Mary Rees: Well good morning we're gonna wait just a minute
while I can see people are coming into the room.
So good morning.
This is so exciting I'm so excited to see. We've
got over 150 about participants already this
morning so I am very glad to welcome you all back
from spring break and those that were here
virtually, all last week. It still feels different
than last week. So welcome back. The time
between now and the end of the semester is always
a fun exciting time. So thank you for attending
the Moorpark College campus update for April 13th
2020. The campus update webinars are being
recorded. This will allow others to view the
information at a later date. The transcripts will
be available following this meeting. We will post
the transcripts on the Moorpark College website
under the president's office an e-mail be sent out
when the archive webinar is available. A reminder
to please go to the gallery view so that you can
see the interpreter for the ongoing
conversations. All audio and visual will be
disabled. Questions can be asked through the Q&A
section at the bottom of your screen. Let's see.
Questions will be answered throughout
throughout the chat. Please ask your questions in
this area. Our session length will be at one hour.
We'll attempt to answer any questions during this
time. Questions that we don't get to during this
session will be answered and available on the
Moorpark College website to begin the Moorpark
College campus update, Dr. Julius Sokenu
Interim College President.
Julius Sokenu: Hi everyone welcome,
and I hope you had some rest over the past week.
Welcome back to our faculty and welcome back to
those of you who took the weekend and
took some vacation time and for those of us who
sort of worked through the week and took some
moments here and there, good for us. And please take
care of yourselves. Let's make sure we're taking
care of one another. I'm going to start today by
just giving you some headlines on some brief
report out from the Chancellor's office. And then
I'll go to a specific Moorpark College related
activities and then I will pass it to the vice
presidents for them to give you a report out from
their particular areas. As Mary mentioned in a
way we're taking questions through the Q&A link
and you can go ahead and post questions there. So
to start off with that's the State Chancellor's
office like us and like the rest of the system is
invested in making sure that students not only
remain enrolled but that they are able to complete
their goals for this semester. So Vice Chancellor
Paul Feist I think that's the way his last name
is pronounced, from the State Chancellor's office
communicated very clearly to us that the State
Chancellor's office is developing this campaign
and it's a statewide campaign called Stay Enrolled and
Complete. And so you will see those messages out
to our students. As for our campus as you know
we've been reaching out to students who are not
actively engaged and trying our very best to make
sure that they know that we're here for them that
they should stay enrolled and remain
working towards their goals. Also from the State
Chancellor's office is an attempt to reach out to
students so that they can complete the 2020 Census
count. So the complete count 2020 outreach is
another area from the State Chancellor's office
that attempts to take us not just focused on the
COVID 19 pandemic but focused on how we fund our
states, how we fund government when how we
accurately count, you know folks who are in this
country and who are living here and who are part
of this great country. Please encourage your
students to complete the census. There is the Moorpark
counts project that is from us our own city
of Moorpark. Ventura County has really
wonderful resources and an outreach effort to make
sure that all voices matter and that all voices
are included in the count at the census. We get
funded based on the population of our state. We
get funded based on our county's representation in
that population base and so participating even in
this time of pandemic is important as you will
find out later on you with the resources coming to
our state and resources come into our college to
address the pandemic and its impact on us. And a
lot of that is differed on who's enrolled, who
lives here. Also the State Chancellor Dr. Eli
Oakley will be conducting a sort of a speaking
engagement with student journalists tomorrow at
2:00PM. I'm assuming that our student
journalists will be participating in that but this is
attempt to reach out to students and to get
their feedback on their experiences during this
pandemic and their expectations, and I guess
their vision for our system and our colleges. So
if you could, you know, if you have student work
students who are part of our Journalism program
definitely please connect them and see that they
participate in this webinar with
Chancellor Oakley. The Relief and Recovery campaign
is being conducted by the Foundation for
California Community Colleges. And it's really an
effort to support our first responders and the
adverse effect that this pandemic is having on
those people and those individuals financially. So
the goal is to provide to the system
the college system from resources that it raised and
funds that have been raised. Three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars to support students who are in
health care, particularly our Nursing students and the
goal is to expand this to Allied Health students
as well and the goal is to get them through so
that they can continue into industry and help
address this pandemic. The goal that the
financial assisting will take the form of about
300 to 500 dollars per student who qualifies. So
there's a whole process that they can follow if
they go to the State Chancellor's office and we'll
get that information and make sure we attach it
to the presentation in some way. The application
is supposed to go live this week, I'm not sure
exactly when but there will be an update from the
State Chancellor's office and particularly to
Nursing programs and then to our Allied Health
programs, depending on how much money is left. I
know a lot of folks are asking questions about
what are we doing for fall. What are our plans for
for the fall semester. I think it's important
to know that we're planning for resiliency.
