Mary Rees: Good morning we'll wait a few minutes while more participants come into the chat room.
Well, good morning, and thank you for attending the Moorpark college campus update for sep, for September (laugh) for October 20 2020. The campus update webinar is being recorded.
Julius Sokenu: October.
Mary: I know and I then I changed it. Hopefully, but APRIL, APRIL 20. Thank you.
You can see I totally have no idea where we are with all this going on, so I do apologize. We are April 20 2020 Moorpark college campus update and thank you so much for joining us. The webinar is being recorded.
If you are interested it is also being closed captioned. Down at the bottom of your screen if you click on the CC that should allow you to see the closed captioning, we are having this closed caption today.
The webinar is being recorded so that others will be able to review the information at a later date.
A transcript will be available. Following this meeting, they will be posted on the Moorpark College website under the President's page. An email be sent out when the archived webinar is available.
All audio and video is disabled questions can be listed through the Q and A feature.
Please ask your questions in this area, and we'll do our best to answer them. We have a series of panelists to help answer questions as well as will review them at the end. Our session length will be one hour
And to begin our April 20 2020 campus update is Dr. Julius Sokenu.
Julius: Hi everyone, welcome. And thank you for joining us this morning.
Yes, I fully understand how feels. It's like Groundhog Day, and we're constantly going through the same day over and over again.
It's a very busy day filled with Zoom. Thank you again for joining us. We're trying our very best to make sure that we keep everyone updated and in doing so last week we held a student campus update
And we had 320 unique participants and about probably like 90% of those were actually students from college and which just tells you the eagerness and the interest and enthusiasm for our connecting to the college
But I appreciate the work that ASMC President Kris Hotchkiss did with that as well as Kristen Robinson who will be joining us today to talk about graduation.
The work that they to mobilize students through social media, the work that they do to mobilize students through various student clubs, and the outreach they give to faculty and staff so that students could be aware of this particular opportunity. And we've got some very good feedback from students, some
handy questions in terms of next steps and how this might impact their ability to complete their degrees, and their work in progress. So it's a good opportunity and something we will try again sometime in the very near future.
To give you some sense of some of the questions and concerns that came up. There are some of the same questions that the faculty and the staff and administrators had
has to do with, you know, summer and fall schedules, for example.
So students wanting to know if we're going fully online in the summer and the majority online., probably about 98% online and as we said before. And the courses that re hard to convert,
will and particularly the ones in the health area, will move on ground, once that on ground is offered at a remote location as well as here on campus.
We also talked about the fall semester and what the fall semester might look like. And
It's important to realize that our fall schedule is really a function.
And it's determined by the context in which we exist in which is a lot of unknowns. What we know for sure is that in the fall, a majority of our schedule will fall in hybrid and online.
And the reason we're doing that is to make sure that we prepare for the contingency of a second wave of the Covid-19 Virus.
The reason we're doing that is that we know that if the second wave hits us that we as an institution needs to not only be prepared. But to have built into our system or into our class delivery our content delivery
transition goes with it. So we're looking at about 60% of our schedule in the fall being hybrid and online.
On average our online is about 23% of our offerings. So having it be a hybrid of about 60% of online and hybrid is I think this is a good medium. We're trying not to go all online and build all on ground because that would not be a wise move if we did that.
What does that mean for faculty and staff? Particularly for faculty who build schedules. The Deans, department chairs are working with faculty around that so that we can be as sensitive to the pedagogy and as sensitive to
content matter as possible, but we're also looking at it in terms of what will be best for our students. What will be best for us in case we have to move
from on ground context to an online context. But we are also being very strategic. We know that there are students who work and learn best online. So we need to have enough opportunities for those students.
We also need to have enough opportunities for students who have a busy schedule or struggling with the
realities of either new employment or lost employment. And so having a schedule that's hybrid will also help to support those students so that they can be successful.
We are working with faculty and department chairs and the deans are working with the faculty, so as to make sure that we look at schedules that
have integrity and allow us to deliver the instruction in a coherent manner, but one that is very good at good very good attention to the context in which we find ourselves.
In addition with it. We know that about a week and a half ago. Students were introduced to the option of the E. W.
Which is the excuse we draw. So that students had that opportunity if they are in class that were registered prior to march ninth actually
when the governor's stay at home order was promulgated, that those students could actually request for an EW
instead of a withdrawal and with that EW they could request for all the way out of through May of 2021.
And what we've been trying to do in our messaging is to require that students think before they take the EW option.
That they look at the pass, no pass option which is also available to them and which will not impact their GPA's, which will not impact their financial aid, for the most part.
And we've been encouraging that, our students services areas have been doing that, faculty and staff have been doing that, just send that message out.
