Mid-Quarter Update from Kimberlee Messina

 

Winter Quarter began with the unexpected and unwelcome news that Judy Miner had suffered a fall, broken her ankle and underwent surgery. The good news is that she is healing well, and in typical Judy flair is outfitted in a Foothill red cast!

 

We may have some Judy sightings sooner, but look for her official return on April 1st. No fooling!

 

The quarter has also been filled with the expected and quite welcome excellent program reviews from all of you. Once again, I am happily discovering new and exciting successes and innovations that you are doing in your areas to improve student success. Thank you so much for providing me with thoughtful analyses, heart warming examples, creative approaches, and excellent examples of collaboration and dialogue. I always learn from you, and your program reviews provide me with the data I need to advocate for your programs through our resource allocation process.

 

Unlike prior years, we also have the unexpected benefit of funds from the state, and for the first time in many years we have been provided funding to focus on student equity and student success. Our process this year has been to solicit proposals from the college community to fund interventions that faculty, staff and administrators believe will help us make a difference for our students. The proposals have ranged from professional development, embedded tutoring, creating cohorts and learning communities, new curriculum, a new summer bridge for English, and much, much more!

 

In our future newsletters we will be highlighting some of these initiatives, so stay tuned!

 
From the desk of Andrew LaManque
Associate Vice President of Instruction
  

There a number of key planning related milestones achieved this fall, including:

  • Submission (and acceptance in February) of our Midterm Accreditation report.
  • PaRC approval of a new Vision Statement for the College.
  • PaRC approval of changes to the Annual Program Review Template, Program Review Committee Charge, and Program Review Committee Rubric.
  • PaRC approval of a college Assessment Taskforce.

The Program Review Committee (PRC) met to organize their responsibility for reviewing the 30+ Comprehensive Program Reviews that were due this fall. The PRC met in January to norm between members the use of the new rubric for evaluating the program reviews. We hope to be able to provide all the authors comments that demonstrate our value of the time and effort put in to writing the program reviews.

 

This fall the curriculum team sat through 3 demonstrations of curriculum management systems as the initial step to gather information on choices for a new system to replace 3CMS if we decide to make a change. The new Web Coordinator, Bradley Creamer, will soon be providing us his assessment of 3CMS from a technical perspective. We will need to weigh the costs and benefits of staying with the current system or moving to a new one. If we decide to move to a new one we will first invite broader input to formally develop specifications of needs and wants. We hope to take advantage of Cori's expertise before she retires in September! We welcome your input!

 

The scheduling office (Shawna Aced and Stephen Ford) has worked to fill the shoes of Denise Perez who is out on professional development leave. We have been working with the Facilities Rental Office on our coordinated use of Resource 25. This has included documenting our process for room reservation as well as examining the capabilities of the Resource 25 software. Our next step is to assess with an upgrade - Resource Live - will better meet college needs.

 

As Kimberlee mentioned, the Basic Skills and Equity Workgroups teamed up in putting out a request for proposals this fall. We received about 35 proposals! Representatives from the two groups spent several hours in December and January reviewing the proposals using a rubric as a guide. The committee recommended funding for 24 proposals (about $350,000 in equity and $170,000 in new basic skills projects) covering embedded tutoring, research, professional development, and technology. Funding was approved for planning a new English Summer Bridge Program, planning a first year experience program, equity training, Voicethread software, an equity research analyst, and an online data system, among others. Our next step is to develop assessments so that we can demonstrate the impact and "return on investment" for the activities.
Curriculum Corner 
By Cori Nunez 

 

The Curriculum Office is buzzing along through all the curriculum work faculty were preparing over the summer and in the Fall quarter. We have approximately 600 course changes or new courses being completed this cycle for the 2015-16 Catalog. A number of the course changes are due to our decision to eliminate the lecture-lab activity type beginning Summer 2015.

