Academic Assembly Update

Participation of Adjuncts in Faculty Governance

Implementing the Resolution 2019-09-[07] Calling for the Participation of Non-tenure-track Faculty in Faculty Governance, the Executive Committee of the Assembly formed the Task Force on Adjunct Participation in Shared Governance. The Task Force will reach out to adjunct faculty to solicit their support and opinion, and review the Constitution and By-Laws of the Grant Campus Academic Assembly to see how those need to be changed to include adjuncts. This group has joint full-time and adjunct membership. Professors DiMauro-Brooks and Wolfson are serving as the co-chairs. The Task Force will present its initial recommendations to the Executive Committee on November 26.

Presidential Search Committee

The Chair of the Committee Theresa Sanders responded to the Resolution 2019-09 [08] Calling for Additional Faculty Representation in the Search for a New College President. (That resolution was adopted unanimously at the October 1, 2019 meeting of the Assembly.)

The Presidential Search Committee is planning to hold forums to get feedback from the College community:

• Faculty Forum – Wednesday, November 13th, 3:45 p.m. – 4:45 p.m.
• Staff Forum – Thursday, November 14th, 11:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m.
• Student Forum – Thursday, November 14th, 12:00 p.m. – 12:45 p.m.
• Open Forum (open to all faculty, administrators, staff, students and those who may have had prior scheduling conflicts) – Thursday, November 14th, 1:15 p.m. - 2:00 p.m.

These forums will take place in the following simulcast locations:

• Montauk Point Room on the Ammerman Campus
• Learning Resource Center (Auditorium-Room 101) on the Michael J. Grant Campus
• Montaukett Learning Resource Center (Room 107/108) on the Eastern Campus
• Culinary Arts and Hospitality Center in Riverhead (Room 219)
• Sayville Center (Room 129)

Please come to share your views and encourage others to attend!

Social Media Policy

On August 16, 2018 the College Board of Trustees approved an Employee Social Media Policy. The Social Media Content Guidelines and Procedures for College Social Media Sites are being developed to facilitate implementation of this policy. In addition, the College is consolidating control over official SCCC social media sites. Director of Communications Drew Biondo is coming to our meeting to speak about specific implementation steps and to answer questions.

The Committee met on 10/29/19 and welcomed a new member to the group. The Chair continues to recruit to fill the remaining vacancies. There is still one vacancy for Grant campus representative on the College-wide Committee.

Updates from the "W" Policy Revision Subcommittee were discussed, and the main points from the online blackboard discussion were addressed. These discussions are included here:

1. General discussion
2. Student-initiated withdrawal during the first two-thirds of the term
3. VP for Academic Affairs-approved withdrawal during the last third of the term
4. Addition of XF option to the drop down menu
5. Removal of W option from the drop down menu

The Subcommittee plans to draft W policy revision for a vote at the next College-wide Academic Standards Committee meeting. The plan is to vote on these revisions at the December governance meetings across all three campuses. Brief updates from the Absences and Attendance Policy Subcommittee and the Academic Integrity Workgroup were also discussed. Faculty Authored Textbook Subcommittee had no substantial updates.

The Technology Committee met on 9/24 and 10/29. The Committee had shared a Technology survey with the members on the committee to share with their departments. The survey closed on 10/31. The results will be compiled and analyzed. At the 9/24 meeting, the Committee elected Jacqueline Stack as Secretary of the Committee. We have discussed and communicated the new features of BlackBoard, the forthcoming integration of Guided Pathways into Degree Works and the College Brief sent out on 9/11. The Technology Committee Co-Chairs were appointed to the newly formed College Digital Committee which replaced the College Computing Council and is being led by VP Shady Azzam-Gomez. The College has unveiled a new self-service is ticketing system (sunysuffolk.edu/suffolkhelp) for technology issues, 1002 requests, IT projects, IT training, etc. The Committee is investigating whether digital sign-in will be made available to adjuncts. The next meeting of the Committee is 12/3.

Two remaining scholarship workshops for the Fall semester are scheduled for

• November 14, 2019 from 11 AM – 12 PM in Caumsett Hall 10, and
• December 9, 2019 from 1 PM – 2 PM in Captree 113.

These workshops will focus on SCCC continuing student scholarships for Spring 2020 and will teach students how to apply for scholarships online. Please see the flyer for Fall 2019 workshops.

The deadline to apply for Spring 2020 SCCC continuing student scholarships is Friday, December 20, 2019.

On November 8, 2019 the Committee passed three resolutions pertaining to the W Policy. We would like the resolutions to be voted on at the December meetings of the three governance bodies.

1. Proposal to Remove W from Final Grade Drop Down Menu
2. Proposal to Extend the Withdrawal Period to Two-Thirds of the Term
3. Post-Withdrawal Deadline Appeal Policy

College Digital Commettee convened for the first time on October 16, 2019. The following are the highlights of what transpired at the meeting.

