Minutes from Social Sciences Task Force Meeting of September 29, 2006

Minutes from Social Sciences Task Force Meeting of December 3, 2010

The Social Science Task Force met Friday, December 3, 2010 from 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM at Rio Grande Campus in Room 125. The following faculty members were in attendance: Geoffrey Andron, Karen Bell, Jake Bloom, Kristyn Brown, Richard Croxdale, Clint Davis, Iris Geisler, Cedric Grice, Carol Hayman, Steven Howard, Tony Lee, Sanford Marble, Shirin Murrassa-I-Khuda, Michael Petrowsky, Elizabeth Pintar, Michael Pool, Marianna Sidoryanskaya, Alec Slivinske, Gary Smith, and James Sondgeroth.

1. The agenda was approved.

1. Approve agenda.

2. Approve minutes from last meeting: http://www.austincc.edu/SOCSCI/Minutes/meet_10_01_2010.htm.

3. The Student Success Initiative.

a. Discuss the President’s Nov. 11 memo on the SSI (http://www.austincc.edu/pres/communications/SSIUpdate11-08-10.pdf). Especially these quotes:

i. “we can do better than having only five or six of every ten students succeed.” What is the definition of succeed here?

ii. Cultural Change: On the College Wide Data Retreat for SSI meeting on Friday, Oct. 29, the President said he was going to change the culture of the college before he retired at the end of the year. What does this mean? Here are some quotes from the Nov. 11 memo: 1) “the culture of ACC is evolving to one in which student performance is the primary focus of all we do (students first, us second);” 2) “Cultural Change is Messy: Community Colleges have always been change agents - when many students found

doors closed to them at four-year institutions with selective admissions policies, they found opportunity and access at ACC and other community colleges. Ethnic and racial minorities, first in family to attend college, and the economically disadvantaged – who often are referred to as “at risk” - overwhelmingly choose the community college. Using research on those students’ performance is the first step in the commitment to help more students succeed.”

iii. “Department Expectations: Faculty Coaches, Department Chairs, and Deans are expected to work together to foster a culture of evidence within their disciplines and to use disaggregated data to inform continuous quality improvement efforts in curriculum design, delivery methods, and student support services.” What does this mean?

iv. Should we invite someone from the Math Department to address us on what they are doing to satisfy the SSI directive? “If you are skeptical, I encourage you to talk with faculty on the SSI Steering Committee and those in departments, such as math, who are doing exciting things with the data and resources the College is providing to assist in addressing curriculum design and delivery. There’s also a wealth of external information about student performance initiatives across the country.”

b. If we have time to get this together before the meeting, we will review the ethnic and racial data on success rates in the economics courses. See the minutes for this discussion during our last meeting and item a.ii. above. Can we succinctly summarize the goal we are being asked to achieve from the above memo and this data? (http://www.austincc.edu/success/initiatives.html).

c. Let’s more precisely formulate the data we want to look at for Anthropology.

4. Interactions with the new head of the International Programs Office: Discuss and take action if needed.

First a history of the contretemps surrounding the Peruvian Program will be given. Yes it has started all over again this semester.

A brief discussion of the treatment of and attitude toward faculty members and the department chair will be discussed.

The discussion will also include the less than collegial treatment of the faculty in the Mesoamerican Program also and a discussion of the Art Departments problematic relations with the new director of the IPO.

What action, if any, should the faculty take?

5. Update on the hiring committee for the new Full Time Position in Anthropology.

6. Update on the now annual event put on by the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies in cooperation with the Economics faculty.

7. Reminder that the department’s Book Club will meet right after the Task Force meeting is adjourned to discuss The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky. As in previous Book Club meetings, the discussion will continue on a more informal basis in The Tavern afterwards.

8. Adjourn.

2. Approve minutes from last meeting:. Discussion: Jim mentioned that each Social Science Task Force member should review the minutes and report any inaccuracies to rdayton@austincc.edu. Also please make sure to ensure that you are listed as attending each meeting. Voting task force members that attend task force meetings are paid a small stipend of $20.00 per hour at the end of the academic year. The attendance sign-up sheet at the meeting is used to process stipends. Tony Lee asked that his name be removed from the minutes of 10/1/10 as he was not in attendance. Action: The task force approved the minutes.

