********************************************* DISCLAIMER: THIS FILE WAS PRODUCED FOR COMMUNICATION ACCESS AS AN ADA ACCOMMODATION AND IS PRETTY CLOSE TO 100% VERBATIM. THIS IS AN EDITED FILE BUT MAY CONTAIN SOME ERRORS. THIS IS NOT A LEGAL DOCUMENT, IT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED, PRIVILEGED OR CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION. THIS FILE SHALL NOT BE DISCLOSED IN ANY FORM (WRITTEN OR ELECTRONIC) AS A VERBATIM TRANSCRIPT OR POSTED TO ANY WEBSITE OR PUBLIC FORUM OR SHARED WITHOUT THE EXPRESS WRITTEN CONSENT OF THE HIRING PARTY. THIS IS NOT AN OFFICIAL TRANSCRIPT AND SHOULD NOT BE RELIED UPON FOR PURPOSES OF VERBATIM CITATION. ********************************************* December 5, 2025 Faculty Senate [background talking] ---Denise Reilly: We have a special musical guest that's going to  start our meeting for us today. Are you ready?   Oh yeah. Come on down. You're the next contestant on "Miss Riley's Right." Just joking... [crowd laughing] it's what I tell my students. Are you going to do it from there? --Jeff Gabbitas: [unintelligible] ---Denise Reilly: So, as a holiday spectacular. --Jeff Gabbitas: Is this on? This is on, right? ---Denise Reilly: It is on. --Jeff Gabbitas: Can you hear me pretty well? All right... I'll sing close. ---Denise Reilly: Okay... so, as a holiday spectacular, we have our very own faculty, who is going to serenade us with what he serenade us with at Downtown Campus at our Holiday Luncheon Celebration. Now, [chuckles] we realized around Valentine's Day that Jeffrey has a gift, a voice... it was nice and it was impromptu... and so then we asked him to sing and he actually has a parody and it was so cool... but he sang it to Downtown Campus, which are not all faculty that could really understand the reference to D2L and all these things. So without any further ado, let's enjoy the music from our own Translation and Interpretation Studies faculty, Jeffrey Gabbitas.   --Jeff Gabbitas: [♪ musical note] And none of these... [applause] and none of these lyrics were created by AI... just so you know. [laughs] Go ahead. [♪ music up and under] ♪ You say it's been five long years and you're comfortable teaching away. ♪ You cry when you log onto Zoom with no voices or faces all day. ♪ Why so sad? Remember your class full of students in person. Hooray. ♪ But you're feeling bad, cuz you miss all the good interaction with colleagues you stay. ♪ You'll be back... soon you'll see... Pima College is the place to be. ♪ You'll be back... in your class.... you'll remember all the students that pass. ♪ One on ones... in the hall... conversations even out on the mall. ♪ So much fun... the office too... they'll even come back 5 years later, just to say, "How do you do?" ♪ [music, lots of da dahs] ♪ You say you miss the simple way to teach... you just can't seem to get D2L on the screen. ♪ And no, don't change the subject... only I can teach my subject... my virtual learning subject. ♪ My invisible, muted, disappearing online subject.. Forever and ever... forever and ever and ever. ♪ You'll be back... it is clear... teaching students you can see and hear. ♪ You'll be back, in one year... attendance tracking with all of your peers. ♪ When you're gone, you'll be sad... don't leave the state... the taxes are so bad. ♪ But I won't push... I will show... I'll even cap student enrollment to five students to remind you of my love. ♪ [music, lots of da dahs] Everybody. [music continues with a lot more da dahs] [music ends, applause] ---Denise Reilly: And that is how we start our December... oh, it's not October... yes, it's December. [chuckles]    That is how we start our December 5th faculty senate meeting. Thank you Jeffrey Gabbitas... faculty have a lot of talent. So, without any further ado and thank you Dennis for driving us again... we are going to start out with introductions and sign-in sheet and all the fun business that we have today... so, pulling up the agenda and I'll start... we'll go around the room,  so just make sure... we have to be cognizant of time... if you could make sure to know where the microphones are at,    and kind of be ready to go up and speak... and say something rather than us wait. Denise Riley, faculty senate President,  college readiness and student success. ---Kelly O'Keefe: Hello... Kelly O'Keefe, faculty and department head for Health Information Technology, representative for Workforce Development, Lifelong Learning, and President-elect. ---David Parker: David Parker, chief risk officer, chief compliance officer, title 9 Coordinator. ---Michelle Tong: I have the shortest title... I'm Michelle Tong, director of compliance. ---Sol Gomez: I'm Sol Gomez... uh, what am I? I am the Desert Vista Campus Library department head... I'm representing the Library. ---Diane Lussier: Hi everyone... Diane Lussier, department head Mathematics, Downtown Campus... faculty senate representative for the division of Mathematics. ---Ally Stacey: Ally Stacey, faculty representative for Mathematics, proxy for Caroline Torres. ---Aubrey Conover: Good afternoon. Aubrey Conover, Vice Chancellor, Campus operations. ---David Bea: Good afternoon everyone... David Bea, Executive Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration. ---Tina Neil: Tina Neil, AVC for human resources. ---Emily Halvorson-Otts: Good afternoon... Emily Halvorson-Otts, acting Vice Provost of Academic Affairs, and guest. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: Kimlisa Salazar Duchicela, faculty senator, Social  Sciences at all. At all... [laughs] ---Liz Rangel Arriola: Liz Rangel Arriola, faculty senator for PimaOnline and World Languages faculty. ---Michael Nolan: Michael Nolan, faculty senator, Visual Arts. ---Alex Armstrong: Alex Armstrong, Biology department head and faculty senator in the Sciences. ---Matej Boguszak: Hi everyone, Matej Boguszak, Math. ---Sarah Robinson: Sarah Robinson, faculty senator for K12 education. ---Makyla Hays: Makyla Hays, here is your PCCEA president. ---Sarah Kirchoff: Sarah Kirchoff, I'm the faculty senate for Applied Technology. ---Vivian Knight: Vivian Knight, faculty senator for Business and IT... and lead Hospitality Leadership division. ---Jane Hall: Jane Hall, faculty senator for Business and IT as well. ---Denise Reilly: [whispering] After Rita. ---Jeff Nasse: Jeff Nasse, Chancellor. ---Ian Roark: Ian Roark, Provost. ---Rita Lennon: Hi everyone... Rita Lennon, Governing Board representative and representing Health Professions. ---Dennis Just: Hello... Dennis Just, Vice President and President Elect. ---Lisa Jurkowitz: Good afternoon... Lisa Jurkowitz, Intensive Academic ESL, proxy for Cynthia Howe. ---Denise Reilly: Did you want to pass?  [unintelligible] Okay, maybe pass that microphone back there. Thank you, Tony... there we go. ---Padma Nair: Padma Nair, Chemistry from Science division. ---Tony Sovak: Hello... Oh, hi... I'm Tony, the director of the LMS and E-Learning Quality guest. ---Jeff Gabbitas: Jeff Gabbitas, faculty TRS, guest ---Denise Reilly: and phenomenal singer... entertainment. ---Elliot Mead: Elliot Mead, Communications, guest. ---M Bennett: M Bennett, Writing, guest. ---Amanda Abens: Amanda Abens, Workforce Development, guest. ---Sam Overton: Sam Overton, Accounting guest. ---Michael Amick: Michael Amick, Chief Online Learning Officer. Guest, ---Jeff Thies: Good afternoon. Jeff Thies, Vice Provost, guest. ---Terry Filipowicz: Terry Filipowicz, Communications division, guest. ---Robert Loomis: I'm Loomis, Digital Film and Video... I'm doing a presentation today. ---Shelley Chen: Shelley Chen, Video Game Design... doing a presentation today as well. ---Jeff Lowry: Jeff Lowry, Digital Arts department head and faculty, guest... and presenting as well. ---Dana Roes: Dana Roes, Dean of the Arts. ---Julie Andrews: Julie Andrews, Education and Dance. I'm a guest. ---Josie Milliken: Josie Milliken, Dean of Distance Education, guest. ---Michael Tulino: Michael Tulino, registrar guest. ---Kate Schmidt: Kate Schmidt, Academic Resources and Services, guest. ---Reed Dickson: Reed Dickson, director of Academic Leadership and Faculty Support, guest. ---Greg Loumeau: Greg Loumeau, faculty senator for Digital Arts... and proxy for Sean Mendoza. ---Denise Reilly: Good job. Thank you so much.  I think we got everybody in there.   So, welcome to our December faculty senate meeting 2025... we're looking all very spiffy today.   We'd like to take a look at the  November minutes first and take a vote.   I'll wait for a faculty senator to motion  to approve the minutes and then a second. Alex votes to approve the minutes... do I hear a second? Second... Kelly O'Keefe seconds the minutes... and all those... oh, look, we get to do this. [chuckles] Yes, we can... we don't have to use the virtual hands... [chuckles] let's take a look around the room first. I guess I should ask Dennis, do we have quorum by chance with the sign-in sheets? We do not have quorum? Okay. So, we're going to have to wait... we're going to have  to wait on the voting for just a couple minutes,   to vote on... or to officially vote on that. If  you let us know, please make sure to sign in,   those of you that are senators, so that we can make that quorum. Do we have any requests for agenda modification? Kelly, request? ---Kelly O'Keefe: Yes, I'd like to amend the agenda and add on an additional official vote from faculty senate to enable AI for our students starting this spring... I've linked it on the agenda... please make sure that you vote as a senator only. And we need to make sure that our leadership at the college has enough information from the faculty representatives to make this decision for the college. Thank you. ---Denise Reilly: Where is it located, Kelly? ---Kelly O'Keefe: It's on the agenda. ---Denise Reilly: Okay. Are we ready to move on to the next? Oh, do  we have any requests for executive session? Great. Okay, moving on down. Do we have a request for open forum from our senators... request for open forum? No... unusual for December not to have a request for open forum.  Any events or exciting things happening? No. Yes. Sarah Robinson. [unintelligible] ---Sarah Robinson: There is a STEM... wait, hold on... Oh, got to turn it on.  Can you hear me? There's a STEM boot camp at Northwest Campus... ---Various Voices: No... recording... we are recording. Oh. Oh, there we go... there is a STEM boot camp at Northwest Campus... please encourage and email your students to go in A207 from 10 to 12 tomorrow. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you very much. Any other items for open form? ---Dana Roes: Tonight at 7 p.m [unintelligible] ---Mike Rom: Is the mic on? ---Dana Roes: Oh, I have to do this again. [someone laughs] ---Kelly O'Keefe: Is it on? ---Denise Reilly: you ready for the ---Dana Roes: All right... ready again. Tonight is "Flex" a dance recital at 7 p.m. in our Proscenium theater at the West Campus as well as tomorrow. Julie Andrew... Julie Andrews is our choreographer and our lead dance faculty lead... thank you... and I will shut this off. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you... another forum item? ---Tony Sovak: Hello. Oh, this is still on... that's great. Pima Community College Creative Writing Club has an open mic at Downtown Campus Library, room 153... Tuesday, December 9th, 3:30 to 4:30... I'm going to be there and if they let me, I'm going to read a poem. So, if anyone wants to see me read a poem, I'll be there. ---Denise Reilly: We're showcasing talent all over the place here with faculty... we started with singing... we've got some dance maybe, some poetry. Let's keep it going. [chuckles] Okay... next, we have requests for faculty engagement. Take it away Dennis. ---Dennis Just: Yes... so first, we are at quorum now, so we can vote after this, on the last meeting's minutes. So yeah... so there are two requests... you can get links to them in the agenda. The first is about picking the theme for All Faculty Day... so, there's a few different color choices that you can select from... so, please vote... and then, the other one is for a work group on shared governance... coming up with a definition of it, as well as updating the appropriate AP and BP's and standard operating procedures... and potentially coming up with a tool to assist college folks in decision making... so, that's quite important... so, if you're interested, please again, check out that link in the agenda. Oh, and all faculty can vote for the theme, too... so, please share it with your constituents... thanks, Kelly. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you... so now, I think we need to move to a vote... we  had a first... we had a motion to approve... we had a second.  And can we take a vote? All those in favor to approve the minutes from November, raise your hands. Yeah... the real ones... yes... are we counting, Dennis, or am I count? Okay. ---Dennis Just: Yeah, it passes. ---Denise Reilly: Okay, motion passes. [chuckles] Thank you, the minutes are approved and they'll be uploaded to our web page. Moving on down, we're starting out with our right on time with our Provost report. So, take that sip of water there, Dr. Roark. Are you ready? ---Dr. Ian Roark: Yes. [misc. talking off mic] I've started my timer... uh, five minutes and then seven seconds just for a little bit of a buffer there. Good afternoon everybody...  I gave this report at staff council this morning... some of you were listening in... so, of course it is redundant, it is the same one... I am very excited, as we are past Thanksgiving and are going into winter break. So first and foremost, I want to thank all of you for what you have been doing in the classroom this term to ensure the success of our students and please continue to ask them to register for spring. And then, I hope that during the winter break you really you really do get that time off to decompress... to reflect... to spend time with family, friends, loved ones, dogs... and do the things that you like to do during this winter break   and for many holiday season... again, just thank you for everything that you do. I'm not going to read verbatim of course the bullet points, as I never really do, but just highlight some of the things. So, first of all, coming out of the College Leadership Council or CLC... the key topics of the CLC that we were preparing for for robust conversation that day were the move to an 8-week scheduling paradigm with a guided pathways context... as well as things regarding first-year experience, such as  the implementation and partnership with student experience,  the career coaching tool so that our students are advised for transfer in a career context.    As you all are aware, we eliminated, a number of years ago, the concentrations   within the Associate of Liberal Arts, the  Associate of Science, so on and so forth.   