That really is what we're doing with
we're planning for resiliency. There's so much that
is unknown right now. Well from one school of
thought is that we will have students who are
graduating high school who as a result of this
pandemic may not go to that four year university
across the country or may not go to a CSU or a UC but
may choose to stay at home and in a way that's
comfort and where their families
feel a sense of security. Then there's the other
perspective that you know students are going to be
disenfranchised and they're going to be
overwhelmed and they will just defer their you
know the admissions period and that includes with
us. And so we're trying to sort of plan for feast
or famine, right? And it's a challenge because
clearly we don't know what's going to happen next
week, not to say next month, not to say you know
August of 2020. But for sure we're not
planning is a plan, and so we're not choosing to
you know, ignore what is ahead of us, and we as a
college and we as a college district are
beginning to plan for resiliency. And what do I
mean by that? We are making plans so that we can
offer instruction both online and on ground and
through hybrid. And Mary will probably talk a
little bit more about that when she addresses the
Academic Affairs report. But it is important for
us to assume that we will have online classes
and we'll have on ground classes and we'll wait
what's more the online because we're not exactly
sure what will happen, but even if we started the
fall semester with, you know, the Stay At
Home Order has been lifted and things are fine.
There are projections that you know, come late fall
and really clearly into the winter that maybe
a resurgence of the coronavirus pandemic or at
least another wave of it. So we have to
make sure that we schedule and build our schedules
for the fall with that potential
in mind. Again our goal is to make sure that we're
planning for resiliency. We're planning for it and
maintaining the integrity of instruction, and that
you can safely say to students that what we know
right now is that we will be online, we'll be on
ground, and will be on hybrid. That's what we
can safely say at this point. In terms of trying to
address enrollment and enrollment plan for the
fall semester, the emphasis
will be on trying to reach those students who are
registered this semester, who are either
inactive or who are not participating and trying
to get them back. The emphasis will be to look at
our students from our local high schools who have
identified their interest in coming to our
colleges making sure that their transition to the
college is smooth that the orientations are
available to them that we're in communication with
them so that they are aware that we are available
to them. And so marketing efforts, outreach efforts
to do that. The goal is also to be very clear that
we know that there are folks who are losing work
and that there will be incumbent workers, we're
looking to get up-scaled, we're looking for
training and that we are then the vendor of choice.
So the institutions of choice for that and that we
build a campaign too in working with that workforce
development board and working with our local employers
that we become that resource to help build their
skills and enough skill as the year
goes on. We also ask for Moorpark College, we are
going to reach out to our local superintendents
and to our local principals and attempt to engage
them in conversation so that they can help give us
a sense of what their students are thinking what
their parents and their families are thinking in
terms of transferring to a college and their
school in terms of going from high school to the
community college. So we're engaging on April 30th
will be engaging superintendents from our local
school districts in a conversation. Also, in terms
of engaging students, on Wednesday at 11:00 a.m., I
will be, the vice presidents as well as the
ASMC president will be taking part in a student
update the student update will be
available to all our students who are currently
enrolled and active students at Moorpark College.
We've sent out an email and we've sent out
messages through social media to students to ask
for themes or areas of which they have questions
and grades come up, finals come up, graduation comes
up as topics of interest. Also on that list is you
know what student services are available and what
student events are still scheduled. And so
clearly our students are interested in connecting
and remaining connected to the institution. So on
Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. we will have a Zoom
student update very similar to what we're doing
here with the faculty and the staff, so you have
that engagement. As you know we canceled the
scholarship reception or maybe you don't know but we did
cancel the scholarship reception that was
scheduled for May 2nd. That doesn't mean that
students will not get scholarships. For those of
you who are serving on scholarship
application reading committees or reading teams
those of you are doing that we thank you and we
appreciate the work you're doing. Maria Perez
Medeiros' goal is to have scholarship
recipients identified by the end of this month so
that they can then be notified in early May. There
will be scholarships going out from the Foundation
to us.
