April 30, 2024

Attendance

Voting Members: Robert Alexander, Adam Contreras, Alicia De Toro, Benjamin Furgganan, Pam Grey, Lydia Hearn, Michelle Hernandez, Melinda Hughes, Debbie Lee, Tina Lockwood, Eric Mendoza, Rob Mieso, Mallory Newell, Izat Rasyad, Daniel Solomon, Aditya Sharma, Tim Shively, Bidya Subedi, Kate Wang, Erik Woodbury

Non-voting Members: Adrienne Hypolite, Manisha Karia, Martin Varela, Mehrdad Khosravi, Michele LeBleu-Burns, Anita Muthyala-Kandula

Absent, Voting Members: Andre Meggerson, Chia Wen

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Approval of Agenda and Minutes

Mallory Newell reviewed the agenda.

Mallory reviewed the minutes from the 4/23/2024 meeting.

No changes or edits. Both approved.

Reminder to submit personnel request, due 4/30/2024 11:59 pm.

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Instructional Materials Resource Requests

Resource Requests for 24/25 - First Read

Mallory started with the summary sheet. The total requested in each area is in the last column.  They have made determination of funding sources for the requests. The funding sources fall under Lottery, Instructional Equipment, Instructional Equipment or SWP/Perkins, SWP/Perkin, and Other.

The “Instructional Equipment or SWP/Perkins” covers items that can be paid from either source. “Other” is for items like marketing that do not come under any of the funding sources and will have to be paid from the B-budget.

They have included in the spreadsheets both the ‘critical” and “desired” items. On the bottom of the sheet are the funds available to allocate. Below that is the rollover fund, previously allocated but unspent funds.

There is enough money to cover all the items assigned to the Lottery Fund. There is not enough to cover all the items in the “Instructional Equipment” fund. They will go through to differentiate the “critical” and the “desired” to determine how they could cover the “critical” requests. 

Erik pointed out some requests that needed clarification. A request from astronomy for the planetarian  was marked “desired” but described as something they ”needed“ to continue running the program.

Under the division/area tabs, there is more information on the requests, grouped by departments. There are color-coded notes on some requests. Yellow means more information needed. Green are items funded by SWF or Perkins. Blue are items eligible for Instructional Equipment. Light purple are desired items.

Orange marks items requested last year. Is it an oversight, a rollover, or an annual ongoing item? 

Review of Previously Allocated Funds

Erik Woodbury shared a spreadsheet that shows the current account balances both for instructional equipment and for lottery. He noted that several divisions still have over $100,000 in their lottery accounts. They appeared not to have spent the allocated funds from last year. 

Christina Espinosa-Pieb pointed out that this should be a job for the manager and not a shared governance body. It should be the vice president, Lydia or Rob, who tracks the accounts and works with the deans on the updates.

Erik explained the current RAPP policy, set last year and approved this spring, that allocated funds unspent after a year gets reallocated. Erik and Mallory did the work on the current documents. They were reaching out to the deans to confirm that they still needed the money. These were funds approved last spring for things people said were critical needs for their programs. It would be great to have more help in the process. 

He would appreciate the managerial oversight as they structure and refine the process. There were discussions about adding to the timeline senior staff review with the deans in the winter quarter with the intention of getting an update on the allocated funds by the beginning of spring quarter.

It was proposed that Lydia will review with the deans the allocated funds from last year and respond to the comments highlighted in yellow and orange. This should be done within two weeks in order to have the fund allocation proposal for the next College Council meeting on May 16.

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Program Review-Med Lab 

Mallory explained that there is an expressed interest to have the whole committee look at some of the program reviews that were completed in small groups. One of the programs was the Learning Communities that Michelle Hernandez will present in 2 weeks. 

The focus for this week. The committee was to prepare for discussion on the Med Lab program review, The intent to make sure that program has the resources and support to continue to operate.

Dean Anita Muthyala-Kandula was present to help with the discussion.

Mallory pointed out how the Med Lab mission is linked to the college mission. They have very extensive goals: more certificates, increase success rates, decrease equity gap, work with guided pathways, villages, engage with the new faculty director and so forth.