3. The Student Success Initiative.

a. Discuss the President’s Nov. 11 memo on the SSI (http://www.austincc.edu/pres/communications/SSIUpdate11-08-10.pdf). Especially these quotes:

i. “we can do better than having only five or six of every ten students succeed.” What is the definition of succeed here?

c. Let’s more precisely formulate the data we want to look at for Anthropology.

Discussion: Jim Sondgeroth said that the Dean is requesting that the Economics department present its suggestions on how to improve student success in the next few years. Anthropology has also been included in the Student Success Initiative therefore Clint Davis was asked to be the faculty Coach for the Anthropology Department. Jim discussed the President’s definition of success as it was presented at the Data retreat on November 11^th as listed in topic 3a above. Jim felt that a specific definition of success was not given but that it seems to be completion of a course with a C or better. There was some discussion on whether this measure of success included those who dropped the course.

At an earlier time the definition of success was presented as students transferring to a four year college or completing their associate’s degree. The state was thinking of taking 10% of every community college and 4 year college’s budget and making it contingent on some success rate that they are going to define. Jim guesses that for us it would be what percent of our academic students transfer on to a four year college. We should find out what percent of academic students transfer to a four year college. They have trouble following students who transfer to out of state colleges and private colleges. The task force asked what percentage of academic students do transfer to a four year college? Jim believes the college can keep track based on requests for transfer that might be tracked by the coordinating board. Michael Pool recalled that our Economics Faculty Coach Jack Bucco asked for this information on our behalf and thought he found out that 70 to 80 percent of those who withdrew did so for personal reasons.

Some members of the task force felt that the legislature and the administrators are making the professors responsible for the student’s success rather than holding the students accountable. Sandy Marble spoke regarding the President’s speech at the Fall assembly. He remembered that the completion rates of students taking classes with fulltime faculty were lower than the completion rates for students that took classes with adjuncts. Sandy would like to see ACC compared to other community colleges across the country and not just to community colleges in Texas. He felt this information would be a good benchmark.

All of our disciplines are passing between 60-70 percent of students who finish the course. Jim mentioned that he thought 15-25 percent of students enrolled in academic courses transfer to four year colleges. If 65 percent of students are completing our courses but only 25 percent are transferring, what is happening to the other 40%? Jim asked Clint to get data on what students who do complete our courses but don’t get an associate’s degree or transfer do when they leave. Mike Pool asked if they never get a degree but they have credit from us but transfer to four year colleges right after high school: Does that count as a student transfer. Kristyn Brown stated that she was not sure we are going to get the information for any other valid definition of success. Clint felt that the college needs to aggregate the statistics; they are disaggregating the sample sizes, and they are too small and are erroneous. Alec Slivinske said there are extraneous factors impacting a student’s success that we are being asked to control that we have no control over. Jim feels this is happening because of budget cuts and that is classic allocation of scarce resources. Many instructors feel that they are being asked to dumb down the courses or to work much harder. Regarding item Iv. Jim mentioned that we could talk to the math department or in particular to Constance Elko who heads up the SSI for the Math department as the president is very impressed with their efforts. Clint says he once aggregated students in anthropology courses that made c, d’s and f’s. If you aggregate those two together with students who haven’t’ taken developmental courses and students who haven’t taken developmental courses actually they are very close. Those that need to take the developmental classes are not in the data (Mike Pool). Jim mentioned a student he had that had a compass score of one in reading and two in writing, and she was in his distance learning economics class. We could say that no student who has below a certain compass score can take our classes unless they have successfully completed the developmental classes. We could enforce these rules but that would reduce our enrollment. Lizzie asked why the college didn’t set a standard to be implemented in all disciplines rather than any one discipline deciding the standard. She felt we should raise the standards of allowing students to take our courses and also enforce the existing skills requirements as they are now.

Michael Petrowsky discussed a survey of questions that he asks his students at the beginning of the course such as “why are you taking this course”? If the student said that they needed this class because of a wider program and ultimate goal to want to work in a particular field then the chances of them succeeding go up. He said if they answered that they were unsure of their goal then the chances of doing well seemed to plummet. Michael does an opportunity cost exercise with his students where they are asked to subtract the hours they will require for sleeping, eating, working, etc. If they show up negative numbers then he explains that they are violating natural laws and have unrealistic expectations. Michael suggested we could adopt this quiz as one of our student success initiatives. Michael presented a handout of a survey used by Syracuse University that tested the existing math skills of entering students in their Economics courses. This survey appeared to be a good predictor of whether or not the students would be successful in such courses. According to scores the higher the score presumably the more successful student was in economics classes. Petrowsky tempted to use and then correlate this with final term averages and if anyone else wanted to do this then they could perhaps buildup a database if results are promising. If positive correlation we could think about adding some math prerequisite or add test like this as prerequisite. Kristyn asked how many drop after taking this. Marianna said maybe 17%. Jim said he would be happy to implement this in his class.