Our goal is to keep students engaged by giving
them the resources they need to continue to do
this work. We're also reaching out to our donors
and we'll be continuing doing that work so we can
make sure that they know that we're thinking about
them, that they know what our students need
currently, and that we hope to be able to celebrate
and honor them our donors in the fall via a
reception. The website migration project that some
of you're a part of continues. And I understand that
this weekend we migrated from our current Drupal 7
I guess to Drupal 8 and that the first round of
trainings for folks who are helping to do that
work will begin this week.
Again I want to thank you for the work that you do
with our students and with our community. And with
that I will pass it on to Jennifer.
Jennifer Clark: Thank you Julius. Hello everybody. Great to be
here again. I wanted to just update you. I'm going
to spend a little bit of time on the CARES Act.
The federal funding that was signed by the
Secretary of Education or announced by the
Secretary of Education on April 9th. But I just
wanted to give a shout out also before I get into
that to our technology folks. There's still I
wanted to let you all know that the laptops still
continue to go out. I was just talking to Dan this
morning about how it's going to see you know how
are our folks petering out or you know be
getting to the end of the loaning out laptops? And
we're really not, it's still pretty consistent.
They have you know consistent appointments of
folks, mostly students that are coming in
to borrow laptops. You know, folks that are students
that are in need. So that work continues. And
then I did want to say for our Fiscal folks and
for our deans and our directors, our grant
directors, budget is happening. And you will be
getting contacted by my office very shortly
because our Fiscal 21 budget is marches on and
we have to plan for it. So get ready to do that.
At this point I'm going to plunge more into the
CARES Act. That was what I wanted to highlight
today. So you may have all heard about this, the
federal money. There's almost 20 I'm sorry, almost
14 billion dollars. It's the Higher Education
Emergency Relief Fund, this is nationally, that's
been released, $6 billion of it is the CARES Act.
Now half of the CARES Act money is really to be
targeted for students and the other half of the
money is targeted more for college to backfill you
know lost revenue or you know help us to pay for
items that we need to purchase in order to
transition or to combat the Coronavirus directly.
So I wanted to get into, in each institution as
far as the student half for Moorpark College
it's about a little more than five million dollars
for Moorpark College alone. So the student portion
of that is a little over two and a half million
dollars. That portion will be coming to us first.
We want to get money to the students as quickly as
possible and we will be using, they'll be going
through the financial aid process. So the federal
legislation basically says each institution
has to develop its own methodology for
awarding the funds to students, and I had a
conversation with Kim Korinke our Financial Aid
Officer earlier today about our process, and she
has, her update basically says that the
prioritization of this funding to students is
pretty much it's based on need. And the moneys
are meant to help students cover expenses related
to COVID 19. These are expenses like food,
housing, course materials, technology, health care,
child care, any number of expenses that students
have in order to, you know, in order to deal with
the situation that we are all in. Students must be
currently enrolled in the spring semester 2020
term in order to be eligible. They have to have a
FAFSA or CADAA, a C A D A A, which is the California
Dream Act application on file, one of those two
things is fine. They also have to file an
Emergency Grant Fund application, and I believe I
have a link. I can actually post the link in the
chat when I'm done and provide supporting
documentation for whatever it is whatever expenses
they're looking to have covered whether it's proof
of health care expenses or food needs, unemployment
layoff, whatever the student situation individual
situation may be. And other factors, she says
that are that they used to prioritize, such as
enrollment of at least half time, so those
students will get priority, satisfactory academic
progress standing, and final semester before
graduation. So you know those those folks would
have a higher priority. And of course all expenses
have to be related to COVID. So we're still
waiting for guidance from the Department of
Education, I mean it's enfolding you know so it's
changing, but as far as the student portion, you
know, our process is solid it's in place and
we're already starting to see applications come in.
So with that I will hand it over to Mary.