We are going to be bringing back a version,  it's not the exact same as a concentration,   but a career... the career plan codes reimplementing  them... so that we can really rely on all of the work  that was done on the default pathways with respect to the Associate of Science, ABUS, and Associate of Liberal Arts. also, really prepared for the higher learning commission visit... for our site visit for the Bachelor's Degree in Education. It will be called a Bachelor's Degree in Education and of course we... it has a dual... a dual endorsement... if somebody here... if I gave that title wrong or that degree let me know. Hot off the presses... this week we received the feedback from the Higher Learning Commission site visitors, and of course, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves and say it is 100% for sure going to happen, but if I read there's... there were... it was a very glowing report with respect to our readiness to go for our first Bachelor's Degree. So, we're going through for errors of fact, of which there are a couple minor ones we may or may not contest... and then move forward on the pro... on the project of our first Bachelor's Degree... so, very excited about that. I want to thank all of the faculty, the staff, Deans, and every... everybody really, who was involved in making this happen. We asked a lot of people to do a lot of things differently to speed up the implementation of this degree by one year   faster than was originally intended... and that's  really going to help clear the way procedurally   for even more Baccalaureate Degrees to be coming on the table... so, please be visiting with your Deans about ideas in your respective areas for future Baccalaureate Degrees. I've got two minutes left, so I'm going to go ahead and skip down to Santa Cruz... a lot of activity occurring in Santa Cruz County, and you can look at that very complicated acronym for the provisional district,   but so, we're just going to colloquially refer to it as Santa Cruz, snd of course, we operate out of the center in in Nogales. Things are really robust there and things are growing because of the economic development in that community particularly because of the presence of South 32 and what's also happening with expanding the port of entry at the border. Right now, for example, out of all of our high schools, and we serve over 70 some odd high schools I believe in dual enrollment. Tucson... Tucson High School is our number one high school in terms of enrollment... in dual enrollment. Number two out of all of those over 70 high schools is Nogales High School, right... and now we also have a lot of Workforce programs... you may have seen the launch of an Electrical Certification, non-credit version of that, down in Nogales, in partnership with South 32... we had spots for 12 and over 100 people signed-up for that particular program... so, there's a lot of demand for what Pima Community College has to offer in Nogales and in Rio Rico. You can see a lot of external engagements there but one I wanted to highlight at the end, was attending my first meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges and Education Design Lab workforce PELL advisory committee. I was asked by the American Association of Community Colleges to join this advisory committee because of the great work that Pima Community College did in preparing and laying the groundwork for Workforce Help... myself and some others actually worked with the AACC a couple of years ago on their framework for advancing that national legislation and then at the state level with the launch of Pima FastTrack as well as adding non-credit workforce training to count towards our FTSE for all community colleges... we led that effort... I was then invited to represent Pima on this group and so I'm very honored by that... there are four of us at the state level, that will be meeting with representatives from the Office of the Governor... that's Dr. Arellano, David Donderewicz, Amanda Abens, and myself... to work with the Office of the Governor in setting the parameters for Workforce PELL in the state of Arizona...  that's one of the pieces of the national legislation... so very excited about what this is going to do   to open up opportunities for our students... since I have the mic, I'm also going to say one more thing... this is my last meeting to have to be working with Denise Riley as President and all of the other officers are changing their roles. This has been a fantastic faculty senate group of officers to work with... they have educated me a lot, my team... and we listen, and I really have learned so much about your perspective... and I really look forward to again working with Dr. O'Keefe...   but Denise, I really just want to thank you for your leadership... and really, I think, bridging a divide between the Provost office and faculty senate, as well as faculty, more broadly... and really, you led the way on that with your team here, all of the officers, but just really want to just recognize Denise for her leadership and her advocacy for faculty and for ultimately student success... and I think that Denise really gives... deserves a round of applause for how... [applause] her... her tenure as President... that concludes my time. I thought we didn't have it... ---Denise Reilly: Mess my time up. [laughs] Ooh, cool. ---Dr. Ian Roark: I got a text earlier that said this was actually left to [unintelligible], so we didn't know if we could actually get to it today... [laughing] We actually have the plaque, so this is in recognition of service on behalf of Dr. Nasse. Dr. Nassie, would you do the honors of joining me to present the plaque to President Riley? ---Dr. Jeffrey Nasse: I see my signature on there, so I probably should present it.  [laughs] Congratulations... you've done great work. Thank you so much for your service to the college... of course, our faculty and our students and staff. Well done. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you... so cool. [Applause] [off mic] It's the last meeting... [laughs] December. Thank you very much... I appreciate it... and it's been an honor. I've got my report coming... so, I'll give my final thoughts at that point. So, without any further ado, we have Rita Lennon with the Governing Board report. ---Rita Lennon: I would like to concede my time... Dr. Nasse, would you like to say anything while you're here? ---Dr. Jeffrey Nasse: Sure. We're just building on... good afternoon everyone... Good to see everybody... happy holidays... and it's great to be here at faculty senate and participating... and congratulations Denise... Professor Riley. Thank you so much for your service, right... you give... this is a volunteer position, right? You're not making a million dollars  serving as faculty senate President. And I've seen, certainly, since I've been here, that it's a tremendous amount of work... and as we... and I heard one of the priorities continuing to be thinking about  shared governance, practicing shared governance,   defining... thinking about shared governance at Pima  Community College... you've been a big part of that, right? Kind of initial effort as I've joined the college... so, thank you for being so welcoming, being so supportive, and being just a great leader for the team... and thanks to all of you...   you know, it's the end of the year as you heard Dr. Roark... you know, you give me the mic and I didn't have the...    I don't know much... how much time you do have, Rita, but I could be up here a long time.   But I think just, thank you... gratitude to all the faculty, all the staff here, the leaders here today, for what you do in the classroom, day in and day out... I so appreciate it... I think about it a lot. Always thinking about how we can just do things better, right? Continuous improvement for our students. And in August, I talked about adapt and advance, like building on things that work, trying to get better in spaces, and we'll continue that.   I know it's the end of the calendar year... I kind of think of things along academic year calendars. So, to me, it's kind of a halfway point... so, it'll be nice to have a little bit of a break and then come back strong in January for that. And it's all about, I think, the unifying lens... and I said this at the beginning, when I started here at Pima. It's all about how can we make our students more successful... so, all the decisions that we're trying to weigh through,   and work with you on, is around student success... and we need faculty leadership, right, to make that happen. So, you've been doing that.  Thank you for the great work and encourage your colleagues, right? We're here at faculty senate, staff council was earlier today... but I'm always thinking about the faculty and staff, who aren't in those forums... and so, as we leave here today, how do we engage our colleagues in all this great work? So... that's it, thank you. ---Rita Lennon: Thank you... I'll give a very, very quick Board of Governors or Governing Board review, report, whatever... it was my last meeting in November... so, that was nice... it was a great opportunity to meet the Board Members at a different level than you usually get to when you just attend the meeting. So, I thought that was wonderful to be able to do that for the last couple of years... my report, I just want to point out, there was two meetings in November, the 15th... I'm sorry, the 12th and the 17th. On the 12th, they talked about dual enrollment representatives and recruitment... high school recruitment representatives... they are two different teams now, instead of just the one team trying to do it all. So I think it's really important for us to be aware of that... where our recruitment efforts are going. So there, I've attached the presentation as well as a link to the entire YouTube video... also on the 17th there was a study session... Tina Neil gave a presentation about how professional development   is going to look for us in the future and it's going to be different... so, I think it's important for all of us to watch the presentation. We're going back to Precipio... and there's about 40,000 courses that... and certifications you all can take for free, or at least the training for free and the certification may not be free... and instead of it just being a one time a year, set a goal, and work towards it and meet your your supervisor, it's going to be more frequent check-ins. So, I think it's important for us to be aware of that. Anyway, that's all from me... thank you. Sarah, you're next. ---Denise Reilly: Let's give Rita Lennon a round of applause... [applause] for her service to the college. Kind of a few of us have been doing this a while up here... [chuckles] And next comes Makyla Hayes with our PCCA report. ---Makyla Hays: Hello... okay... yes, it works. [chuckles] I just wanted to say thank you to faculty... it's been a really awesome semester... lots of engagement, lots of conversation, and I hope to see that continue... we had... I have a lot of information in my report, including who your representatives are... we really want to get you connected with your representatives and make sure that information is flowing beyond just a small group of people. So, December updates... there is a study session at the Governing Board on December 15th... not sure what it is, but I was at the November meeting and I did represent the feedback I had heard on the work location policy. We're still working on that in AERC as well... there's a survey out in your email that is open until Monday. If you haven't taken it yet or you don't know if, you know, your colleagues have taken it... please encourage faculty to respond, because it gives us our priorities for the next year... we will be reporting on the results of those at All Faculty Day... and giving faculty an update through email... um, let's see... we are still working on shared governance ideas and looking forward to the accountability with the 360 evaluation idea... and the new system that HR is bringing on board...    and we are determining financial priorities what we're going to ask for in the next budget cycle if there's any money...  [chuckles] and seeing what we can do to make sure that we advocate for faculty voice there... and with that, please reach out if you have any questions. ---Denise Reilly: Okay. Ooh, thank you, Makyla. ---Makyla Hays: I was trying to find you. [laughs] ---Denise Reilly: [unintelligible] act here... is this... there we go. Oh, goodness. Okay. So, I decided I'm going to do my last President's report from here, because I wrote it all out, in case I messed up, which I frequently do when I just speak off the cuff... so, here we go... it's titled... and I'll attach it, a Culture of Excellence. Good afternoon, senators, colleagues, administrators, and guests... it has been a long ride. [chuckles] Stepping into faculty leadership at this level and with this commitment for the last 4.5 years has been quite the journey. It has been challenging, exhausting, and rewarding on so many levels. I have worked under three chancellors, three provosts, and multiple faculty senate officer teams. I feel like I've been in active duty. Yes, I have a strong military family background to Pima Community College... I'm including my 2.5 years of service as the Governing Board representative prior to two terms as your faculty senate President... I'm headed into the reserves. It is a deeply moving experience to stand before you today... I was a little thrown off by that at first, just so you know. [chuckles] I could see that in the pictures you're all sending me... It's a deeply moving experience to stand before you today   at the close of my term as the faculty senate  President. In my 26 years as a public educator   in numerous faculty and counselor roles, this has been the single greatest professional honor of my career.   And I want to begin my reflections and  thoughts with profound and heartfelt gratitude.   Thank you to every member of the faculty senate body, who dedicated time away from teaching and service to ensure that the faculty voice was heard. To my faculty senate officer team: Kelly, Dennis, Rita, and Sean. Your support, teamwork, planning, and execution... and your steadfast commitment have been the engine that powered our work. This has been the Dream Team, as we've held each other to high standards, modeled high expectations, propelled the role of faculty to where it belongs, put on a faculty morning talk show, [chuckles] and focused on the work. To my AERC leaders, staff council leaders, and change makers... thank you for working collaboratively with faculty senate.   To the Provost leadership team, especially provost Dr. Ian Roark... thank you for not only listening and supporting,    but taking action in academics... leadership is influence... nothing more, nothing less... to quote John Maxwell, you have influenced me. To our chancellor, Dr. Jeff Nasse, thank you for choosing Pima... you listened and learned about faculty support needs at PCC and have steadily made structural and systems changes to give us that support. I have been impressed by your leadership and that is no easy feat... and to my division leadership, STU department head Amy Davis   and Student Success discipline Dean Dr. Jeff Thies... thank you for supporting me professionally on this important work.    I know it was not easy to navigate my teaching commitments during my 4.5 years as a faculty senate officer... thank you.  