Education Advisory Council Minutes, December 13, pm, Sylvania Campus, Conference Rooms A & B In Attendance

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1 Education Advisory Council Minutes, December 13, pm, Sylvania Campus, Conference Rooms A & B In Attendance X Karen Jolly, Chair X Kendra Cawley, Curriculum/GenEd X Loretta Goldy, Membership Susanne Christopher, X Degrees/Certificates X Porter Raper, Policy Mary Severson, Student Development Members Present (X): X Rueben Allen X Jenn Gunn Kate Richardson X Rick Aman Pete Haberman Consuelo Romanski Len Anderson Mark Hagen X Mark Schwebke X Cami Bishop X Taylor Hanna Torie Scott X Kristin Bryant Eli Herr X Michael Sonnleitner Diedre Cain X Laura Horani X Sheryl Stohs X Chris Chairsell X Scott Huff Melissa Summers X Connie Christopher X Eric Kirchner X Anna Tannehill Larry Clausen X Craig Kolins X Reine Thomas James Dawson X Laruen Kuhn X Phil Thurber X Heidi Edwards Ed Lindsey X Dawn Tsongas X Margie Fyfield X Theresa Love Barb VanAmerongen X Veronica Garcia X Katy Nadal Nancy Wilder X Lori Gates Katherine Persson Susan Wolf X Brooke Gondara X Linda Reisser Guests: Michael Dembrow, David Johnson The business meeting was called to order at 3:03PM Karen Jolly reminded the EAC members that the agendas are long and we have been unable to get through agenda items at each meeting. She asked that members come prepared for the meetings by reading minutes of previous meetings and handouts that are provided prior to meetings. The standing committee chairs will continue to send information before the meeting and minutes to committee meetings are posted to the appropriate websites. Taylor Hannah has agreed to work on a MYPCC group so that many of the topics can be discussed before official EAC meetings. The committee was asked to arrive prepared, on time, and with a willingness to participate in the discussion. Karen reminded the committee that many of the discussions are about the process and not the issue itself and asked that we try to focus discussion to the specific topic. Action Agenda 1. Approve November 15 and 29 minutes and December agenda. Page 1 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

2 Minutes available at inutes html and inutes html Cami Bishop moved and Rueben Allen seconded the approval of the November 15 and 29 minutes. The motion carried Corrections to the December agenda included the addition of approving the agenda. Changing the name of the Policy Committee was removed from the agenda. Cami Bishop moved and Jenn Gunn seconded the approval of the December agenda. The motion carried. 2. Bylaws changes Chris Chairsell shared that policy is made by the Board of Directors at the recommendation of the District President. Procedures are created to implement Board policy. The cabinet has changed the name of the Academic Policy Handbook to the Academic Standards Handbook. This will make a greater delineation between policy and procedure. A draft letter from President Pulliams explaining the difference between policy and procedure was read to the committee. a. Change Policy Committee to Academic Policy Committee Removed from the approved agenda. b. Change to Membership area of bylaws The policy committee is recommending the proposed change to the membership area of the bylaws with the intent of making the bylaws more elastic for ease in changes. Two areas created discussion: Representation of students and number of faculty members. All campuses have a recognized student government. The intent is to have faculty as a majority of membership. By definition they would then be a voting majority. There are many members who are not voting members for example managers do not vote. Student government would like the words student government stricken and Associated Students of Portland Community College (ASPCC) added to voting membership. Regarding the number of faculty--the present climate is positive; however future changes could impact the voice of the EAC. Recommended wording remain The faculty in the majority. Would like to see the language stay as it is. It is important to have as many faculty involved in the decision making as possible. The personal goal of moving this council moving towards a more Page 2 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

