Linda Resendiz: The agenda for today.
So for today's agenda
Dr. Sokenu will be doing our welcome and will be doing an introduction. Dr. Jennifer Clark will be doing an update on HEERF and the SCFF updates.
Tammy Coleman, Professor of English and DEI Coordinator, she'll be doing a update on social justice. And we'll be ending with Dr. Sokenu. And so there will be,
after each update, there will be a Q&A. So like I said, anybody who has a question can either type it in the chat or whoever is here present, can come up to the podium.
We will get started.
Julius Sokenu: Okay.
Okay, so thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. We appreciate your presence.
These town halls are an opportunity for us to not only pick specific topics and focus on those topics and those topics only. And we have town halls once a semester.
And this is our fall town hall, and this is our first town hall in HyFlex. Thank you Professor Ruth Bennington for being here in person. Ruth gets the prize. And thank you so much for the, wow, almost
75 people online
who are joining us right now. So thank you, thank you, thank you. These town halls and opportunity for us to pick specific items from our
campus life. For today will be looking at stimulus funds. The HEERF monies that we've received. And giving an update on how those funds have been spent
and how we plan to spend them moving forward. We will also take you back about two years ago, actually three years ago now,
when we started discussing the student centered funding formula and the student centered funding formula allocation for this college. You might remember that there was a town hall meeting in this exact space, where we discussed what SCFF is, how we might
spend it and we came up with a plan of action,
and then kind of life happened. And so today's an opportunity to give
an update on how we spent it and how we actually used
other resources to meet some other obligations and we asked for your feedback and your insight on how we move forward.
Today is not about any other topic, other than those two. This is our focus and so we'll sort of discuss those topics.
And again, we thank you for being able to ask questions, pose questions and we'll answer them to the best of our abilities. I thank Dr. Jennifer Clark, who will be presenting, as well as a Professor Tamarra Coleman,
who will be presenting an update on our DEI and our social justice work at the college. And so with no further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Jennifer Clark, Vice President of Business and Administrative Services.
Jennifer Clark: Thank you Julius. Good afternoon everybody. Really, really happy to be with you all today. This is very cool. I love this
HyFlex stuff. This is super cool.
So I'm going to, yes, as Dr. Sokenu mentioned I'm going to give everybody an update on the HEERF
money, all of that federal stimulus, pandemic response money that we've been receiving.
You know you'll hear the hundred million dollars from the board, right? They reference the hundred million. So we're going to be talking about the Moorpark's piece of that
hundred million. And then I'm also going to be able to circle back around and give you some update on the SCFF, on those plans that were formulated, oh gosh, yeah it was before my time here at Moorpark. Silvia Barajas was in
this chair or this seat in my position when this all happened. So I sort of am picking up and circling back to where she left off. So anyway next slide please?
Is that the next slide? So I'm going to start with HEERF updates. So next slide please?
Okay, thank you. So if you recall, the HEERF money. The Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund is what it stands for.
They will came to us in three waves. The one, two and three, known as CARES, CRRSA, the C-R-R-S-A, was round two and then the ARP,
the American Rescue Plan is around three. But it's all under the umbrella of the Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund.
So it came to us in three different waves and for three different purposes. So I'm going to talk about the first bucket or the first purpose, which was the student direct aid.
I'm going to go into the institutional portion and then I'm going to go into the HSI portion. Those are the again, the three purposes or the three major buckets of this HEERF
money, that has been coming to us for the last year, year and a half or so. So the first bucket the student direct aid portion, you can see
from HEERF waves one through three, we've received about $14.5 million. That is our budget and the purpose of these funds is purely for student direct aid.
The third column, you can see the year to date expenditures. This was taken from our website
just a couple of days ago. So this is a very, very recent number. We have awarded over $8.8 million to students and we have a balance of a little more than $5.5 million.
I will remind everybody that these monies, the grant period ends April 2022. There's a little asterisk under the
matrix there, but there is an ability for us to add on a one year no cost extension, if needed.
And that is extended to all community colleges and universities that are receiving this money. So, if needed, we could have until September 2023 to spend the money.
You can see though, at this rate, as far as the student direct aid portion is concerned, we are going to fully expend our monies for this purpose, well before the deadline or the extension deadline of September 2023.
I've also made a note and again, taken right from the website, that we've been able to award monies to over 7,726 students, which is fantastic news that's about
maybe about half, a little more than half of the students that are currently in attendance. And recall that our current award is $1,000 per student, per semester for carrying six units or more. So the same amount,
$1,000 for every student whether they're part time or full time, so long as they have six units.
And we are going to be continuing with that program again, in the spring.