I'm especially grateful to the incoming President Kelly, President-elect Dennis, and the new leadership team. You are inheriting a strong foundation and I have complete faith in your vision and energy. To Rita, who brought me into this office in all these officer roles... thank you for entrusting me to lead and seeing my potential   when I truly did not want to be the face or voice of faculty. To the Provost Leadership Team, Deans, chancellors, cabinet, College Leadership Council and faculty support areas of the college... thank you for engaging with the process of shared  governance even when the conversations were   challenging or required compromise and reflection. It's still important to note that while we are working together for the same purpose, student success... there is jurisdiction that must be honored with the unique role of faculty. To that note, my fellow faculty, we have the most support,   voice, and respect at this time than I've seen in my 10 years as full-time faculty at PCC. We have a voice... let's use it appropriately, professionally, and be open-minded and collaborative with our academic leaders.    The support and respect we have is from the top down and I expect that to continue with our Governing Board, Chancellor, and Provost. Our relationship is not defined by agreement on every point... not even our officer team agrees all the time, [chuckles] but by the mutual respect that allows us to approach every issue, from curricular and large-scale college changes, to strategic planning as true partners in the mission of Pima Community College, and to the entire faculty, the heart and soul of this institution... thank you for trusting me with your voice. You are the professionals who transform lives every day, in every classroom and online environment... Your commitment to student success, often under  immense pressure, especially in our current times in higher education and society... is what makes   Pima indispensable to Tucson and Southern Arizona.   When I took this position, I spoke about strengthening our structures, governance processes, system improvements for faculty and students... and embedding the faculty perspective more firmly into the college's strategic blueprint. Looking back, I believe we have made some significant strides... we worked together to streamline our policy review process, ensuring changes are transparent and faculty input is weighed appropriately... we successfully advocated for key support resources and professional development opportunities that directly impact the quality of instruction. The committee repository, Division Spotlight, faculty engagement and recognition, professional development, and a general push for a more organized, structured, and accountable college are all contributions of faculty senate within the last few years. That's something to be proud of.  Can we give my team a round of applause, please? [applause] The focus was and remains central to cultivating  the professional excellence our students deserve.   But perhaps most importantly, we learned how to listen better to another and to the diverse voices across our campuses and programs. The challenges of the past few years, [chuckles] so many... navigating new leadership structures, enrollment shifts, adopting new technologies, and ensuring equity for all students has not been easy. Yet through every complex issue, the faculty senate remained a constant, clear, and collaborative partner. We proved that true shared governance isn't a checkbox... it's the difficult, vital work of consensus building that leads to better, more sustainable decisions for the college. As I step down, I want to leave you with a singular message that is not a farewell, but a blueprint for the future. The work of collaboration must not only continue, it must deepen into a shared culture of excellence. Our mission is too crucial to go back to silos... Pima Community College is a beacon of opportunity for our region. We offer a pathway to a better future, whether through occupational training, transfer degrees, or lifelong learning.   When we, the faculty, staff, and administration collaborate seamlessly, we fulfill that promise effectively.  Furthermore, I challenge us all to consciously foster a deeper institutional culture of excellence. This means more than meeting minimum standards... it means setting audacious goals for student outcomes, continually refining our pedagogical approaches, as you mentioned earlier, and celebrating innovation in teaching and service. Excellence is not a destination, but a shared commitment to continuous improvement, a commitment that demands open communication   and mutual support across all campuses. Moving forward, I urge every faculty member to view your role in the senate...   not just as an obligation or checkbox, but as a dynamic opportunity... continue to share our collective voice not for the sake of conflict, but because robust debate is where the best ideas are forged. This does not mean viewing every initiative or change as a battle, but a way to progress. To our college leadership, please... [chuckles] continue to prioritize the faculty's disciplinary expertise and pedagogical insight. Your strategic vision needs the practical student- facing wisdom that only faculty can provide... let's commit to making every meeting, every committee, and every conversation a true partnership, where the focus remains unwavering,   achieving the highest level of excellence in our  service to our students and their success. If a group or meeting doesn't serve a laser focused  purpose, initiative, or goal, let's not entertain it. The foundation of trust we have built is strong, but it requires continuous maintenance.   It demands that we hold each other accountable, always with respect and always in service to our shared institutional values. Almost there.  I am stepping away from the gavel... actually never had a gavel, so I don't know what that's about. [laughs] I'm stepping away from the position, but I'm not stepping away from Pima. I look forward to returning to the classroom with renewed focus and to supporting the new senate leadership as past President. Pima Community College is a wonderful place to learn and work, made so by the talented people who dedicate their lives to it. And thank you for the lessons I've learned... thank you for the privilege of serving you, and thank you in advance for the vital collaborative work I know we will continue to do together. I wish the incoming president Kelly O'Keefe, and the senate, the entire faculty senate, and the changeover of all our... all of our leaders, productivity and success.  Now, let's go change some more lives. Thank you. [applause] 10 seconds to spare, ooh. [laughs] And that is my final president report.  [laughs] Moving on down to the agenda... oh, Dennis.   ---Dennis Just: Yes. I have a brief update on the vote on enabling AI for the students... we had 79% senators vote... and the... 90% were in favor of enabling it... so, it does pass our vote. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you, Dennis... that's a pretty cool gig he's got back there, by the way... he's got five screens going on... he's watching movies. I'm just joking... [laughs] he's not watching movies. So now, we'll move on to our business section... and we do have a chalk pack.. chocked... chalk packed. I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say... a packed or chalk pack? ---Rita Lennon: Chock pack. ---Denise Reilly: There you go... [chuckling] Wait... chalk full... that was the word I was looking for... there you go. Business section... so, we're going to start with our Division Spotlight... something that was created by the faculty senate officers to highlight what our faculty do that's great... so, please come on up... we have the Arts division with Gaming, Digital Arts, and Film. As they get their gear up and ready to go, are we? ---Dana Roes: Do you want us up there? Uh huh, yeah... up there. Aubrey Conover, are you ready for the next... do you want to go? [chuckles] I'm thinking we just get them set up over there, and then you can go ahead right now with remote work. Would that work? ---Aubrey Conover: Yeah, hopefully, um... I don't anticipate this will be a crazy long conversation. As those of you who remember, Andrew Plucker was here talking about some of the state and international laws that we need to be following... and so we have two groups that are being formed to work on a long-term solution.   But we know, especially for faculty and for summer planning, you all needed something now, so that you could prepare effectively. So... Tina, Andrew, our legal team, all got together and worked on the remote work policy guidelines... I said guidelines, I know it's not a policy... Tina always yells at me... this has not changed, but you will find a significant portion on the bottom.   What we are asking is that, if in working with your supervisor, you identify that you're either going to be working out of the state this summer for more than 30 days or internationally... there is a document here that asks you to affirm that you're going to take all the appropriate steps to do it legally... we're not go... we are not at a place where we're going to ask you to turn in different documents or those types of things... but we just need you to be aware,   so that you are safe both in terms of insurance, workers rights, all those different pieces... and that the college has some protection as we work through this longer process. We're going to continue to have those groups meet to see if we can have a stronger process, whether that's an internal system that we need to develop or if we use an external agency... but we need a little bit more time than we have right now. So, that's the document that is attached here... and I don't know if folks have any questions. ---Denise Reilly: I see one question by Kimlisa Duchicela. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: Actually, I don't have a question... I've read it over... I've sent it out to my faculty... I have a comment: We met at AERC and talked about this at length and we were going to have a task force... and then the next thing we know decisions have been made about  our summer... you didn't reach out to the people that were on the task force... you didn't ask us how we felt about this... of special import is carrying around an IT device across the globe. I feel like this was kind of a backdoor... and it feels pretty yucky in the scope of shared governance. I can understand why we needed to do this, don't get me wrong... but I really feel like this is something that impacts every single person at this college... every single one...  and yet, now we've come up with something, you know,  and we knew it was coming... because our Deans reached out to us and told us to stop scheduling. So, maybe that was the time to ask us for... also for input... also, pull together some of the people on the task force to be part of this... instead of it being done yet again in a vacuum to plug a hole and no shared governance at all. So, that is my comment on this... my fac... the faculty that I represent were like, what? I'm... I can see some head shaking   around the room and yet again, you know, here we  are we talk about respect and and being part of  shared governance and here's something else  that's not a policy, but that we'll have to sign,  and get clearance from IT, and do all of these things... and frankly, you know, a lot of us were already doing these things anyway. It would have been nice if you'd asked us. ---Aubrey Conover: Couple different thoughts: so, one... we are committed to those groups, to have a long-term process    that everyone is part of, so we can move those forward... the challenge we faced as you just articulated was folks were scheduling for summer... and we were caught between a timeline, and the ability with you all to meet on a regular basis... so, these pieces that are on here are just capturing the legal ramifications that we must follow. We are not trying to introduce any new rules or anything... these are basically state, federal, and international rules that we're trying to follow and put into process to give us time  for that more robust conversation, that you're talking about, that needs to happen... and if there are things on here that you don't feel fall under a legal piece, please reach out, and we'll take a look... you know, it's... it was done with the intent only in mind, to make sure people understood what would be required of them if they were working in different venue and to keep them safe in those different areas I mentioned. So... but if there are things that people would like to share, please reach out to myself... to Andrew Plucker... we will take a look and see if we can incorporate them now into this document. And of course, they'll be part of that larger conversation that we do need to have. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you... we need to move on to our next section, but  that will all be noted in our minutes. Thank you ---Unknown: Move on? ---Denise Reilly: We do need to move on... so, we'll  come back to it or connect with Aubrey. Okay, let's go with our Division Spotlight for Fine Arts. ---Dana Roes: Do I have this? Okay, I'm on. Hi. [chuckles] Thank you for inviting the Arts to speak today and be your Feature Spotlight. I'm going to quickly introduce three outstanding artists and faculty members: game entrepreneur Shelley Chen, she's going  to talk about the future of computer art and game... illustrator, graphic designer Jeff Lowry, he's going to speak about graphic design and illustration... and filmmaker Robert Loomis, to talk about our film program. Thank you. ---Denise Reilly: Okay, so just as a refresher, division spotlight came about because we were interested in learning about what our peers are doing in the classroom... so, this is Fine Arts turn... and each has five minutes... and Kelly will give you a one minute warning, okay. ---Shelley Chen: Okay... hi everybody, I'm Shelley Chen... I'm the new faculty member and I teach video games. Today I'm going to talk about what we have been doing the past semester... and also, what the game pathway will go. So, what I have been working on this semester... during the semester I try to boost the student for more advanced   creative thinking... I try to incorporate a lesson,  have them to simulate real life studio experience,   and also sharpen their art skill for industry application... my student, Ariana, made me this meme...  it was loved by every game student I have... so, I decided to put it as a top page. So... what the student were doing before... the previous professor was having them very heavy on text generating ideas. So, when I first got into the classroom, I asked them to send in their portfolio to me... and I get tons of tons of papers and writing with words, narration... and all the creative ideas were limited by the words. So, I was thinking to do something different that's closer to what the industry was doing. So, I encourage them... even if they're not artists... even if they're coders, they're designers... I never draw before I say... use doodle, use any of the imagination that you have... create a vision of what you wanted to do in game design. So, this is what they are... what they came out with... and I thought they're fantastic and all these imaginary... even though they're not well rendered, but they're very, very creative. Another thing that I'm focusing on is to make sure that our students have Leadership Ability training. So, what I do is I spend two weeks talking to them, looking at their portfolio, try to understand their personality. I split them into three groups to make a group project... the three assigned groups all have different structure of leadership arrangement... some of the groups with three types  of leadership students that are running the group.   