Committee for Teaching & Learning (CTL)
Santa Barbara City College
Minutes of October 23, 2006
3:00-4:30 p.m.

Present: Scott Brewer (Ed. Support), Dixie Budke (Tech.), Anita Cruse (Eng.), Mark Ferrer (FPDC, FRC), K. Neufeld (Library), G. Lewin (Chair), P. Nunez (ESL/FL/Ed.), J. Pike (LSS), J. Simpson (Sci.), C. Solberg (Soc. Sci.), M. Spaventa (Administrative Liaison), N. Warner (F. Arts)
Excused: P. Guenther (Math), Evan McCabe (Health/Human Srvc.)
Guest: Kathy O’Connor

Luria Library Collection Development Policy
Kenley Neufeld discussed his revisions to the Library Acquisitions Policy; the last time it was updated was 1999. He is trying to expand the library’s offerings, weed out items that need discarding, and is now updating the policy to streamline the process. He is concerning about the quality of the collection; accreditation will look at the collection’s average date of publication. To get it to an adequate collection would take a lot of funding over a five year period. Policies exist to be able to show someone why the library has what it has, and if someone challenges what the library has, there is a way to discuss reasons.

Anita Cruse asked about audiobooks. Kenley said there may be compliance issues, but I’d like to develop a small audiobook collection. Jerry Pike said the LRC has audio materials (Ender’s Game) and audio materials, lectures, etc.

Anita said international students need to read and hear it. Gerry said dyslexic students (and this applies to other students who need to hear it and see it) are changing from audiobooks to cds and electronic publications. Students will have the text read to them using earphones, while they see it and stay active by taking notes (that can be printed out) using Kurzweil 3000. Textbooks are coming with cds which can be read by a screenreader. Kenley has considered adding cds to the book collection, and is waiting for a request for it. Audible.com has texts that Anita has been able to download. They download books and I put it on my iPod. I listen to it as I drive to class to listen to them. Kenley talked about the use of MP3 players (possibly checking them out with the requested book on the player in the future.) They need to purchase the books to be able to share the item (“Law of First Sale”). ). Kenley said to put these items in the Non-print category on the first page of his document. He will check with Accreditation to see what the guidelines are now.

Gerry clarified what the legal requirements for blind students. Kenley thinks screen readers is too cumbersome. She will invite Kenley to DSPS to discuss shared interests. Teach comprehension is the focus; decoding is different from comprehension. Second language students benefit from it.
Pat Nunez suggested recommending that all the books used by English Skills should be obtained for public use in the library.

M/S/C Jodi moved to adopt Kenley’s updated Library policy, Pat seconded, and the CTL voted unanimously to pass it.

Athletic Zone: Kathy O’Connor
The proposal to translate “Life Fitness Prog. Ed. Manual” into Spanish has been changed to a FPDC grant.
Kathy handed out several pages about the Athletic Zone program. She reported that the $13,000 pays for two coaches-study hall instructors: Jason Fowle and Charlie Stansbury. Charlie had done same type of work at a four year school. Jason has been running the football study hall in the last two years. They are incorporating a 20 minute session on study skills, learning styles, notetaking, etc.

Funding and Space: Some of the challenges were listed by Kathy. We have had to limit hours to 7-9 at night. Monies are used up to pay the coaches to do the study hall. The facility is a problem too. We are hoping in Spring to adjust hours.

Tutors: General work study budget is paying for a student tutor. She comes in evening to tutor math in PE Conference Room. Math is one of our issues. She has some volunteers are tutoring English skills. She wants to get more funding to hire more people. Morning classes are fine, but we have an issue with Wed. evening when 40-50 student athletes show up. They will be using the PE conference room that seats 25 people when it is completed.

Jason Walker is allowing them to use the Cyber-Center for evening hours. They can download Alecks over there. They are cordoning off a section for the math tutor. The concern is having enough people to monitor those two areas. Coaches are going to volunteer to monitor computers.

Dixie asked, “Can the PSS/FPD Grant cover some of this?” Marilynn mentioned some math adjunct teachers use their flex hours to tutor in the Math Lab. Tutoring in general helps develop the instructors professionally. They see how students are doing and what kind of assignments other faculty are giving. Anita asked if we can ask in our dept if anyone wants to do tutoring for flex credit. While these are excellent ideas, Kathy said that not many adjuncts have that many flex hours to do. Kathy said our intention was to refer to the Writing Lab but nobody is open from 7:00-9:00 p.m. We can send them in the morning. You lose control if you send them out to other places.