But what we've noticed is that students are still choosing the EW, because that's true for so many of them seems to be the option or the default that they're
pursuing. So as of today, there were 1200 EWs in the district. And that's duplicated. So if a student drops, a student who attends both Ventura and Moorpark drops a class it's counted twice, because it's by the course that they're dropping.
So there's 1200. Of those 1200 as of this morning 585 of those are Moorpark college students.
And again, it's duplicative because the student may be going to Oxnard, and Moorpark, and Ventura, but it counts each drop.
Our goal and we really do need the help of our faculty and our staff in doing this and our administrators in doing this
is to reach those students and let them know that dropping is an option, but we would recommend that they consider taking a pass, no pass and they have through the end of the semester to take the pass, no pass option.
So I think we talk with them in a very supportive and empathetic way, but counsel them to go ahead and
remain in school, remain in the class if they can, if they are getting a C that's a pass, stay in the class don't drop.
And I know that the students were concerned that their grade point average would be impacted, and so they're dropping. But they also then lose the opportunity to benefit from the CARE act funding if they drop now before
the semester is over. So that's another piece of information just consider that, and I'm sure that
the folks in financial aid and in counseling and in other specialized programs is sharing this with students when the students approach them. Now I'm not so sure how much of them are approaching you know the resources that we have on campus to get that guidance on that council prior to dropping.
In terms of where we are with the college, the work of the college continues as you all know, we haven't stopped. So I wanted to get an update of where we are in terms of hiring and this is just a little blanket update for Moorpark College. So
in terms of the faculty hiring. We are, let's see, we've hired a math faculty person a full time faculty person.
We hired two nursing faculty members and an English faculty member.
We also hired a temporary faculty member temporary full time faculty member for the fall of 2020 in mathematics. In terms of our hiring for the Deans that the Dean hiring that is very last stage and we will be sharing that information with you shortly and we will be doing that with you.
In terms of the fact that recruitment for the director of market advancement marketing and communication that was declared a failed search.
The goal is to go back and review that position and revise it so that we can then, I guess
reestablish the position in a different configuration and that will most likely not happen until sometime in the fall. In the short term, we're looking at ways in which we can
meet the needs of that particular office. Currently, we have no one in marketing, no one in the advancement office and we'll be doing that, especially now that we will be struggling with enrollment and we are currently doing so.
I think part of my
For us today is to remind us that we keep doing the work at the college and that that work at the college means that we need to now look into the future. Now look into the fall will be up before and
There are a couple of factors I think we need to be aware of. And as we talked about this factor, a lot of that has to do with our enrollment.
You know, prior to Covid-19 we were already 2% down. As of today I see that we are 1.55% down in head count, about 200 students less than we had last spring. And if you remember last
about as many students less than the previous Spring. So this is the time to focus on making sure that we grow our enrollment, making sure that we
pursue strategies that enable students to persist so that we can retain them.
And part of that work means that we put resources into marketing. Part of that work means that we put more resources into supporting students in financial departments, out reach to students, out reach to new year populations.
We will be working at the cabinet level looking at district wide marketing and district by planning and a particular area of interest to those of us on cabinet is the
college promise. You will note that often folks don't know we have one even though we have one, which means, you know, students get go to college, and they take 12 units, have a certain
GPA, and that entitles them to recovering of their tuition fees. And a lot of our students still aren't taking advantage of that.
That's the AB 19 money that we refer to sometimes. So part of our work without with our with our marketing, but part of our work with, you know, amongst ourselves and with our students coming communities with our own communities is to
share the great work that Moorpark does in changing lives. Share the story of success that Moorpark College students are and continue to be. And so we can use that as a way of growing and keeping our enrollment buoyant.
I'm going to transition over now to Kristen Robinson, and who will talk to us about commencement. As you know, we canceled commencement as a result of the stay at home order and the social distancing.
Kristons been working with her colleagues and the district offices will share with you the outcome of that work.
Kristen Robinson: Thank you, Julius. So, first of all, I'd like to say that my counterparts at Oxnard and Ventura and I are incredibly disappointed that we cannot celebrate our students in the way that they so deserve.
It is heartbreaking. But the district has come together to try to identify ways we can still honor their accomplishments, while also combined with state mandated safety policies.
So, um, and I don't know if I, thank you, perfect. So, due to Covid-19 all on Grand ceremony that were planned for
2020 have been cancelled. However, the district wanted to acknowledge our graduates in some capacity. So they've created these commencement web pages. And while it's not a virtual graduation
it will allow us to highlight our students successes. So, last week graduates received an email with an invitation to submit information about their degree or certificate,
their next academic or professional steps, and they have the option of uploading a photo of themselves.
