Senate Members in Attendance: Phil Sell, Angi Caster, Jack Harton, Moira Fulton, Barbara Hunter, Eric Baer, Ruth Windhover, Keith Paton, Patricia Haggerty, Toni Castro, Sharon Hashimoto (for Vicki Ropp)

Observers: Tim Morrison, , Santana Villa

I.Call to Order

The meeting was called to order, by the chair, Phil Sell, at 2:38 p.m.

II.Approval of Minutes:

Minutes of the January 14, 1999 meeting were approved as read.

III.Agenda Review:

The agenda was approved as written.

A.Chair: Phil Sell

Council of Councils – the status of various items that have been before the Faculty Senate:

B.President: Ed Command

Will turn in a written report later to the Senate. Ed has been spending a lot of time in Olympia and not been on campus as much as he would like. If someone wants to contact a legislator, etc. in Olympia, Virg Staiger is a great resource for contact information. About the current legislative session, Ed has several concerns, including the salary increases for full and part-time faculty. According to Ed, the biggest challenge at Highline is to get salary schedules attractive enough to attract and retain quality faculty.

48% of full-time faculty at Highline have only been here since 1990.

23% have more than 25 years at Highline.

71% of faculty will have changed in a 15 year period.

Community college teaching salaries are lagging behind K-12 public schools and 4 year colleges and universities.

Other issues are full funding for FTEs, money for community colleges to strengthen existing problems, getting capital, repair, and renovation funds for Highline to upgrade buildings, etc.

Univ. of Washington interns were on campus today, as a way of getting graduate students to a community college to get them to consider teaching at this level. In other words, servitude and hard work are great, and the money doesn’t really matter (according to Ed, tongue in cheek).

Last year the nursing graduates from Highline averaged a starting salary of $42,000, with placements at 100%. None of the faculty in the nursing program makes this much in salary, and could make substantially more if working in the industry instead of teaching. This is indicative of the concerns we have about salary.

C.Senators-at-Large:

Jack reported on how last week there was a Faculty Senate sponsored faculty meeting about the use of technology in the classroom. Presenters included Allison Green and Wendy Swyt, Diana Bender, Stephanie Delaney, Babs Cerna, and Barbara Clinton. The presentation seemed to go well.

Angi brought up the issue of what seems to be an increased number of meetings/forums, etc. on campus. An example is the upcoming forum on student behavior. Others include developing guidelines for distance education, etc. It seems that the meetings are being called on a more grassroots level. The faculty meetings themselves are sponsored by the Senate, who aren’t so much in the role of determining the content of the meetings but to make sure they are called for in a judicious and timely fashion.

We should put on the agenda for next time coming up with possible procedures for scheduling faculty meetings, forums, etc.

Community College faculty make up only 4% of WEA. WEA sponsored a conference that had a speech by Wallace Loh, representing the governor on higher education. Loh said that if the community colleges wanted more money it would have to be more efficient. Jack pointed out that this was the same Wallace Loh who gave a speech most of the Univ. of Washington faculty protested, claiming that it was more of a business and less of a educational approach, and depended too much on unrealistic expectations of the use of technology.

E. FACTC – Phil Sell:

Phil Sell reported on about the FACTC meeting to be held the week after next at South Puget Sound

F.ASHCC – Santana Villa:

Student Government has been working on the smoking on campus issue and is looking for a resolution to this. Some ideas include a smoke free zone in front of buildings, since there are complaints of smokers huddling in the front of buildings. Another idea is coming up with a program to help people who want to quit smoking to do so.

The ASHCC Vice-President for Legistation has been in contact with Karen Kaiser (our district’s state legislator) to talk about concerns of the student body.

D/G committee has set a two meetings next week to talk about this proposed requirement. This is a subject formerly addressed by the Senate.

The Work on the CO2020 committee has been steady but slow. The Senate Curriculum Committed submitted to the Instructional Cabinet some questions trying to clarify Cabinet’s response to the CO2020 report. Cabinet has been slow in providing these clarifications.

Science and Social Sciences divisions don’t seem to have wide support for proposed requirements brought before them. The Science one for quantitative skills apparently is lacking a constituency.

American Institutions requirement recommended by the Instructional Cabinet in their response to the CO2020 report is not getting support in the Social Sciences Division, according to Robin Buchan.

The Senate Curriculum Committee has made inquiries to the Coordinated Studies Committee about the CO2020’s recommendation to make a coordinated studies class as a requirement in the AA degree. The Coordinated Studies Committee hasn’t responded in any substantive way and doesn’t seem to have any firm ideas or clear mechanisms on how to make this recommendation possible. The Coordinated Studies Committee seems to like the idea but there are a lot of implications to implementing such as requirement.

According to Tim, the role of the Senate Curriculum Committee has been to act as a facilitator and not initiators in dealing with proposals for new requirements, and not to manage or decide all these issues by itself. The Committee has also been working on the idea of a capstone requirement. This proposal has met with mixed support, and does not as of yet have a championing entity on campus. This is true of other proposals of the CO2020 report. There seems to be a lack of momentum following the publication of the CO2020 report that the Senate Curriculum Committee is having to deal with.

Jack pointed out that the Diversity/Globalism requirement has been pushed because there are people on campus with passion in seeing that it come into effect. The other proposals from CO2020 aren’t developing the same type of passion, and therefore are being considered at a slower pace.

Angi, in regards to coordinated studies, stated that the Coordinated Studies Committee changed in nature from a facilitating body to more of a screening body. Also, there is research going on about the effectiveness of coordinated studies, and it is good to have some data and other proof before instituting coordinated studies as a requirement.