Mike Pool would really like to see the statistics by course, at least for anth and geog, a breakdown on grades and whether or not the students receiving those grades met the skill levels when they took our courses. Clint said the numbers would be too small by the time you get the cells in there statistically the numbers are too small. Clint mentioned that development math has a progression of steps they can go through and with our disciplines this isn’t a case. Jim mentioned that if you remember the data we looked at over first task force meeting in October it had rates of success rates of students who had math classes. It was quite low until you go to fairly complex math courses. It actually looked like if you didn’t have to take developmental classes and went to a good high school the students that came directly from high school into our classes did better than those who took math classes here.. For Anthropology we are in the getting us data. The task force can ask OIEA to run the queries in the database for example what is the pass rate in physical or cult anthropology if successfully completed English Composition I and Clint mentioned that that information is already available. Jim then further suggested that maybe we can look at Physical Anthropology what if had taken Biology class. Mike Pool requested information on how the grade compares to whether or not they have the skills level mandated by the catalogue. This is basically passing or equivalent of development courses in reading, writing or developmental math. Jim mentioned that if they co enroll in a developmental course they can take them. What is the success rate if they haven’t completed the developmental courses as asked by Michael Pool. Have they finished the level of skills required for the course not any particular classes. When they take our class are they taking developmental courses or not? Does that affect our class?

Action: Clint Davis mentioned that we need more tutors for all the disciplines. Suggestion of more tutors that are qualified and a wider diversity for Economics, Anthropology and Geography.

Action: For Economics courses we will send the questions as suggested by Michael Petrowsky out to the Economics department to be done this spring and collect the results in a database.

Action: Jim restated Mike Pools request as follows: What is the difference in successfully completing an anth class between those who have already completed the developmental classes and or met requirements versus those who are co enrolled at the time they are taking it and have not successfully completed it. Is there a significant difference? Clint will ask for this information from OIEA.

4. Interactions with the new head of the International Programs Office: Discuss and take action if needed.

First a history of the contretemps surrounding the Peruvian Program will be given. Yes it has started all over again this semester.

A brief discussion of the treatment of and attitude toward faculty members and the department chair will be discussed.

What action, if any, should the faculty take?

Discussion: The Peruvian program is now in the same situation it was in two years ago in regards to the International Programs Office delaying approval of the Peruvian program and therefore not recruiting students. Jim has been told this was due to a problem with a student who returned a cell phone late in Peru and lost her deposit. Jim started meeting with Stephanie Amundson in the International Programs Office at the end of the summer and then we wrote a memo. IPO suggested that we not do the program as Carol had run it before. They suggested that students should spend three weeks in Austin in traditional lectures and then only two weeks in Peru. They also further suggested that they would be involving a third party provider to take care of transportation arrangement, site visit specifics, housing accommodations and that they would arrange everything with the host university.

Carol Hayman said that she needed to give this arrangement some thought because basically it has been imposed on her at the last minute. Michael Petrowsky, Karen Bell, Carol Hayman and Jim met to consider The International Programs Office requests. They came up with a list of questions regarding the involvement of the third party provider and stated that they would be willing to concede to the provider’s involvement if all of their questions and concerns were addressed satisfactorily. Jim sent the email in September but didn’t get an answer until four o’clock yesterday after the item had been posted on the Task Force Agenda. After hearing all of this, the task force suggested a vote of no confidence in Stephanie Amundson, the Director of the International Programs Office.

It was mentioned that Ms. Amundson came on board with basically no experience in the academic culture. Jim felt as if he had no say in how the Peruvian Program or other Social Science Study Abroad programs would be run and that his concerns were neither heard nor addressed as significant. He felt that this was not a successful meeting. In the second meeting, Jim stated that he felt he was treated quite rudely and that he was basically being excluded from the whole process. Jim stated that he knew that other study abroad programs were having problems. Jim felt that his position as department chair of the Social Science Department was basically disregarded when he was not provided with the completed student evaluations on the program nor was he apprised of any student complaints that could have possibly been handled quickly and satisfactorily in our office.