We have sufficient funds to be able to cover and offer our students again, that $1,000 award for six units.
Beyond spring, we'll kind of see, we'll have to temper what award we offer because we will, as you can see, we will have gone through the lion's share of the money and we won't have relative to the $14.5 million we started with. We'll have a small amount left.
Next slide please? So the next portion I'm going to discuss is the institutional portion. And this is definitely the largest portion that the colleges received. Our colleges no different.
I've broken it down into like seven different categories, starting at direct student aid at the top and lost revenue at the bottom. That is the seventh
area, you can see. I've given the charge or the matrix, also a column that talks about the percent of the budget. So you can see the largest percent or proportion of the monies
is campus safety at 39%, and the smallest indirect costs at 4%. So you can see relative and then the next column shows you the actual dollar amounts
for each of the buckets. So campus safety is almost $7.6 million. Going to the top the direct student aid portion is almost $3 million, it's over $2.9 million. Student support is $2.6 million, etc. You can see how much is allotted to each area.
And then the next column shows you what has been spent. And this is as of September 30. So this data is about three to four weeks old.
But pretty recent and then you can see the final column is the balance. I did note at the bottom that we have the same grant period
or ending period I should say, as on the student side, we have theoretically until September 2023 to spend the money, but really the grant period is through, it was originally meant to be spent by June 2022. So that's really in what?
Eight months or so from now.
I did want to note that at the current rate, so, if you look at what the original budget was, how much we've expended, what's encumbered, what the balance is,
I'm projecting that about the 10th quarter of this money, that we will be fully extended. So that projected out is a little bit more than a year from now. At the current rate, we will have totally spent the money by the end of year 2022.
You can see at the bottom, December 31, 2022 we will by then be absolutely completely spent. Now, there is, we'll to try to
make these monies last as long as we possibly can. So there is interest and we are looking at this,
you know, we started looking at this already, where, how are we spending the money. How can we kind of prioritize what we're currently spending money on. Can be back off in any areas so that we can
make again, make these monies last a little bit beyond that December 31, 2022. Ideally, if we could get another 6,7,8,9 months out of it into the calendar year 2023, I think that would help us.
Next slide please?
So the third bucket is and I mentioned this earlier, this is the third and the smallest bucket is the HSI. So this is the additional money that the campus gets for being a Hispanic Serving Institution.
And you can see, really, we only have these monies budgeted in three areas. By far and away the largest, the lion's share of this
budget, which is almost $2 million, is budgeted in the area of student support. We have a small budget for professional development. There were some
I know curriculum audits done by a number of faculty, where we're sort of
looking at curriculum and equitizing it. You know, it's online. How can we make it better. Reaching all students, particularly those DEI populations
in this manner. So I know that we spent some money from this pot, on those trainings for faculty.
And then also we have some for lost revenue. And I don't know if anybody remembers this, but sort of an artifact of this program,
when it was first launched by the Federal Government, the HEERF monies was originally, the HSI portion or the HSI bucket was the only money that we were allowed to
backfill or support lost revenue for the campus. Now, few months later, as the feds kind of refined the rules,
that changed. And so we can use institutional and you probably noticed, there was a lot more spent on loss revenue on the previous slide in the institutional bucket, because the rules did change. But initially, this was the bucket that we had to use.
And I also have a note down here, at the bottom, that that lost revenue,
very much local programs that are supposed to be self sufficient, that were severely impacted by the pandemic,
and could not generate the revenue that they were accustomed to. And of course, salaries are paid out of them, etc. So we supported those programs.
Meaning the zoo, the CDC, our civic center program, our bookstore, our international students. Our international program has been hit particularly hard by the pandemic.
Our vending program and then we have a local, in our trust account, our box office holdings, which are accustomed to selling tickets, which we weren't able to do during the pandemic. And I will say, not all orgs, there are very specific rules around when
or which kinds of revenue can be backfilled, not every kind of program is eligible. So, believe me, we looked at every single program on campus
and we back filled every program we possibly could, every program that was eligible. And these are the ones that were done, at least initially. Next slide please?
So this is how, and this is not an exhaustive list, but this is how and I'm sorry there's a lot of text and I originally had some items that were bolded, that I see in this formatting it's not really jumping out at you, as I had intended.
These slides will be shared, so you can review them at your leisure, but I wanted to just share, highlight. These are the programs that we have been very much supporting
over the last year and our half with our institutional and our HSI dollars. You know, we're familiar with the engagement programs and tutoring and all the different technology pieces and software.
We know that there were some items and housing near the bottom. We did have some temporary housing for students that were able to offer
around the holidays last year, which was great through Raider Central.