3 representative body would be best suited by keeping the language as it stands. Concern over size. EAC meeting are open so anyone can attend and the faculty voice is very clearly heard. Michael Sonnleitner moved an amendment to read The faculty will constitute a majority of the voting members of the EAC. Taylor Hannah Seconded the motion. The motion carried. Rueben Allen moved and Jenn Gunn seconded an amendment to change the words student government to Associated Students of Portland Community College (ASPCC). The motion carried. The motion from the Policy Committee with two amendments was carried. 3. Textbook Task Force New Initiative Request Recommend reduction of bookstore contribution to the General Fund by 25% each year until there is no contribution requirement. Recommend reduction of textbook markup to reflect the reduced contribution requirement. Full report found at Concerned that the request to reduce the bookstores contribution to the general fund would have unintended negative consequences. The suggestion is good. However, the implementation piece is of concern. Is implementing the charge of the EAC? Management has requested a dialogue from the EAC with a suggestion for implementation. There needs to be more detailed information for implementing this recommendation so that it does not impact students. New iniative money does not necessarily mean new money. Attached to the new initiatives are staff contracts, the management compensation study, and other set increases in cost of operations. What bookstore inventory is this recommendation involving? Answer: reduction of text book costs only. Cami Bishop moved to strike other and add that loss of revenue should be covered by means other than tuition or fee increases. Rueben Allen seconded the motion. The motion failed. Discussion about amendment: Feels this is not an issue. The board does not increase fees easily. This does not need to be added If this motion carries, the new initiative would be removed from the list because it is associated with raising tuition and fees. This is better as originally proposed. Page 3 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

4 The total estimate is about $300,000. That means a reduction of $100,000 each year for four years. Further discussion How significant is this budget amount? We do not have a specific budget amount; however there is always an impact when budgets are decreased. There are consequences to the vote including the services that the bookstore supports. For example food services and the print center. There is no intent to move towards privatization of the bookstore. All profit centers within the college contribute to the general fund. Books are required for classes and other college services are not. Appreciates the comment. However, this recommendation does not appear easy to undue and the ripple effect is not known. A flexible option would be more beneficial to the college. Last year the EAC requested a taskforce to be developed to recommend ways to reduce the cost of textbooks to students. Many of the recommendations were approved and some are individually before the EAC this year. There was a strong sense from the students that they wanted to have a clear idea of what the actual cost of books and services is. The charge before the EAC is a recommendation that the bookstore reduce the contribution to the general fund by 25% each year. If this is a new iniative. Then it would need to be reduced be either $100,000 each year which would be risky or a one time $400,000 iniative which is a rather large request. Are there other places to look for fees? The college is held accountable for using the revenue from fees specifically for the intended purpose. Do we know what the average cost reduction in books would be? It will most likely not be great but it will be some. If this is to go to the new iniative list, then President Pulliams would like this to be vetted out in the appropriate areas. This recommendation would go to Rand McEwen for consideration in his budget area. As a point of reference a new faculty position costs about 70,000. This request is equal to 1-2 positions at the college per year. This recommendation is not going to be a huge reduction in the cost of textbooks. The cost of textbooks would be only reduced by a few dollars. The motion was made by Michael Sonnleitner to Reduce the Bookstore contribution to the General Fund by 25% each year beginning in , so that the budget will include no General Fund contribution from the Bookstore. Concurrently, direct the Bookstore to reduce its markup (of about 23% currently) on Textbook sales, reflecting the reduction in Bookstore contribution to the General Fund. While it is preferred that the loss of revenue to the General Fund resulting from the reduction in the bookstore contribution be replaced by New Initiative funding, if such funding is not available that loss of revenue should be covered by other means. The motion carried. Chris Chairsell requested priorities of the following requests. Page 4 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

5 o Pre-req implementation Restoring funding and positions o Copyright office - $100,000 placeholder o 100,000 reduction of the general fund so that the bookstores costs can be reduced for students. This would go to Financial services for consideration so this does not need prioritizing. Taylor Hannah moved to affirm that pre-req implementation is the number one priority. Lauren Kuhn seconded the motion. The motion carried. 5. Online Degree Policy Committee The policy committee has requested that the EAC consider a Task Force to review whether totally online degrees need an on-campus or in person component. The topic of discussion is not if PCC should have an online degree but if a taskforce should be set up to make some recommendations about students receiving a PCC degree wholly online. Rick Aman presented informational data regarding distance learning students. The first goal at PCC is access. Within the scope of access is distance learning. There has been a significant increase in the number of students taking online course students polled in Fall term DL courses (39%) do not come to any facility when taking courses. 19% of credit delivery at the colleges is online. 61% of students care about an online degree. Most of these do not want to come to campus to take classes and most of them could if they wanted to. 55% of students desire to complete a degree entirely online. 1/3 of the students who answered the question would not come on campus if that was the only way they could get the course. 350 DL sections are currently scheduled for winter quarter. 162 of those courses are completely full and 17 have completely full waitlists. Distance learning is an important strategy within this institution. There are significant unintended consequences if the choice is made have a student take a course not online. From the state perspective a course is a course regardless of modality. The logistics of discovering if a course was taken at a campus would be monumental. The Policy Committee has asked for this recommendation because they have wondered if a face-to-face component is valuable. The Policy Committee felt that this issue was not falling within the academic parameters of policy. The policy committee was also at a very close vote regarding the recommendation of requesting a taskforce. Currently PCC offers fully online degrees. Gerontology, CIS (both AAS and the E-commerce certificate), MSD, and Associate of Arts general studies is fully online. Do we want to set up a taskforce to discuss all degrees having an on campus component? Rueben Allen moved and Jenn Gunn seconded the motion to set up a taskforce to look into the on-line degree issue. Rueben withdrew his motion. Page 5 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

