Mary Rees: Good afternoon. We'll give people a couple of minutes to join us. Hope everyone is doing well.
So we'll just wait another one or two minutes while people come join us.
Hope you all are enjoying your summer.
Between summer school and summer vacation and summer planning.
Just heard that it has been a whirlwind of joy and I love it.
And we missed all of you as well.
Well, good morning. I always say that. Excuse me. Good afternoon, and thank you for joining the Moorpark college update for July 27th. The program is being recorded. It is also closed captioned. If you'd like to see the closed captioning,
Please click at the bottom on the CC so that you can see the closed captioning.
Let's see, we talked about the captioning and that...Transcripts will be available as well as the past transcripts on the President's web page. Hopefully you've noticed our new web page. Our new...
All of our new postings, and that, and are enjoying that as well.
So good afternoon. Interim President Sokenu.
Julius Sokenu: Hi everyone, welcome, and thank you for joining us this afternoon.
As always, it is one of the highlights of the week for us, for me anyway for us to gather at this point in time. I know everybody's kind of antsy cuz
I know like me. I just, I was looking at the calendar and I thought, wow, you know, the fall semester starts in three weeks. And that just kind of, you know, it creates anxiety on some level, but it's also excitement on another level.
Of course, you know, we're sort of education, well, I speak for myself. You're education nerds and the whole going back to school thing kind of recharges us.
I just want to sort of start off by giving you some very short updates on what's happening regarding our, our fall 2020 operations.
And really, by the end of this week, you should have delivered to everyone's mailbox,
email box, the operational plans for fall 2020. I know that folks are really anxious to identify what we'll be doing in terms of, you know, for those folks who are teaching on campus, coming on campus.
For those who are working remotely, you know, what does that mean
for the fall semester, etc. I think it's really important for us to know that a group of folks have been working really diligently on not only
thinking through our fall offerings, or thinking through our fall offerings through the lens of safety. Through the lens of, you know, equity, and thinking through our fall operations with the understanding that, you know, things might change on a dime in any given moment.
So you will be hearing later on from us this week for that document that will be clearly delineating all the various actions that we've just been recently talking about. You know, doing individual workshops next week, so that folks can
get a more in depth opportunities to ask questions around those particular activities. What you do need to know is that each of the colleges in the district has crafted a fall 2020 operations document.
We're still, you know, editing and fine tuning those at the moment, but each one of us has. The college district has one as well and
and so there is clear thought that has been put into this. In doing this work for the district, the Vice Chancellor for education services has met with various stakeholder groups.
The Presidents, the Vice Presidents, the various Senates, the Unions, student leadership, etc. So that way, everyone is sort of aware of what is coming,
the leadership of those groups are aware of what is coming. And so the document that you will see, both from the district and both from our college, is really the byproduct of inclusive discussion.
We are very thankful and grateful to John Avalon, who is the coordinator for Allied Health's Program, and to Vice President Jennifer Clark, for the work that they've been doing in putting together our Moorpark College specific documents. And
shout out to the coronavirus workgroup folks who have also served as
really a sounding board as we do this work. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your
thoughtful, engaging, and really intentional feedback on that work. So what you folks will see
coming out of this is a product of really lots of collaboration and thoughts..
Is it going to address every single situation? No, it can't because everything is so dynamic. And talking about being dynamic,
we expect that the Governor of the State of California will be sharing directives to quote unquote reopening higher education
in the next...hopefully it's sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours, but we're hoping that this week that that information will go out. We're also hoping that that information will not contradict what we've been planning. But as always, you know, we are
agile, and we will go ahead and pivot as it is necessary. I know you all have questions around this. I ask that you please,
you know, save those questions for when we get to the question answer session. And know that, really, the questions will be better answered when we send you the document, you read through the document, and then we have information sessions to discuss them.
Convocation before we know it, you know, August 14th will be here. Convocation is that deal where,
if you remember, we all gather back on the lawn in front of the PAC and there's croissants, and this orange juice, and this fruit, and, you know, people are wearing shorts or some people are wearing shorts.
And it's an opportunity for us to gather back together as a community. And of course in, you know, in the moments of a pandemic and particularly in increased surge in
infection rates in California, we can't do that. So we for, you know, we will be doing this virtually,
like everything else we seem to be doing right now, and we're looking at ways to kind of carry that energy of convocation that we've had on ground, which is really, really, kind of like, you know, coming back home kind of feeling that we have to bring that into an online environment.
Later on in this update, first off Brian Burns, faculty coordination and staff development
professional will be talking with you about the professional development week and what that will look like and Convocation will be part of that. What is key is that we are going to close all offices that day.
We ask that all supervisors work around the new build schedule so that folks are available to participate in convocation.
Eight to noon. So please do set that aside. Please don't take a sick day, please show up. We really do want to hear from you, we want you to be a part of it, everybody to be a part of it.
And so we are, as I said, closing the offices on that day and expecting that everybody will attend convocation and we can track who's there. So please do show up. We want you. We want your voice. We want your participation.
