Minutes of Academic Leadership Meeting with Follett to Discuss Ongoing IncludED Issues Now Posted

The Faculty Council recently agreed to have Jennifer Baggett - who previously has served as an IncludED faculty champion for the School of ETMS - serve as the Council's liaison to attend a meeting between Provost Shawnda Floyd and other academic services leaders, and representatives from Follett.

Jennifer recorded notes of their Nov. 15 meeting, and those notes are now available for review in this folder on the DCCFA SharePoint site.

September 8 Update on IncludED Project

As many faculty are aware, the DCCCD IncludED project has successfully provisioned textbooks and other learning materials to a majority of our students. At the same time, there have been numerous challenges, some of which were anticipated and some of which were not anticipated, resulting in many students not being provisioned with their learning materials as had been promised.

Following a change in leadership of the IncludED project, there is now a larger team of staff who are now answering inquiries from both faculty and staff, in a timely manner, and who are empowered to escalate issues to the appropriate persons if they are unable to resolve the issues.

Students should send emails to studentquestions@dcccd.edu

Faculty should send emails to adoptionissues@dcccd.edu.

Meeting Minutes and Video from August 4 Question and Answer Session on IncludED

Please select this link to watch a video recording of the WebEx meeting on IncludED conducted on August 4, 2020.

You can also read the minutes from this meeting at this link in the DCCFA Share Point site.

Do you want to know what's REALLY going on in the District? Read this:

The DCCFA Council met with Chancellor May on Friday, October 5^th.  As we discussed the state of the District and our colleges, our conversations centered mostly around the following categories:

·       8-week courses

·       Student Centric Network Implementation

·       10 Year Up or Out & Professional Development

·       Follett Book Program.

8-week courses:

At District, fresh analysis is taking place as more research is studied over the idea of 8-week courses.  The research comes from the College of Charleston which implemented an 8-week schedule about seven years ago and has experienced higher student success from this change.  We also have our own data from RLC, NLC, and EFC who all currently offer 8-week courses during the Fall and Spring semesters. 

There has been rumor circulating around the District that EFC is at a 100% 8-week schedule, however, this is not true.  For Fall 2018, EFC is at 60% 8-week courses and plans to be closer to 80% 8-week courses in Fall 2019.

Chancellor May indicated that the decisions regarding length of classes is a campus-level matter.  However, we have strong data that shows, in most courses, students prefer the 8-week schedule.  The District wants the colleges to have options and to be flexible with trying new approaches to scheduling to improve the success of our students.

As of now, about 18% of our students do not complete the courses they sign up for.  We can do better than this!  We need to focus on where we are losing students.  In addition to more flexible scheduling, the District hopes the Follett Deal will put books and needed supplies in our students’ hands on the first day of class improving their possibility of success in the courses from the very first day of class.  The District also wants students to be able to finish any degree or program within two years.

Finding the perfect solution to scheduling will take up to ten years.  As of now, the District is looking into ways that students can give their preferences in addition to the colleges.  No one currently owns this process.  The District wants to make sure that both students and faculty are not hurt in the process of change.  We will all have input, and there will be better communication.  The key word is collaboration.

The colleges can expect information sessions coming from District very soon regarding scheduling possibilities and the data that supports a flexible schedule for students.

Student Centric Network Implementation:

On September 4^th, at the Board of Trustees Committee Meetings, a presentation was shared titled “Implementing a Student Centric Network”.  This presentation was shared across the District over the next month.  The DCCCFA created a blog post about it as well:  http://dccfa.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-dccfa-is-your-associationyour-voice.html

This presentation has received good and bad feedback from faculty.  The Chancellor helped dismiss a lot of speculation, assumption, and paranoia surrounding this presentation.  First, this presentation was developed from data collected from the Boston Consulting Group meeting with faculty, the Faculty Council, staff, and administrators.  In addition to meeting with faculty, the group was given our Faculty Climate Survey results, committee reports on load (created by the Faculty Load Research Group), and a survey that they created and had faculty complete.