Clint mentioned the IPO was making unilateral decisions and not including the input and or advice from the faculty teaching these programs at all. Jim explained to Stephanie that he was elected by the faculty of his department and as such he would represent their concerns. Clint stated that during his meetings with the IP office he made all sorts of suggestions but he felt that none were considered.

Michael Petrowsky explained that there are bad precedents being set in that IPO they is conducting rogue evaluations on its own, taking complaints on its own, and it has a star chamber quality because they are judging these folks without any due process. If a due process precedent like that is broken here then there is no stopping another college office from evaluating our courses with no notice and then not providing us with the results. This is really serious in terms of the precedent of how we evaluate the classes ourselves in which results go to the department chair; this process has been totally bypassed.

When Jim got the Vice President Midgley’s response was presented to the task force. The questions that were proposed to the IPO office regarding the third party provider were presented to the task force as were the responses from Mike Midgley. Jim said that based on his email received from Mike Midgley that Mike seems open to talk about it the issues concerning the task force. As far as Carol and Karen’s Peruvian program, Carol and Karen are okay with the suggested changes.

Jim felt it was very difficult to separate the evaluation of faculty in the Study Abroad Program from evaluation of faculty in other ACC courses. The Task Force felt that both the Task Force Department Chair, and the Task Force should develop an evaluation instrument with the IP office and the department that we can share. Lizzie asked why CSI is being used all of the sudden. (The main issue for the task force to consider is the issue with the evaluations). Jim wants to discuss with Mike that the task force is not happy with the independent evaluation but that we are willing to work with him and develop co evaluations that the faculty and department chair will know about and respond to. Jim felt that their rationale for not releasing the completed student evaluations is that if they were released, you could identify the students that are making the complaints. There were only four students that responded out of the nineteen that went on the program which is a bit of a small number to draw any conclusions from. . Mary said we should argue that in order to improve the program we have to see the evaluations and if they are not willing for us to see them then clearly improving the program is not their primary goal. Jim felt he needed to see these evaluations and that the meetings with Stephanie got very tense and unproductive. He said he told Mike and Stephanie that he would ask Martha Perez for them on Tuesday morning. Jim received them on Monday at four o’clock.

The problem with approving IPO’s suggested changes is the evaluation. Jim feels the department should be part of the evaluation process. He has seen the Peruvian program evaluations however he has not seen Clint Davis, Mary Chipley or David Brown’s evaluations. Several task force members suggested a vote of no confidence for Ms. Amundsen and some sort of negative comment about her management skills.

Clint had more concerns with the fact that there was a lot more at stake than was even suggested. They set up an advisory committee for the Academic side which is normally only done on the workforce side. Clint had asked to be present at this first advisory meeting and said that at this meeting there were no other study abroad faculty or anyone who he felt knew anything about the international programs courses. At that meeting there were three models of what the programs are supposed to look like in the next three years. They are telling Clint that they are going to treat his travel monies for the program as any other travel funds for faculty and have him provide the money out of pocket and then be reimbursed. He and other study abroad instructors were unwilling and unable to do that. Jim said he has talked to Clint and it is as if they do not trust the faculty member, it is as if IPO suspects the Faculty are pocketing the money and going on vacation with it. Clint stated that more importantly, somehow the IP program has lost their policies and procedures manual that was done many years ago and now Stephanie is recreating the policies without any input from study abroad faculty. Supposedly no one has a copy. Jim felt that they seemed to be doing this to kill the study abroad program. Jim said all of the study abroad programs he knows about have been created by the faculty members themselves and with these new structures they may not be able to find any volunteers to go.