We are hiring nine new faculty members who will start with us on that week august 10 is their first date of hire and of those nine, I believe, three of them are
were currently part time faculty members. I am really, really excited about the opportunity of bringing this many people on board.
Also very excited to see that we have folks who have come from our adjunct ranks into our full-time faculty higher position and I'm also very excited about the diversity of the pool of our new faculty members.
I appreciate the work of everyone who served on a hiring committee and some of that we did prior to COVID and others we did after COVID, actually mostly after COVID and
you have risen to the occasion and we thank you. As Mary said earlier. Oh, new faculty orientation is what I was going to talk about. New faculty orientation is going to be online. Thank you to Jeremy Kay and to Ashley Vaughan
They'll work on this and they will be sharing with us, I think it's next week, the week after, Right Mary?
Okay, they'll be sharing with us, what new faculty orientation will look like in the virtual context.
But please, we will send out the, you know, the names of the new faculty member and ways to contact them so you can welcome them to our campus but just know that new faculty orientation will happen as it always has.
But it will be online this time around. And in addition, our website, as Mary mentioned, has been recently launched
Last week, and we've been getting a lot of information and input from folks who have, you know, used, utilized the website or who have visited the website. We appreciate your
continuous feedback so that we can keep enhancing. The new website is Drupal 8. There will be training sessions during professional development week so that we can provide to you, ways of navigating, but we also have, as I mentioned a
week ago that we also now have a coordinator of marketing and, sorry about that, a Coordinator of Marketing and
Web Design in the person of Dina Pielaet and so Dina will also be here on campus to help support that work.
With no further ado, I'm going to transition over to our Vice President of Business who will share with you the update
Jennifer Clark: Good afternoon. Thank you so much. Julius you
Julius already talked a lot about our fall plan. So we are very excited myself, our team. The coronavirus work group along
Again, I want to give another shout out to John Everlove who has just done a tremendous job writing this document for us, gathering information and he's just done a wonderful job.
So I'm very excited that will be able to share that really, it's the, it's the draft version 2.0, with you later this week.
for broader input. And yes, we will be scheduling sessions with you all next week to for you to again to do some training with you and then time for you to ask questions about, you know, procedures, process the document itself, whatever, whatever questions you may have.
I don't want to take up a whole lot of time this morning. We have a very, very full agenda. So I will just update you just on a couple of very quick things.
Quick items I should say the CAREs funding for students, I did want to happily report to everybody that the 15% of the 2.7 some million that Moorpark College received to go directly to students to support students in their, you know, their academic
careers. we have fully expanded that we fully have distributed that 15% it's about 385,000 dollars. We were able to help 655 students for the summer.
So that was our summer allocation fully spent, we are well on our way to
To allocating or false. So we're several hundred thousand into at least a couple hundred thousand into fall already, so that work continues.
The other item I wanted to let you know on is the budget, I'm, we're still waiting to hear on the budget, we know that tax collection ended a little over a week ago.
I don't have any new information on how that went. I'm still waiting to hear. I keep checking my email checking my resources, looking for updates.
But I did want to just reiterate to you all that Moorpark is prepared you know we are prepared for, as in upwards of a you know a 10% cut to our unrestricted general funds. So we've done that in stages. We've worked with our, you know, our Dean's and all of our
all of our folks all of our coordinators program directors everyone who basically has authority or
you know, over a budget, we work with those folks to look at, you know, what would a 5% cut look like what would a 10% cut look like. So we are ready for whatever comes
So with that, I'm going to pass the mic over to Mary Rees.
Mary: Thank you, Jennifer, appreciate it. As what Julius was referring to and he was talking about. We're looking anxiously to hear from the governor
About a week ago, the Governor's Office did talk about that schools reopening in the fall, would be linked to whether the County was on the state monitoring list.
When they talk about school, schools refer to K-12 and adult schools. So it is not the higher education and does not include us in that, the States definition of the schools.
So we have not had specific instructions come from the new instructions come from the Governor's Office, K-12 did and they were told they needed to wait on their reopening until
They the County was off of the monitoring list currently for two weeks. Currently, Ventura County is still on the
to be monitored list so
are the K-12 are going to be going with online instruction for at least for right now, it depends where we are. And the good news about that is it. It's a floating
Timeline in that if we are told the same thing which we have not been, but we are waiting to hear in any instruction. But if we are told that, then that just says, at that moment, if we're on the watch list or the monitor list for the last two weeks, we can't open
only essential services. So then we would have to continue monitoring and hopefully the county will be soon off of the monitor list and we can move forward with
repopulating and safely moving forward with our with our plans. So we'll continue to monitor and keep you aware
Currently our scheduled for fall is a 90% completely online. We do have about 10% of our courses that have some kind of a non ground component
Nothing is completely on ground even our essential services all are utilizing online, where appropriate, so
we have really the faculty and staff have really worked hard to define what's needed in order to provide excellence safe education for our students and
So some of those courses do have an on ground component. we're working through all the details, you're aware of the groups. If you're in those groups you're aware that yours are. And we're working through as far as providing as safely as possible.