And so students who opt to do this by the may third deadline will see their information incorporated into a Moorpark college branded slide that students can view on the commencement webpage slideshow.
The commencement web page will also feature videos from those community members who traditionally would have been invited to speak at the on-ground ceremony,
such as president Sokenu, or the Associated Student president, among others.
All the photos will include alt text, and all the videos will include closed captioning. And we're also going to be using this as an opportunity to highlight
some specific graduates, and we worked with different departments or offices to ask them for recommendations on students that are graduating in their area that they thought should be highlighted on this page.
The tentative launch date for the commencement page is Friday, May 15 which would have been when our on-ground ceremony was scheduled to take place.
District marketing is also working on developing a custom filter for Snapchat or Instagram that our graduates can use to share their pride across social media.
And information about the commencement webpage launch day and the social media filters will be emailed to graduates once those details are finalized.
And we'll also share that information with our broader campus community.
In terms of a commemorative gift giveaway. So we wanted to provide students
or graduates with a Momento to celebrate their accomplishments. And so working with district graphic designers, we've ordered custom lawn signs for graduates to display
letting their neighbors or passer-bys know that a proud Moorpark college graduate lives there. And our bookstore managers have ordered commemorative 2020 tassels in Moorpark blue and black.
So we'll be giving out the commemorative lawn signs and tassels to graduates for free on Saturday, May 9. I'm working with my counterparts at Oxnard and Ventura to settle on a time,
for the time frame and also just to kind of hammer out the process details. But as of right now, we're tentatively having a drive thru pickup option from 11am to 1pm on our respective campuses.
And information about the gift giveaway day will be emailed to graduates within the next week and we'll be sure to keep our campus informed on that as well.
As President Sokenu mentioned, we've received a lot of questions about a possible postponed in person ceremony.
And while the chancellor and the Board of Trustees said they are amenable to the idea of hosting a postponed or on ground ceremony, we can't make any promises at this time due to a projected resurgence of Covid-19 in the fall and winter.
So instead, we're focusing on inviting students to participate in our commencement web page and to pick up the free lawn sign and the tassel as a way to make sure that their accomplishments are acknowledged and celebrated in the moment.
Some students have been asking if they can walk in next year's ceremony. And so I would suggest that you direct them to me.
It's more likely that they will be able to, but we're still kind of trying to figure that out.
We've also had a number of students asked about ordering regalia or other graduation items and originally we were told that we wouldn't be able to do this, but because
all three campuses had had the same request, on Friday we received confirmation from Amy Kennedy, who's the general manager for the VCCD bookstores,
that all three bookstores are setting up a website through our regalia vendor, Herf Jones, to sell regalia directly to students with free shipping. It's very exciting.
Students will also be able to order diploma Frames, diploma covers, pride sashes, and other items through this website.
Amy said she'll be sending the details soon, and those details will be included in the email that will go out to all graduates with the other information I've already mentioned.
And lastly, students have been asking about how they're going to receive their diplomas and so
it takes approximately eight weeks for degrees or certificates to be processed by admissions records.
Traditionally MC registrar Dave Antar and his team reached out to graduates notifying them that they can pick up their degrees in person by visiting the Admissions and Records Office during normal business hours. They've also
usually extended the request for students to ask to have their degrees mailed to them if they reside outside of a reasonable driving distance.
And this mail option has traditionally been intended for graduates who have moved outside of the area.
Or have a pretty valid reason for not being able to pick it up in person. But with the statewide stay at home order for Covid-19, admissions records
will mail degree or certificate for any student who submits a mail request form.
And our staff are processing requests of this kind on Tuesdays and Thursdays
until the stay at home word is lifted. And this is probably most relevant for the students who graduated in fall 2019,
and who never came to pick up their diplomas and want to know how to go about it now. Students who are graduating this spring should probably await Dave's email as instructions might vary depending on where we're at with Covid-19 at that point.
So with that, with that, I would like to see it, looks like Dr. Jennifer Clark is on the line. So I'd like to go ahead and turn it over to her. So thank you.
Jennifer Clark: Hi. Sorry, everybody. I had some trouble connecting.
I could get audio, but I couldn't get video. Anyway, here I am. Just a quick few updates from the area of business services.
The financial aid officer Kim Karinky wants to just remind everybody to let students know that
if they've applied for any emergency grants, please just follow up to any requests that financial aid has asked of the students
Please follow up with Documentation Requests as soon as possible in order to, you know, facilitate faster processing, super important. From the area facilities wanted you all to know that we are officially, we're going to be launching the
the parking lot access for students on the upper floor of the parking lot.
Because that's where the best access currently is for students. We are marking and signing parking spaces so that to be two apart. So there's like a no parking symbol every other parking space. And again, there'll be signs and whatnot beginning tomorrow morning. And just
an update also on equipment.