Another one that has like, one leadership type of student and with a support row student that is helping the leader. And the last group is... the leader was selected because he's an elder student and each group I have made sure that they have student that needs extra help, who is slightly delayed on coding on our side. So, this is an experience that is very close to industry studio companies that, you have to learn how to work with a leader, you had to learn how to work with someone that is slightly... needs more help, more than you do, and you also had to understand how to lead people... so, this is the example that we're doing. Another industry practice that we've been doing... here's another example is concept art. Concept art is the very beginning of the production for feature film animation, for game design, anything that relates to visual, that is the first step... and I have my students start doing silhouettes, which is one of the training to make them like, flesh out characters, not just like draw the first thing that they fall in love with... this is all actually industry standard of practice. So, if they wanted to apply to any internship, any entry-level position, if they have slower development people will be like, okay, this student understands how professional expecting and what they're supposed to do to create visual. And for game design one for student, who first time doing game design, that they have no experience of designing and all this is new to all this whole world, I have them do board game, which is required for the curriculum,  but what I did different is... the student will  experiment with different kinds of material. So, we spend a long time to actually have them putting different method, or putting their ideas into physical pieces. In the beginning you see, they're using pins and cardboard... and during play test and quality insurance phase they start using magnets. So they're refining their idea... they're not just... they're not just putting things that they feel excited about... and we have the final product that is well rendered and very, very good execute. We have an upcoming game show next week... these three games will be showcasing... the student made the three games   entirely... the code, the visual, the music, the sound... they made it themselves... I'm very proud of them. And the showcase will be December 10th at the West Campus bookstore lobby. Please... everybody are welcome to stop by and give the  students like encouragement....they worked very hard... they deserve love from all the departments... so... this one a little bit more... sorry. [chuckles] Can I go a little bit more or...? ---Denise Reilly: You have time. ---Shelley Chen: Okay... so, here's a future pathway for the game pathway... so, since the game pathway is sunsetting, I wanted to redesign this, of course with Dana, and the department... I would like to have a new pathway that is called Computer Art. So, my goal for Computer Art is to create this pathway to... in order that... to have students to access to these three big industries, which is game industry, 3D feature film industry, and tech companies... so, why game industry and why CGR? Is because it's dominating the market right now. Okay... I will wrap up here... and thank you so much for giving me a chance to speak. Thank you. [applause] ---Denise Reilly: In the future it would be nice if we didn't have  to do Division Spotlight as faculty senate, if there were other opportunities for faculty  to showcase their work. What? ---Jeff Lowry: Is it all right if I hold this? I feel weird leaning into it.  [chuckles] It doesn't want to come out. Okay. Hi, Jeff Lowry, Digital Arts, Graphic Design. Let me go ahead and start this. Okay, so... I'm here to talk about the Graphic  Design program. Great graphic, right? [laughs] I was actually messing with you... if that was actually my presentation, it'd be really, really sad. Anyway, I'm here to talk about Digital Arts, Graphic Design program.... what is graphic design? Well, according to the Oxford Languages  Dictionary, graphic design is the art or skill   of combining text and pictures in advertisements,  magazines, and books, which actually sounds like   a really limiting definition, because graphic design or... but what is it really? It's actually much more than that. It actually touches literally anything that you see with text, graphics, and images... it's vitally important to our society, the apps that you look at... it really helps us kind of understand how to get around and be humans. [chuckles] This is a non-exhaustive list of pretty much all the things you can do as a graphic designer, and it ranges anywhere from branding and logos, color palettes, typography... all that stuff... marketing, advertising. One big one, user interface, website design, app design,  software design with a focus on user friendliness... accessibility, and intuitive navigation... and I'm pretty sure that no designer ever touched eLumen or D2L,  because... [laughter] they are the worst to deal with... book, magazines, publications, packaging... literally all packaging is... a designer  touches... motion graphics, which is huge...  a lot of people don't understand that designers  do that ticker you see during news broadcasts.   They do title sequences for films... packaging and all typography and motion graphics that you see in video games.    So, it is huge in terms of what it does... but it can also help win elections. This type face is called Gotham, designed by Jonathan Hoefler... it helped, you know, put a really good branding on the Obama campaign.   Fun fact... after he won, pretty much every political campaign after that used Gotham... because they had to bite his style. [laughs] Or it could also help lose elections... if everyone remembers  the fun Al Gore, George Bush recount in Florida,   where everyone accidentally voted for Buchanan instead of Al Gore. But... so, what... how does this relate to PCC and DAR? Well, our classroom is really designed based on real world timelines, real world projects, not just fun stuff... it's like, hey, you make this... but really, think about like... what is this used for? What are the clients needs? What are the people that are going to be looking at this and seeing this? We use industry standard software and technology... we also are working on this, it's coming soon... but the DAR Design Studio, which will be run by students and they will help provide materials for the Arts division... and hopefully, if everybody is interested, other programs and departments as well... it gives them work experience, portfolio pieces that are beyond the classroom, and just more experience working with others as part of a team. We also teach hard and soft skills, how to write a proper email, file management, you know, all that fun stuff. Focus on artistic and conceptual end... this is really  big, because I was told numerous times, it's like...   oh, Pima... your students are technically, like,  proficient, but they don't know the storytelling.   Actually, I'm... they're very wrong with that... we push storytelling in concept immensely... because if you can't do that as a designer, you're really just going to set type or be a production designer.   Last but not the least... or not... there's two more  coming up, taught by industry professionals...   and we create an open and inviting learning environment for students to just feel safe, have fun and just make cool stuff. So, this leads me to... I'm not going through this in detail but currently we are now combining web design and graphic design together as one piece, and we... because web design is still graphic design, and this will ensure that our students will be more well-rounded and give a greater opportunity for employment in both print and web as well. So, I'm not... I can't make it through all of these... this is our student success page... we have Otto, this is one of our student ADDY award winners from 2025. Studio award... ADDY award winner Jennifer from 2024. Claudia, ADDY winner from 2022... she actually currently  lives in New York and works as a designer as well. Alumni Laura Hobbs, full-time designer at Earmark here in Tucson. Laura Rincon, graphic designer at Gospel Rescue Mission full-time. Brandon Robles... I took this from Linked-In, he doesn't have an actual photo, I'm sorry... he's a full-time designer at West Press here in Tucson. Emma, she's a designer and web editor for TUSD, full-time in Tucson. Andrea Howlett, she was actually one of my Capstone students at U of A when I taught there. She is an art director at Tucson magazine full-time. Eric Beasley, our advisory committee member, is one of our alumni as well, and he is a full-time multimedia designer at UofA. And last but not least, Neil Bernardo, adjunct faculty, PCC AI leadership team. He is also design direction and creative development for the Gordley Group here in Tucson. And if I can't... don't have time to go through it, we're done. Okay. Sorry. There's more work, if you want to check it out later... there's a PDF. [applause] ---Robert Loomis: Hi, I'm Loomis, Robert Loomis... I just use my last name as my first name because it works better at Starbucks... too many Bobs. All right, a joke in Hollywood... no matter what job you have, there's... someone always says that, what I really want to do is direct. That leads into the stereotype of just how impossible breaking into this rarified career is. The myth of our access to the industry being limited to nepo babies and the elite. Fortunately, they did make unpaid internships illegal a decade or so ago, which basically limited people who could afford to live and work in Los Angeles without pay for a few years before they really broke in. This is a very poor quality slide of Sophia Coppola, who I do not want to make fun of, because I'm a big fan of hers... but it helped that her last name was Coppola... here she is winning her Oscar, the dream of course that we're talking about. The reality, however... it's dirty... it's a lot of grunt work. This is Emily Belleranti... she is a gaffer, which is actually pretty rare for a women, unfortunately, because I think of the perception   of what kind of jobs are actually available in this industry... there are a lot of jobs people just are not aware of. We have gaffers, grips... I'm basically wearing the official gaffer uniform, currently... the winter version, long sleeves. So, electrics, cinematographers just considering cinematography as a career is something that just does not occur to many people in our community... disenfranchised youth out there aren't saying... oh, I think I'll become a cinematographer,  if they even heard of that as... apart from this idea of what Hollywood is about.   So, DIT is so new I don't even remember what it stands for... Digital Intermediate (Imaging) Technician I believe. First, second, third ACs... location mixers, boom operators, honey wagon drivers—that's the Porta Potties. So, there's just a lot of jobs that just don't... people aren't aware of... and it's our job to make them aware of that. So, we have people who work in the industry, who are going to be able to prepare our students for the reality. Now, having said that, I think it's very important never to ever diminish the dreams, because we can prepare them without telling them... you're probably not going to direct. If they want to direct the next Transformer movies, good... I'm excited about that. We want to make sure they're ready to get a job as a production assistant as well. I don't know why I'm like, nervous up here.... I'm, I'm used to talking. All right... so, this is Larry Foster, one of our instructors on the set of "Taxi"... he looks a little different now...    this is cast & crew... he has worked in the industry in Los Angeles... in fact, all of us have. Like I said, I worked as a gaffer and a key grip in Los Angeles and here. He also worked at pretty much every TV station  in Tucson... this is several decades ago at KUAT. And helps prepare our students... teaching things  like multi-cam... things people don't think of, right... being able to shoot a live performance, live shows... I wanted to present the numbers... this is, by the way Wikipedia... so, you know, 40... but 4.6 million jobs in the overall entertainment... 2.74 million in film and television... 3.6 average yearly growth... global box office last... well 2023... was 34 billion... 100 billion annual revenue for the whole entertainment industry, which includes games, which is the biggest one... 170 billion projected by 2030... so, there are jobs there. Who gets those jobs? The privileged few or our students. So, this is them working a multi-cam on our last production of... what was the... what was the... 9/11 day, thank you... which we did combined theater and television... or broadcast. This was a list of our students that work currently at channel 13, six of them. This was a invitation based on how well of an impression they made... Larry Foster preparing them for jobs, not Hollywood, right? The things that people don't think of. All right. Covering sporting events... this is one of our alumni... he's right there... took that picture... The World's Strongest Man, the events that you don't think of. This is Jorgiana Jake, she's a member of the Producers Guild  of America... she worked on Toddlers & Tiaras, which is funny. That's her on a local cooking show. Linette Shorr, a production designer... those are her films... impressive... that's her on the set... her. And that's one of our alumni, who won an Emmy last year, pursuing a disenfranchised kid from Tucson, that dreams come true. Thank you. [applause] ---Denise Reilly: Thank you so much Arts department for sharing  of a few of your different amazing programs. Now we're moving on to our next item... and if we do have time at the end, we can come back to that remote work conversation... but for now, we have... and I know a lot of you have other meetings to attend right after this, or may need to leave early, but Dr. David Bea, we have fiscal year 2027 discussion or budget, I'm sorry... and just a plug that there is a meeting next week that I believe we all got an email about, the Virtual Budget Forum... so, this is just a shortened condensed version of... ---Dr. David Bea: Really...really? ---Denise Reilly: Kind of the highlight... yeah. ---Dr. David Bea: Shortened. No. ---Denise Reilly: Is it? No... [laughs] 15 minutes. [laughing] Isn't the other one an hour? ---Dr. David Bea: I see you did little cuts. Is it on? Okay. ---Denise Reilly: Yeah. ---Dr. David Bea: Get it. Okay... I'm... you have materials... and again... as Denise just mentioned, next Tuesday, 3 p.m. I'll be doing an online budget forum... much more information than what I'm going to hit today... but we thought it'd be good to come in here, talk a little bit to faculty senate. I'm going to AERC next week... targeting some of the particular groups, but then doing the open forum just to give you an update of where we're at... so, if I can figure out how to skip the course. Again, look at the materials... I'm not going to go through every slide because I know we're... I'm going to try and catch you up timewise. The good news is... enrollment continues to improve... you can see that it's grown, a little bit over the last five years... more actively the last couple of years... so, it is trending in the right direction as enrollment grows.   