• Overview – Shady Azzam-Gomez
  • This Committee is replacing and changing the format of the College Computing Council. The Committee will meet once a semester, more if it is deemed necessary. Generally the meeting will be held the 2d week of the 2d month of the semester.
  • MS Office 365 tools should be used for collaboration. Documents and spreadsheets should be shared and not sent as an email attachment. Sending attachment slows down the speed of the email's receipt by the intended recipient due to the layers of security email are now subjected to.
  • Training – a ticketing system will be used to request training. Training can be group or one-on-one. Specific training can be requested (IT, security, MS Office tools, etc.)
  • The IT Security office has sent phishing emails to faculty and staff to determine if there is a pattern of and who is being misled by phishing emails.
  • Electronic Information Technology (EIT) is responsible for VPATs. Michele Fowler has been made a part of this group and will be handling a lot of the VPAT work.
  • There is a self-service password reset for faculty and staff through MS 365. It will be available for students in the future. This has reduced calls about password resets to the help desk.
  • External Email Banner – there have been complaints about its effect when searching through emails, and concerns that emails from BlackBoard to students would have this banner. Emails sent through BlackBoard to students do not have the external email banner,
  • Banner has been updated to Banner 9 which will provided a lot more functionality and gives Banner an updated look.
  • Adobe – there are licenses for the Creative Cloud but Adobe Acrobat Reader DC is being dropped in favor of Foxit.
  • Commencement Tickets were handled online through the University Tickets software. It was a success. If you have a need to sell tickets to an event, this system can be used.
  • The new Suffolk Help ticketing system was recently released.
  • Distributed Antenna System - an RFP is in process. It will boost cell tower power on the 3 campuses and eliminate poor reception and include all carriers.
  • A new customer relations manager is being implemented by Student Affairs to aid with tracking and communication with students.
  • ITS is looking into requiring Dual Authorization in certain situations.
  • Dual Enrollment (HS students) – will be moving to an online tracking system. Currently it is done manually with spreadsheets. We have approximately 5,000 high school students at the College and handling the tracking manually has become too burdensome.
  • The new ITS webpage is sunysuffolk.edu/ITS
• Desktop Support - Drew Rabinowitz
  • Windows 10 migration is ongoing. They are beta testing MS Office 19. This will probably one of the last updates for Office, the program will be moving to a fully web-based product accessible through MS 365.
  • The challenges with the updates is checking all of the ancillary software for compatibility.
• ITS – Jason Fried
  • Workplace Answers contract expired. An RFP has sent out and 3 bids are being reviewed. ITS is looking at the curriculum and modules available.
  • ITS is looking at the process and procedures of IT access terminations – when someone leaves the College. They may come back as an adjunct, notification may not get to ITS for a bit, they are trying to identify gaps and reduce risks.
  • Technology Purchasing Governance – all software goes through the VPATs process but it also has to go through a technical review for data privacy issues, server capacity, frequency of back-ups, etc. All software (purchased and freeware) should go through the accessibility and technical review. Freeware is the issue, purchased software has a procedure that's invoked when the purchase is made.
  • ITS is reviewing API practices.
• Infrastructure – Steve Clark
  • Zero client – the virtual desktop initiative is continuing and will be expanding. So far, it has been a successful initiative.
  • The copper and fiber cables in and between buildings is being upgraded to increase speed and reliability.
  • The wireless networks are also being updated. They are trying to create separate out networks so that pathways can be built to manage capacity. The current network can't handle the wireless capacity.
• Enterprise Applications – Laura Levine and Christopher Blake
  • The Banner 9 update included updates to web-based forms. It was a very large undertaking.
  • The College has instituted the Chosen Name Policy – so there is a field to enter your chosen name, if different from your legal name.
  • Degree Works has been installed – it was a SUNY Mandate and helps to show the transferability of credit to other colleges.
  • SLATE is the customer relation manager we are using.
  • College Scheduler is a program we will be using to build students schedules.
  • Purple Briefcase is no longer being used. They did not have a VPAT and were not ADA compliant. We are looking at College Central instead.
  • Web Time Entry – part-time employees have been using paper timecards. Banner 9 provides a web-based time entry process so part-time employees time submission will be automated (eventually).
  • Clockwork is a disability services software that will be used to track paperwork in the Disability Services Office.
• ETU - Pete DiGregorio (I'm just including Grant's ETU – I have notes from the other 2 campuses but didn't seem too relevant to us)
  • Over the summer, 270 PC, 20 iMacs and many projectors were replaced. 800 PCs were reimaged.
  • The 3 ETUs have been getting together for various trainings. They will continue to meet for trainings.
  • The Veterans Resource Center was moved to Sagtikos.
  • WISE management system is being trialed in the Business Tech lab to track zero client machines,
  • VDI project advantage – software can be put where it is needed, e.g. the tutoring center computer science tutor need specific software, with VDI ETU was able to get an icon on the desktop easily.
  • It also benefits the CAD program because machines with little RAM can be used to access software that requires a lot of RAM because it hosted n the server and not the machine.
  • All classrooms were for projectors that can be controlled remotely. All have HDMI now no VGA.
  • The Sagtikos bid is going out. The SAG Building will be the home of Fine Arts and will most likely need rewiring.
  • They are working through the Windows 10 issues.
  • Apple released a new OS – Catalina. It's being tested and when it was uploaded – it broke everything on the MAC that we use.
  • Johanna Boutcher is doing the college-wide overload scheduling and holds trainings for students and faculty.
  • The ETU coordinators try to meet regularly by WebEx.
• Center for Innovative Pedagogy – Camille Karlson
  • Online Coursework – we have a number of degrees that are fully online and many that 50% - 75% online.
  • There are over 3,000 students enrolled in at least 1 online class, 5 are out-of-state, 387 are out-of-county.
  • The out-of-state students can enroll because of NC-SARA which established national standards for distance education in higher ed.
  • We are trying to become an OPEN SUNY+ school. The designation would put us into more/better search results when students are searching for courses and gets us additional funding.
  • Faculty Support – the eLearning Academy is open as well as the Advanced Academy.
  • With regard to the BlackBoard maintenance time – the issue was discuss at the SUNY meeting with the iTech and it was determined that Wednesdays from 4am-7am worked best for the majority of campuses. Exceptions cannot be carved out.
• Subcommittees
  • Networking – Steve Clark – hasn't met
  • Student Tech Fee – Paul Basileo – hasn't met – the budget is flat, they will be looking into purchasing multi-year licenses for savings and to stagger costs.
  • Professional Development – Shady Azzam-Gomez – he will put PD opportunities on MS Teams
  • Policy – Shady Azzam-Gomez – they are inventorying all of the IT policies and review them and determine what needs to be updated.

