Faculty Senate Report for Monday, August 29, 2016

A few points of interest from the Senate meeting today:

A mobile app for Palomar is in development, with an anticipated release sometime in September. It was unclear on what functions would be included, but it might involve allowing students to manage their enrollment, among other things.

Overall enrollment is only slightly down this term (1%, I think, was the figure quoted), and it is hoped that it may even end up with no decline as classes fill in the first weeks.

There will be workshops on applying for money for student equity projects on September 7 and 8. Olga Diaz can provide more information.

The Senate will be looking for two part-time faculty senators in the near future. Interested individuals should contact Patrick O’Brien.

There was substantial discussion of problems associated with cancellation of “low-enrollment” classes. Many senators shared stories of classes which were cancelled despite having 14+ students. Other shared that they had often seen such classes fill to 20+, even to capacity, in the last days before classes began, which may make cancelling them before that time poorly advised. It was also pointed out that classes are cancelled with the assumption that the affected students will subsequently enroll in other sections or classes–this assumption may not be valid, especially when the cancelled class is (for example) a required capstone class for which there is no alternative. In addition, if low-enrollment classes are cancelled, students may have few options for classes to move to.

There was discussion of many factors which can lead to classes having low enrollment; it was pointed out that our enrollment system’s interface is not especially user-friendly, and may be confusing to students with limited experience with computers (or, for that matter, ones with plenty of experience), and this may delay some enrollment.

Some students do not receive the financial aid for which they have applied within ten days of enrolling, and are thus dropped for nonpayment (which might then result in class being cancelled). This particular problem may be remedied by the upcoming payment plan system.

Several suggestions were made as to how to deal with these problems. Many senators would like greater transparency in how cancellation decisions are made; it seems to be inconsistent between divisions. It was also suggested that it might be possible to adopt a longer-term planning approach, in which a low-enrollment section would not automatically be cancelled. Instead, it would be noted, and used for planning future terms. If a normally full section is sparsely occupied in a given term, it may be that that was simply a random chance and the section should be offered in the future; alternatively, a section which fails to fill for several terms in a row could be rescheduled or altered. If these changes were only applied after a few terms of observation for a section, it would avoid pulling classes out from under students’ feet, wile serving the need for long-term instructional and scheduling planning.

The Senate will be conening a workgroup to consider these issues and come up with a list of suggestions from the Senate to be presented to the administration, in the hopes that the faculty can play a role in solving this problem (which is, after all, an instructional issue).

As always, please feel free to bring anything you’d like to see in the Senate to me, or to any other representative.

-Richard Albistegui-DuBois