanities division brought a handout summary of the 8 respondents in his division. Other divisions gave a verbal report. When we summarized the feedback on the white board, 13 faculty plus most of the Pure and Applied Science division reported problems with the Testing Center’s availability of hours and it’s limited space (17 desk tops). Eight additional faculty reported “they have no problem with testing services” and 5 faculty reported that they either don’t use the Testing Center or don’t need it.
Several other opinions were voiced that revolved around the issues of make up testing and hybrid support.. Some faculty thought that if a class was truly an on-line course that testing should probably be on-line as well. That means they wouldn’t need test proctoring services for that course. A hybrid class should be able to test on campus since it meets here as well as on-line.
Highline used to have 62 hours of testing time each week, however that has dropped to 42 hours of testing a week, only 14 of which is available for make-up testing. Even though the hours are varied between morning, afternoon, and evening, the drop in makeup testing service is felt by the faculty. This is a drop in service of 50% from the year before.
Gwen Spencer handed out a Testing Center Survey which showed the differences between BCC, ECC, GRCC, and SCCC in terms of available hours, tests provided, Centers where testing occurs, and number of employees. It is clear that these other schools have more employees than we do and that 3 campuses have at least 2 centers where testing takes place.
Is make up testing a hot issue for the rest of the faculty or only for the Pure and Applied Science faculty and a handful of others? Is additional accommodated testing for students with disabilities, especially those that must have a quiet place needed?
It was suggested that this issue should be taken up in a full Faculty meeting, where the concern can be discussed with everyone present. Alternately a polling or survey of the full faculty was discussed. This could also be the work of a subcommittee from the Senate. Ruth said that we would table further discussion and decision making on this item till Winter quarter.
Kate Bligh suggested we could use the student satisfaction study this spring to tap into student perceptions about testing in addition to anything else we plan to do. She also stressed the willingness of Student Services to partner with the Senate and Instruction, to be part of the solution to the concerns over testing availability. Kate also asked for input about when to implement the elimination of the 20th day grade designation of WI.
Meeting Adjourned at 4:04 p.m.
Next meeting is November 28th, 2007.
Minutes submitted by Gloria Rose Koepping, Faculty Senate Secretary