We are backfilling student parking fees. Again, that's in the lost revenue category. Parking fees is a big bucket that we've been backfilling all the campuses, because
we haven't been charging parking and very few people have been coming to
park on campus in the first place. So we've had to fund our police departments using HEERF, over the last year and a half. So anyway, these are the sort of the bigger highlights, things that we've been using institutional and HSI dollars on.
Next slide please?
And those were in the area of student support, of course. This slide shows you in the area of campus safety, on the left.
And then the area of professional development, and then the other category again, major programs that we've been supporting with institutional and HSI dollars.
We've had additional sections. Our entire campus screening and check in program, from the tents, to the signs, to paying all the screener salaries, to the app to
the testing folks that are going to help us do contact tracing. HVAC improvements. All of those things that we've done to make our air
kind of cleaner ,and fewer pathogens and all of that. Whether it was the duct cleaning, the
filters, the UV-C lighting, all of that. All covered by campus safety, which explains why campus safety is by far and away the largest
bucket, if you will, out of the institutional money. If you recall, it was 39% of the overall budget.
And this is why. These huge and all of the facilities programs. The FLRs and all that site work, all came out of campus safety.
I highlighted professional development, and again, these are some things
that we've used the money for, and I've covered lost revenue and there is some indirect costs, which are sort of the back end processes, the accounting, and
all of the processes that help us to monitor and make sure that we are compliant with this, $19.5 million institutional,
plus another $2 million in HSI, plus another, whatever the student one was, it was between $8 and $9 million. So a lot of back end accounting that needs to happen to keep track of all this stuff. So anyway. Next slide please?
So those are the
slides on the HEERF. I'm looking at time and I think I have like 10 to 15 minutes or so.
So I might pause for if there are a couple of questions. If there are any in the chat.
I don't see any. I don't know if anyone in the room, like Ruth
has a question, but I don't see any in the chat. So I'm just going to keep going.
Linda: Doesn't have any questions.
Jennifer: Okay, thank you.
So if you can go to the next slide please?
So this is now the SCFF update. So as Dr. Sokenu
referred to at the beginning of the presentation, there was money that above and beyond what was in the adoption budget,
out of the SCFF. If everyone recalls, the 18-19, that was the first year that the state implemented this new funding formula.
So it was really, really tenuous and no one was really sure exactly how much money we would actually get. There were a lot of estimates that like changed almost every day. I recall seeing every presentation or
spreadsheet I would get from the state, it would have a different number on it, and so there was a lot of like
we don't know what this is going to look like. So our district decided to be really conservative and adopt that hold harmless amount and as it turned out, we did
out of that first year, the whole district, all of our colleges were what we call a winner, meaning with using the new
SCFF funding formula, at the state level, our district ended up receiving more than we had under the previous model. Which was pretty much a purely FTEs model.
So these monies came to us after the fact, because it was not assumed at the beginning of the adoption budget that we would have the money.
So we started receiving money, and I think it was like two days before the end of the fiscal year, we received the first chunk of money out of this $3.3 million. And then there were two subsequent board meetings over the next year, where some additional money from this 18-19
pot was was finally released to the colleges. So to cut a long story short, it's already kind of a long story, it was $3.38 million that we received for Moorpark, above and beyond the
18-19 adoption budget. So again, extensive process. What are we going to do with this money because we have to assume it was one time. We didn't know if we would continue to get it, and it has greatly varied, year to year.
So we wanted to take a very long term approach. What could we spend the money on that would benefit the campus long term.
And I know at that time there was really more of a robust enrollment. Sorry, yeah enrollment management plan developed. And again, I wasn't here but,
these are the stories and the information that I heard that all of these conversations were happening and program plans were reviewing looking at everyone's resource requests, really come up with this
really massively comprehensive list of items that were requested by all variety of individuals, across the campus to improve program.
And as it turns out this mindset of long term, has really been helpful for us throughout this pandemic and the HEERF money that we've received, because we've always had this
mindset that we want to spend money wisely, not just on the today, in response to the pandemic. but how can we spend the money today that's going to help us through the pandemic to be sure,
but to help us for years to come, as well. And so that's really,
that's been our mindset all along. Next slide please? So I'm going to kind of quickly go through. I kind of synthesized the list or the spreadsheet that I inherited. It's kind of a really long list. So again, this is really synthesized.
So it's it's basically two sets of columns. So, for example, the first program that was identified on this ginormous spreadsheet,
for what to do with the SCFF money, was distance education.
Give release time to a coordinator and hire an instructional technologist. Those were the two biggies that came in under distance education.
