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Makoto Lane / Courier
Krista Walter, English instructer, discusses Academic Senate business as Dr. Bell looks on with attention at the Academic Senate meeting Monday Sept. 20.

Heated discussions over shared governance and communication issues broke out between various groups at the Senate meeting on Monday.

Calendar Committee Co-Chair Krista Walter expressed her concern to the Senate over the changes to the 2012–13 academic calendar.

“We had just completed a year-long shared governance discussion…our work was dismissed,” Walter said. “I thought we were supposed to conduct collegial shared governance.”

Assistant Superintendent and Senior Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs Robert Bell sympathized with Walter.

“Shared governance is on the agenda with the administration. We will try to work as a collective whole,” he said.

Faculty Association President Roger Marheine expressed his grave concern over the shared governance issue.

“The FA really took shared governance findings to the Board. I thought that worked really well. We thought the process worked. The rug has been pulled out from beneath us,” Marheine said passionately. “All shared governance discussions are irrelevant.”

Another issue arose with the three executive committee recommendations created over the summer, which included appointing two hiring committees for the Dean of Faculty and CTE Dean positions. Many were upset the committees were created when nobody was on campus.

Classified Senate Vice President Deborah Johnson explained the Academic Senate had created the committees with out informing the Classified Senate.

“You formed some committees here that we found out by rumor,” Johnson said.

Senate President Dustin Hanvey apologized.

“I would like to publicly apologize. We will be meeting [Wednesday] with the Classified Senate,” Hanvey said.

Others did not understand what the new Faculty Dean position entailed.

Assistant Superintendent and Senior Vice President of College and Business Affairs Robert Miller explained the position.

“[The Dean of Faculty] will be reporting directly to [Vice President] Bell. The dean will work on all faculty and student related issues. The idea of the position is for the dean to be an advocate for the faculty and to address student and faculty needs, [and also streamline] academic processes,” said Miller.

The CTE Dean hiring committee was recommended to consist of three faculty members, including Matt Jordan, whom many members felt should not be appointed to the committee.

Assistant Superintendent and Senior Vice President of Business and College Affairs Robert Miller explained the screening process had already begun and that Jordan was among several candidates for the CTE Dean position.

“It would be wise not to include him in that committee in case he gets the position,” Miller said.

English Instructor Martha Bonilla was concerned about how the committees were being formed.

“There is something wrong with how things are being conducted on committees,” Bonilla said. “[The administration] manufactured a crisis when they created the crisis to begin with. They are causing our own shared governance bodies to implode.”

“[The administration is] not responding to the needs of shared governance, but in fact to the manufactured crisis. This is appalling,” she said gravely.

The CTE Dean hiring committee was approved with an 11- 9 vote.

Yet another issue discussed was the lack of clarity on the actual calendar dates for the 2013 summer session.

Community Education Center Instructor Daniel Hamman was upset over the wrong dates stated in a handout provided by the administration and the public relations department.

“The handout says that there are two summer sessions,” Hamman said.

Bell explained the hand out was in error. “We are working on a summer term, instead of two distinct summer sessions,” he said. Many members in the meeting inquired about the number of class sections that would be available during summer. Bell explained the number of classes for the 2013 summer semester has not been determined yet.

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