 

I am very happy to announce that we have met and exceeded our ADT goal of 17 transfer degrees. We received Chancellor's Office approval in December for #20! Our approved Transfer degrees are: Anthropology, Art History, Business Administration, Communication Studies, Computer Science, Early Childhood Education, Economics, English, Geography, History, Kinesiology, Mathematics, Philosophy, Physics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Spanish, Studio Arts and Theatre Arts. Congratulations everyone!

 

We are shifting to the new curriculum cycle so all course changes and new courses are due to Instruction by June 19, 2015 for the 2016-17 Catalog.
The SLO Zone 
By Roseann Berg 

A few quarters ago, I took the time to notice and reflect on the lovely little diagram on the Instruction and Research's Student Learning Outcomes and Assessment page. It is called "Bloom's Wheel."  I had not spent much time thinking in depth about the utility of it until I was at a workshop last summer. The presenter encouraged and helped us participants understand how diagrams like this can make aligning SLOs with teaching and testing a simpler and more meaningful process.  If you are not familiar with a Bloom's taxonomy verb diagram, you should go Google one immediately, or head over to Foothill College's SLOs and Assessment page.  Past research has found that stated course SLOs tend to emphasize higher cognitive domains of Bloom's taxonomy, Synthesis, Analysis, Evaluation, yet what is being assessed in the classroom are the lower level cognitive domains, most often Knowledge and Comprehension (Momsen et al. CBE-Life Science Education 2010; 9:435-440). 

The takeaway message from their study was that in the 77 courses they evaluated, there was no correlation between syllabus goals and assessment items.  Emphasizing only these lower level cognitive domains typically results in the memorization and regurgitation of facts, which may be the goal for some classes, but hopefully not all, since analytical skills, problem solving, planning and critical thinking skills show up on basically every top 10 list of skills employers are looking for.  Let's make sure that we are aligning our assessments with our outcomes, working together and using the resources available on-campus and online to gather meaningful data as we reflect on the 14-15 academic year. 

 
Discussions at the Academic Senate about Student Learning Outcomes 
By Andrew LaManque & Carolyn Holcroft

SLOs on CORs 

The academic senate continues to facilitate review and revision of Foothill's Student Learning Outcomes Assessment Cycle (SLOAC) policies and procedures. ACCJC released new Standards this summer which include new language for Standard II.A.3 that requires SLO statements to be included on Course Outlines of Record.

 

At its February 23 meeting the academic senate adopted a resolution that included the following statement:

 

"Resolved, that the Foothill College Academic Senate supports the addition of student learning outcomes statements to course outlines of record and that if/when faculty revise their SLOs in the future, they must also change them on the COR for submission to the Office of Instruction consistent with the established processes in place for making changes to the COR."

 

This has two implications for faculty and our students:

  1. Course-level SLO statements from TracDat will be transferred onto the course outlines of record. The Office of Instruction will orchestrate this process for faculty and we anticipate this task can be completed by the end of Spring quarter. Stay tuned for more detail about timing specifics.

 

2. After the initial transfer has occurred in Spring quarter, if faculty later want to change their SLOs in TracDat they will also need to change them on the course outline of record in C3MS. Such a change would be processed by your division curriculum committee in the same manner that you handle other changes to your CORs.

Length of SLO Assessment Cycle

Also of note, the academic senate adopted a resolution to allow each division to adopt its own SLO Assessment Cycle timing. To this point, as a campus we have all been on the same (minimum) cycle of assessing/ reflecting on at least one SLO every year for every course taught. Going forward, however, each division may agree to adopt a different cycle if desired, provided that each SLO for each course is assessed and reflected upon at least every three years. This three-year time span is intended to ensure that divisions will have a minimum of one full set of SLOAC data for every course by the time their comprehensive program review is due. Divisional curriculum representatives are asked to lead faculty discussions to determine the SLOAC timing that will make the most sense for their division. The Office of Instruction will assume divisions will continue with the current (default) cycle unless they hear from the division curriculum committee representatives that you've decided to adopt something different.