all things related to the college operations and budget improve... there are a lot of things that are tied to enrollment, not just related to tuition, but related to other revenues that we get... and there we go. Overall, one of the things to that we have to keep in mind is that the college has to operate financially responsibly. That is, we have to maintain appropriate reserves... we have a reserve policy that says that we are to maintain 180 days of operating cash on hand, which is... really it's not cash, it's in investments... but the idea with that is that, that's really good.   Just like in your home life, you don't want to  have zero in your banking account... it allows for us to handle exigencies, contingencies, other emergencies that could happen.... stabilize everything.   It's really important for credit ratings and things like that, that we have a good reserve policy and that we maintain good reserves. So, as you can see here... our chart that looks like a bell chart, not intentionally necessarily, but the college's days of cash on hand   grew to a very, very healthy number... that was because of really good budget management and also because we actually had issued the revenue bonds and we got the money from the revenue bonds in anticipation of spending it on the new projects...  many of which are here... and then you can see   as we started spending down for those capital projects, the days of cash on hand have gone down significantly. So we're currently above the low threshold... If we go below that on an annual basis, meaning when this measure is comparable to... that, means we have to come up with a plan for how to get back above that number... it is a healthy... 180 days is healthy... you may recall, the University of Arizona had a number, and they had major problems a couple of years ago... their number was 100 days and they went below it. So, 180 days is a healthy number... it is equivalent to like a double A to a high double A rated organization. So, it's where we want to be... and that's one of the key things that we're measuring against. What that also means is that we have to balance our ongoing operating expenses with our ongoing expectations for revenues. Anyone who's heard me talk about the budget, that's what we talk about every year... what are our additional revenues   that we have coming in on a given year, versus  what the increases in expenditures we have. So quickly, just a dollar increase in tuition, overall general tuition, generates about $400,000 levy increase, if we do nothing...   new property generates about 2.2 million... and then, if we increase it by 1%, it's another 1.4 million on top of that. We have some capacity to increase the levy above that, but there's always resistance to increasing taxes and tuition. Other revenues, not so good... there might be some small growth in the sales tax related, those are the ones at the bottom.   And then there's a big risk at the state because of what's happening federally with changes in Medicaid and Medicaid support... [computer beep] that that likely, and some of the other federal programs is likely to put a lot of pressure on the state, which means that the state's budget is going to be limited. Are you giving me a signal?  ---Kelly O'Keefe: It's almost time. ---Dr. David Bea: Okay... [chuckles] I'm trying to be attentive... the a... so, as the federal government is not funding certain things, the state has certain obligations that they have... that's going to put a lot of pressure on the state budget. The relative silver lining is that the state doesn't provide us much... so, we're not at a huge risk. Some of our peer institutions are at much greater risk than  we are... but there are some smaller pools of money... we do get a little bit of money for STEM, which we mostly use for equipment... but that is something that we'll have to be monitoring, and so forth... so, the outlook is not great, but it's not dire. And then, this is the other key slide... and if you've seen me talk ever... a majority of our operating budget goes to personnel related expenses... so salaries, wages and benefits. So, that's the blue in this chart... and that's the key takeaway there. Again, if you want more information, come to my session next Tuesday. And then, how are we making these things balance?  As I mentioned, the key is to balance our operating... our expectation of what our ongoing expenses will be with our incoming revenues... because we are trying to give a year of experience and minimum increases to people for salaries to recognize the great work that you all do... that's an increased cost. Medical... just like it costs more for everybody for medical expenses... it does cost more for the college. That's an expected big increase this year... so, balancing out those very basic expenses, that's doing nothing different... that's just covering the increased cost in personnel... is a pretty significant cost that we're expecting... and that means that revenues need to come in to offset that... if you don't have revenues to come in, you have to cut elsewhere. So, one of the Chancellor's goals this year is to try and get us calibrated so that we're on a much   healthier trajectory going forward. The goal is to reduce operating expenses... that's ongoing operating... that doesn't mean just operating, it means personnel and operating expenses... but on the operational budget, non-capital... these are ongoing expenses. Reduce them by $4 million in the current year... so, it's actually... it's what's important is it's the savings for next year's budget. And then this is the thermometer chart that doesn't have your little bulb at the bottom. .. so, sorry about that... but this is the thermometer chart. How are we doing so far on our goal? We are more than halfway to our goal for these are again, reductions that we've already identified, that we're going to be taking out of the budget going forward next year... about $1.5 million in reduced personnel positions through attrition... and then on the operating side   that's reducing contractual things that we have  identified... we have duplicated systems where we can find cheaper systems... other savings... adult education moving on to Campus is actually going to have an operating savings for us as well... that's included in there. So, those are the key things I wanted to touch on and give you at least 20 seconds to ask questions, if you have any. Again, if you want more information and you can't wait to hear me talk more about this stuff... and sorry that my graphic design work isn't better... I didn't... [laughter] I didn't study that in college, but basic stuff. ---Denise Reilly: [unintelligible] ---Dr. David Bea: I know... I know... I was paying attention to your thing, I was like, "Oh, look at those, those colors... they're vibrant and so forth." Mine are very basic and boring... anyway, I encourage you to go to that session. And then, there will be again, sessions as we go into the spring. There's a calendar in your materials that show when the different things happen related to the budget as well. So with that, if there are any questions, I'm happy to answer. ---Denise Reilly: We do have a few minutes on this. Okay... I look over at this side right here... I think... [laughing]  he's going to go... Makyla, go ahead. ---Makyla Hays: Can you give us a quick idea of whether your ideas for next year's budget include the years in position increases? ---Dr. David Bea: I wouldn't have mentioned it if it wasn't... to start with. ---Makyla Hays: O... okay. ---Dr. David Bea: Like from my standpoint, we always want to start with that expectation. ---Makyla Hays: Cool. ---Dr. David Bea: I mean, I can't guarantee it... the Board has to be involved, all of that stuff... but the idea is, that is a planned way that we approach personnel at the college. That's part of what we did in the big changes with class comp, is to build in a structure where we would have a year experience and recognize. ---Makyla Hays: So, is the $4 million to compensate for the increase that we're looking at or is it on top of? ---Dr. David Bea: It helps... it helps us be able to do that more. ---Makyla Hays: Okay, that makes more sense... got it. ---Denise Reilly: Thank you... do we have a question from Matej? ---Matej Boguszak: Thank you... for this category under operations, what are some of the largest things that contributed to that 844,000? Can you give us a couple examples maybe? ---Dr. David Bea: Yeah.... that... I'll give two that cover about half of it... the security expenses... it's actually, so the... reducing expenses in adult education moving to the campuses is, we have to pay for contractual security services... so, that's one pretty significant chunk, that when they move here, we don't have to pay for those security services anymore. Another one is that we are paying off lease obligations for some computing equipment... so, this was five-year payoffs of computing equipment... this is before expenditure limitation, before Prop 481. We leased some of our computing equipment to be able to get the equipment and not have it hit expenditure limitations... we're paying that down and we no longer have to pay that lease payoff anymore... those are two of the biggest... but there's... and then there are a number of things in IT, where they've identified cheaper ways to do things. And a number of the big ones... I'd be happy to share the information at another point but... a number of the big ones are... like, have gone to the Board, where they're changing how they're storing, where they're storing, some of the digital... like, the servers... the services we use for service, for our servers... we're going with a cheaper provider... things like that. ---Denise Reilly: So, I noticed... and thank you for parceling it out more than usual... I see administrative versus staff classified. Can you tell me, where do directors, supervisors, managers... like, where does that fall in? Is that under staff classified... or is that under administrative? Like, where... what is the... what's the level or benchmark? ---Dr. David Bea: So, admin... the the administrative here, is what traditionally people think of as administrators. If the name is director and below... like director, manager, etc... that would be staff. ---Denise Reilly: So, Deans and administrators are... ---Dr. David Bea: Deans are in administrator. ---Denise Reilly: Administrative... okay. Thank you. ---Dr. David Bea: And executive... the one... the one hiccup in this... executive directors are administrators... again, long-standing legacy. ---Denise Reilly: Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? ---Dr. David Bea: And actually the better description for that is, they're on annual contracts. ---Denise Reilly: Okay. ---Dr. David Bea: Folks who are on annual contracts are in the administrative category... the staff ones are not. ---Denise Reilly: Okay... quick question, Kimlisa, and then we'll move on. ---Unidentified Speakers: [some talking off mic] ---Kimlisa Duchicela: Are you looking at a step 17? ---Dr. David Bea: I imagine that will be part of the conversation this coming year. ---Dr. David Bea: Top of the list of the conversation? ---Dr. David Bea: Makyla is... [chuckling] Makyla is nodding her head... yeah, I'm sure that I will be discussing that idea with AERC. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: Thank you. ---Denise Reilly: Sounded like a second from Kimlisa... [chuckles] second that topic. Well, thank you Dr. B for coming in... and we  will see you next week. Thank you. [applause] Always appreciate it... I know that several have, like I said, other meetings to attend to... so, we are moving right on down to AGEC prefixes and a very short topic from Dr. Jeff Thies. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Awesome. Thank you and good afternoon everyone... just a real quick reminder of the new Arizona GenEd Curriculum that we have.  If you want access to see where we are with respect to what courses fall into the new categories, go to the catalog on the web page... there's a drop-own menu in the upper right hand corner... It'll show all the archived catalogues  all the way back to, I think, 2020. But if you keep scrolling down, you'll find the draft of the '26-'27 catalog... select GenEd and it'll land you on this particular page. So, just highlighting a key di... a couple of key differences...we no longer have an OTHER, right? We are limited to 32 to 35 total credits. We're looking at a minimum of 6 in the writing and oral communication and all 6 of those are essentially writing 101 and 102. So those... the first 6 are pretty much spoken for...  Arts and Humanities is now one group. If you go back to our current catalog, you'll see that you have to take at least 3 credits in Arts and at least three credits in Humanities because they're separated out... in the new AGEC, they are not. So, you will see, when we scroll down to the Arts  and Humanities section, there is this piece that those of you in Social and Behavioral Science  will recognize.... it's in your current catalog as well The idea that you have to take two courses,  but they need to be from different prefixes, right?   So, in the past we didn't need that for Arts and Humanities cuz they were separated and you just took one from each, and that guaranteed that... so, that's the piece that we wanted to make sure you were aware of. The same statement is in the Social and Behavioral Sciences... there you go for that... making sure you take two different prefixes. Now, that doesn't mean you can't take 2 Econs or 2 Histories and have them count, because as you'll notice, there... you can take from 6 to 9 credits... 32 to 35 is the total... 28 is mandated... right? So, if you go back to that table   and look at the left column where the minimums are, that adds up to 28 credits, but you have to, as a student, get to 32... that could happen in a lot of different ways, right? You may go over 32, but that could happen different ways. You may take College Algebra instead of Quantum Reasoning, and you already have that fourth... or that extra credit there... that gets you to 29... now, any 3 credit course will get you to 32. You may decide to take two Sciences... you may decide to take a foreign language or other courses that might be at 4 credits. Um, questions? Yes, ma'am. ---Rita Lennon: I don't want to brag, but I got all of my curriculum through just recently... um, ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Congratulations. ---Rita Lennon: through Curriculog, and I'm... ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Do we have time for that anyone? ---Rita Lennon: I think there should be, definitely... however, I did it based on the old information... so, I did h... I do have an OTHER category and I also have the... [sigh] the two categories that we had to use before, which now I know that the Institutions of America... am I going to... please don't say I have to do this... but am I going to have to put something in Curriculog again to remove those things, or will they already know in curriculum to just remove those things? ---Dr. Jeff Thies: We'll have to take that offline... no. [everyone laughs] But, what I would say is that the CTE, Gen... General Education has not changed yet. ---Rita Lennon: Okay. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Right. This is what we're referencing here is the AGEC that only goes with the transfer courses. So, the CTE general education curriculum, which is 15 credits, and what she's speaking about is you have to meet a Math competency but you don't have to take a Math course... right? If you place at a certain level, you can take a science course, and that counts as your, kind of, Quant Reasoning Natural Science. So, I'd have to dive into the specific details to really, you know, to go deep into that question, but your areas in the CTE GenEd... and so it's a little different than than what we're talking about here. Yes, Kimlisa. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: Yeah... I... so, this is it, right Jeff? We have... what we've got here with the... and of course, you can take more History courses. If... what we see here is pretty much it, we're not going to have any more changes... this is the done deal for when we start? ---Dr. Jeff Thies: The only change that might happen is, there's a few courses right now in the curriculum process, that have asked to be in one of these categories. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: Okay? ---Dr. Jeff Thies: And so, as they if they get through the process soon, they'll be added... so, there will be no deletions, no changes other than a few courses may make it onto the list before the drop dead. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: And really quick, I want to thank Emily for getting all of that intensive writing stuff out, so we didn't have to turn in one for every single one of those classes... so, we are so happy with that in Social Sciences. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: And I'm glad you brought that up... that's another point... the intensive writing, the C and the G categories, that used to be in the AGEC are now gone... so, you don't have those I, C, and G components that a student has to try and make sure they navigate to to check those boxes as well... and additionally, Rita brought it up, Institutions of America is a new category, and we no longer have the OPTIONS category. And so, there were some courses that kind of fell out of favor with GenEd because of that... CIS-120 is an example that didn't fit in any of the categories... and because we didn't have an OTHER, it doesn't really have a place in the GenEd. And we're at time. ---Denise Reilly: We're at time... I just wanted to ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Sorry, we're at time. [laughing] I'm kidding. ---Denise Reilly: I got the mic... oh, you're still my Dean... darn it. [laughs] so I do... I do hope... I know that this is draft catalog for '26-'27... but where I see, it might seem like just initials and changes, but what I see is the biggest potential hiccup to come, is if CQI and Student Experience don't have this, like information, really set up, ready to go, for students... because this is a lot more selective and choosing... and as far as the transfer programs... this is... it's going to be work. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Absolutely ---Denise Reilly: To get students to understand each of these categories and the differences starting in the... in the catalog year '26 -'27. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Agree, and we... but we all do feel that having one instead of three is much simpler for all. ---Denise Reilly: Absolutely... thank you. Thank you Dr. Thies. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Thank you for your time. [Applause] ---Denise Reilly: We have the duo coming up here, Michelle Tong and David Parker to talk to us about AP/BP and improvement process deliverables. ---Misc Voices: [off mic talking and loud mic noises] ---Denise Reilly: Go ahead. ---David Parker: The art session a little earlier  resonated well with me. I had the chance of starting for a small UHF TV station as a grip on the mobile camera... moving up to technical director,   up to program director... technical director for Children's Theater for 10 years here at West Campus as well. And I can draw a really mean stick figure... so... [chuckles] yes... Michelle Tong is our brand new director of compliance... she has been working on this project. We knew that there were issues that we needed to work on... we know that ever since COVID we've had difficulty keeping AP's and BP's on their... I'm going to use this word over and over... cadence of having them reviewed. Many times we were looking at them more when we needed to do a review... [cough] sorry.. Then when that time for annual review came up... and then, when HLC came along, we had to push everything through and it's now kind of on a one-year timeline with three-year overview. As we looked at it, we had questions from the different groups, including this one... can we spread those out? We also looked at... how can we spread out the ones that the different groups... this group, AERC, and Staff Council historically have wanted to look at.... we identified that the standard cadence for ones, just to make sure you're reviewing them, has tended to move out towards five years... and so, we're starting with that as a starting place. We want to make sure that we are grouping them together thematically... so, things that are related, we look at together. We also want to look at... sometimes they feed another process... so, to give you an example... those things that affect our students... we want to make sure we look at those and complete them in time... that then we can look at the Code of Conduct and the other things... and update those for the next year. So, that's all built into the timing... when we talk about the month for the different areas or different themes, that's the target month for it making it onto the agenda for the board... either as an informational item or the first read. We will be running some through much more quickly to move the ones out that we know are fairly easy or already are in work or are currently due... we also know that as we come up with the reviews along the way. Wait... now that kicked it out 5 years, now we're loading up other years... so, we have a process in place where compliance will be monitoring and scheduling... we'll have a plan each year for which ones do we need to do this year, we'll shepherd them through... and then, sometimes we'll just need to bring one up a year or two and do it again... simply because we we don't want them jamming up again. One of the last things... we've talked with this group and several others multiple times on different things... I bring them to you early... for the things that are a little more controversial or where we're putting a stakeholder group together, we will be encouraging, that if this group, Staff Council, or AERC has a standing committee or if they have an interest, and we're forming a stakeholder group, we invite participation... send a representative, include the discussion... that way, when it comes back to the group, there's less of a chance that it gets bogged down there, because we've already discussed it. So, that's a quick overview... I'll hand it off to Michelle and she'll walk through how it all looks. ---Michelle Tong: Thank you so much. So, what we designed is, if you'll go to the slides... oh, are you? I didn't know I was supposed to manage it... oh, I thought you were my person. Thank you. He actually got me started on this process... so, big kudos to Dennis there. if you'll go down to the next slide... what we are recommending is that we... the industry standard, as David said, is three to five years. We're recommending that we push it out to the top of that with colleges and university standards to five years. What that will allow us to do is, instead of having a three-year, all of these cycles come forward... and when I got to the college I heard that you all had a big push to get some through for HLC. And so, guess what? When I mapped that out, every 3 years you were going to have those same big pushes come through. But if we go to 5, then that allows us to move some of  them forward and align the AP's and BP's that would be   the exact same ones that work together and put them forward together so people can think strategically  about what they need to do with the policies. So, we're saying... let's do a 5-year rec... um, uh... cadence, good word, and then let's allow some flexibility so that if the law changes or if business operations change, we can move some forward... we're not going to be tied to the   calendar that we put together.... it's going to be one where every year, as David said, we sit down and look at the calendar and say, "Let's see what makes sense." But if you'll go to the next slide.  This was just an idea of what it could look like... so, if we move forward this year, we can we will have some heavy years, but as we move forward with some of those ones that we have to make sure that we're getting through in that 5-year time period, but then going to the next 5-year cycle, and then going to the one after that, we were able to see that we could get to mid-30s policy reviews, BP and AP every year... then we looked through and said... "What were the ones that faculty senate, staff council, AERC, took more interest in?" And we did that by looking at minutes from meetings, because I wasn't here, I've only been here 3 months... so, I went back and looked at the minutes, and none of the years will have more than 9 that would be ahead, the ones that you expressed interest in before, knowing you look at all of them. So, this is the cadence that we think we could get to with this recommendation, but we have another addition to it... if you'll go to the next slide. We're also recommending that we dedicate a sponsor month every year, so that people will know when the policies will be going forward to the Board... so, I'll show you what that could look like... that's going to allow for some more consistency and planning and prep... so, if you go to the next slide. This is the calendar that we're recommending... so, as you could see, every group and they're kind of done by theme. So, we have security together, we have things that might affect employees together, things that might affect students together. We... we're strategic in the way that we're making these recommendations... thinking, okay, well, if there's the student matters that need to be addressed before students might be registering for courses,   and we have to get all the course materials together and up online... then we can have those done in the fall... then the student stuff could start planning for the spring... so that when August comes around and the students start, all of that is all together and there's not a big rush. Same thing with employees... we were thinking, if we could  have the employee stuff done all addressed during the fall with all the questions and committees... and then have them ready to go hopefully at the January meeting... then everything could be processed through, so that when employees are getting contracts, or when benefits are coming out and people have to make decisions, everything is set to go. If you'll go to the next slide. What this does is, it provides some predictability for the different employee groups and for the different units. So they know... okay, so we would have... if student matters are coming forward, we send a reminder out to the Provost and the different student affairs groups that have policies... they have the whole spring semester, January through May,  plus another month when everybody comes  back on contract, to go through everything before it would then go to the General Counsel for final review 21-day posting... and then to the Board. Same thing with employee policies... and then everybody else gets at least 3, 4 months in there to deal with the different policies and know when the committees are happening. So, this is our recommendation. If you go to the next slide. We're recommending that this doesn't start this year because we're halfway through the year. So, the calendar would start in 2027, fiscal year 2027, I'm sorry... but we at least need to get through 36 policies this year in order for us to stay on track... so, we have chosen ones that were already in process... the ones that deal with the policy review process or ones that are, we're hoping, pretty simple, that we don't think there would be many changes, like, we're always going to follow the law on posting sex offender notifications... so, we're not really going to have to change that one, so it could be a quick review... so going forward... if you'll go to the next slide... what we are going to be recommending for the changes is, going from 3 to 5 years... and also saying that if a policy is just reviewed and there is no change, that would be defined as a minor update and that would be the Board policy. Going to the next slide. The AP, you're going to see the same thing... 