6 Jenn Gunn moved and Ruben Allen Seconded the recommendation that the EAC appoint a Task Force to review whether on-line degrees need an on-campus component. The motion carried. Discussion Is the focus on a residency component or an online degree? It is should we have a taskforce look into these questions. The focus is on the residency idea. This taskforce needs to have very clear instructions what is to be reviewed. Chris Chairsell shared that should a recommendation for a campus component for online degrees come forward, it would most likely not be accepted. As a direction from the Board, Distance Learning is a way to measure access. If requirements are added that reduce DL then this limits access. Students will be harmed if an on campus component is added. DL classes are not new to the college. These classes have been offered for years. The number of instructors who are interested in teaching online has also increased. This is a SAC issue. These courses have to stand up to the same criteria as on campus courses. Not supportive of this idea. However, faculty are concerned about this issue. The potential accommodations have not been explored. The taskforce could come up with a recommendation to address quality and access. The motion states that all online classes have an on campus component and it has been made clear that cabinet is not going to be supportive since this is an access issue for students. Recommended a no vote. There are many students who do not take the classes within the state lines. This would be a challenge for those students. The quality of the course is the same. Would like to see energy focused on items that would have greater support from the board. Demand should not drive good teaching. The nature of the taskforce is to be exploratory. It is worth hearing the concerns that exist and see if accommodation can be made without putting more barriers up for students. SAC s have control over individual courses and sets of courses that are offered online. There has not been conversation about what that means in totality if a student chooses to take all classes online. That is not a SAC question. The nature of the Task Force is to be exploratory. These questions deserve to be considered from a different direction. Could the online experience become better with the outcomes of a taskforce? There is concern with the word degrees in the recommendation. There are many degrees that serve different functions. The AAS degrees mentioned are all professional Technical degrees. Professional Technical degrees are closely developed by SACs so if they went completely online it was not by accident. The AAS degrees that have done this have already had this discussion. The AAS discussion should be kept separate from the AAOT and AS degrees. Page 6 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

7 The policy committee is aware that there is currently a tiny percentage of students who have all classes online. The goal is to have the discussion before the numbers greatly increase. There is a history surrounding this request. Faculty feel there are large components missing and that this request would begin to address some of those components. There are very few AAOT students who fall into this category and would like this discussion before a fully online AAOT degree is online. The word residency was brought up twice. Let s be clear that this is an on campus issue. PCC already has a residency requirement for degrees. If you are interested in sitting on the taskforce or chairing the taskforce please let Karen Jolly know. General Discussion It is very important to have good quality meetings, which have been running very late. Last month a second meeting was held. What course of action would you like to take? Would like to hear from committees who did not speak at the last meeting. It was noted that all of the committees were able to speak last month. Would like to have meetings from 2-5 instead of 3-5. This conflicts with committees and with faculty schedules. Can we get a report from committees prior to the meeting? The minutes from the committees are available on the EAC website. Can the specific issues be highlighted such that the items that are slated for EAC discussion are easily identifiable? Karen reminded the EAC that Taylor Hanna will be setting up a workable group on MyPCC where items can be posted and input to issues can be placed. Lengthy meetings cause a time problem. Karen announced that the Janaury meeting end at 5:30. Upon request, there will be a social time following the meeting in January at an off-site location. EAC discussions are very rich and the administrative support is intense. Adding more meetings would make it very challenging to give more time as it would become a workload issue. Too much time is spent on details. If there are concerns of the members about the issues, they should be addressed at the standing committee meeting. It appears that the committee recommendations are not being respected by the full EAC. MYPCC groups can be a great place to have this discussion, but discussion at the EAC meeting remains necessary. Adjourn The meeting was adjourned at 5:04 Respectfully submitted, Nellie Long Page 7 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006

8 Additional information, membership lists, agendas and meeting minutes of the EAC and its standing committees can be found at Page 8 of 8 EAC Minutes December 13, 2006