 

The Office of Instruction will also be facilitating discussions about the implication of this change for units completing Service Area Outcomes and Administrative Unit Outcomes.

 
Winter Quarter Articulation & Honors Updates 
By Bernie Day

C-ID Update

Foothill College currently has approximately 150 courses approved for C-ID, with approximately 30 additional courses under review.

 

Effective June 2015, all Associate Degrees for Transfer (ADTs) must include C-ID approved courses, where a C-ID descriptor exists. We are in the process of analyzing all current ADTs to determine whether additional C-ID approval or course revisions are necessary.

 

Associate Degree for Transfer Update

Foothill currently has 20 ADTs approved. As a result, we exceeded the requirement by completing 118% of the required degrees.

 

We are eligible to apply for four new ADTs:

  • Biology
  • Chemistry
  • Child and Adolescent Development
  • Nutrition/Dietetics

Faculty interested in developing these degrees are encouraged to contact Bernie Day to begin exploring appropriate courses for the degree as well as to ensure we have course C-ID approval.

 

Do ADTs make a difference? According to research presented to the Foothill College Academic Senate by Stanford researcher Rachel Baker, the number of students earning degrees and transferring to baccalaureate-granting institutions has increased significantly since the implementation of the ADT.

 

In addition, Rachel's research indicates that ADT students are transferring and graduating with significantly fewer units.

 

Note: effective for fall 2015, the UC system considers completion of an ADT as a positive factor in the application review process.

 

New Honors Institute Courses

The Honors Institute will soon be offering the following new honors courses:

  • CHEM 12AH
  • CS 1AH
  • CS 2AH
  • ANTH 2AH
  • SOC 1H
  • MATH 1AH
  • MATH 1AHP

Completion of honors courses and participation in an academically rigorous honors curriculum are among the primary review factors during the University of California admission process.

 

Faculty interested in developing new honors courses are welcome to contact Bernie Day daybernie@foothill.edu for information.

 

Bay Area Community College Honors Research Symposium

The Seventh Annual Community College Hon

ors Research Symposium will be held on Saturday May 2 at Stanford University. This is truly one of the premier events of the year! All Foothill faculty are welcome to attend. If you currently teach or are considering teaching, the Honors Institute will reimburse your registration fee for attending.

 

 

Registration will soon be available online at:

http://www.losmedanos.edu/honors/research/ 

consortiuminfo.asp  

 

Please encourage your students to attend! 

 

 

Where Are They Now? Former Honors Student Profile  

Honors Scholar Kirill Dmitriev began his postsecondary education at Foothill. After completing the honors program, he transferred to Stanford University, where he completed his B.A. in Economics. Following that, Kirill earned his MBA from Harvard University.

 

Originally from Kiev, Kirill had a successful career in the USA as an investment banker. He was named one of the Young Global Leaders by the World Economic Forum. Now serving as the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, a $10 billion fund, Kirill also

served on the Advisory Board of Harvard Business Review in Russia, as well as on many other boards. Kirill has served as an economic adviser to Russian President Vladimir Putin is the author or co-author of numerous publications. View a recent CNN interview with Kirill on CNN at:  

 

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFnqyZGILvQ  

 

Former Foothill College transfer student Kirill Dmitriev meets with Russian President Vladimir Putin

 

  

Where Are They Now? Honors Student Profile

Brian Armstrong was a local high school graduate who opted to attend Foothill because of our Honors Transfer Alliance Program with UCLA instead of attending any of the other universities to which he was admitted. Brian was successful in his goal and recently graduated summa cum laude from UCLA. A writer and filmmaker, Brian is currently the CEO of Canopy.co a curated storefront for Amazon which features some of their premier items. Prior to that, Brian worked at Google. While at UCLA, Brian was elected as President of the Film and Photography Society. Prior to transfer Brian received the Foothill College Achievement Award for Excellence in English Literature.

 

The Foothill College Office of Instruction and Institutional Research Newsletter is published each quarter. Have something you would like to share with the  Foothill College community? Please email  Craig Gawlick .