Mary: Thank you Jennifer. And I think that's really
important with the California CARE Act that those
need to be students that are currently carrying
units in that so we need to make sure that our
students do give it a chance before dropping their
courses in that so that they can, still qualify. So
do have a conversation, send them to Financial Aid
or to counselling so that good decisions can be
made. On the EW that's the Excused
Withdrawal, if your students are interested in
withdrawing from this semester, as Julius mentioned
first of all we'd like to encourage them to give
it a try and to see how they're doing. They can
drop through the EW all the way up and effectively
the date is even May 15th. So you can go up to the
bitter end and see how they're doing. So be
flexible with your students encourage them to try,
see how they're doing, see if they can pick up the
material before they go with the Excused Withdrawal
if they do need to withdraw from the class. If
that is the best thing for them then the Excused
Withdrawal is a simple process and we will be glad
to process that it is not a negative for the
campus. This is all about what is best for the
students. So please support your students on
trying to help them make good solid decisions on
the rest of the semester. For the rest of the
semester, when we come back from spring break I
know one of our big focuses is finishing up, is the
final. This will be a new trist for us. Most of
you have just incredibly moved into the remote or
online world. It's amazing. I think our next big
hurdle is going to be figuring out have they
accomplished all of the things that we wanted them
from this semester? How do we do a final? And I
encourage you to work within your departments and
your divisions to find out the best ways we're
going to be having training on Proctorio which
is a testing service that may or may not be a good
answer for you but review sheets for what one
should have learned this semester might be a
really good thing to put out this year so that you
can make sure your students have covered all of
the things that you want them to have mastered
this semester and work with your peers, you're
gonna be the best answers on how to close up the
semester on a positive note for your students and
for you and how to do your final testing. So I
encourage you, you know, you'll figure that out just
as beautifully as you figured out how to move on
to this remote online world. After the semester the
next set of questions is summer and summer is
going to be online.
And then of course we're going to, but what if?
What if we get a April 15th or May 15th
and they raise the stay home order? I think we've
all been hearing that when it does come it'll come
in stages. It won't be a situation where they will
be encouraging large group, hundreds of people to
gather together for big lectures and things like
that. It will be staging. So we need to be aware
and moving, as Julius said with resilience and with
a consistent, so we have as less changes for our
students. So we'll have online courses for summer.
Of course the exceptions are going to be our EATM
program which needs to support our zoo and our
animals there. Our Allied Health will be as they
are an essential function, we are working very
hard to continue our Allied Health programs in
the most safe and distancing methods possible so
that these students can go out and to help provide
much needs out in the community. If situations
improve, if we're in an online, we will certainly
work with you to do whatever, but for right now
the information we have suggests that we'll be
online for summer. Like I said if situations
change we'll absolutely work with our district
with our state with our County Public Health to
see what is safe and reasonable for our students
our faculty and our staff. And as more information
becomes available that's what we will keep you all
in the loop. So that's where we are for right now
is zoo and Allied Health are on ground and the
rest of the summer is online until we hear
anything different from all of the groups that
we're working with. For fall, as Julius mentioned
we're going to try to take a broad look at it and
have the majority of our courses set up so that we
could respond quickly if something does happen. If
we do get a new wave, if the numbers don't go down, if
we have some kind of staging of social distancing
that's going to be required, a lot of unknowns. So
if we had the majority of our courses online or
hybrid we would be in a much stronger position to
respond to changes in the fall. So that's what we
want to do. If your course is easy to offer online,
nothing is easy, I certainly don't mean that.
But if it's if you are not one of the ones
that are hard to transition, then assume that
you're going to be online. If your course is one
where hybrid is the best for your students we're
going to want to work to help you get DE certified
I'll talk about that in a minute. But we
want to then work with the hybrids so that you can
take the part that needs to be on ground, can be
complimented the parts that you can effectively
provide online. So that will be the majority of
our courses for fall and then the ones that need
to be on ground will be on ground, the hard to
transition courses. If we look at the schedule
that we currently have for our students about 40
percent are ones that have a lab or an on ground
portion. So those are labs or lecture labs. So if
the others can be in a online or in the online
with some hybrid pieces to it then they'll be ready
to move into whatever flexibility is
required for us for the fall. To teach in the
summer and to teach in the fall, with a lot of
conversation going on about how to be as effective
as possible, we believe that we've done a good job
of providing training and I know there's always
more training that can be offered, but our
Instructional Technology group has done incredible
work to provide a variety of different kinds of
trainings. If you've taken the online training be
sure and talk to your department deans about
getting the credit. We've got five hours of
training for faculty that
so we've got five hours of training
that our faculty can get paid for. Be sure and
talk to the department to your deans about that.