Angi also spoke on the importance of publicizing what the Senate Curriculum Committee is doing, about the substance of the CO2020 report, changes in the general education requirements being proposed, etc. Patricia Haggerty echoed this point. Tim said he would take some steps to publicize his committee’s activities and areas it is working on.

Tim talked about the proposed writing applications requirement. There is movement on this requirement, initiated in part by Wendy Swyt sending an email to faculty about their requiring their students to write in class. This is still in progress and being fleshed out, with people in the writing department interested in this issue. The requirement is something similar to the idea of writing across the curriculum, with some classes being designated with a "W" for meeting the writing requirement.

A. Proposed Faculty Senate Constitution

Phil – changes in it are essentially those dealing with the makeup of the Senate, who the officers and representatives are, the purposes of the Senate, and the whole document has been written in a more understandable form.

Eric Baer received mixed feedback from the Sciences Division on the question of whether faculty should be tenured before allowed to serve on the Senate. The debate on this question concerns whether not allowing probationers on the Senate is exclusionary, if being on the Senate may put a probationer in a sensitive position in terms of what one can say before getting tenure, the fact that there will be so many probationers at the college next year (about 34 faculty), etc. Phil stated that probationers may not as yet have sufficient knowledge of how the college works, the potential vulnerability of probationers, probationers feeling pressured to be on the Senate even if they would rather not, and that having probationers on the Faculty Senate may lower the regard the college administration has for the Senate. Barbara Hunter agreed with some of these points, but also stated the Senate was a good place to learn about the college, and that maybe an internship to the Senate for probationers might be a good idea. Angi spoke on how being on Senate gave her knowledge of how the college works, and is strongly in favor of allowing probationers on the Senate.

Eric brought up the point that it was necessary to change the perception of the Senate from ineffectual and unimportant to being an active, respected, and meaningful body representing the faculty at Highline. Phil agreed and said that from his observations and the feedback he has gotten from other faculty and the administration is that this perception would not change until only tenured faculty was allowed on the membership. Eric disagreed with Phil in the fact that open elections open to both probationers and tenured faculty should be held, with the hope that faculty who are motivated and knowledgeable will run and win the elections. Patricia Haggerty spoke in favor of only prohibiting first-year probationers from being on Faculty Senate.

Phil spoke on the purposes of the proposed Senate Constitution (in brief):

1. serve as the paramount voice to the President and the Board of Trustees to establish and advise on college-wide academic standards, grading policy, degree requirements, and educational outcomes;
2. review and approve new courses for inclusion into the college catalog;
3. review and make recommendations on interdivisional curriculum issues;
4. consider faculty concerns not covered by the HCEA faculty agreement.

At this point, Angi brought up questions about whether the proposed Constitution should be voted on before the HCEA bargaining committee listens to faculty concerns next week, because there might be some issues that could be relevant to the HCEA.

Regarding the review and approve new courses for inclusion into the college catalog, Phil stated that the Senate wouldn’t take over this responsibility until the Constitution was approved by the Board of Trustees. According to Phil, this is important because it gives the Senate an ongoing responsibility. Other changes would include the vice-president for academic affairs would become an ex-offico member of the Senate, as is the president of the college. Another change would be for each division to elect two faculty, one being a department coordinator, to the Senate. According to Phil, these proposed changes would help faculty meet their responsibilities to share in college governance in a meaningful way.

Angi asked whether the change of the Senate reviewing and making recommendations on interdivisional curriculum issues would mean that the coordinated studies committee would have to become a Faculty Senate subcommittee. Phil said that he didn’t think the Senate would have to become automatically involved in everything, or has the right to get involved. Angi, in considering the implications of all these changes, thought it would be a good idea to get more faculty input.

Eric, at this point, stated that he didn’t agree with all the aspects of the proposed Constitution but saw it as far better than what was in existence. Phil stated that he was not personally opposed to having probationers on the Senate, but not allowing probationers on the Senate was part of the price to get administration to buy into the new Constitution.

Jack stated his belief that there were more avenues today for probationers to get involved in campus governance than four or five years ago.

Angi moved that this discussion be tabled until the next Faculty Senate meeting and move it to action then because she would not feel comfortable voting on it now until speaking to the Writing Dept. and the Coordinated Studies Committee about the interdivisional curriculum issues provision of the proposed Constitution. This motion was seconded by Patricia Haggerty. Angi’s motion was passed 7 to 2, and the Constitution was tabled until the next Senate meeting.

Phil noted that the proposed Constitution would go to a vote of the full faculty and depending on what happened, eventually to the Board of Trustees for approval.

Eric spoke on the "mixed perception" at the college regarding passing grades. Departments that see a grade between 0.7 and 2.0 as unacceptable or failing include Paralegal and Writing; departments that treat this range as acceptable grades include Geology and Chemistry. Eric stated that there seems to be interest in a faculty forum on this subject because of the confusion resulting from it. Angi reported on the Thunderword doing a story on this and that she has been contacted by them.

This issue was on the college trying to develop some degree of standardization concerning student evaluation forms. Presently there are a myriad of forms being used. There is some thought that some degree of standardization can be found among the evaluation forms, as long as there was flexibility in them to reflect the different types of class being taught, such as lecture, lab, coordinated studies, etc. One idea is to form a subcommittee of the Senate to look into this, using faculty with professional knowledge of assessment and evaluation tools.

The Faculty Senate meeting was adjourned at 4:12 p.m.

Jack Harton (Senator at Large) for Lea Ann Pratt, Faculty Senate Secretary