When you're coming to campus. If you are on one of those courses that do have a
On ground component, whether you're the essential services, which include the Nursing the EATM RADtech EMT
our Biotech. Many of our sciences have either small groups or specific classes where they would come in many of our arts, Performing Arts, arts and Music,
has setups where that they would come in, for example, ceramics is a great example, come in and get the clay drop off or killed work, pick it up so that they could
Do the glazing, these would all be scheduled appropriately so that social distancing and very safe manner can help meet the students
objectives as well. So if you are coming in for that you need to make sure that you've got your plan set up so that in case we do need to go completely online. What are you going to do
So if you're doing an on ground component to your class, you need to have plans so that if your student does become positive. You wouldn't want them coming in,
just so that they didn't get dropped from the class. We want to provide flexibility so that our students are making good solid safe choices.
So we need to have all of our plans for that. The same thing goes with
substitutes for all of our faculty, and I think probably for all of our staff too, needs to be aware and thinking about what are you going to do for substitutes, if your activities need,
if you heaven forbid did get sick and that, so if you're a faculty and are ill, the usual process is notifying your dean,
and hopefully you've established a substitute list, so who would be good for those classes and work with your dean and their department chair on that,
and then once your deans been notified, they can notice by our instructional design team to have that substitute
given access to your canvas shell so that they can substitute in your class. So lots of little details to work out. If you are coming on campus, for a class that's been pre- approved by submitting it to the chancellor, to the college, to the district office, to the Ventura County Public Health,
then there's certain processes. If you're not part of any of those plans and you do need to still come on campus, we would follow our same process, which would be notifying your dean
in your division and requesting permission to come on campus, explaining, we do want to keep the number of people on campus down as low as possible, just to provide every measure of safety for all involved in that.
If you do need to come on campus, we have established setups, that's going to be as Julius defined and Jennifer said will be coming out to everyone.
It includes a plan where either through your phone or through your computer, there's a pre-screening: have you been exposed to anyone with Covid? Do you have any of the symptoms?
It'll be using the app that we already have for our phone systems for Moorpark College we'll be sending out information on that.
You would just answer whether you have any of the symptoms, and then you would get the green light on your phone or computer that says you can come to campus.
When you come to campus, there'll be specific parking lots, which for faculty and staff to park in and for students to park in.
Near those parking structures will be some tents to greet people and to check their temperature,
and if your temperatures is okay, and you already have the green light from the pre- screening, you'll be given either a bracelet or a sticker or something to indicate that you
have done all the pre measures and to increase our safety here on campus. Anyone coming on campus, needs to be wearing a mask.
If people are walking their dogs from the neighborhood, they're going to see signs in the street, signs on the campus that say
"Anyone on campus needs to be wearing a mask." This is for your safety and the safety of everyone else. So we need people to
include that in their syllabus to define that students are expected,
are required, I should say, to be wearing a mask and to go through all of the pre- screening and the temperature check in order to come on campus. We have
wonderful, high-quality, excellent education online; if your particular course does have an on ground component, we expect you to be following, the students, and the faculty, and staff to be following all of these rules so that everyone can be safe.
I think those are main things that we're going to be talking about. We're going to continue to have lots and lots of conversation because there's
a lot of nuances, as you know, we're a big campus and we meet large number of students needs, but your students need every one of you, all the faculty and staff and the other students
to be there and the administrators to be helping support the students because if we're not sure what's going on,
and we're a little concerned with all the changes in our world, just imagine what they are doing. So they need your help to move forward. They've got their educational goals and they need your help to help them move towards that.
On Student Services, student services have been really addressing that particular needs, trying to make sure that all of the needs of our students, whether you're talking about Financial Aid, Admissions and Records,
Tutoring, learning how to use the online with our students online resource, all the faculty resources online, the staff resources online;
there's just incredible resources that are being made available, and we want to thank all the people that have been, trying to prepare systems so that when students can come,
clearly, it won't be like a normal fall, but it will be in, that you will be there and they are there to help the students find their way.
Part of finding our way is Brian Burns is going to be helping us today with some discussion about our usual
process of Professional Development. We've got our Flex week and Convocation. Brian, can you tell us a little bit about that?
Brian Burns: Lovely,
so good afternoon, everyone. Thank you, Mary. So I wanted to give an update about fall Professional Development week, we can see the dates here from August 11 to the 14,. So
you know, as, as it probably is not a big surprise, of course, Flex week is going to be 100% online.
So things are going to be different than what we've done before, we are, you know, facing certain challenges, but we also have certain opportunities to consider. So if we could have the next slide please, I'm going to introduce some thematic ideas.
So, "life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass...
...it's about learning to dance in the rain."
So we have obstacles. We have challenges in front of us, and we have opportunities to to think about these obstacle, are they things to struggle with, or are these opportunities?