Clint said of the three models presented to the advisory committee for study abroad programs, most of them wouldn’t work because it would cost thousands of dollars to implement. He said in that case they would have to eliminate a number of programs and that the only way they would be able to do that is through competition. Clint felt they don’t have enough people to handle the programs they have right now and there is no more money in the budget to hire assistance. Jim clarified the students pay for the program but they just cover the cost of the program. So Stephanie Amundson and her staff are covered by other funds from the college to which he felt the college was now unable to contribute more funds. Lizzie asked if CIS is making a profit off the program and if so why is ACC handing a profit to CIS. Clint stated that he thought that possibly they are hoping that they will handle the student problems and not the instructors. The problem with this is that the instructor will have to wonder if CIS is taking care of the problems. Jim and Clint stated that it seemed the idea is that they will be safer and more effective programs. Jim said he had talked to Clint and Carol about this and he had heard that people in International Programs office are over worked but from his perspective as department chair Clint and Carol work very hard to get these programs together and do all the work. With all of this being taken care of by the professor, Jim said he wasn’t quite sure what was handled in the IP office. Clint felt since Giancarlo came on board there were more visits to campuses, promotions of the programs, and recruiting of students. Clint said in all the proposals there was no mention of facilitating and that Stephanie told him that the IPO was not here to facilitate. Clint said he used to do all of the stuff they are doing. They are doing more with taking in the monies and with scholarships and taking a greater interest in trying to improve and to help the programs that are there. Clint said he does see the work being done by the IPO as they coordinate several programs with about 225 students participating in various courses every summer.

Clint said it was suggested that the next thing is they want to limit all of the programs to the summer session with all of them competing against one another. Clint felt we need to involve as many members of study abroad faculty together with IP office to try to recreate the policies and procedures manuals.

Jim made a motion asking that Faculty members and the department chair be involved in any restructuring of the IP office, be not only consulted but included in the development of programs , and need to be included in development of the evaluations and policies and procedures. Jim said this should be sent to Mike Midgley. Michael Petrowsky felt this should go to the Faculty Senate, Adjunct Faculty Association and out to other international programs. Geoffrey felt the IP program should be reevaluated form ground zero with half selected from among faculty and the other half from IP. Michael Petrowsky felt the issue needed to be addressed regarding the comments made about Stephanie’s behavior and profound disrespect going on with Jim. He said he felt strongly that the student evaluations and the complaints about any instructor be handled through our department.

Action: The task force decided on the following motion:

1. The department strongly disapproves of Stephanie Amundson’s arbitrary and capricious management of the International Programs office as it relates to social science faculty and programs.

2. The Department strongly supports student evaluations of the International Program. We insist that these evaluations of the programs and the Faculty running or participating in them be done through the Faculty and Staff Evaluation Office. We agree that the forms used to evaluate the faculty and the programs logistics should be different from the forms used in regular faculty evaluations. We further request that Faculty from our department be in the committee that draws up the evaluation mechanism. Finally we insist that the results of any evaluations be distributed to the relevant faculty members and their department chair.

3. The Department’s concerns about the operation of the International Programs Office, and especially its handling of faculty evaluations, should be sent to the Faculty Senate for guidance, review and action.

4. In keeping with the shared governance policy at ACC, the Department requests the establishment of a committee, made up of International Programs faculty and International Programs staff, to immediately establish policies, procedures and administrative guidelines for all International programs that recognize the faculty driven nature of these programs.

5. The Department strongly feels that a program delayed is a program denied, so these issues should be resolved within the next 30 days so as to not hurt existing program offerings.

Jim said on Monday we would send it to the Vice President, the Dean and Stephanie Amundson.

On another note Lizzie mentioned some problems she had been having in responding and or sending posts to the Social Science Task Force list serve. Jim said that if you have your messages forward to another address like Gmail or yahoo and then when you reply from that email as a valid one and it will not deliver the message. If you want to put several emails on the list please let Rachel know and that should solve the problem.

5. Update on the hiring committee for the new Full Time Position in Anthropology.

Clint and Lizzie are dividing the first sixty applicants into two parts and Jim feels this should be done now as there might be fifty more applications by January. Jim mentioned that there are about a thousand pages for all applicants. Jim said he would think the deadline is the Friday before classes begin we send out invitations out to the ten or twelve people we want to invite for interviews. That would be January 14^th and the applications close on the 7^th. Jim mentioned that he was told we need to have our top three candidates to the dean and to HR by the first week of March before spring break. If we can ask people in to interview by the end of February, we would like to give them at least a month to arrange their schedules especially if they were coming from out of town. Clint and Lizzie mentioned what a bad time this was to review applications.

6. Update on the now annual event put on by the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies in cooperation with the Economics faculty.

Avy Gonzales proposed the annual event put on by the Center for Public Policy and Political Studies however he is no longer president. Peck Young wanted to substitute a different function and sent out a memo stating how much the Economics department wanted to work with them. We have not heard from his office regarding rescheduling this.

8. A motion was made to adjourn. The meeting ended at 3:20p.m.