And then also if you've been helping train others
and are on the DE list for faculty you can
also be receive 10 hours of pay for helping
train others for that. So we've been having a lot
of training for our faculty to help move on to
online, in order to teach courses most effectively,
these are specific trainings that we've been doing
on software or tools, Zoom and Canvas and
Proctorio and that. But in order to really be know
how to teach an online course, there's the pedagogy
as well as the technology. And for that we provide
a DE certification course. It's four weeks with
about 20 hours. It's the same training for the
three colleges within the district. So once one's
certified, one's certified for the whole district. Our
ideal situation is for anyone teaching in the
summer to be DE certified, meaning gone through
this four week training,
and that training starts today for the next four
weeks. Hopefully we've found all the people that
are teaching this summer, and you've
already registered. If not, we'll work with you and
figure out what we can do. We have a second DE
certification training starting May 18, runs the
next four weeks and it'll be done before the
latter sections of summer school.
So this is the best situation. It provides you
with the pedagogy and the technology in order to
know how to do DE to teach online using Canvas.
The small trainings we've done are supportive, are
on special projects, special softwares, and they'll
help you, but they're not the big DE certification
part that looks at the pedagogy with how to do DE
training or DE teaching I should say. What
happens if you can't get into the course? Or you
just are up to here too much, you can't get it in
or that? Come and talk to us. We believe the best
thing is to for people to be DE certified. We think
we've been hearing from faculty that they need the
training. They want to make sure the best courses
are being provided for the students so that the
students can succeed. So, we believe that this
DE certification is the best way to make that
happen. If for some reason it doesn't fit into
your schedule, there's all sorts of caveats on that,
then come and talk to us and let's work through
this because we want what's best for our students
and best for our faculty and our staff, but
basically, we'd love you to be DE certified because we
think that's the right thing. You can include part
of this in your DE training, so that you'll at
least be partially compensated for part of you're
moving your courses onto online. We'll work with
you on these things. So there is a little bit of
flexibility, but we don't think it's the best thing.
The best thing is to get DE certified the
Instructional Technology group, I believe there's
over 70 people that have signed up for these two
trainings. There probably is even more than that
by now. So you won't be alone, it's asynchronous,
it can fit into your schedule, so we'll keep
working on that. So that's EW's, summer schedule,
fall schedule, and DE certification. If you have more
specifics, be glad to go over and talk about that
as well. Did mentioned about the finals that we
need to figure out how to optimize that and to be
as efficient because we want to make sure that
the students have learned what they want to learn
and is flexible so that it fits into all of the
stress that, we know finals can be a stress time
anyway, and we want to make sure that we're
reasonable on with all the COVID stresses that
are out there as well. I don't know where we're
hitting on there. As you know the college's retreat
got canceled and we're looking to see if there's
any ways that we can still bring it back before
the end of the semester. The reason for looking
into that is that we think it's really important
to hear from people what they think our goals, what
our annual plans need to include for next year.
And we know that we do best when we all work
together on these projects. So we will be reaching
out to try to figure out ways to get input so that
our annual plan, strategic plans for next year for
moving forward will include all of you. So do
expect more information coming out on that.
Let's see I assume Amanuel probably could talk about
the student survey so we won't go into that. But
I think if there's any additional questions, do
reach out to all of us were here and want
that, and I'll also look through the questions and see
what else, information we can provide. Amanuel?
Amanuel Gebru: Thank you Mary. I just want to just give a
quick update in regards to really supporting our
students and how all of the students are
communicating with you faculty in the classroom
about resources and those kind of things. So if
you can just encourage students to use the help
button which has all the support services for
students from counseling, or registration. Any
questions they may have, the help button is a
resource or a guide to get them to all
all the services
they need and the questions that they may have.
But I really just want to emphasize in terms of
financial resources, Kim Korinke from
financial aid has put together some support
resources for laptops, hotspots, or any hardships
that they may have. So just please encourage
students to go on our website, visit the financial
aid page, and see if they can apply for
some of these resources that we have set aside for
them, and really just to make sure that they're
getting what they need in order for them to excel
in your classes. In terms of counseling, our
counselors are diligently seeing students
so encourage our students to make appointments to use
the counseling services.