And if we could have the next slide please.
So I'm introducing here, this is our theme for professional development, not just for PD week, but for the whole year for professional development.
Our theme here, is "Dancing in the Storm: Finding and Developing Innovative Solutions in Challenging Times," we are facing challenging times,
we are facing a storm of challenges. Now, I'll be honest, we started developing this theme back in the middle of last semester and at the time we were thinking about challenges dealing with, you know, fires and
some political conflicts and some other, you know, very serious challenges that we we're already facing in our community,
and then we had Covid and now we have, of course, these calls for social justice and activism in the U.S. and all over the world right now.
And so really, it's as educators, and we think about this, you know, "how do we get back to normal?" and "where was normal?" and "is there even normal anymore?" So we have these storm of challenges or do we have storms of opportunities?
What are our places? What are our rules as educators, as community members to think about our students, to think about our communities, to think about ourselves,
and instead of trying just to wait for everything to blow over and just kind of make it through to survive,
instead how do we dance within this and how do we take advantage of these opportunities to create something innovative, and amazing, and really impactful,
for our students, for our communities, and for ourselves? And so that's sort of our thematic goal to think about this as we're going forward,
and today I want to talk to them in a more detailed way,
about specifically, what our plans for this specific PD week,
and then of course during the semester, we will have other professional development activities as we're going through the term, and of course, we'll be in very close contact for all of those. Before I get to the schedule though, I should mention just up front,
so as I mentioned, all of these sessions will be online,
all these sessions, the good news is, all these sessions will be recorded, which means that if there's any sessions that you see, in which there's conflict, you see two sessions, saying, "Oh, I wish I could go to both of those,"
well, now you do, you will have an opportunity to, you know, take part in both of them,
it's just an obviously for the, for the live sessions,
as usual, we'll ask evaluations, at the end of those, and then, of course, if you're watching it recorded, you won't be able to to be part of that that evaluation process,
but otherwise, certainly this is one silver lining to this storm, this rain that we're dancing in, is that it's a lot easier for us to archive these professional development presentations that we have coming up.
And I will say, that the schedule I'm about to show you, it is, I'm pretty confident that's where it's going to go, there might be a couple of sessions where some times flop or something like this, but this is pretty much it, and
I'll be sending out a more detailed program, you know, within the next week or so, and that will include
you know, more information about, you know, links and how to get a hold of the information or I'm sorry, how to take part in the various sessions and that sort of thing, so, so that's coming up and it's something to look forward to. So if we could have the next slide please, and I'll show us Tuesday,
of that week. So that's Tuesday 8/11, so we see we, you know, for all for all days we may have a full docket of really very interesting and I think really fun
opportunities and sessions that we have going on. So we see here in the morning,
where Tuesday, we're going to have a session about online academic integrity, and in this one, we're really, this is obviously a serious concern, if we're all essentially 90% of our classes
are online, there are some real questions about academic integrity. There are some some real questions on checking on learning.
And so there are some tools, there are some approaches that we can use, for how to maintain that really important education standard.
Then we're going to have a session at the same time dealing with advanced canvas tools,
a lot of us have been going through canvas training. Thank you for those of you who have been doing it and thank you for those who have been facilitating those trainings.
This is really important work, and so now, what's our next step?
And again, this is our opportunity, not just to survive using Canvas, but let's take a look at Canvas as opportunities to provide service and tools for our students so that we're not just
you know, surviving, that we're really taking advantage and having really positive and helpful learning opportunities for our students.
The next session dealing with accessible documents. This was always important, to making sure that our documents, everything that we share with our students and with our colleagues should be ADA accessible,
but especially now, that so many of us are online and this is, you know, it's always been important thing, but it's especially important now that we're going to doing a lot more electronic correspondence,
to keep that in mind, making sure that our documents in terms of Word documents, PDFs, are accessible to our students. We will also concurrently have a session on
the Canvas Studio program that's already integrated into Canvas, but, but how can you use it and it's for video, it's for using some really creative
tools to help our students increase student engagement, which, as we know, student engagement is involved with student learning
as a best practice. Then after a short break for lunch, we'll have some time management tips so that we're not sitting at the computer all day long. What are some tools and tricks we can use to save some time here,
and so that we're not, you know, burning ourselves out with too much screen time. In addition to that, we will have a very thorough
introduction discussion about the, the CVC OEI Rubric for Course Design. Any of you who have gone through the Canvas training, you've had some some exposure to this, and so we'll have a further conversation
about course design, about best practices, when it comes to Canvas and Canvas design, course design I should say. Then a session in the afternoon,
from, a presentation from our Dean Monica Garcia and talking about our Behavior Intervention Team and thinking about this again as a tool for student support, and student success and then a presentation also, about a team of our professionals here,
specifically addressing our website roll out, as Mar- as we were just discussing a bit earlier in this talk, our new version of Drupal and some really cool tools, really cool opportunities and
really looking forward to that session and there's going to be a lot of discussion about how to
how the website works, where to go to get more support, and again, thinking about these opportunities to really take advantage of these new tools. Okay, so [laughs] and so that's Tuesday. That's just one day. So if we go to the next slide please?