We've previously mentioned that there were some 360 degree machines that were available for like electrostatic cleaning that can clean like 18,000 square feet,
inside of a building 18,000 square feet in an hour, those machines still have not arrived. We ordered them like a month and a half ago.
We're still waiting. You know, there are things that are very, very back ordered and we have ordered some other electrostatic disinfection guns to help sanitize spaces, but again we're, we're hoping those arrive soon but, you know, we'll see.
We, let's see. Just a request for you all.
Please, if you can give us at least a 24 hour notice that people are going to be on campus,
so that we can,the custodians can kind of plan which buildings to open rather than sort of running back and forth as people sort of show up last minute.
That would be much much appreciated. Just a 24 hour notice at least would be wonderful.
And then from Dan from the area of technology, just an update to you all, you know, they've been working feverishly. 213 requests for laptops so far for everybody.
There's still about 60 odd that are that are, have yet to be given out. They're making appointments. People are coming in all the time.
But, you know, things are still hopping in technology. So those are my updates from business services. So am I passing it back to you. Mary, or,
Mary: Great. Thank you, Jennifer.
Jennifer: Thank you.
Mary: I think it's really wonderful. We've heard back from our students that about 10% of our students didn't have computers and didn't have internet access and the
IT area has really gone a long way to try to work with everyone on campus to try to lend out computers to our students and to our student workers, faculty, and staff that need it in order to
do their class work or to work remotely, so that's absolutely wonderful. For the 10% that didn't have internet access this top of the parking structure.
Hopefully we'll be able to in a safe manner provide the Internet access that many of our students need in order to do their classwork and that this is particularly important as we know that our summer as Julius mentioned our summer is online.
And so our students do need to make sure that they continue to have the computers and the Internet access in order to keep moving forward. We're seeing a fair number of questions still doing dealing with the. EW.
If a student wishes to buy a course they can withdraw get an excuse withdraw from those particular courses, if they are willing to do a pass, no pass,
the counselors can help advise them. The UCs and the Cal States
have said that they will accept these passes, but it's always good to verify with a counselor on their particular needs so that they can make wise decisions moving forward on their education.
On the trainings. I want a huge shout out to all of the people in the education instructional design and in the DE area. There currently are 63
Faculty going through the DE certification. We have 64 that have signed up for the one that starts on May 18, and then we will have additional DE certification later on this summer. These are scheduled with our other two sister colleges and they're done all through the district wide.
These are four week courses, about 20 hours worth of time, and they do count, the 10 hours from that can count towards being compensated for your DE training.
So that means as you probably have seen that there was an MOU that was signed with the district.
That allows that faculty can get compensated for 15 hours of DE training. We originally had five hours for the zoom and the canvas training and now there's an additional 10 hours for those that are undergoing the DE certification.
Please reach out to your deans and there's a simple Excel spreadsheet that we fill out once you notify them that so that you can receive your
compensation for that. If you were already DE certified in the past, way to go, congratulations. You don't need to be recertified.
If it, if you've been teaching DE and you're comfortable with it. If it's been a while since your DE certification,
and you are aware that things have changed in the areas of accessibility in the areas of now requiring interactions between student to student as well as student to faculty, and you would like to rework through some of that we have our DE recertification.
That class started today. And there are 46 people in that, that DE recertification. There will be a second DE recertification on May 3 starting May 3 so if you're already DE certified. You do not need to do the recertification.
If you were certified Oh, a while ago, and feel like you can use the help, the support, as you know, these trainings are really both about the technology part and about the pedagogy part, and they really help
prepare, they help the faculty to optimize their teaching online using both sets the technology and the pedagogy. So if you are certified great,
and you don't need to be recertified. If it's been a long time, then yes, we can do the recertification. There's one that started today and and then there's one that starts again in May.
For those that are already just are,
looking for just specific trainings. If you look on the DE page under faculty support you'd notice that there's a whole list of past trainings that are videod there that you can look at. There's a trainings for proctorial which might be of interest to you as we move into final time.
There's also a daily office hours for our instructional designers. Michael Ashton, our new instructional designer who has just jumped in and with the help of Matt and Tracy is just such an active
engaged person on campus. His office hours are from 4 to 5 Monday through Thursday. Tracy is from 12 to 1 Tuesday through Friday, so they're there to help you with your specific individual questions.
So hopefully your resources are being provided to help you. We have been trying to provide resources to our students,
and trying to provide resources and trainings to help our faculty and our staff. I know they are also providing professional development for staff.
There was one, I believe, last week, and there's another one this week, and we're hoping to have some training each week for the classified staff also in the DE area.