Registration begins April 20th for our special
population. So with that being said, we want to
encourage those students who may have dropped
classes or have had some struggles this semester
with online transition. We want to help support
them to be able to take classes for summer and
fall. Nenagh Brown also sent another email on my
behalf, I believe this morning, in regards to
students who have not been communicating with you
or students have now log in to canvas. Please
send that information or list of those students to
Dave Anter. Dave Anter is going to work with
Claudia from First Year Experience to make
sure that the coaches are calling these students and
we're trying to just get an assessment of where
these students are in terms of why they're
dropping classes and those kind of things. And as
Julius mentioned earlier, we're working with our high
schools and our high school counselors and our
Outreach team to really get a sense of where
students are in terms of what they are planning to
do for Summer and Fall. So as Mary mentioned,
most of our classes or all of our classes will be
online for Summer. So we want to make sure we
support those high school students who want to
take classes with us in the summer, and then also
have conversations with their principals and
superintendents about Fall just in case some
students who may not be going to the four years to
CSUs or UCs. We want Moorpark to be an
option for them. We want to enroll them and support
them and get them involved. So that's pretty much it
in terms of updates. Just encourage students to
use our resources and use our website in terms of
any support whether it's tutoring, whether it's
counseling, whether it's figuring out more
information about EOPS or Counseling and
that's all available online. Thank you.
Mary: Looking through some of the questions, let me go
through them, a lot of questions about the EW. How long
can the students request an EW. Dave. I
appreciate Dave Anter responding that the
students have a year in which to request. I've
also had a lot of discussion about this, Julius Can
faculty request any EW for students.
Julius: They can
encourage students to go ahead and apply for an EW
but they can't impose it upon a student. Now if
they become aware of a student's situation it would
be you know in both of the student and their best
interest to counsel the students to go ahead and
do so. I also saw that there was a question as to
if these students take the EW would they
disqualify themselves from qualifying for the
CARES Act, and Jennifer had said yes. So it
really is important for us to counsel students and
to send them to multiple resources before they
choose to take the UW or even before they choose
to withdraw period. That way students are making
decisions that are not only informed but that will
help support them when the consequences of their
decisions become apparent to them later on down
the line that they're able to address it knowing
what that consequence might be.
Mary: Thank you. Amanuel, there's a couple of questions
asking if you could further explain where the help
button is for students?
Amanuel: The help button is on the front
page of the website.
And let me see where I can pull it up.
Yes it's on the front page of the website. I can't
remember exactly where it is.
Julius: They can also go to the Student Services, click on
the Student Services Link and they will see the student
help button there as well.
Amanuel: Right.
I think Matt may have sent that out to all faculty
as well in terms of where that information is, but
I'll pull it up and I'll respond in a few minutes.
Mary: Thank you. Julius, the question keeps coming up
too about "what ifs." What if things get
great over the summer? What will we do? And what
if things still look really good in the Fall? What will
we do?
Julius: So in terms of if the situation changes
come let's say I don't know, May 22nd, let's pick
a hypothetical date.
As you suggested Mary, we get the approval by the
Ventura County Public Health to open the campus
back to students and the public because that is the agency
that will make that decision. We just don't make
that decision based on the governor saying you
know this to stay at home order is over. We still
need Ventura County Public Health, who in the
first place actually sanctioned us to go
ahead and mandated us to go ahead and close campus.
We would need them to give us the authority to
reopen campus. First of all that needs to happen.
If that happens and we know we can put some
courses in and deliver those courses in
July and August. Sure we will. We'll try our very
best to do so. One of the reasons why we've been
tentative about saying everything goes online, is
that we know that about probably
about what 95 percent is online already now and
we're holding off on some things. So if this
situation changes we can pop pop those things with
those courses in. Now, but what that requires is
that the faculty members work with us and that
they are also flexible to be able to then take on
that course if it becomes their opportunity in
late May or in early June or in mid June.
The bulk of the decision has already been made
with the bulk of our offering is online in summer
of 2020.