So, in the next column, you can see, I've noted that whether it was funded or not. And so yeah the instructional technologist is funded. In fact, he's running this PowerPoint. I think, Michael.
So, yes, we funded the instructional technologist and we used HEERF to fund the
coordinator release time. So I'm not going to read all of them, but you can kind of see how this is set up. AB 705, there were items identified that could help us with that program. Dual Enrollment.
I did want to point out, we did hire a director. We've got Sergio now. He's our
director. The counseling assistant underneath it was also identified under dual enrollment. That has a no. So that's something that was identified. I have all my massive list but we've not been able to fund it
up until now. You can see PACE program had a number of items. The DE the distance ed/ library, this is an Assistant Dean position that we're looking at funding through PRT.
I will tell you this is hot off the presses. Julius and I were just talking today that I said it sounds like HR or Laura Barroso, our Vice Chancellor's been talking with looking at ED Code,
and there's a question as to whether this needs to be an assistant Dean, or a full Dean. So we have to kind of go back and talk about that. So it's either going to be an Assistant Dean or Dean.
You've got OER ZTC items and those items listed have been funded. If you go to the next slide please?
More programs. CTE certifications, there were a number of items identified there that we wanted. Again, three of them, it looks like we're funded and two of them are not.
We have or curriculum non-traditional students, where we wanted to hire a coordinator/ director for non credit, which we have not been able to do.
Marketing. We've got a coordinator of marketing. Dina. Thank you. We hired Dina.
We don't have a director, no. And then you can see we've got Basic Needs, ACCESS, Health Services, and Technology, Facilities. All programs that were identified on this list, most of which, except that last item in Facilities, we have been able to fund. Next slide please?
And then, finally, we had outreach identified. Lots of things under outreach and international. So international, particularly, has like I alluded to earlier, particularly very hard hit by the pandemic. International programs shrunk massively across the country for a variety of reasons.
And so it has struggled. So we haven't been moved forward with any of these. At this point we're sort of trying to
kind of catch ourselves back up and kind of regain our lost footing with our international program at this point.
But on the outreach side, we have been able to do quite a number of items using HEERF. So that was it. I think that is my last slide.
I would invite, I don't know if Mary is listening. I know she's at a conference. Amanuel was on earlier, I know he had to go to another meeting. I don't know if he's left yet.
If Mary or Amanuel wanted to jump in and say anything about these, I would invite them to do so, or Julius. And if there are any questions about any...
Julius: Just like to say that we've been, as always very strategic in the way, in which we use funds. So you will note that we make this plans for all these positions or these projects, for SCFF funding.
And when HEERF funding became available, some of them we then transitioned to HEERF funding so as to pull back on the SCFF money and some we also used AB19 money to cover it.
And if you think closely, some of this money is categorical funding, our unrestricted general fund, as
we call it. And some of them are one time monies, like the HEERF, and others are recurring money, but then the allocation varies by the year.
So I just want us to realize that this is great to have these monies, but some of it is not for sure guaranteed every year and it's not guaranteed at the same
rate. So we're constantly in this game of being able to sort of move resources and funding positions and making sure that we keep the positions as funding becomes available. So we're constantly leveraging and that mindset is very important. Also when you look at
the international program, our goal is to grow our international student programming and bring more international students to this campus.
International students come with much more resources than domestic students and they have to support our domestic programs.
And as you may remember there was a point where individuals from various countries in the world who couldn't come to the US and then COVID happened, and so
goal at expanding globally has been impacted by those particular areas and those instances. We're still looking at growing international program and we're now actually growing an international program district wide.
And given the fact that Moorpark College has been a leader in this work, at this district, we're looking and positioning ourselves to be the institution that benefits from
some district wide money as well as whatever other resources we can, to sort of grow an international program and align with our global mission in our mission statement for the college.
Jennifer: Hey and Julius, Tiffany has a really good question and you can speak to it, I will start, but you can probably speak to it better than I.
She asked about the Assistant Dean position versus full Dean, and how PRT can fund it. And, of course, PRT, a big chunk or a big focus of the PRT is on distance education and
DEI. So I don't know if you wanted to kind of jump in about kind of the Assistant Dean, what they would be doing and how it would support sort of that DEI and PRT plan?
Julius: So I'll start with the PRT. If you remember, we brought to the campus, constituency groups.
The innovation and effectiveness plan that came out of our PRT visit. One of the positions is two positions that
need to be funded, actually when we say funded, it's actually save money for those positions. PRT money only funds new positions, when it comes positions.
And only funds them for no more than two years or start off. So whenever we do this, we know we starting with PRT money, but we'll have to find other resources.