One of their biggest challenges was COVID because their students weren't able to be in the clinical sites during COVID. This was reflected in their enrollment that has gone down during COVID, but enrollment is trending back up after COVID. The enrollment last year was at 245. It was about 300 prior to COVID. 

The sections have been holding stable. Full time faculty equivalency has been consistent.

Anita Muthyala-Kandula: One of the requirements for the certificate is to have externships. They are heavily loaded unit classes involving many hours in medical facilities. Those courses were most severely impacted by COVID. Those contact hours were incredibly reduced. They are starting to pick up with Kaiser and Sutter asking students to come back to the lab.That is where the student contact hours are concentrated.

Mallory: Since this is a CTE program, the report provided additional information on the job market. There is a very strong positive outlook for Medical Laboratory Technology technicians and technologists, an estimated 8,610 job openings due to growth, 25,200 total annual open jobs from 2018-2028 in California, which is higher than most other fields.

Their core success rate has increased from 82% to 85%. There is an achievement gap for their black and Latinx students, as well as their female students.

Anita Muthyala-Kandula The program did not have a full time faculty for 4 - 5 years. It was run by part-time faculty.  Since the fall, they have had a full time faculty, a new Director, that is bringing a lot of new ideas from outside. He is both student and equity focused. He has been reaching out and making contacts in the industry. He works part time at a Med Lab that helps him to maintain contacts.  That has helped to alleviate a lot of the previous deficiencies.

There's a lot of exciting things happening in the department. Through Strong Workforce and Perkins, they are able to hire in-class tutors for the students. They are also able to offer skills labs. Several times a year part-time faculty conduct special labs, free lab classes for students to get hands-on experience before they go out on external ships. All these efforts elevate the quality of the De Anza Med Lab program.

On the subject of degrees and certificates. There is no incentive for students to apply for them. Students just need to complete the course work to be hired. They are working with counselors to encourage students  to pursue the certificates and degrees.

Lydia felt that this program was getting a higher level of scrutiny than other programs. She would like more clarity on the criteria for referring a program back to the larger group. Was the intent to allocate more resources to this program or some other reason.

Erik Woodbury made it clear that the program is not in trouble. The program reviews were conducted in small groups without ​​necessarily diverse expertise. In this case there are some questions about the review that could benefit from having a broader group of people look at it. This is an opportunity for people to learn more about the program and give it extra attention. That is not a bad thing.

He acknowledged that the process does need a stronger, clearer rubric for referring program reviews back for further review and to the full committee.

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Hiring Prioritization

Funding Sources and Future Allocations

Continuation of the discussion from the previous week on potential revisions to current procedures around hiring prioritization. People had a week to reflect on the subject. What are people’s thoughts?

Tim: moving forward with the current process is not sustainable if the funding is only coming from instruction. If vacancies from classified and administration should come into the same pool, not just from faculty, that would be an equitable arrangement. It is inequitable to drain money from instruction to fund other positions. We are just over the 50% rule and the hires this year put us dangerously close to that line.

Lydia pointed out the difference between faculty and classified hiring in terms of timing and impact. Faculty positions could be filled with part time faculty while the same cannot be applied to classified and administration. 

There are other considerations on how long it takes to fill these positions. Clearly, faculty, classified, and administrative positions cannot be on the same hiring cycle.

Looking forward to the budget scenario, there will not be much increase in money. There are a lot of demands and needs across campus outside of teaching.

Tim felt that RAPP is on the right track, but got started late in the fall, therefore the delay in prioritizing and approving the positions

Christina expressed concerns over the lack of faculty full time tenure positions approved in the last round. She suggested setting a number or percentage for faculty when approving positions. For example, out of 10, 6 or 7 should be faculty.

There were more comments on the source of funding and the overall needs of the campus. Looking for guidance from the district.

Rob suggested having 2 buckets. One for faculty (instructional/non-instructional) and one for non-faculty.

Employee Data

• 70% faculty, (41% part time, 28% full time)
• 3% admin
• 27% classified

Recruiting for next year

Invite potential RAPP members to attend as guests. They can observe and participate in discussions as non-voting members.