So here we have Wednesday, again, another full day of activities. We're doing program planning in the morning, and that tends to be a very popular session, so I chose not to
line up anything against program planning. So we'll have that in the morning. Then we'll have an update and some information from our faculty union our AFT union, and then a presentation, also from our Student Health Center, and we're especially thinking about our Student Health Center as
yes, they've been involved in in tele-health and those are the health practices that are important for our students,
and I'm also really interested in hearing more from our student health professionals about
our health center's role, in terms of providing mental health services for our students, and the challenges they're facing with Covid and with our
you know, the other social challenges that we're facing in terms of, you know, the anti racism, in terms of the other sorts of
social concerns that we're seeing and that we're trying to address these in very positive, and constructive, and supportive ways and our Student Health Center is integral to that particular goal.
So then next we'll have some Academic Senate planning and Classified Senate planning, you know, we're always important to have goals and moving forward with those two constituencies.
Then, a session with SLO eLumen. So that's our new SLO reporting software. So, this is really important information about SLOs, this is important to have this, this information and this should make things more streamlined and more
user friendly,
as we go along.
Now this other one is Zero Textbook Costs. We've been doing this for a while, a good year and a half, we're really focusing on zero textbook costs.
This is I think especially important from an equity point of view, we're talking about if equity is removing barriers from our students,
then textbooks, the cost of textbooks is a significant barrier for many of our students. So what can we do to address that and to
help our students at the same time is maintaining, of course, a very high level
of quality of our texts and quality of instruction, but what can we do to remove those barriers so more of our students can be successful? All of our students can be successful?
I think this is especially worth thinking about, that, the zero textbook cost because a lot of those resources are online, I mean, not necessarily all of them, but it really is thinking about using online tools,
and so if we're, you know, 90% of us are online, removing the need for a physical book, is another obstacle that we're helping students to be successful.
You know, so people have concerns: "How am I going to get my book?" "Where do I go, do I have to order it?" that sort of thing. Whereas, if we're being online or at least offering those options online, it's another barrier, removed.
So in the later in the evening, we'll have our adjunct information session, which in the past, I used to call that new adjunct information, but I've discovered that
the, the people coming to that one sometimes are new and sometimes are returning adjuncts and I'm happy to have them all. So I'm just calling that now adjunct information session where I'm happy to welcome
all of our adjunct instructors to come and take part in that session later in the evening.
Okay, that was Wednesday and we can move on to our next day, please?
To Thursday.
So Thursday, again got some great stuff going on. We're starting off with Guided Pathways and Starfish. So Guided Pathways is, you know, we have these four pillars.
Clarifying the path, get them on the path, keep them on this, on the path, ensure continuous learning.
And so starfish is a really powerful tool that I think can be especially important
to integrate with Guided Pathways, in terms of student retention, in terms of keeping them on the path, in terms of ensuring continuous learning, that sort of thing. So we thought these two
tools were really important to talk about, how they work in conjunction with each other, also have a session from our library,
and we're talking about information literacy resources, if we're moving online and we're getting our information online,
then more and more, we have these opportunities to think about what are the most efficient ways to move through that online environment and to teach our students
how to find useful, reliable information and how to recognize, you know, faulty or misleading information as well. And so anybody involved in any sort of research or writing heavy courses, I think can really benefit from from that particular session.
We'll be doing a presentation in which one of our counselors is talking about
some research about online student learning, about their experiences, about what works best, and what didn't seem to work out,
and that will include some students speaking as well, what were their experiences being shifted online last March, and what was it like, and what did they learn, and what did they wish
their stud- their instructors would know going forward. Right? How can we use this as opportunities?
In addition to doing another Guided Pathways specifically thinking about our classified staff,
Guided Pathways is a whole campus project, and our classified professionals are of course, hugely important to our learning community. They are part of our learning community.
We're all together with the same mission, to support and to advance student success, and so Guided Pathways, our classified staff, I'm sorry, are hugely integrated, integral to Guided Pathways. Tthis is not just something for instructors to be aware of.
So that's, that's going to be really important session as well. We'll have a session dealing with student equity talking
about social justice. We'll have some conversation from our TOMCA teaching men and women of color advocates, as well as some other student equity work that we're doing on the campus and including Project CHESS, at the same time, the curriculum committee meeting, and then from there
a session now about ACCESS. So we had the ACCESS section on Tuesday about documents and now we're thinking specifically about ACCESS and Zoom. So, especially those of us doing
synchronous courses, especially those of us who are doing, you know, trying to replicate through Zoom, what would it be doing in class, and I'm saying Zoom, I know that there are other
video conference tools, as well but Zoom works I think pretty well,
but there are some some tools and tricks that we should think about in terms of making sure that those classes are accessible to our students.