3 to 5 years... but we're also adding a provision that says that it could be reviewed more frequently if there's a change in law our business operations... and also, that there would be a responsibility for compliance to build a calendar every year. So, what we built out isn't going to be the perfect thing, but at least it's one that we're going to be looking at every year and build a perfect calendar at the beginning of the new year. And then the next slide. We are recommending, as David said, that some of our processes, as we're reviewing these AP's, be pulled into an SOP... but to make sure that if we are addressing anything that could affect somebody's responsibility or somebody's rights, it doesn't change unless the AP directs that it changes... and that we link all SOP's in the AP so that people know where to find them. You want to take over? ---David Parker: So, we know that we have things in AP that could easily be an SOP... one of the goals is to shorten the APS, move as many things to SOP as we can... but if we do, and it's a child of the AP, then we want to make sure those SOPs are where you can find it... and so, what we'll do is have links on the AP, and we'll keep those current. We're also looking at how to bring most of the SOP's that affect all of us into one place... finding them is a challenge. When I look for the travel manual, one of our SOP's... I know where to look and I still have a hard time finding it. So, we'll work on getting all of those in place. It doesn't mean every SOP has to be on an AP. We have a lot of SOPs that only affect a single unit, things like that... I'll give you an example, the Board or the AP for discrimination, harassment, retaliation is the longest one we have, because it incorporates all of the Title 9 regs. That could be a much shorter AP with 2 or 3 SOP's for the Title 9 sexual harassment and the other things. And then the SOP's are all linked and we can update those when there's a new definition change or something... much more quickly instead of having to go back through the whole process. Key to this is SOP's are able to be found, able to be linked very quickly. That was pretty much what we had. It's ready to go to 21-day comment, but we wanted to bring it here and discuss it specifically... it is not yet posted... Dennis, thank you so much for helping with some of the early concepts. We also met with him at the end and made sure that it was it was something that would work well, but we'd like your insight also. Does this sound like it's really better? [chuckles] ---Denise Reilly: Can everybody give a thumbs up? Because we're all physically here, so [chuckles] we're looking for a thumbs up? Okay. ---David Parker: Oh, we did have a comment this morning about finding a way to let people know which AP's or BP's  are new... and one of the suggestions was, we could put, like, an asterisk on the web page so that you see,   this one was within the last 6 months or a year, maybe other ways, but we're looking for multiple communications ways for that. ---Kelly O'Keefe: That was one of my comments, so thank you... but my other comment is... the 30-something that we're going to need to review this year. Do we have a recommended time frame that is spreading those out, so that they're not all coming in April and May? ---Michelle Tong: Yes, kind of... so, if you'll go down to the appendices in the presentation... keeping in mind that they're ones  that I'm hoping would not require  a significant amount of review. What we have... no, go back up... I'm sorry one more... up, up... yes. So, what we are looking at is, going through... this is the policies that would be dealing with the review that we're talking about right now... and then, we would start looking at first, ones that I said are not ones that are going... I'm hoping not be of great interest, like the compliance policy... everybody here wants compliance... so, I'm hoping that that would be one that we could push through... giving some people to time to make sure that they can work on them and they're not surprised. But we would be moving some of the other ones through with the provost... I'm sorry Dr. Roark being at the end. But the ones that we have on were already in the review process, other ones that should be fairly straightforward... like we will have a curriculum, we will have a student code of conduct, that sort of thing. So, that's what we're hoping... this is the only year when I put everything out that would come into June...  everything else we were able to get through... so that, the last Board review, last Board presentation would be in May. June would always be the month that would just be the catch-up month with nothing occurring July, August. So, it worked out nicely that nobody would ever be off contract when policies would be posted. ---Denise Reilly: At this point, we're going to go ahead and close up this presentation... give them a round of applause... [applause] thank you so much. Hopefully, we'll hear more next semester and thank you for the work on this... this is... [chuckles] something that faculty have really kind of  driven and highlighted... and thank you Dennis for taking the starting steps with our administration to make these changes.   So, our last item on the agenda, which they're already cut slightly short so we end on time... so... we have student success through 8 weeks and there is an article "Shortened Terms" for some reading... and then there's a presentation by our Provost Leadership Team. Take it away. ---Dr. Ian Roark: Do we get a drum roll for this presentation?  [drumming on tables] Oh my gosh... yes... feel the energy. Thank you very much. we are not going to answer, right... every question about a monumental initiative moving to predominantly 8-week scheduling paradigm in today's presentation... but the aim was for this faculty senate meeting to keep the cadence going in terms of communication... I've been meeting with many of you individually, but not everybody. And so, I think it's pertinent to go ahead and go through this. So, we can go to the next slide because everybody knows who we three are. I'm not going to read this entire slide and I have violated almost every slide design... [chuckles] rule you can think of... of course with respect to the amount of text that we see here... but I wanted to highlight, right... the context... because the context isn't just waving a magic wand, making everything 8-weeks, doubling the amount of time students spend in class and all of the rest of our problems go away... that is not the reality of the situation... it really is more about the data, and really our current state, as we are designed optimally for the results we currently get, which includes things like, if we think about the students who don't go from fall to fall at all or have no first term success.  It's 1 in 5, on average over the past 5 years, of our student's experience zero success in any class the first term that they are with us. Now, let's talk about the ones that do go from fall to the fall, or do experience first term success, but they don't make it to the next fall...  so, VFA, fall to fall, right? Their course taking pattern is generally around 8 credits, 8 or 9... it goes back and forth in the fall. 954 Then it drops to around 5 or 6 credits in the spring, 1 in the summer, and then they don't come back. So, they also fall out of the system... so, really thinking about ways we can... and Dr. Ozlem Kacira has a part if you want to ever read it  I can source the emails... we'll just forward this data point to the Senate to forward on because what it really shows is a direct correlation, right... between... it is a great indicating and leading factor in terms of persistence at the... at the institution and student success. How many credits a student takes... the ones who go from fall to fall have not always a full-time status, but an increasingly higher and more consistent pattern of  course taking... around 10, 11, or 12 credits in the fall...   10, 11, or 12 in the spring... and 2 or 3 in the summer... and then they do return in the fall.   And so, it's really about how can you... we facilitate the schedule in a manner, at scale... and Jeff Thies and Emily Halvorson-Otts are going to give some of our own internal data... but how can we do things, where we're already being successful in this... but how can we scale it? And so, then I also wanted to again, highlight the language, right... the goal is to... I am going to read another taboo... but the goal is to define the optimal format for 8-week  scheduling and develop up a phase transition plan, right...  and it is my commitment and my... from me to you... and my expectation of my team, that faculty leadership, right... as Dr. Nasse said in his opening remarks... and as President Reilly said in her's... like faculty have to be a part of that work and have to be part of that conversation, right? I have a Music degree and then Education Leadership and Policy Studies... I can't tell the Math DFC how this is going to work best for their particular classes or which ones this will work for that's my area of expertise... so, through our shared governance bodies, as well as what we've been saying is shared governance through the reporting line... and in this case ownership of curriculum in the DFC is a really important part of this conversation. So, we want to keep that going with you and I'm going to turn it  over now to Emily for the next parts of the presentation... Emily. ---Emily Halvorson-Otts: Thank you Dr. Roark... so, our Provost just spoke to some of our internal data and our Cabinet goals and I want to talk about the why and some additional data. So, our why is about helping our students complete their educational goals and their degrees and their certificates. If you are familiar, and I'm going to be citing data from the Institutional Scorecard... if you're not familiar with that, go on to pima.edu, type in Institutional Scorecard, and it'll pop right up... or you can get it weekly in your email... and that Institutional Scorecard indicates that only about 20% of our students are completing their degrees and certificates... only 20%. And we... I guarantee every single one of us in this room want that number to increase... so, what is our why? Our why is helping our students complete.... and the how is through guided pathways and shortened terms.   And there's a ton of data out there that's showing  that this can move those metrics and those needles,   for these numbers I'm going to be talking about... so, they are very much guided pathways with fidelity in conjunction with these shortened terms...  meaning traditionally, the 8-week model. And so, we've got several data points up here that are first term no success... Dr. Roark spoke to that.   So again, approximately 1 in 5 Pima students  have no success their first term here. However, data shows that through guided pathways, shortened terms... those percentages go up and withdrawal rates decrease. Actually, let me rephrase that... the success rates go up the first term, no success decreases. And we're... later I'm going to provide some of that data or resource research for you. The other piece the Provost spoke to was that credit completion... students who... we have internal data that shows that if students take  more credits they actually are more successful... and that is one of the trends that tends to be found with 8-week models. Productive grade rates can also improve... and we're going to talk about some of our own internal productive grade rate data and persistence and retention increase... so, our persistence numbers again, are from fall to spring. And right now that VFA cohort, which again is a cohort of high school students that come in in the fall... and we're tracking those cohorts, it's around 65% right now for last year's cohort. That's decent... we could do better... retention  fall to fall is less than 50... so, think about it.   They came last fall and only 50% of them are back... so, how can we... and I know there's lots of things that impact those numbers, but how can we, as Pima College, move that needle? And these are some historically proven initiatives through research that can help us with that. So, what is our current state? Our current state is that the general education courses that account for 80% of those GenEd and that's 54 courses specifically. So, 54 courses account for 80% of our GenEd curriculum... only 3 of them have never been offered in an 8-week term   in the last academic year... all right... so, our CTE programs, the 10 top enrolling CTE programs...   only 3 of them have never ever taught an 8-week course. So, you hear that and you think, "Oh, we're actually doing quite a bit of this work." You see the next statistic, though... and you see currently 30% of all enrollment is in 8-weeks. And you're like, "Oh, it's a bigger lift there, right?" And so, I'm going to go back to the Cabinet goals... implement a plan by the '27-'28 year, right? That's a big part of this... and so, how do we get that lift happening? So, we're going to be talking about that as well today. All right... so, I said we would look at some of our productive grade rate data... and so, we've got 4 groups of 4, right? And so, each blue is a different year... and the first grouping is 8-weeks... and actually, I'm going to pull back real briefly... these are all summer... so, when we think about summer courses, summer courses are really our accelerated courses already, right? It's our shortened... we know they're fast-paced... there's a lot happening in summer.    And we've already... we've been internally talking about this as being our Acceler8 initiative... [chuckles] So, we're throwing that out there today, as it could likely be our title... So, looking at our Acceler8 model right now and our current status with our grades from 2021 to 2024... first 8 weeks tends to be about 8... 75% productive grade rates. The second 8 weeks is around 74, 73%... so, a little lower... and that also mirrors our fall trends as well.   Interestingly enough, sidebar... is that summer, er, or spring, it actually... there's less of a decrease.   They're almost identical productive grade rates in the spring, because of spring break. That's already influencing our decision-making and what we're thinking about for fall, but that... I wasn't going to go into that, but I did... so, 5 weeks, we've got an... around 80 to 84% productive grade rates... 85, 84% productive grade rates in first 5 weeks in summer... that's fabulous... that's the work you guys are doing. And in the second 5 weeks, it's around 74%. So in fact, 8, 5... first 5 weeks in summer is better than our current 16 weeks, which is around 74%... so, just some interesting data points to think about. And I'm now going to turn it over to Jeff. ---Dr. Jeff Thies: Thank you, Emily. Uh, huge lift, right?  Huge project. When we first saw that goal on the cabinet goal, on the draft page, we were like, this is a significant project for the college to take on. We talked about doing something similar  to this a few years ago at a campus level... so, a much smaller version of this particular goal... and so, we learned some things from that conversation   that we had over the fall semester of '23... so, one of the things we did is we looked at the Achieving the Dream Guide to Transitioning to Shortened Terms. And knowing in August that we needed to create   a cross-functional team to get the conversation started... we reached out... we had 3 faculty... we reached out to our faculty senate President to ensure that we had folks representing the contact hour courses that were in question the last time around... so, we wanted writing because they have the Co-Rec    and they have the developmental education and reading... is it four? We wanted science or somebody like that represented because they're a 6 contact hour course... we had great conversations about CHM 151 had already transitioned, but what does that mean for other sciences... and then the others, we definitely wanted somebody from the Career and Technical side because as many of you know, their lab lecture ratios are all over the place, right? There's a lot of 2-4's and 1-5's and 3-6's... what do those contact hour courses look like? so we had... Dennis, was one of our faculty members... we also have Maggie, who's not here today, I know she's a faculty senator...  