One important note is, today is National Library Awareness Week, and I'm going to send out some information today about that but
It's a nice time to celebrate. You don't have to be, have access to the campus in order to have access to our library.
There's some wonderful resources that are available online, so please make sure you take advantage of the library and that our students are taking advantage of the library. It's a great resource and that.
I think we've covered most of it, let me pass the questions off to Amanuel. Thank you.
Amanuel Gebru: Thank you Mary:
Good afternoon, everyone. Just a couple of updates from my area. Just want to remind
Faculty and staff and everyone that registration began today for our special population, so please encourage students to meet with counselors for support about their registration needs and to look on our website and use the help button on the front page.
Also a few additional hirings that Julie has talked about. English did finalize their hiring position. Rosie Gabrileanne is our new English faculty and she'll be starting in the fall.
Business, counseling, and EOPS are in process, and we hope that we have those finalized the next couple of weeks as well.
Student workers, we've placed pretty much all of our student workers on jobs working remote with different offices, such as outreach and other areas.
But I really want to thank Claudia willroy, Johnny Connie, and Bineya for working diligently to support the transition of getting these students jobs on campus somewhere, working remote.
Student elections.
Associated Students received 31 applications for its board of directors positions and 24 of those 31 applications are cleared.
Have cleared all the hurdles to become viable candidates for the 2020, 2021 year. Voting will take place beginning
On Tuesday, April 21 at 8am through Wednesday, April 22 at 8pm, so please continue to remind students in regards to that. Students can vote by logging onto their myvccccd portal.
A ballot will be automatically popping up asking them to vote for their campus candidates. Winners will be announced by Thursday, April 23 at 8pm via the ASMC Instagram stories feature, with a campus wide email going out the following week
huge thank you to all the faculty and staff who encourage students to run and who allowed them to campaign in your classes as well.
So one final update Ruben Castro's charities food and pantry at Moorpark college. Ruben Castro's
is still hosting its food pantry at Moorpark college Tuesdays from 1 to 3 and 5 to 7, so let students know.
There's been some minor changes, instead of people lining up and walking through the pantry as they traditionally did,
students and community members can participate in a drive through grab and go pantry during a designated window of time.
So as to stay within the Covid-19 social distancing measures. Information about the pantry and other services are offered by Ruben Castro's charities online at rubencastrocharity.org
And I just want to continue to thank everyone for supporting our students and also just working with one another to ensure that we support everyone during this transition.
Thank you.
And I think I pass it on to Nenagh Brown from here.
Nenagh Brown: Amanuel. Thank you very much, and
I'd like to just start by saying how inspiring and what a privilege it is for all of us to be part of this group,
who are if you want to know, I can see the other side today. There's about 190 people that are on this zoom meeting.
All of us wanting to know more about what's going on, how we can be effective in our jobs, and what we need to know to keep up to date with this. It is so inspiring. I am still in awe of what I am calling phase one of this adventure we are upon.
On the Friday, we believed we were going to be in our classes the next week and in our job places and Monday we were all online and we had to do that.
So that is unbelievable. Within days our students were having their classes online. By the end of the week, we could refer our students to all our student support services.
And almost all of them were up and running by then. I mean it's just incredible. This is Moorpark. It's such a privilege to be part of this community. But I'd like to mention where I think we are, which is phase two.
And I think this is a much harder and more time consuming phase. We have managed the technology to put what we do online, but that's really just the start of it, and I think some of us are beginning to really feel this now. The question is, how can we be most effective online.
As a, as an instructor our job is to teach students, all of us on this campus. Our job is to teach students, and are we doing it as effectively as we used to?
The real thing is excellence, Moorpark is about excellence. I'll tell you my students are having their class for me online
but the next step is how to adjust to that modality. How do we do the jobs, that we love doing, as effectively online.
So I would just like to acknowledge that that's where we are, that this takes incredible time Mary
has told us all these incredible things that were going through that people offering us to be able to do that better. But this does take weeks. It takes months, and again as an instructor,
It really takes three times to teach a course to really feel like you're mastering it and that's what we do at Moorpark. We master our jobs.
And again, I've heard from counselors, you know, they can talk to students, three or four different ways, but are we doing our students support across our campus?
Are we feeling as good about that job as we were before as we learn how to be effective? So we're all in this together. We're all aiming for excellence,
as we always do. And the other thing is the sustainability piece. Phase two requires us to meet the sustainable. So I just like to acknowledge that.
I'm here today to talk about participatory governance. Again, I cannot believe we are very ahlive and all participants occurrence is very, very well at the moment.
There is so much going on, our committees are meeting. Thank you to everybody across our community that is making that happen.
I wanted to bring up two really key documents that are in the next couple of weeks, and we're working on. And the first one is our ACC JC Mattel report. So that's our accreditation report were in the middle of our accreditation cycle.