Vice President Lauren Tacke-Cushing received 66% of the Annual Academic Assessment reports from the 2018-2019 year. In the 2017-2018 cycle, 86% of the reports were received by this time, so we are down by 20%.

The committee met on Friday, November 1. The following items were discussed.

• Each campus reported on any issues or feedback regarding purchasing textbooks and course materials from the campus bookstores
• Issues discussed included: wait time at the bookstores the first few days of the semester, promoting online ordering more, miscommunication with web orders with email sent (this email message/system is in the process of being revised to make it more streamlined and easier to understand)
• Future enhancement: students will have the ability to scan student ID card and receive a print-out of class schedule with textbook/course materials needed for each course. Time to complete: TBD
• If a faculty or department is meeting with a publisher representative, Follett is requesting to be invited to the meeting
• In addition to the $10,000 scholarship funding through the SCC Foundation, Follett will also be donating $3,500 to the campus libraries per year
• Follett distributed an SCCC Bookstore Calendar for Winter/Spring 2020 and highlighted that book orders are due by 11/4 due to HEOA compliance. In order for all books to be stocked and ready for Spring semester, book orders must be submitted no later than 12/16. The earlier book orders are submitted, the more beneficial for the students (ex. availability of used books, etc.)

The Committee is working on the following proposals:

1. Honors Program Class Size 22→24 Proposal
2. ART120 Color Theory Class Size 17→20 Proposal
3. GRD101 Graphic Design I Class Size 18→20 Proposal
4. GRD103 Typography I Class Size 18→20 Proposal
5. MUS111 Piano for Non-Majors Class Size 14→16 Proposal
6. MUS124 Piano 1 Class Size 14→16 Proposal
7. MUS128 Piano 2 Class Size 14→16 Proposal

The DSAC met last Oct 12. The two main topics discussed were the Accuplacer and the organization of our yearly Developmental Studies Workshop that happens every March. Here are the main points that came up in the discussions:

1. Accuplacer may go away?
   1. California has gotten rid of it and uses high school GPA instead. They feel accuplacer not as good a predictor as high school performance. (But not all high schools have same standards).
   2. Multiple measures used to currently place students, not just accuplacer
   3. Waiting more semesters to see if students are being placed properly
   4. Math dept cancelled a lot of developmental classes. Same with other departments.
   5. More RD099 and fewer 098 across all campuses.
   6. With new placement, did number of developmental students change?
   7. Many low IQ students registering
   8. Maybe look whether regents/high school scores match where they were placed.
2. Spring Workshop/Professional Developmental Day
   1. Should we have the Developmental workshop as part of PD day?
   2. "Trends in Developmental Education" – possible talk

Next meeting on Thu Nov 14 at 3:45 pm in room Ammerman 205, Selden campus.

The deadline to apply for Spring 2020 SCCC continuing student scholarships is Friday, December 20, 2019.

At the September 12 meeting of the Council, the 2020-2027 Strategic Plan draft was discussed. Concerns were raised about finilizing the Plan when the College is searching for the next President who will be responsible for the implementing that Plan. It was suggested that the next Strategic Plan should be adopted after the College has a new President in place so that person may contribute their thoughts and vision. Some members wanted a better explanation of the logic behind how the goals were established.

The Council met on October 6 to address those concerns. It was decided to review the draft of Values and Institutional Goals and to give individual Council members the opportunity to provide feedback using online discussion format.

In Spring 2020 professor DiMauro-Brooks will be teaching COL 110 which is the first college seminar course offered at Grant tied to service learning/community service. This course is 3 credits. Please spread the word. A flyer contains more details.