Case in point, we have a dean of IE. Oleg is here today because we started using PRT money and then over time we found general funds to keep up that line going.
And it's a similar plan that we have with this position here. It was clear that we need to look at our distance education program and look at how we grow it in the context of more online
programs and curriculum being offered, more degrees been offered online, and also just need to support our
move towards more online instruction and online services. So the need of a dean to put in all that work, the need to sort of take that the work of the
DE, the work of the library, the work of instructional technologists, all of those elements that are aligned around
technology, media, and knowledge, and learning, put them together under one dean.
Currently, we have a dean, who has all of those programs, plus math, plus athletics, and clearly, the poor is not only overwhelmed by this,
but doing a great job. And the reality is that if we want to really grow those programs, we need to make sure we're not overwhelming one person or one division and take those resources and build and grow.
What is an essential part of
our plan to make the college more buoyant and viable in an online context. So that's the need for the dean. We debated whether this be an Assistant Dean, or a full Dean. Part of the work was the money.
An Assistant Dean costs a little bit less than a full Dean. And so we were looking at how we can sort of supply an Assistant Dean to take on the responsibility.
We actually looked at hiring a director. Directors cannot supervise faculty members. They can
supervise classified barely, but they can certainly not supervise faculty. So we took the idea of hiring a director out of the
consideration and looked at an Assistant Dean. And SARS are pretty similar to those positions. And then as just as Dr. Clark mentioned,
our district is looking at whether or not we should be hiring a full Dean, and an Assistant Dean. Ideally, that's what I would like to hire. But to be quite honest, if we could
conserve money because I don't know what's going to happen two or three years from now, when we're no longer held harmless, I'd rather hire an Assistant Dean, and when the resources become available, then we can
either change it a Dean, or of leverage some of the resources elsewhere. So that's kind of the short of it. Does that address your question Tiffany?
Jennifer: And actually speaking of rock star, Dean Calvin just private messaged me to remind me of something that I had forgotten, where we say it's funded, this position would be funded by PRT.
Actually, this position would be mostly funded by existing general fund money from the Learning Resources Supervisor position the John Dobbins position.
We're actually abolishing that position and creating this position in lieu of that. So it's mostly being funded by that position. The difference would be the PRT. So thank you Matt or Dean Calvin for reminding me of that.
Julius: Again, that's very important that we sort that that other position didn't serve us as
effectively as we thought it could, and we are now realigning. And so the benefits and the savings and of course, made from that position is used to sort of find this particular one.
Jennifer: Thank you Dr. Sokenu.
Julius: There's a question here.
Ruth Bennington: Hi, I just wanted to know of the $100 million received by our district, how much of it went to the DAC?
Jennifer: So initially Ruth,
none of it goes to the DAC. It all goes to the campuses. However, there are a few centralized services that were eligible or that needed HEERF
support. For example, the Ready Education app that were used, that was essentially purchased, Dan Watkins and his team in IT,
are, but it's for everybody's benefit. We use HEERF money for that. The big one is police. The big one is parking, because the revenue, the
big chunk of that revenue for police services, comes from selling parking permits from the daily coin daily permits, as well as the semester permits,
as well as parking tickets. A lot of revenue comes from issuing parking tickets. Well with no one parking on campus, of course, all that revenue was gone.
So I think Moorpark ended up paying, last year, I think it was around $40,000, maybe a little bit less than $40,000, to go towards the revenue for police services. I'm recalling a journal entry for like $38,000 something.
Don't quote me on that because I do remember there was a journal entry for that, but I mean it's sizable. It's over $100,000, definitely. That out of the three colleges were put towards supporting the police.
[Ruth]: Thank you Jennifer. [Jennifer]: You're welcome.
So if that's it, that concludes my my presentation.
[Julius]: Okay, so I'm not sure Professor Coleman. [Linda]: Yeah she's here. [Julius]: She's here. Oh great. Okay. So if you know
at multiple campus updates we've talked to you about the progress of our social justice and racial justice work and you probably experienced that
in a variety of ways, over the course of the last year. If you've gone to a group discussion, those facilitated through our
library. If you've attended a cultural heritage month program. If you have been part of a curriculum
audit. You've been a beneficiary of the conversations that have led to, and also an individual who's added to campus wide dialogue on
equitizing the curriculum, making sure that we are an anti-racist community, campus community and building upon the strengths and the values that the diversity and viewpoints brings to this campus. So
Tammy is going to provide you an update on our social justice programming and our social justice
I guess workgroup mission. So Professor Coleman?
[Tamarra Coleman]: Thank you. Can you hear me? [Linda]: Loud and clear.