We've had incredible help from EDCap, putting that together with a gap analysis, more readings, if I may call out Oleg
for for doing a lot of that work and putting a document together. Mary is our accreditation liaison. In some ways it's almost an anticlimax. This document is so good and so thorough and so ready to go. That
you know, it's ready to roll. We're going to have a second vote at Senate Council on Tuesday, but I want to acknowledge that because we were so ready and ahead of the game,
thank goodness! We're already ready to go with that. So thank everybody who was involved with that. The next document, I'm going to try and show this to you.
Look at that. The Moorpark College Decision-Making handbook. Please note those years 2017 to 2020.
So this one, is really right in the middle now of the process of updating it. This is the key document
for our participatory governance. All our committees are in here, all our processes are in here. I'd love to show you just endless notes. We've had this for three years,
and all of us, I think, have come up with ideas. We need to update, we need to improve, we need to change. So this will be going out a first update draft to the whole campus to all users.
It's an update we do every three years. One of the questions we're asking is, should we do this every five years?
We're putting in a clause in it that says we can update it during the cycle as well. There's a lot of changes, and I know Gilbert would like to speak to that.
Just to remind you this document signed off on by the Academic Senate, the Classified Senate, Associated Students and our College President.
Those are the four groups that together, put together our participatory governance processes. Right at this time, I just
couldn't be more proud of what we are doing and some of the suggestions here for how we're going to improve this. So
please, when you get that all users if you're on one of the many committees that have discussed that charge and how to update it and the membership. Thank you for your help, keep on coming with those ideas and comments and just I am in awe of what we're achieving, so
you're texting me you're emailing me or some of them in the chat here please keep the communication going
Amazing, amazing, folks. Thank you.
And I think Gilbert.
Gilbert. Are you there Gilbert? Yay!
Gilbert Downs: Yes, I am here.
All right, well thank you so much! To touch base,
about the making decisions document. So number one, I have to thank Nenagh for keeping me on task with the Making Decisions Document, because this
document is can be really unwieldy and there was so much work that went into this document and the work that we all did really
spoke to the inclusive nature that Moorpark College really has. I saw a lot of growth there. We looked at our memberships from the Classified Perspective and look to see
where we needed to grow, and where things were okay. We made a lot of suggestions and going back and forth with the groups.
We really got a better understanding on what the needs were on our campus. So we were very excited to speak about this document at the next Senate meeting, which is this Thursday at two o'clock.
This will be the first time that we're really getting to look at its entirety and I really want to hear some feedback to hear what you all consider
is appropriate and making sure that things are the way that I understood it. I know we've talked about the membership for months, but I want to make sure that this is really right that this is where we need to be.
In addition to that, at our meeting on Thursday. And by the way, for those of you that do not know we have upped our meetings to bi-weekly
from monthly. This was due to needing to open up the lines of communication, a bit more. Now that we are remote and as we see with our meetings, we're seeing an increase in
individuals coming, we're seeing the numbers actually double so it's been really nice. We've had some great guests come
Mary Reese came by a few weeks ago and Chancellor Gillespie came to our last meeting and so it's been really a great time to talk and really
explain what's going on in our areas because we really need to share what is going on in our areas right now more than ever.
So it's been a really great experience having these meetings remotely and even once we end up on campus.
I would like to see an occasional meeting done remotely because they seem to work really well. If you have any feedback about that I would love to hear it, because any way we could get more people to the meetings, the better.
In terms of some additional updates, for those of you that may or may not know, scholarship reading is underway.
There's about a dozen classified employees that are reading scholarships right now and our deadline to finish them is next week. So we are working hard to get all these scholarships done. I have read about two dozen so far and they're really
uplifting at times, and sometimes a little hard because we really get to hear what our students are going through right now. If you ever get a chance to be a reader. I would encourage you to do so. It is a really great experience to have.
In terms of what's going on over the next month in some of the committees from the Classified side. So as many of you know my time as Classified Senate President will be ending June 30.
And for those committees where we have a Classified tri-chair, those positions will be changing. So last week Professional Development got to meet Gabby as the new
Professional Development Classified tri-chair, and next week of Fiscal Planning will get to meet Linda Resendiz as the Classified tri-chair for that committee.
So we are looking forward to making these transitions. As you'll see in the coming months, there'll be more and more Classified employees, taking a leadership role
as I step back during this time. So I'm really excited to see more and more people get involved and see how it changes the perspective of
the Classified Staff. And lastly, I just really wanted to thank Tracie Bosket and Michael Ashton for all their incredible support that they've given the Classified staff over the last five, six weeks.