Also a presentation about sabbaticals, and this is a new one that just got in the last week or so, I was talking to some folks about this one. So we have our Data Science
program CTE program that's, that's being launched, and so some of our folks in this area of CTE are really thinking about this field of data science, which is a combination of several different
computer skills of how to as they're saying "solve big data problems," but also in very ethical and in mindful ways, and so these are, this is meant to be a multidisciplinary sort of cross disciplinary
program and so they're really hoping to introduce this idea to our faculty and to really invite faculty
to come if they want to get involved, if they want to think about, "Okay, well how does my class, might be part of this data science, a work group in this data science project?" that's another opportunity for our students to pursue the CTE training.
In the later evening a Tenure Committee training, as you know, as, as usual. So those are our three days for for the official PD week, in terms of programs that are
you know, we're having different facilitators will be recording those, we will be evaluating those. So, and again, this schedule will be coming out
in the next week or so and you can start you know really looking through there and seeing what seems appealing to you, what would you like to attend. What would you like to record.
We would like to have live attendance at these and I think it's really important to, to have that interaction and to not,
to not forget that it's we're a community and we're a group of people working together to serve our students. So we go to the next slide,
and I can show us Convocation. So I didn't get the fine tooth comb out for this one, but we do have some really exciting and really cool stuff coming up for Convocation,
including some some conversations, you know, of course, will be hearing from our college president of course will be hearing from our Academic and Classified Senate presidents,
but we'll also be doing some some good conversation, some important conversations about the social justice work that we're doing and
we're really looking forward to this. This will be a relatively new, new idea for convocation of having some student voices involved in this as well,
and so this was based on some work that we've been doing this summer, having students involved in these conversations about social justice, and if we aren't having
that question, "How do we best serve our students?" Then having the student voices involved in that conversation is obviously clearly important, and so that's something we're looking forward to that.
And of course, we'll look forward to celebrating our new faculty, we'll look forward to celebrating our faculty who have hit
a call to service milestones. So, you know, really important day and I state this, so you see this big chunk where it says, Academic
or sorry, Convocation Programming and it looks like three hours straight, it's not three hours straight, please don't think
I'm asking you this to three hours straight. There are going to be breaks built in.
We are talking about ways having some fun during the break, what are some things that we can do to get up and move around, you know, and making sure that you're, you're not all fall asleep at your monitors and things like this. So,
we are hoping to bring this as a celebratory and really exciting and energizing
program for you. And then, of course, we'll have our Academic Senate general meeting and
lunch break and then of course and we'll roll into our division or department meetings as, as usual, because all of those will also still be online.
So I just want to introduce, those sorts of things and do keep an eye out for that schedule that's coming out, a couple of the sessions might change time a little bit, but I think this is pretty much it, when it comes to the schedule.
And when I send out the schedule it will include links,
to, you know, where do you go to to participate in these different sessions, and again they will be recorded and will post them up to our brand new PD website,
which you know, that's an opportunity for me, now that we have our new website, to rebuild a PD website and make it a lot more
user friendly and a lot more welcoming, a place of resources for our faculty and our staff. So thank you for your time and thank you for your participation. And just thinking about this idea, just to sorta close the loop here on,
on our theme,
so again, we're facing challenges, our students are facing challenges, and we can endure it, or we can dance with it, and create innovative and creative solutions. Thank you.
Mary: Thank you, Brian. And thank you to, a big thank you to all the people, the faculty, staff and administrators that are on the Professional Development Committee.
We have just a couple of questions, Julius, before we move into this social justice piece. There was a question related asking what we can do to help reach out to students within our community that might be lost and might need colleges or need new careers?
Julius: Okay.
First of all, I know that our folks in Student Services have been, they've been developing and working with John Loprieno and Dina Pielaet on a video
that will be on our social media, that will be available for folks to share and forward to a variety of individuals who are interested, and that video basically talks about
student services and the tagline is "we're open". And so the idea is that we're open for them to come join our community, we're open, our services are open, our hearts are open, you know, our practices are inclusive, etc., etc.
So that's one way in which we do that work, which is to sort of send it out. We also have increased our advertising, so that we can communicate with our service area with advertising our career programs. Right? And for advertising our PACE program.
We have continued an ongoing outreach that's happening through our Outreach office so that folks can hear about the programs that are available, but I ask each one of you to please be our advocates, and to be our ambassadors in the community,
you know, everybody's on Zoom, everybody's on some social media platform, you know, post about Moorpark College,
and one of the things I'm training myself to do now is, you know, post something about Moorpark College on my LinkedIn page or something about Moorpark College
at least once a month on my Facebook page and I could probably do it daily, if I, if I were more disciplined about it,
and please do share that information. We're also working with our local K-12 schools. Not only through our dual enrollment offerings, and you should know our dual enrollment program offerings are packed. they're filling,
but we're also working with them so that we can get message out to families of those high school students as sophomores, juniors and those incoming seniors as to the opportunities that are available to them at Moorpark College.