and we also had Dawn Majalca, who is part of the AERC team as well. So, we wanted to make sure we had that representation from faculty, to have the conversation get started. The primary goal of that team was to think about all the different challenges we knew about previously and moving forward and setting up the two teams that we wanted to move this effort into the spring. So, there's two teams... I'm going to talk about  student experience and then I'll bring Emily back up to talk about the academic affairs team... we had a lot... we had representation on the steering team from student affairs, financial aid, and a few other areas... other than the faculty and the Deans that were on that team coming about... one of the biggest challenges is right now in an 8-week model we charge for the whole semester, but financial aid only delivers on the courses based on your start date... so, if I'm taking 2 first 8-week and 2 second 8-week, I'm getting charged for all four in August, but I'm only getting my financial aid for the first two, right? So that's a challenge that we definitely  do not want to put students in that situation   where we're only giving them half the funds... so, we recognize that that's a challenge and something we have to move on to. The onboarding process, how does that change? Financial aid, advising, how does the advising model change with respect to students bouncing more consistently from 8-week to 8-week? Academic supports... how does tutoring change, right? Right now, tutoring is something that's a lot of times targeting that beginning... and then, as students get to those places where they're struggling, we may need to have a different professional plan for that that group as well. The prerequisite checks... and of course we heard earlier from the BP's, AP's, and SOP's. We realize that making a significant change like this will change processes that need to be reflected in those AP's, BP's, and SOP's. So I'm going to turn it over to the academic affairs leader. ---Emily Halvorson-Otts: Thank you Jeff... so, the other group, cross-functional group, will be the academic affairs team... I will be leading that as well as Michael Amick and Kate Schmidt... and I'm not going to talk about all these, I just want to touch on a few of them... so, the steering team determined that these are some of the topics that we really need this academic affairs group to start focusing on... and one of them that keeps coming up, of course, is course redesign and thinking about, how do we take the curriculum from 16-weeks to 8-weeks? How do we support faculty through that? How do we guide you through that, right? So, that's a big component that's been discussed. The other one that I just want to p... and so, that's really... also bullet forward that professional development... and the other one I want to really touch upon right  now is the process to request staying at 16-weeks.   So, there was going to be a process to determine  that... so, you'd be... if there was an interest in that, there would be an exemption... requesting an exemption... and the key thing you also need to hear right now is that this team is going to consist of representatives from each division, a minimum of one from each division. So, there is going to be lots of input from the divisions to help guide these decisions. And then of course, those representatives will go back to their DFC's, their divisions through a shared governance through our reporting lines to keep talking about this and help us work through this, okay. I'm going to... just in the nature of time, I'm going to have us go forward... Dennis, thank you. So, as I alluded to when I was up here the first time, there is a lot of research. We shared with you the Achieving the Dream document... we asked you to read 8 pages of it, and that is one of the links here... there is... the first grouping is some research articles... then there's these guides and then there are several community college examples... some of them talk about those metrics that I was speaking about when I was up here earlier,  about how it was improving and impacting completion, persistence, retention and other important student metrics. So... so, lots of background information for you... and now we are up here for questions and I'm going to turn it over to the Provost. ---Dr. Ian Roark: And just one final, you know, final remark, right... I met with a faculty senator, who I don't have permission to quote... so, unless that person gives me permission to quote them, I will... but they said... you came with a number of concerns about moving... and the individual said... this is the largest operational change at the college in perhaps many decades, right?   And that resonated with me, right?  Yeah... so, we're not... we're taking that very seriously.   So, I want all of you to know that  I take that very seriously, in that in... and at the same time, with respect to student success,  I agree with Emily... I think everybody in this room   wants to see those numbers move, and move in a significant matter, because for every student that doesn't... that doesn't cross that finish line, it's a student whose college   and career dreams weren't fulfilled... and for me that breaks my heart sometimes, like, when I see those... actually every time I see the number but if I think about it, it's like our mission, right?    Every student, every learner, every day, every goal, is not being fulfilled if we don't do something about the current state...  and so with that, we are open to questions... if we have time... President Riley... Sarah... and if I  can't answer it, I've got lots of people who can.   ---Sarah Kirchoff: I have a question... if the statistic says that only 30% of our enrollment is currently enrolled in 8-week classes, then what makes us think they're going to want to enroll in 8-week classes if we don't give them an option? ---Dr. Ian Roark: Well... so... ---Sarah Kirchoff: Like, if you're... if we're saying we offer all of these classes now, but we only have 30% of like that... whatever that statistic was... and I'm just thinking about, you know, in our area.... I don't know... I don't know what that looks like... we haven't had any interest... so, I'm just curious, right... they might do better, but they also may not want that. ---Dr. Ian Roark: Right... well, right now it's an option, right? The model that we're talking about is... and there's different formats together, but the model we're talking about is that, the predominant number of courses would be 8 weeks, right? So, other institutions that have made this change haven't seen a massive drop off in enrollment just because the format changed... and in fact they've seen, you know, enrollment increasing, because you have increased persistence and retention.   So, we just want to make sure that we're paying attention to both. I had another mentor at one point that told me that if we're only focusing on enrollment without intentionality   around persistence and completion, we're  committing educational malpractice, right? So, it's about all of it together... Kimlisa. ---Kimlisa Duchicela: So, my area is kind of on board history... but... but we're different and there are others that are not as on board... but my question is a very intentional one, and you and I have talked about this. How are you going to support us? This is a huge lift to... we can't just stuff 16 weeks into 8 weeks... the CLT is very full... we need training.    AI could helped, but again, we're just starting and people are doing great work. How are you going to support us? And not only that, this is big work... so, maybe compensate us on moving all of these courses because in some places like history, there are 2 of us, you know... so, what is your thought process on the logistics as far as supporting faculty... and then, on top of that, supporting our students, especially in the online area? Are we going to have finally, an online tech center/ tech corner? What... what are the logistics? ---Dr. Ian Roark: Yeah, so of course, I can't answer all of those now and there are a lot of decisions that need to be made that have your input along the way... I have raised a concern in a number of occasions both to my leadership team   as well as faculty individually in some groups that... I do think that if we also have current state of operations, like in the CLT, or like in the Teaching Learning Center... that we won't get that... so, there's going to have to be some accommodation and there's going to have to be a lot of intentional conversation... to include, with faculty... around how are we going to ensure that course redesign doesn't become the bottleneck that sets this out... and that means current practices may have to change in some current operations and I think that they probably will have to to some degree... it's also noted on the professional development as well as that... so, Kate and Jessica and team are already thinking about that...  don't have predetermined answers for you... so, we want to be a part of that conversation, but those are the responsibilities of the 2 sub teams of the steering team... and I know that Jeff and Emily and team will be taking that to heart and I've seen your classes, so I  understand, right? I mean, I... Kimlisa gave me a tour of... of her classes and they're fantastic, right... and that takes time... and she has a lot of pride in that, and I know all of you do. So, we... we will be assisting with that and providing that. ---Denise Reilly: In addition, I believe that the January, or one of the spring academic forums, is focused on this topic as well, with more details potentially. ---Dr. Ian Roark: Yes... if you haven't sent... seen my email out to all of the academic list serves... it's in February... I can't remember off the top of my head what the February date is, but we will be dedicating the February academic affairs forum for which we usually have 2 topics... we're only going to focus on this topic at that academic forum, so please attend.   ---Dr. Jeffrey Nasse: Hi Kimlisa... are we on? ---Dr. Ian Roark: Yeah. ---Dr. Jeffrey Nasse: I just... the paradigm is interesting, right? I think we need to... I mean part of that... the answer is your... the question Kimlisa was... what are you going to do to help us? What I would say is... we need your guidance on what do you need? What would you like to see in terms of support? How would you shape it? And that's what I'm talking about in terms of faculty leading in this space... I would want the History faculty to say... hey, if you want this from us, this is what we imagine as a structure... this would be ideal for us... we think it could work this way.   And then they could try to provide those supports,  you know... so that, when he says conversation that's how I'm envisioning it is... faculty need to say...  okay, if you want us to do this, if we think about this... who in the discipline can kind of say this  is what's worked, this is what would not work...   we need this kind of technological support, etc... you mentioned CD as a part of that, that's all. ---Dr. Ian Roark: Agreed... thank you sir. ---Denise Reilly: I thought you might have some final remarks of some sorts... in addition to it, right. [chuckles] Well, I think February 20th is the scheduled Academic Affairs Forum that that will be the focus topic. So, all these items can be talked about there and discussed at further... further detail... so..   I think... I think it's time to close this meeting.  Do you want to end with final remarks? Do you?   ---Dr. Jeffrey Nasse: This is your final meeting. ---Denise Reilly: This is my final meeting. [laughs] ---Dr. Jeffrey Nasse: And then, welcome of course. ---Denise Reilly: Yeah... I just want to say thank you. Thank you to our team... you know, I know Dennis is behind the scenes back over there, but interestingly enough, yeah, give him a round of applause back there. [applause] Interesting fact... Dennis, Rita, and I started in Faculty Learning Academy together 10 years ago. So, the three of us met way back when... who knew that 10 years later we'd be up here. In addition, I was just laughing when Michael Nolan came in, because years ago, believe it or not, I never said a word in faculty senate for a couple years... do you remember those? Yeah, we did. We wanted to be off camera and Michael Nolan and I would sit back there and figure out when to open our seltzer waters without getting hurt... [chuckles] without anyone hearing... so, we've come a long way. I have complete faith in the next leadership  team... we are so excited for... and not just the officer team... I forget to mention that half of the senators are outgoing senators as well... potentially. Some of you might be sticking around, but there's 5 divisions that have, I think... it's Adult Basic Ed... there's a couple divisions who are changing over in their senator representatives. So, how about... stand up if you are leaving faculty senate... but we still love you, but you are no longer rep. [chuckles, applause] but you've you've been doing the work. Thank you, Kimlisa... stand up if you are coming into faculty senate and starting out. Oh, Julie, stand up back there... [applause] and Elliot, yay... yeah. And the rest of us just must like it here... I'm not sure... but anyways, thank you... thank you for continuing to collaborate. Kelly, next president, give her a round of applause. [applause] And I really want to say,  [chuckles] you know, we've been a team, but Dennis and Kelly will be taking on... and some other leaders over here as well... but Rita and I started this gig... well kind of... she roped me into this many years ago, 4 and a half years ago... and I didn't want to do it... I didn't want anything to do with this. [chuckles] I said find anyone else. ---Rita Lennon: That's not what I remember. ---Denise Reilly: No, I said find anyone else please... and so... anyhow, thank you for your service. Thank you for being faculty representatives... and thank you for entrusting us to lead and push for some great initiatives... I think we've accomplished a lot. So, final words. Thank you. [scattered applause] ---Kelly O'Keefe: Just a quick note... thank you Denise, for your leadership this year... and I'm happy to step into some pretty big shoes that have been filled in the last few years. So, thank you for your confidence in me.. Also, I'd like to bring up the new officer team, just so everyone can put a face with the name... Vivian is our new Vice President... [applause] please come up. Sarah Kirchoff is our new Governing Board rep. [applause] Jane Hall is our new secretary... [applause] It's going to be very nice to have a secretary again. [chuckles]   And then of course Dennis Just, in the back there, [applause] is our new President-elect. So, thank you all for staying just a few minutes extra for that... and have a wonderful weekend and happy holidays. We'll see you January 13th for All Faculty Day. [applause] ---Denise Reilly: Meeting is adjourned. Happy Friday. Happy December, October, whatever you want to call it.