They have done everything they can to add additional trainings, week after week to help us. And I just can't thank them enough. This Thursday we'll have another training at one o'clock.
It will be focusing on Microsoft Outlook and we are very excited to learn all the new things that there is to offer. So on that end I will turn it over to Mary
Mary: Thank you. Gilbert.
Wonderful hearing about all the exciting things happening all around campus.
Julius, there is a lot of questions still talking about are DE certifications required to teach the Summer or are DE certifications required in the Fall?
Do you want to review that or would you,?
Julius: Sure, in terms of DE certification for the Summer, the preference, we're encouraging folks to go ahead and get DE certified so as to maintain the integrity of the instruction that is delivered.
The preference is to have faculty who are DE certified teaching classes during the summer. If there's a situation where there is a DE certified faculty member
who cannot teach a class, and we have folks who are not DE certified of course they'll be able to teach the class, but our preference is to have individuals who are DE certified over those who are not.
Because the cut the summer classes are so compressed that to have and struggling through delivering a course during the Summer,
that is just newly introduced to online teaching is a challenge. Again, as I said before, the preferences is that but of course situations and context matter. So I think it's important for us to recognize that.
Mary: Thank you.
Also, the questions still go as far as the re-certification
The re-certification would be the same as Julius was talking about in that it is preferred. I believe that the Chancellor did count this semester as teaching DE.
The contract before had stated, if you hadn't taught within three semesters, you should be recertified.
If we look at what is the best for making your life easier teaching as well as helping you in the classroom, then I think that's the approach we're taking as far as the recertification any comment on that Julius?
Julius: No, and
I agree. I think it's very important for us to acknowledge the work the faculty who have
been teaching online. Are you doing it during this semester? If you've been certified before, and it's been since three semesters, but you're teaching, you've been doing this since March 23rd.
I will give you credit for that and acknowledge that. Other institutions across the state o have the option of a faculty member who has not been
recertified for three semesters. I have a long time for this and you know
Showing or sharing what they've done in the past and then just looking at what they need to add to it and having the abbreviated format on abbreviated version of the recertification process know I'm open to that we're open to that.
But again, the intention is, if you already teaching online this semester. Since March and you talked in the past before is the Model three semesters. We take this to my server account as physicians
Mary: Thank you. And if you needed to sign up for either decertification or recertification there's a sign up online at the faculty support on the web faculty support web page there on there. There's a sign up for the
The certifications and for the recertification and when new sections are open. They will also be there so you'll be able to sign up directly there. I've also seen that people have signed up and then
Are wondering what the next step is, I think they are hoping that Earth, assuming that they were going to be contacted if you've been signed up. You're just ready to go. And you can go on to your shell and start working asynchronously on it.
You don't need to get a special, you know, email to say that you're been accepted into that particular training. If you have questions, you can reach out to Matt Calvin myself.
Tracy bosket or Michael Ashton and we can try to help you on your trainings.
Let's see, there are been quite a few questions related to the food pantry. I think Ruth has answered some but
Any comments from any of the panelists on the food pantry.
Amanuel: Yes, the hours marry the hours will be changing from one to four starting on the 28th. Let me find that response to
What update information that hours will be charged changes during the 28th of April and will provide that information. I think Ruth paste posted on the chat. So please look for those changes in those hours that you could provide our students.
Kristen: Up, just to jump in on this Kristin Ruth said that it will be from one to four, although they might be staying later, to clean up.
I'm going to, if it's ok we can work with Ruth to try to come up with an email.
That we can send out to our students or we can work to share on our social media accounts to make sure that our communities updated.
On not only the hours, but how students can access the resources provided and then there was also a question about how people can contribute to the food pantry. So I think that would be another important detail to include
So thank you, Ruth and we'll be chatting offline to figure out how we can
Get that information, put it together and make sure we distributed to our community and perhaps it can be included at next week's update as well.
Amanuel: Thank you. Kristen. Thank you.
Mary: Julius, there's a couple of questions, talking about
In the fall, will we have social distancing. Will there be a limit to the size of the classrooms.
It me
It's two balls that you can help us with
Julius: At this point, our assumption is that hopefully you know by August 18 is when the semester stuff i'm not i'm not wrong, but that day will be
A stay at home order would have been lifted, that we will be on campus to some to some way
The common consensus at this point. And this is really based on what's happening in other countries, is that once the stay at home orders are lifted, they'll be lifted in phases. So that umm,
and I think you see that with some of the other states that have gone in that direction. Texas, for example, you know, has lifted some part of their order, and then others they've sort of kept in place. So we expect that that will probably happen with California as well. We also expect that
once that comes into being that we as a district will request from the Ventura County Public Health
The authority to resume instruction on ground fully, and to have the campus open for students and the public
And I really support it. And once that goes through then there may be some, some conditions, you know, which that will be granted and we'll have to work with those conditions.