The two phrases that have caused the most concern were “High-Performing Faculty” and “Current faculty members may choose to leave instead of adjusting to new policy”.  In giving feedback to the Boston Consulting Group via survey and focus group, many faculty reported that equity is very low when it comes to workload, class load, extra service, committee work, student service, and other forms of institutional service. Ironically, then, much of the Boston Consulting Group’s focus on these items regarding faculty performance came from their research of faculty talking about other faculty.  The Chancellor wants the District to do a better job in the future capturing data about equity in terms of workload, extra service, and institutional service, and he is strongly committed to equity and fair treatment of faculty.  The Chancellor said his goal is to make all of our faculty great.  Unfortunately, there is a lot of variance across the colleges, and District hopes that master faculty and professional development will help with this.  There is NO plan of weeding out any faculty.  We do need more rigorous standards in evaluating faculty and teaching.  The Chancellor wants this initiative to be “faculty-led”.  We will always need new faculty and master faculty to make our colleges and District continue to grow and succeed.

Regarding extra service, questions in the research came from faculty mostly.  Faculty claim extra service is not divided equally or by any logical or merit-based system.  The District researched these concerns and found them to be generally true.  We will see this become more equitable because soon it will be inputted electronically and not by hand anymore.  The process of scheduling should become more transparent, logical, and equitable.

Main Goal:  The Chancellor wants to have the best faculty in front of our students.  The Chancellor, District, and colleges under no circumstances want any faculty giving grades away that are not rightfully earned by students.

As of now, the Boston Consulting Group is not writing any policy.  An RFP will go out for implementation assistance for the various phases of this student centric network implementation plan, and District will accept bids from several consulting groups.  However, BCG has done good, thorough work, and BCG does want to do continued business with DCCCD.  As new policy is being written, District wants to have faculty involved in that draft review process, and the Chancellor wants to continue his practice of submitting completed policy proposals a month in advance to the Board prior to the Board voting on that item the next month.

The full Boston Consulting Group Report will soon be made available to faculty.

To learn more about how faculty have been involved in the process of developing the Student Centric Plan, please follow the following links to the DCCFA Blog:

Faculty input with the Boston Consulting Group during the development of the Student Centric Plan:

http://dccfa.blogspot.com/2018/02/flrg-report-9-faculty-council-meets.html

Faculty input regarding evaluation processes:

http://dccfa.blogspot.com/2017/09/update-on-faculty-evaluation-system.html

Faculty input regarding scheduling and load:

http://dccfa.blogspot.com/2017/09/flrg-report-8-final-recommendations.html

10 Year Up or Out & Professional Development:

The 10 Year Up or Out Policy only applies to faculty hired in Range 1 or 2 after September 1, 2015.  The policy requires affected faculty advance one salary range within their first 10 years of employment. Furthermore, in order to be eligible for a 10-year milestone raise, one must have achieved that range advancement within the first 5 years of employment.

That range advancement is required to maintain one's employment with the District, and can be achieved either through education or through an approved discipline-specific development plan (where one credit hour would be equivalent to 16 clock hours) {see DEA (LOCAL) for full policy}. If faculty opt for the discipline-specific development plan, they are supposed to come up with a plan with their dean to be documented and submitted to HR. Unfortunately, there are no guidelines from the District on how to do this. While some have already done this in the District, some have not been able to create such plans due to lack of procedures to guide the faculty and deans. There is a possibility for professional development and other institutional service activities to count towards this, but procedures need to be developed.

The District wants to meet with the Faculty Council and more faculty to whiteboard ideas to develop a strong process.  This plan was meant to grow and develop faculty to better enhance student success.  The District does not see this policy that would lead to all faculty getting Ph.D.’s.  The District wants there to be several packages to choose from.

A first step will be making sure there are Professional Development Centers at each college.  Ideally faculty will be able to take Professional Development courses at all colleges in our District just like our students are able to take our courses at any campus.  We will also see more offerings and opportunities come out of LeCroy.

In the process of researching the procedures for changing ranges, it was discovered there are a few terminal degrees equivalent to Ph.D.’s currently in Range 1 and 2.  One such example would be the Master of Fine Arts.  This is currently being evaluated by the District, and we should see a solution to these terminal degrees being excused from this requirement and/or be moved into the appropriate range based on the content of the degrees.

Faculty have also wondered why the District has not provided tuition reimbursement when advancing in salary range via education. In the past, the Faculty Council recommended to the Chancellor that receiving a raise when advancing a range was preferable to tuition reimbursement, since that raise would forever be built into a faculty's salary and would compound with future raises. The Faculty Council is interested in exploring whether faculty currently have those same preferences

Follett Book Program:

At the September 4^th, Board of Trustees Committee Meetings, the District presented a program that it had already developed with Follett to the colleges for the first time. {Please see the attached file for the original Follett Program PowerPoint.}  Since this program is still in the early stages, we do not have all of the details regarding how the program will work practically as of now.  District within the last week formed a committee to work out all of the details regarding implementation of the program.  Faculty will be represented on this committee.  Brett Dyer (NLC FA President & Art Faculty) and Shaun Gilligan (CVA FA President, DCCFA President, and Government Faculty) are both on the committee, along with Dr. Shawnda Floyd the current Vice President of Instruction at NLC and Dr. Greg Morris the current Vice President of Instruction at ECC.