Tamarra: Yes. Okay. Awesome. Good afternoon everyone.
Next slide?
Forgot I have to say that.
So I'm going to give you an update on a particularly, or specifically, the four social justice work groups that started last year, that we actually talked about in several of the town halls last year, and where we are on that work and where we want to go with that work.
So there were four workgroups, initially. Those are the ones you see on the screen. And the idea was that the folks who joined in participated in the work, wanted to see change in these areas, all related to
being responsive to our students, in terms of culture, also thinking about anti-racism, particularly in the national context that was happening last year,
thinking about our curriculum and is our curriculum reflective of our community, thinking about our employees. Are we in an environment where we are diverse, in terms of our employees, and are we thinking about the barriers that may prevent that,
either now or in the future. And then the last one was related to civic engagement and leadership on campus.
Excuse me. My role as the DEI Coordinator, was to think about how to
incorporate the work of the work group and figure out with the help of others, how this fits into our campus. What are we already doing, how can this add to what we're doing, what systems already existed in our institution
that should take on this work, theoretically, in terms of the work that they are already doing, and how it ties to the social justice work.
Next slide?
So the first area, diversifying curriculum, which was a fairly broad area. One thinking about ethnic studies, so new curriculum, but also thinking about the curriculum that we currently have and what does that look like, when it is "equitized" or the curriculum reflects
in all different academic areas, our students, right, our student population, who are students are, or
broadly speaking, thinking about different cultural contributions to our different academic areas. In terms of the requirement for ethnic studies, the truth is we didn't really have to do much about that. The CSU mandate really pushed us
toward that effort and making sure we can provide those courses for students who will be transferring to the CSU's.
But the work that's happened on our campus to produce that, came out of this work group and others working in that area. Patty Colman lead that that effort. Mary Rees certainly was
a superstar in terms of supporting that work and making sure we have an Ethnic Studies program and we're in alignment with the state
requirements.
Also, as an update, some of you know, in a faculty prioritization process, a full time position was listed high on priority
for next year. And so that's also a progress in in thinking about how we want to grow this ethnic studies program.
Beyond the ,new programming, we also did a curriculum audit this past summer, in May well the beginning of the summer, for all faculty members, open to all faculty members in all disciplines to really take a look at what they're doing in the classroom and what they can do to infuse
a broader sense of culture, reflect culture within the context of their curriculum. It was a very successful audit. Very good feedback.
The plan is to have, in the long term to have regular opportunities, either in that context, the sort of three day thing that's really intensive or even in shorter context, like during Flex
Week, in both the spring and the fall, providing opportunities for faculty members to really take a look at their curriculum.
There was also discussion. And I'm sorry I didn't explain, on the left side of the screen, those are the goals. On the right side of the screen that's the update of what has actually happened, or what we're doing in that area.
That particular workshop was thinking about the idea of including language in the syllabi about diversity. Some faculty have developed their own statements.
There was also, which I think we should have had on this slide, the land acknowledgement, right, and thinking about native peoples in the land, in which we stand on. Which, if you were a part of the
Convocation, a part of Convocation, you got an opportunity to hear that land acknowledgement, and also be introduced to one of our Chumash elders at that event.
But this is one of the ways this group is really thinking about curriculum, the classroom and students, and thinking about diversity. Are we putting statements in our syllabi,
signal to our students that this is important to us and a value for us. The last one is the goal of embedding social justice. And this is for more longer
conversation what even social justice mean. What does that mean to embedded in there. And that's why you see on the other side, where it says, this has to be discussed.
And this would be work that would be done within the context of our curriculum committee. So part of what we're trying to figure out, in the conversations were having in the work group, is where does this go.
Which committees would have this discussion and think about this, whether we decide as an institution to move forward with some of these ideas. There are currently committees that
really are charged to do that work. So at this point, the next step in terms of thinking about program learning outcomes, would be moving into the curriculum committee and having that conversation there.
Next slide?
The second group was dealing with culturally responsive student services. And again, these four areas were areas in which our students in last year's town hall, back in the end of the spring,
talked about. And so we heard their voices and responded to their concerns and student services was an area in which students felt like
there were some challenges on campus.
And for this group, there were several other goals that had already been accomplished, and I think we talked about them at another town hall, but these were the last three goals that were on the list.
And one was really thinking about what cultural competence training would look like and require cultural competence training.
And that would be in the onboarding process for new employees at every level they would have this kind of training. There would be some continuing education for
employees who have been here for, not new employees, but just keeping them abreast of of changes in demographics or changing in our campus population. And then also thinking about accountability.