Mary: Thank you
Amanuel: The "Help Button" is right below where it says Student Services in
the front page, access student help "click here". So
if you look in our front page and from there we'll
take you to all our resources and I've posted the
link on the thread as well.
Mary: There was a question that asked with changes in
demand, do we expect changes in Counseling assignments.
Amanuel: In terms of what? What changes in Counseling
assignments?
Mary: Yeah. To me that I think that's it
and also the changing demands. I'm not sure. I
assume you're going to be assessing that. I think
student demands are going to be probably very high.
Amanuel: Right. We're looking at the number of
appointments that we have the number of chats
that faculty are having and we're working with
the Dean, Kushner and the Department Chair to make
those assessments and provide the right
accommodation that counseling will need. Whether
it's adding more part time or giving full timers
adequate hours to support our students.
Mary: Thank you
Amanuel. Julius there was a question
asking if there's going to be a hiring freeze
to attain full time faculty next academic year.
Julius: at this point there is no intent to and there
has been no conversation about a hiring freeze
from this college district. There are other
districts that have already put that in place or
beginning to put that in place. We have not.
We've discussed that it could be
a potential but that's where we as a
college district if we're not invested in going there
right now. We want to make sure that we're fully
well staffed, assuming there will be a creeping
increase in demand. We also made plans about
hiring based on what the institution needed and
throughout our planning processes and
participatory governance processes and right now
our intention is not to stop that. So we continue with
the hiring, the interviews are continuing through
Zoom and we are hiring people. So there is
no immediate plan to freeze hiring. Having said
that, I was on the CEO webinar last week and quite
a lot of districts across the state, particularly
the ones like ours that are in the hot cold
harmless situation where they have not hit their
main targets as a district. And so
they've been given time to do so. Quite a few of
those districts are looking at their budgets and
their finances and they're making decisions with a
lot of caution. We're not there yet, but if one
were to predict I would say that if the economy
gets worse and if the stimulus money that's been
pumped in does not motivate the economy quicker
that we might get there but right now there is no
plan to freeze. There is no plans to lay anybody
off. We are sort of taking a "wait and see" attitude
and we are trying our very best to grow our enrollment
for the Fall. We're trying our very best to bring
students and retain students over the summer and
we're trying our very best to work with our K-12
partners as well as our university partners so
that there can be opportunities for our student and
community. Talking about withdrawals. as of
Saturday morning, 128
Moorpark College students took advantage of the EW.
128 as of
Saturday morning and I think the opportunity was
revealed on Thursday if I'm not mistaken. So
there are students in your classes who are now
taking the EW option and I suspect the Moorpark
will probably have the highest of the three
colleges just based on our size. So it is really
important. It's imperative that we talk to
students whether you doing that in your canvas
shell or they do it during your Zoom meetings with our
counselors they're are doing that during the
interactions and our Financial Aid folks, they're
doing that but that we are talking our students about
the implications of an EW, but we're also
talking with them to give them hope,
help them plan for the summer, or help them plan
for the Fall. If they
have that information in hand I'm hoping that they
will make wise decisions. In terms of the CARES Act
as as Jennifer mentioned but we're getting about
5.4 million dollars and half of that will go
directly to students. The other half goes towards
operations, it goes through lost revenue that
FEMA will not cover, and range of other things. As a
college district, we're talking about how we want
to make sure we standardize what we do in terms of
support either from the student and or on the
institutional end so there's some standardization
there. So there are few instances
of where students might say well, I took you know
at Moorpark they do this and at Ventura they do this
that or vice versa. But we also realize that
each of the colleges has their own unique
situation and context and that the way in which we
deploy those funds might also be a function of
those situations and context. So lots
happening folks. If there's anything we need to
sort of remind ourselves is that there's so much
unknown and we working with the system as things
unfold.
Mary: But Julius, you did say the students have they
have to be students here at Moorpark in order to
qualify for the CARES Act. So if they drop EW
all of their courses or most of their courses they
could be making a decision that would limit their
accessibility to that money.
Julius: Yes. And that's why
it's important for us to tell students that they
have through May of 2021 if they want
to request the CW. Even if they got an F they have
until May of 2021 to request the EWs.
So I think it's important for us to give students
the full picture. Amanuel: Right and just to add to that question,
Julius if students do a retroactive EW, do they
have to repay previous Financial Aid?