There are a lot of details to be worked out, but as of now these are some of the things we know:

·       CFO John Robertson will oversee implementation.  For a proposed Summer I 2019 rollout, we have until March, effectively, to work out the implementation plan specifics.

·       Faculty will still be able to choose their textbooks, and will have the same range of choices they have now.

·       Digital books will be encouraged since they help to drive costs down, but hard copies and a print-on-demand option may be available.

·       There will be an additional fee most likely for printing unless the students print themselves.

·       OERs are still encouraged, and more resources from District will be put towards this.

·       Submission of textbook orders by the deadlines will be crucial in the process.  

·       This will help with 8-week classes insuring students have books/materials in hand on the first day of class.

·       Tentatively, once students register for classes, they will have access to their online “book shelf”, and they will be contacted where and when to pick up any printed or hard copies of texts or materials.

·       We may be able to negotiate lab kits for courses that may require blueprints, art supplies, and lab equipment, etc.  Regular supplies like notebook paper, pens, pencils, etc. will not be included.

·       All students will be charged $20/credit hour that will be added to their tuition to cover this service.  This charge will be applied to all courses whether textbooks (free or not) are required or not.

·       Even after this tuition increase, DCCCD students' tuition and books cost will still be substantially less than the other "Big 6" Community Colleges. {Please see slide 6 of Follett Program PPt Update}.

In the recent past, faculty were included in the discussion for a plan like this: 

http://dccfa.blogspot.com/2016/06/discussion-with-chancellor-about.html

In Closing:

The Faculty Council knows there are a lot of changes happening constantly at our colleges and within our District.  We ask faculty to be flexible, involved, and confident that their voice is always welcome and heard.  Please know the Faculty Association, YOUR association, will always support and fight for faculty rights and academic freedom.

We also believe the District and Chancellor want what is best for our students.  Did you know that Chancellor May was a first-generation college student, and he would not have been able to finish school without the care and support of his professors?  This is one of the many reasons why he is so focused on the student experience and having the best faculty.  Many of you might also recall that Dr. May also started his educational career as an adjunct faculty member at Cedar Valley College.

The Faculty Council wants to encourage us all to collaborate to better the experience of our students, improve their success, and create the strongest and best college district in the nation.

Thank you for all that you do!

Update on Chancellor's Staff meeting of June 13, 2016

Faculty Council President Matt Hinckley reported the following from the June 13, 2016 Chancellor's Staff meeting:

Textbooks:

At today’s Chancellor’s Staff meeting, Dr. May stated that the proposed changes to the textbook delivery model, “will not affect how faculty select their textbooks.” Moreover, he said, “We hire faculty to make textbook decisions. I know faculty go out of their way, including often at their own expense, to get materials to students (who can’t afford to purchase them), but that’s not the job or role of faculty to do so.” Mary Brumbach also said, “This is not about what materials are chosen; this is about how to get the materials that faculty choose to the students as quickly as possible.”

Dr. May in particular is interested in a model that would get a PDF/digital copy of textbooks to students at no cost to them, with options to purchase print on demand rights and/or printed copies if they choose. Dr. May also said that Vital Source and other providers can work with even small boutique academic publishers to convert materials that faculty choose to PDF format.

Board of Trustees:

Runoff election votes will be canvassed on Wednesday, June 29. New board members will be sworn into office immediately and take their seats at the meeting. Dr. May also plans an orientation for the new board members at a date TBD. John Robertson was asked to provide a more detailed budget work session at a date TBD (when the board members are available to attend).

Handguns on Campus:

Dr. May and Rob Wendland are reviewing the latest developments in the campus carry debate. Specifically, State Rep. Abel Herrero, Democratic chair of the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence, has asked Attorney General Ken Paxton to review if public community colleges may be exempt from campus carry because they offer programs for minors, such as Dual Credit and Early College High School. However Paxton rules, the legislature could come under pressure--either from gun rights groups or from concerned parents groups--to modify the law during the January-May 2017 legislative session. Nevertheless, Dr. May said he plans to engage faculty, students, and staff, starting in the Fall 2016 semester, to prepare our colleges to deal with campus carry that. As the law stands right now, we would have to allow CHL holders to carry their handguns on campus starting with the Fall 2017 semester. 

