Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College How is approval authority distributed between curriculum committee, senate, and other approval groups?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College How are the duties of the committee distributed between the chair, other committee members (especially technical reviewers), and administrators?

How are disagreements among content experts dealt with? Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College  How are disagreements among content experts dealt with?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College How is the curriculum committee involved in processes not directly under its charge: accreditation, planning, student services?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College How does the committee insure that curriculum supports the college Mission and strategic plans?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College What data sources maintain curriculum codes (TOP/SOC/CIP/SAM, etc.), and what infrastructure can be implemented to keep them aligned?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College In multiple-college districts, to what extent is curriculum shared between colleges? How does this effect the above?

How can any of the above be streamlined? Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College How can any of the above be streamlined?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College How do you make Title 5 and other regulatory documents your best friends?

Q&A for “Newish” Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Karen Daar, Vice President of Academic Affairs, LA Valley College Daniel Keller, Faculty member, LA Harbor College What do you need to know about C-ID, articulation agreements, ADTs, certificates, non-credit, CTE programs, and distance education?

From the North: Q&A for New(er) Curriculum Chairs and Administrators Eric Wada ASCCC Curriculum Committee, Curriculum Chair Biology, Folsom Lake College Thais Winsome ASCCC Curriculum Committee Curriculum Chair/Academic Senate President, Biological Sciences, Mission College

Scenario #1 (from a breakout at the 2015 Curriculum Institute) ESL Deactivation: The area Dean has determined that a handful of courses in ESL need to be inactivated and the department needs to develop courses that are easily stacked into certificates. He works with the Academic Services area to administratively inactivate 15 ESL courses and then begins the process of drafting courses in CurriCUNET for the department. When the Department Head returns from a short summer break, she learns that she needs to restructure the fall course offerings to remove the 15 now-inactivate courses and she is very upset.

Scenario #2 The Music department faculty are persuaded to offer an AAT in Music. The new program is vetted at the senate, the curriculum committee, and at the administrative level. After one year, the faculty realize they can't support the program because they lack sufficient resources in terms of practice space, instruments, and faculty load. To everyone’s surprise, when the discontinuance process was started it was discovered that over 100 students had enrolled in the major.

Scenario #3 The Police Academy has not updated its courses or programs in well over a decade. This is a politically powerful department, with faculty serving in positions of union and faculty leadership and also holding positions on local and state police academy advisory boards. Attempts on the part of the faculty leadership in curriculum and the senate to reason, persuade, cajole and, finally, beg the department faculty to take action to bring their program into compliance have so far been unsuccessful.

Scenario #4 The college curriculum approval process has no provision for administrative review or input early in the curriculum process. This has caused problems with programs moving ahead without sufficient resources to support them, as well as CTE programs not obtaining BACC approval in a timely manner because the area dean was unaware of them. When the curriculum chair and VPI approached the curriculum committee and the senate with a plan to include administrative review early in the process, the faculty unanimously rejected the proposal on the grounds that any administrative oversight was outside the purview of administration and would diminish the faculty voice in curricular matters.

Scenario #5 Faculty in a STEM department want to add a one unit problem solving course as a corequisite to an introductory course citing poor student preparation and therefore low student success rates. Counseling faculty note that adding the corequisite could delay student transfer, and transfer institutions do not require such a corequisite. The discipline faculty insist that two-year college students are not the same demographic as those who are at a four-year college.