Mary: Thank you, Julius. Jennifer, would you mind reminding us, people on on what to tell students as far as picking up books from the bookstore or how to get their books from the bookstore?
Jennifer: Oh, sure, sorry, it came on and then it went off. There we go. Yes. So bookstore, the bookstore textbook ordering is going to be all online.
So please let your students know that they should, you know, it's again it's entirely online. I understand that if the students spends $100 or more, whether they're renting or buying or whatever they're doing,
if they're spending $100 and more the shipping is included. So, you know, that's great. They don't have to come to campus at all to get their books.
If, however, they are buying or renting less than $100, the shipping is not included. So if they want to pay to have it shipped to their house, that's wonderful, that's great. They certainly can,
but our bookstore will be open for pickup. So we are arranging for some couple of windows,
at least a couple of windows, sort of in the back, or we're, again, we're working out the social distancing with the bookstore staff and the students and how that's exactly going to work, but
the in store or the on campus bookstore sort of interaction will be to pick up books, textbooks that students did not have shipped to their house.
Mary: Thank you, somebody just reinforced that by saying they ordered from Barnes and Noble and received the books within three days so
that's really good. Thank you for that. Just a clarification on Brian when he was talking about wanting live interactions we mean we want live like live Zoom,
rather than live like really in person. So just so we're clear on that we still are doing Zoom for
for Flex week as well as Convocation so not to, you know, we want people to be, take advantage of the taped ones but or the recorded ones, but also to be there
synchronously, I guess would be that the new term on that. So thank you. The Times for NFO I will get and we will send those out in the email,
and the request for additional higher, advanced, training in Camtasia, and other things, we'll have a discussion with DE and see what we can do. Julius, would you be able to lead us forward on, I know you've got some great ideas for us on the social justice?
Julius: Yes, thank you, Mary. And just to add to what Brian said about Convocation. We are trying our very best to be as inclusive as possible, and so we are inviting and we'll be sending an email,
as well as a social media campaign to all our students. Students can participate in Convocation.
They will, the student leadership will have access through Zoom and the general population of students will have
access through YouTube. So we're working towards getting that in place and that then opens it up for the entire community to actually participate. One of the things we would like to do is to
impress upon our local community that we are not only their local community college, but that they're part of us. And so our goal this year will be to get more students participating Convocation,
more faculty, staff and administrators participating in Convocation,
and inviting our local community to participate in our Convocation. So I'm thinking of it as really sort of, you know, the state of the college and if it's a state of the college, then you know,
the individuals who live in our neighborhood, our Mayor, folks who are on the Water Board, whatever it is, you know, should want to hear about us and how we are helping to build capacity in those towns and communities that we serve.
So again, that's another way, which you can share about the college, invite them to come to our Convocation and hear all the great stuff that's happening at Moorpark College. Next slide please. So,
I want to thank you first and foremost for everyone who's participated in one of our social justice work groups. This work is challenging work. This work is hard. It requires courage.
It can be uncomfortable work to do, and folks have thrown themselves in heart and soul and have joined this work roups and engaging, we've had one one group that has 35 people in it,
right? I mean, that tells you that folks one to engage and I appreciate it. I particularly appreciate the fact that we have faculty who are not in contract
who are doing this and who are participating and facilitating conversations and being members of groups. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
We also want to make sure that we engage and involve our all our stakeholder groups,
our classified professionals, our students, and thank you to those individuals from those groups who have chosen to take on leadership roles
we're grateful for that, and this work cannot happen unless we as a college committee participating in this and doing it from a place where we discover and a place where we learn and we grow.
You can still join a group, you will get, the whole college, will get invites to all four groups through an Outlook invitation that Linda will send out and please go ahead and
join one of those groups if you were not there last week. But yeah, last week, least you go ahead and join them on this coming week on Monday, the third of August at noon. Next slide.
So where, you know what's next. Where are we going? I think it's really important for us as we do this work, to not only work smart and not reinvent the wheel, but I think it's important for us to focus this work around certain
I guess tenants, institutional priorities. So as we're doing this work as a new individual work groups, please think about what you see, or as a possible institutional priority.
We have four work groups, we have these each of these four groups either working in a programmatic level and they're looking at what
what will support a department, support a service area, or support a business area. But as we're doing that work, on larger goal is building institutional capacity,
helping all our students, helping all our faculty, and staff, and administrators feel like they belong in this setting, feel that they have a voice.
So as you're doing your work in your groups, think about what is our, what is the campus wide sense of urgency?
What should we be prioritizing as an institution?
It may be maybe something within your group, it may be something within another work group, but ultimately, that's where we want to get at, each of these work groups will do their thing, but there has to be one institutional priority for this academic year.
We have not identified it as of yet, we're hoping that as you do your work, that you have information that we can all come together and identify that institutional priority. This is something with campus wide urgency.
The work groups are, should also within themselves identify their own priorities for fall 2020 and/or spring 2021.