Kathy said each student athlete has to spend three hours a week in a focused study hall. The criteria for admission into the Study Zone is listed on handout (p. 3). She wants to keep them in one place rather than coordinate a bunch of hours outside of the evening study hall time. There are 350-400 student athletes enrolled in 12-19 units per semester. Eligibility rules for athletes are unbelievable. PD 140 College Success course helps students see requirements. It is a group of students who have high needs; however, they have a good success rate. If students miss three classes, they are put on academic probation within our dept. They have a contract. We do a lot of internal monitoring. They do well but they need to do better because their ability to go on to transfer and participate in athletics will be a challenge for them. They have to follow a lot of rules.

Anita asked if Kathy could add Eng. 103 to the list of English Skills classes required on her list.

Kathy thinks all the athletes need help, but they don’t have the hours and personnel to offer this study hall to them all yet. She hopes to get more funding in the future. We have been trying to coordinate everything in our Athletic Support Program in a lot of ways; she said, "I’m glad Scott Brewer is here. We may bring this to CTL; we have probation program, advising, awards, study hall", etc. We are trying to create a model program like Mt. Sac. We all feel it has to be coordinated under one umbrella. We are going to go to Matriculation to get some funding. They plan on coming back next year on the PSS proposals.

Mt. Sac is a model program for advising and supporting the success of student athletes. They have fulltime coordinator. They have a robust Student Athlete Zone, like we do. They have tutors; students bring in their syllabi. They have priority registration by taking PD 140. They have someone who helps their students with Financial Aid.

One of her problems is she can’t get her student workers get over to Federal Work Study in the day. We really would like a fulltime counselor to be an advocate for student athletes. We are going to mix and match funding. We’d like a fulltime counselor. It’s a challenge to get this through the faculty rankings. Student athletes generate a lot of FTES per year.

The goal for 90% is to transfer. Some get an AA degree program and get a job. They often want to play at 4 year schools. After two years, they often decide to pursue academics rather than just play. Kathy supports the academic side of it. We get 80% return rate on the Progress Checklists. I hope to be involved in the Banner method of sending this automatically.

Nina asked could the fulltime advisor be the program coordinator. Kathy said yes, the program coordinator should be a counselor. Our goal is to see each student athlete once a semester. They need to do the SEP, Student Educational Plan. We need a Coordinator with the knowledge of a counselor for this program. One bad semester can change their future. These students have to do well in order to fit into the Division One guidelines.

Gerry asked Scott a mathematical question regarding ratio of counselor to student. From your regular counseling position, how many students do you see normally? Scott said you’d see each athlete once a semester whereas many students do not come in every semester. If each was seeing equal amount of students, there would be a 1500 students for one fulltime counselor. What’s the average workload per year? Scott said we work with majors. Each counselor gives 30 hours a week for appointments, and sees up to 60 students a week. Not all students come in. Scott emphasized that talking to athletes is different from regular students, especially for Division One, the Division Two, and those on the 5 Year Athletic Clock. Division One athletes have to have 40% of their BA requirements done in first two years. Some students could have been Div. One, but they could not do the academic part.

Students who are new do not remember what they are told in the PD 140 class about the Student Athletic Clock, so many fall behind. If you’re not meeting a student each semester to work out the difficulties between number of units, they fall through the cracks.

Nina asked if they have asked for a fulltime position before. Would this be paid halftime counseling and halftime athletics? Kathy said they are looking for new money. They want this coordinator to go to the counseling meetings. We will have to work it out with the Counseling Dept. Monies may come from Student Success, Foundation, etc. The question of famous athletes came up. Kathy said we haven’t had success with ongoing funding. This needs to be institutionalized. We are modeling ourselves after EOPS.

Anita asked if she is looking for more tutors. Yes, they are looking for math, English, and those from other disciplines. Yes, tell people to report to Kathy who might want to tutor.

Gerry brought up the criteria on the Evaluation page for Partnership for Student Success. Kathy commented on the numbers. She asked Jack Friedlander where he got the numbers because we were never consulted about evaluation. He said they had to get an evaluation document together so they just made it up. Since not all the athletes are participating in it (because we don’t have the space or money), you can’t ask for a 3% increase. We met with him and worked on a multiple measures policy. Paula is working on a questionnaire from students to find what worked, what was valuable. Jack and she agreed on looking at same group of students from the last two years, and compare those groups. I don’t know where the 3% came from, she said. The percentages have always been problematic; they’ve been used since we did the new College Plan. We do have a higher success rate from the college average. Should we expect a higher or lower percentage? We are working out our evaluation criteria. We will do some comparison data between last year and this year with same group. She will survey coaches as well, and make a report.