Discussion with the Chancellor about Textbooks

An ongoing conversation has been taking place this year concerning the costs of textbooks, which has become a more pressing issue. At the June 1 Faculty Council Meeting, the Council asked Fred Newbury to attend a meeting, scheduled for Wednesday, June 8, with bookstore and publisher representatives and to report back to the Council.

Dr. Thom Chesney chaired the meeting.  Ken Alfers and Fred Newbury were present representing faculty. All attendees were sent the following introduction and charge prior to the meeting:  

"Pearson Higher Education would like to meet on Wednesday, June 8^th, from 10 am. – noon with a small but representative cross-section of DCCCD employees to ideate and discuss a variety of topics including but not limited to student access to and cost of educational resources, e-text environments, “bookstore of the future,” barrier and pathways to student success that are related to course materials, etc. This will be an open, conceptual discussion for which having members of our academic and student affairs, IT, business/finance, and administrative community will help determine any next steps we might take." 

The following is the complete report that Fred Newbury provided to the Faculty Council on June 10, 2016:

We met for nearly two hours with the executive leadership from Follett, Pearson and a relatively new company, Vital Source.  This was not intended to be a meeting where any kind of contractual agreement would result.  Only one publisher was present in an effort to better discuss the rapidly changing elements in publishing and marketing of instructional materials without the inevitable posturing for market share.

The primary focus for the meeting was to look at ways to be sure that students had the materials that were needed at the beginning of each class.  Cost and timely delivery was a major part of the discussion.

THE PROBLEM:  Dr. May started the meeting with an overview of the problems that students face with the beginning of each term.  There was nothing new here--he has discussed all of this with the Faculty Council on many occasions.  Cost is the obvious problem, but he also talked about the study that Dr. Mary Brumbach will be releasing within the next few days about those areas where we seem to lose students as they move through the matriculation process.  There are a number of areas identified--the bookstore is one of those.  The question for this meeting was very direct: how do we equip students to be ready on the first day of class--with course materials in hand?

It was also reported that, for many courses, 40% of our students never buy a textbook.  This is undoubtedly related most to the cost of the materials.   This is troubling, since it will dramatically reduce their chances of being successful. 

Dr. May asserted—as we have heard before—the DCCCD will not intentionally profit from our students.  This is consistent with steps that have already been taken regarding the commissions paid to the bookstore.

The consensus of the group was that colleges need to structure a system within the entire process that will ensure the optimum opportunity for students to be successful.  This certainly includes obtaining course materials in a timely, efficient and cost-effective manner.

In addition to these general concerns, the usual litany of bookstore problems was mentioned:  books not being available at the start of the term; short ordering, wrong titles given to students, prohibitions against giving students direct links to publisher materials, etc.

CURRENT REALITIES

• Digitally delivered materials have become, or soon will be, the norm.
• Given the current marketing models, the competition between the bookstore and publisher is inevitable.  It is obvious why the bookstore does not want a direct link to the publisher.
• The DCCCD wants further discussion about ways to integrate student registration and the book procurement process so that students have no delay in getting the materials needed.
• The changes that have occurred in the flexibility of our enrollment options which provide an almost year-round semester with many beginning points, has added to the problem.

NEXT STEPS

A dramatically different marketing approach is needed with would still provide incentive for publisher innovation of instructional material and a more efficient link with local bookstores.  Vital Source (one of the participants in the meeting) is a new firm who is working with almost all of the current publishers—as well as the bookstores.  They are largely a consolidator.  They want to be the link between all individual publishers and the bookstores.  Potentially, this means the student can order direct.  For digital products there is no delay in receiving the material.  Print texts can still be made available but there will be some delay in shipping. Much more discussion is needed but this is the type of innovation that needs development.

FACULTY CONCERNS

• There are, obviously, many considerations that need much more discussion at every level in the DCCCD.  This kind of change potentially represents a dramatic departure from the traditional model that we have followed and could abridge a faculty member’s “right” to determine their own course material.
• To what extent will textbook costs, or lack thereof, drive student enrollment in courses? Implicit in that question is the increasing pressure to use open educational resources to remove all costs for classroom materials—even to the determent of student learning.
• There are certainly profound questions about academic freedom in all of this but there is also the question about maximizing the potential for student success.  We would hope for much more discussion with all of our faculty before such important decisions are made.