At this point, I don't know. We don't know. We don't have any any clarity, other than the fact that, you know, when the stay at home order is lifted, that we will need to get approval from Ventura County Public Health to receive on campus offerings.
Mary: Thank you. One last question. There was a one related to the $5 million
That was going to come to the campus and also to our students
Julius: Yes.
So if the concern, When the, What we know. I mean, Jennifer can I obviously answer this better than I, but
for that $5 million half of it goes to directly to students that's the intention, to help support them with food and rent and books and materials and equipment and
Other other materials and resources that they may need so that they can remain enrolled and complete their coursework. The other half is coming to the college, and the college
has been given a set of guidelines as to how we can utilize those resources. The most clear guideline is that it needs to be related to
the impact of Covid-19. So once, when the College begins to utilize,or when the College gets the money,
and then when the college begins to utilize the money, it needs to utilize it in ways to address revenue loss that came up as a result of Covid-19. Address the institutional resources or support systems that are needed to be in place as a result of the impact of Covid-19 etc.
We will be having this conversation as to, you know, what we do with the college resources part of it,
at the campus with our executive team and there will be also posters sharing that consultation.
Council members and coming up with a plan for our college that's clear and that's based on the guidelines set up by
the federal government. At this point, we know it's 5. something million and Jennifer, correct me if I'm wrong.
5.7, thank you Nenagh. And then about, half of that goes directly to students.
That's as much as we know right now. It's a work in progress, but we are looking forward to how we are able to utilize that money. Let me, Jennifer, Is there anything you'd like to add
Jennifer: The only other thing that I would add to that is that we have submitted our application. Kim Karinky, our financial aid officer, has completed our application. I don't know, we apply as, I'm not sure if we apply as a college district. Julius: As a college.
Yeah, or whether we have to do it all together. But I know our application has been completed and she did say that
she's heard from other colleges that have applied that the feds have actually responded within a few days. So that's really good news that the, you know, there isn't like this
major delay that we get after the application has been accepted. So hopefully those funds that the half for student needs will be flowing shortly.
Julius: Right, we're
Mary: And Jennifer, how did the students apply?
Jennifer: Students apply the same way they would apply for any other emergency fund grant.
We talked about it last time if folks can direct students to the student services web page under financial aid,
they'll see a huge button on top. They cannot miss it. Applying for emergency funds. It is a one page document that students need to fill out.
Please, please, please tell students to include any supporting documentation with that one page application because it does slow processing down if they've,
if they've given no backup. No sort of proof or you know emails or utility bills or whatever it might be, to support whatever funds they are requesting.
And then they also need to have a FAFSA on file or a California Dream app application on file, but the process is the same for any emergency fund application.
Julius: Right. I think what's going to be important for us is how we get the message out to students.
So that they can actually apply. And this is where we need faculty. This is where we need our staff. This when we need other students to get the word out so that instead of students dropping out because they can't afford,
or they drop out because they're so overwhelmed by life, that they know that there's financial resources available through this institution, and that we're here to support them.
If you folks have any ideas in ways in which we can connect with students and and,
you know, target or market to them this resource. Please, please, please share that with us because I think we can all learn from one another and wisdom which we can get the word out. That's going to be very important.
I would hate for this to be like some of our other resources where you know we have the money's leftover and we can't use them for something else. This is dedicated for funds right it's restricted funding. So I think it's important for us to
develop a process and a strategy for
engaging students to these
Mary: Thank you, Julius. Any last minute comments for the campus?
Julius: I have an idea here. When Gilbert was talking he mentioned the importance of wanting to continue zoom meetings.
You know, once, even once we get back to campus. And I know one of the conversations we've had on this,
on this college campus is about a college hour. The places where the other college hour and, so the college shuts down
and it's and it's more than one hour usually, where communities meet during that time period and classes are not scheduled during that time period and we've gone back and forth with this over the past 14 years that I've been here.
But this weekend I was thinking about, you know, what if it's a virtual college hour.
And like the in-person, on ground college hour that we don't schedule classes, and we block it out for that time frame. and it may be more than one day, maybe certain days
over the course of the semester. And that allows us to get this degree of engagement that we're getting right now from our college community
in the work of the college, the governance of the college, the operations of the college. So this is just a food for thought. I just sort of throw it out there.
Gilbert kind of similar to what I was thinking over the weekend. So there needs to be no answers by people. If folks have some suggestions please share with folks from your various constituency groups and let us know, email me or text me, let me know.
Mary: Thank you. Everyone have a great day great week, and we will talk with you next week. Thank you.
Nenagh: Thank you.