There have been many broad, wide conversations in many areas of the college that
do in some ways, provide education, provide professional development, or help to prepare our faculty, but what we found was that there is no centralized,
focused
space or even clear direction on our campus in terms of
where does that get developed, where does that start, where do I learn about this stuff. You have all these questions about the possibility of training
and that wasn't clear to us. So we met a couple of times last year in what I call it across campus collaboration, with
the areas that you see here the Teaching and Learning Center, the new faculty orientation, professional development, First Year Experience, CHESS, ASMC,
and we kept in our minds that HR, even though it's not on our campus in an official way, in a sense that it's right there with us, it's a district HR,
we do recognize that some of these, especially if we're talking about requirement, would be the job of HR. And so part of the conversation was how do we advocate for that at the district level,
which would mean all of the employees in the district would have training at different levels in their career here in our district.
The other two items or goals are things that are actually the Umoja program is in our PRT plan for us to really think about the feasibility of that program, whether it's something that we can have on our campus that
would be beneficial to our campus. And so that discussion is still happening, and I believe that's one of the goals to actually continue that discussion.
The physical space came up in this group, which I think was interesting because this has also come up in other context and conversations about the need for a place or cultural centers,
places that would reflect different cultures. Spaces that our students of color particularly, our very small populations of students who kind of feel like they don't have other spaces on campus.
This is a larger conversation. I'm not sure that there's movement on this, except the fact that there are groups talking about the need
for this. And, of course, it requires space, just like the Umoja program. So the dollar amount is a challenge as well for both of these two things. That doesn't mean they aren't good ideas or good goals.
And I also just wanted to say that Moorpark faculty. There are Moorpark faculty and staff working at the district level to advocate for training, and require training, and for the district to really take responsibility for
creating that training, or outsourcing, or whatever it needs to be done to prepare our faculty in these ways. Next slide?
Diversifying hiring.
Alright, so there weren't very many goals in this area, one of the reasons is that hiring most of what happens in terms of hiring is at the policy level, which means is at the district level. So our concern was more about practices. What are we doing on our campus.
This is a challenging group, because the the discussion about practice is interlinked with a discussion about policy. And so what policy do we have to help guide our practice for
folks who have really for years been pushing for
changes in terms of the questions that we ask, or the criteria. What are we prioritizing in criteria. There are folks who've been advocating for this for years. But what policy do we have to really
enforce the idea that this is an important value for our district. So the work that's been happening in our campus has really been conversations about hiring, with different stakeholders and hiring areas.
So it's not just about full time faculty. We've pulled in the classified hiring managers, the employment equity facilitators, which is the new name
for the facilitators. The Senate presidents. The folks that we have representing us on the district EO Committee. Deans, administrators, and also
faculty and staff. And thinking about what problems or challenges that they see in the process, or that they've experienced and how can we improve the process on our end.
And recently, we've been really looking at the relationship between the policies in all of these hiring areas and the practice.
Again, this is another area where there's work happening at the district level. Work happening
fairly quickly thanks to advocacy of folks from our campus and other folks in the district really pushing
the district, and the board to change the language. So that it's clear that our hiring policies are reflective of the district's commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion, the California Community College's system
commitment to diversity and inclusion, and, of course, that commitment on our individual campuses. So that gap analysis and that best practices, those two goals, that's work that's happening within the context of those stakeholder groups.
Next slide?
So this final group is a group that, if you see on the right side, it says less focus has been given to this area.
There were goals that this group had early on and those goals were met. We had a local legislator on campus in somewhat of a town hall formed last year. That was actually listed as one of the goals that and a couple of other things. The goals that you see here
again, less focus has been given to that area, but civic engagement is not a new item. There is, and I believe I'm correct when I say there's an item on our Edplan that talks about increasing the number of courses and civic engagement
courses infused with with some civic engagement component. And I think it's actually a pretty sizable number of courses.
But there are many, many opportunities for conversations around civic engagement. I think there's even been some with CTE and thinking about internships and these
other things for students that come through our programs and connecting them with the community and these conversations certainly need to continue.
Next slide?
So that's where the work groups are. So what do we want to do now with the workgroups? So we have been meeting and talking about what we want to do, as groups, and how can we be of value and benefit to the campus in our efforts, collective efforts
working around DEI. So the thought of an advisory group of some form, or a group that is working to help inform the DEI work, is something that we're talking about now. We're thinking about one, what that would look like.
Also, thinking about how other people can participate. So
there's a group of people who kind of started in these work groups, but that doesn't mean that other folks from the campus can't enter into the work at some point. So allowing that flexibility and opportunity for other people to participate.