This is not a one, one and done effort, the intention is to make sure that we build a foundation and build systems that will support this work ongoing,
so that when those of us who are here now are retired, this work is still going on, right? That's the intention. It's not for us to just sort of sit down work on an initiative right now and then it'd be done,
that is not this work. So please think about it as what you want to do in the fall, what you want to do in the spring, or what you want to do through the entire year and just start in the fall and work it throughout the entire year.
Also, as you're in your work groups identify action items needed to accomplish your work.
What are the individual pieces of work? What are the individual items that need to be built out? What are the individual actions and operations that are in place? What barriers are
impeding inclusion of all voices? How can we address those barriers? Those action items matter as much as the concept.
We have a good tradition at this college of talking and talking and doing great work talking, we need to move from talking to action, by moving to action is identifying action items right from the start. Please pick one or two action items that you would like to pursue
or develop this semester, as I said, maybe start something in fall and finish in spring. The goal is to make sure we're working on activities that will lead to something, and that something is addressing institutional priorities that can then lead to systemic change. Next slide.
So for the priority action item, please think about these additional considerations. What is required to make progress on this work? What do we as an institution need to do? What do you need to do in your departments? what do we need to do with our students? I heard a said earlier,
earlier, a week or so ago, it said, "No student is expendable," and I think it's really important to start from that place, we're doing this work so that no student is expandable,
but we're also doing this work so that no faculty member is expendable, no staff person is expendable, no administrators expendable.
All our voices matter, but this work to make to me transformational change at this college and in our community, we need to be very clear
on what we need to make progress. What are the resources that we need? What are the attitudes that we need? What are the routines that we become used to that we need to revisit and eliminate or dismantle?
How does this work, connect to the charging actions of our existing or governance groups on campus? As I said in the previous email every single word group is connected to some governance committee,
and it's connected to some work group, to some task force. How can we make sure that we're not duplicating effort? How do we align the work that we're doing in this work groups with that work,
so that the curriculum conversation is not just happening in this work group, and diversifying curriculum, but it is connected to the agenda, the work plan for curriculum committee?
Right? We also know that we need to set a timeline for making this work.
So as you're in your work groups, look at the timeline, either for this semester or for the academic year,
and then plan on how you're going to hold yourselves accountable, knowing that things are going to happen in the course of the semester that will be distractions from this work,
Right? You know, things will happen in the course of the semester, where this work is still important, but you have those papers to grade, you have those students to counsel, you have the facility to take care of,
all of that happens as we're doing this work. Also, it is important that we identify which important considerations, the who, what, where and when, that needs to go into play, so that whatever you as a work group focus upon as your action items, so that we can make sure that is a reality,
and how will you know that you've been successful in doing this work, what are the indicators of success? We need to be able to envision it see it before it happens. What is that success look like
because that's successful tell you what we as a college want to see happen so that we can affect social change.
It will also tell you what we as a college want to happen so that all of our students feel connected,
it will also tell us what we as a college wants to see happen, so that each one of us feels like we can bring up all of ourselves to the work that we do at this college,
and it's very important that we get buy-in from everyone to build in this work,
not everybody's in the choir and everybody's jumping at doing this work, but from what I see, so far, there's a whole lot of people in the choir.
Let's get more people to sing, let's get more people to participate.
The reality of equity work, the reality of activism, the reality of addressing the tough questions around race in this country, and in our own college environment, is to speak it out.
If we don't speak it out, if we don't say it, we can't identify and that becomes a challenge.
We need allies, we need folks to ask those tough questions. So if you're not so sure about all of this, please join a group, please participate, please ask questions.
All I ask that we do is that we be civil and respectful of one another. All that I ask that we do is we put students at the core of our experience and all that we ask that you do is respect one another's roles on campus.
Respect one another's identities, either on campus or what we bring to this conversation because that civility matters. Next slide please.
So what is important as we do this work, is to know that as a group, each of these work groups will be presenting at Convocation on the 14th of August, and that at that time each group will be required to identify a 10 minute
presentation where you share with the
with the college, you know, what your priority is, how you will go about your how you think you might go about it, if you don't have the how yet, you know, set a timeline for yourself to identify what that how is, and then again, let us know what are your indicators of success.
That brief presentation from each group will be integrated into our Convocation activity. So please come with that,
with that idea, with that frame in mind, so that we can simply continue to do this work.
This is not a top down approach. This is not a Julius initiative. This is not from the executive team. This is not an Academic Senate and Classified Senate leadership, you know, joining the bandwagon of an initiative. This is really from each one of us.
For this to really make meaning, for this to really this is about campus climate, and it's very important that we think about what environment do we want our students and what to study, and what environment we want ourselves to work.
Positive change
will only occur if we work together. We are all in this together, and if we can continue to believe and work through that, I know Moorpark College we're a college of excellence, we're a college of innovation. We can do this. Thank you so much.
Mary: Julius on that excellent note, you all have a wonderful day, and a great week. we'll talk to you all next week. Bye.