Julius: My understanding is that it doesn't impact the
Financial Aid. If Kim is on the line maybe she can
respond through the chat to folks. That's my
understanding that it does not impact their
funding. Financial Aid doesn't impact their
probation status and doesn't impact their
Financial Aid as well as their ability to transfer.
Amanuel: OK thank you.
Mary: Julius, for the schedule for Fall,
would you describe it as going to be lean and with
good productivity meeting students" needs?
Julius: So as you all know as a college about 25 percent down in our
FTBS. And really the factor that
we can see very clearly is that we have
a decline in the average number of units that our
students are taking in comparison to our sister
colleges. It's pretty it's pretty substantial. So
part of our work is to try and get more students
to take a full load. The other part of our work is
to get more students period. Right? So that
combination means that our goal is to help support
students to continue their education. It means to
populations of students that we
currently are not addressing and bringing them, but
more importantly to make sure that the students we
have currently are passing and that they are
continuing in their process. So it's important for us
to sort of remind ourselves that we are a function
of enrollment, we're a function of our student
success, we're a function of our local economy
and our local demographics. I think if we can take
all of that and take that into consideration then
we build a schedule that is lean enough so that we
are able to offer courses to students as they need
it but that we have been productive. We'll build a
schedule that allows us to figure out areas where
we can maximize enrollment and that we deploy
instruction services and support into those areas.
Mary: Thank you Julius.
There was a question related to essential
employees.
You wanted to identify that, Jennifer?
Jennifer: I can certainly speak to it, but like I said,
I don't have a list in front of me but it's FM&O,
It's IT, and there's there's two or
three people in fiscal that are in the office for
you know a couple or so days a week, two or three
days a week.
Not too many people other than that.
Essential, what we are defining essential employees
is, are the folks that are assigned
regular on-campus duty schedule. They are
on-campus five days a week three days a week to do
whatever it is. They have an assignment, you know
every week the same. If that's not you and it's
not me, I'm not on campus every day, I'm not on the
list. Then like I said it's very few people
outside of FM&O and IT.
Mary: And the process for people
that do need to come in for picking up
files?
Jennifer: Yep. So that went out in an email a
couple of weeks ago. If folks need to drop by
their office or their work area to pick up files,
they need to let their supervisor know. They need to
basically let their supervisor know that they need
to come on campus. An email is preferable and
CC Linda Dobson, because Linda Dobson kind of
has the overarching view of how our facilities are
being used. She informs campus police, she
informs FM&O custodial if areas need to be
cleaned, wiped over, after someone has been in there.
So Supervisor and Linda Dobson.
Mary: Thank you Jennifer. There was a question about EWs
for Summer, or Fall. When we're talking about EWs
we're talking about for Spring 2020.
Any last words Julius
or anyone? I think we've gone through most of the
questions. Julius: Yeah I just want to thank again,
want to thank everyone for remaining you know in
the fray and continuing to support
our students and support one another and encouraging one
another through the challenges. And it really is
important for us to remind ourselves about what it
means to Moorpark. I think this is the time
we say that and we
believe it and now how do we live it out. And
this is one of the times in which we live it up but
being graceful and gracious to our students have
been graceful and gracious to one another by being
flexible and innovative, by being consistent in the
way we apply our processes and equally as
important realizing the values that we we share as
a college and collegiality our commitment to
equity and diversity. You know our commitment to
creativity. All of those values starting for what
we do. We thank you for
being on this journey and on this trip with us
And for being on this team with us. The team
really is all of us. And I know it sounds cliche
and trite and that's not what I'm going for, but I
do think it's important for us to remind ourselves
and one another on an ongoing basis. We will keep
doing this until there's nothing else to do and
then we'll sort of stop. Our hope is that we will
get to see one another and be back in our offices
with one another at some point soon. The governor
of California has made the you know he's implied
that is probably going to be sometime in June but
we don't know. So we just keep doing the work that
we're doing from our respective locations and
thank you very much. Mary: Thank you. The updates from
this will be on the website under the
President's Office. Moorpark College campus
updates you can see there on the screen. So if
you've missed the part of the Zoom meeting you'll
see the transcripts located there. Thank you all.
Have a wonderful day. Thank you.