And one of the things that we have been talking about and thinking about, particularly as it relates to our larger goals as
an institution, long term goals, is how long term goals and short term goals, how are those goals actualized. And the program plan is really the place where
those goals they live out. And so what does that process look like. What are we doing
when we're program planning and how is that related to these goals of diversity, equity, inclusion. So we're looking at data. What does that mean.
Where is the accountability. All of these kinds of questions we're asking in this group and thinking about how we can then have that conversation with EdCap. So that's the committee in which
the conversation about program planning would happen. Again, as I said in the beginning, that's part of the work is trying to move this into
our institution as something that's just a part of what we do on a daily basis, not this sort of side note conversation about equity, about diversity and inclusion, and largely about social justice. With that,
theoretically, that advisory group would really work with and assist the DEI Director and there is a plan for a new position for a DEI Director.
You can sort of see the process and the position, one needs to be written, take into the Cabinet, and then recruitment for that would happen in the spring of 22.
So that's sort of where we are. I think, ultimately, hopefully, what you see is that there's a sense that there's a strong commitment to this work,
not just at our college, but also in our district, but there's also a commitment to making sure that we have the capacity
in place to keep the work going, because it can't keep going in work groups and all of us have other full time positions that we're doing and trying to do this work, all focused in that way, at the same time.
So I'll stop there, and
I think I'm inviting questions.
[Linda]: Nice job with the recap Tammy. [Tamarra]: Thank you.
Linda: It looks like there are no questions. Thank you Tammy
for this update.
Then we will have Dr. Sokenu close the meeting. [Dr. Sokenu]: Okay, first of all, thank you to everyone who's participated in this town
hall. What is so important about engaging in these conversations and in this exchange on information is that our accrediting body asks us if we engage in a culture of dialogue. They ask us if there is a culture of evidence and
data driven, information driven decision making. The accrediting body asks us what channels, what venues, what vehicles we have to communicate to the campus community.
And this is one of those vehicles. So when the accrediting folks come in 2023, you need to be telling them we had a town hall, and we had a series of town halls, and here's how we talked about the DEI, and here's how we talked about
the budget and other things. And so I think you, because what you're doing his part of the civic work of this college and being part of this conversation.
We have the opportunity, as you can see, to expend some massive amounts of money and we've had that opportunity over the past
year or so. And we'll have it going to another six months to a year, and maybe longer if we can sort of stretch the monies. And what that does it in some ways keeps the wolves at bay,
but we also know that we've been held harmless. We also know that enrollment is not buoyant. The college district is 9% down. This college is actually 11% down, in comparison to the last year.
And so we need to grow. We need to find programming that meet students where they're at and where they live, and how they want it.
And we need to continue to grow programs that are not only meeting the needs of our students, but that they're moving and pushing us further, pushing knowledge and pushing
the ways in which we use knowledge to better our humanity, moving forward. So the town hall meeting as you see, is really an opportunity for us to share with you what we're doing, how
we're going about it, solicit input from you, thus, you've been asked if there are any questions, and then that we move forward.
One of the things that used to happen is that we would have this town hall meetings twice a year, and it was one of the few ways in which there was
community conversations. Now, we're doing those every two weeks through our campus update.
As so our campus update has created more ongoing conversation and dialogue between the campus community and its leadership, but also among the campus community.
And I think that is a benefit to this college and to our learning community. As always, if there are questions or concerns about how
we're utilizing the college resources and how we are engaging in activity, we have a variety of vehicles and venues to do so.
So if you are participating in your senate, in your Classified Senate, on your faculty senate, or if you're
a student who's listened to and participated in ASMC, you are part of this deliberation and this decision making process. And we appreciate your participation in those venues.
We are consistently being asked how do we connect what we say we do to what we do, and this is one of those ways in which we do that.
I appreciate the opportunity for us as a campus community to sort of share information and gather information. For those folks who can't make it here, we will post the
PowerPoints and the person on the presiden'ts office webpage, but we'll also post it in our planning
pages, so that folks can see that this is part of our planning process. If you have any questions, after having reviewed them, please feel free to pose those questions to me, or
to Dr. Clark, or to professor Coleman who's giving these presentation, but also, we want to start dialogue. So that's part of the work that we do.
Again, I want to thank you for taking the time to engage us today and be part of this. We have a campus update on Monday.
And
it is really wonderful to be part of this campus community. And as we struggle through the pandemic, and we struggle through range of things,
I love to believe that we're here for one another and that as we do that, we serve our students better and we continue to figure out ways, in which we can live in community. Thank you so much. Have a great rest of the week. Have a safe and restful weekend. Take care. [Linda]: Thank you.