A blanket percentage reeks of NCLB, Anita said. Kathy said we have used percentages for a long time, and there has never been much proving of it.

Jerry said that the percentages are not impressive to the general public, even though a 1.5 percent increase is significant. The increased percentages are to show people, like the Board. Kathy noted a lot of it came down from the state; they wanted program accountability. However, we haven’t lost funding if we don’t show percentage change. We are looking to make sure our students pass through math and English. If they have to repeat either of those, you can write off Div. One.
Kathy discussed the realities of the athletes’ academic histories.

Gerry talked about the DSPS help available, and how they should contact us way ahead of getting to SBCC. Many want to do it on their own and don’t seek help. Kathy said we have about 30% who need help. Kathy described a student with ADHD doesn’t want to get DSPS help, even though she wouldn’t need to be tested; she’d just need to bring in documentation to be served. Kathy wants students in the summer to get double time on placement exams, even without documentation. She asked what’s wrong with giving everyone untimed tests? Gerry said legally if one person did this on the placement exam, it would set a precedent that SBCC couldn’t follow through with, and we might set ourselves up for a suit. Kathy asked isn’t a counselor recommendation enough to give double time? No, they need actual documentation from a professional, Gerry said. What I’d like to see happen is that students be informed when they call the college a year or two ahead to ask high schools to test them. If they can, they’d be prepared before coming to college. Gerry said DSPS needs another person to help out because we have a problem covering the office all year round, and have to work with a skeleton crew. Scott mentioned that Gerry was on a skeleton crew in the summer and was advising, and was unable to come to his class.

Kathy asks if they think they might have a learning disability. They always say no, until they fail. Those students can lose a whole year. Another problem, Gerry mentioned, is we don’t have enough funding (or personnel) to test in the summer. Pat would like to see summer testing, as would Kathy. She said their athletes need to be tested in the summer. It is hard because only certain people can test who have the training so it isn’t like getting an adjunct faculty from any discipline. Pat said we do more extensive testing that is more thorough than h.s. If they’ve been served in h.s., we’ll serve them here.

Jerry asked are you comparing the students who are taking same courses in your cadres? Yes. Several members asked if Gateway be connected with Athletic Zone? The hours don’t match right now. The Gateway is set up to be class specific (Gateway IA to a faculty). It doesn’t have to be that way. If you’re wanting to introduce a Gateway component into something you’re going to serve a specific group of students. Scott suggested Kathy use the IA through PD 140. Maybe there is another programmatic way Gateway could be used, Jerry said. Kathy tells them to enroll in Gateway classes; students forget about it and don’t use the tutor. First time freshmen athletes in PD 140; can we take those hours and use them in the Achievement Zone? Scott and Jerry agreed that this could work out. Kathy said a meeting could take place; Jerry said the Tutorial budget could help out with math and English tutoring. It would be a remote facility to help in a special discipline. Another point is the coaches are in charge of football, so will be consumed during fall. The coaches run the Study Zone, and students report to them what they will be working on.

Anita will contact Kathy in the Spring about tutoring in the Athletic Achievement Zone. If there is a group of student athletes, I’d be comfortable doing a small group. Pat said maybe an email could go out to math and English professors, it would let them know of the need.

Kathy offered to come back in Spring and report on the progress. Perhaps she can report on the connection with Gateway.

Gerry asked for points of view about Gateway to report to the Academic Senate. Curtis noted that his version of Gateway is distinctive; people are talking like it is a generic thing, but it is more individualized. Students should know there is tutoring available. Dixie said Gateway has to do with furthering Student Success. The idea is good, Jodi commented, but the handle is bad. Jerry said it evolved out of a perceived need for students to continue in their majors. It now has name recognition. Funding is based on the centralization of it, which is important, but the whole notion of Gateway is founded on the fact that faculty can individualize as they so choose. The main thing is there is not a lot of public comprehension about its nature.

Gerry added that we should tell our divisions about the Scaffolding Workshop on Thursday being given by Pat and Pam. The interest in this area is burgeoning. It will have a lot of different manifestations. Discussion ensued about the last day of meeting. Dixie said CTL has oversight of grants. We will have opportunities for recipients to present their grants on May 3rd or in Sept. Gerry asked how many people would be available at 4:15 on a Thursday to attend the FPDC meeting? If most can go, we may be able to cancel the last CTL meeting, unless we have more to do. We will revisit who would like to go and whether we will meet that last day here.

Next meeting: Monday, Nov. 13, 3:00 p.m, in SS240E.

CTL Minutes Archives/ SBCC