THE NOVEMBER 14 BOARD MEETING, Part II

As I indicated yesterday, Monday night's Board discussion of marketing and outreach was kinda interesting, if "interesting" means "worrisome."

It started with the grilling of Tracy Daly, the gal in charge of marketing and chirpiness. Tracy explained that IVC's pattern of enrollment decline has ceased, and Saddleback's enrollments are slightly on the upswing. She's no logician. She immediately and unapologetically attributed these trends to her much-ballyhooed "Next Step"/Surfer marketing campaign. --You know, the one in which a moron represents studentry and our colleges are like wax.

(The campaign is not "ballyhooed" on the cover of the latest Lariat, which declares: "Ad campaign reviews mixed: campaign fails to attract many students despite winning national marketing award.")

Some trustees questioned the reliability of Tracy's "post hoc" reasoning. Good for them. I like Tracy, but a fallacy is a fallacy.

In the course of the discussion, Trustee Fuentes displayed his philosophical repulsion at the very idea of our luring students to our colleges. Something deep within him causes the fellow to cringe and squirm and squeal at the very thought of messin' with the "marketplace."

And this phenomenon of district's poaching in other district's territories? Well, that's a "cancer." That Fuentes sure has a way with words. He's got a point, though. Why don't all the districts get together and declare a moratorium on poachitude? Wouldn't that be sensible? For all I know, they're doing that.

Another aspect of the discussion concerned the responsibility of faculty for outreachery at the High Schools. Some have suggested that faculty are inclined to resist participation in outreach, and if they're gonna do it, they oughta be compensated.

Naturally, Trustee Fuentes seems to view such attitudes as a further demonstration of his Lazy and Overpaid thesis re full-time faculty, which he articulated on TV a year or so ago.

Check out his suggestions about luring "star" part-timers. Maybe you can explain to me what he's saying.

In the end, the item--a request for a big chunk of basic aid money--passed, with only Fuentes and Wagner voting against it.

FUENTES: ...Will [this marketing] be in our district geographically? Or are we talking about advertising and promoting like the other districts do outside of [their own] district?

DALY: Most of it’s here in our district.

FUENTES: All right. I think that’s something we need to come to grips with in clarity. It is a cancer that has spread among the districts, that there is this competitive recruitment, and it’s costing us, and it’s costing our taxpayers, and it’s costing the taxpayers of other districts. I wanted to respond to a comment that Trustee Milchiker made about our experience at Irvine Valley’s forum. I guess it’s who hears it, but I heard that very enthusiastic teacher [Spanish instructor Jeanne E.] tell us of her and her husband’s experience in outreaching, and going to visit other campuses, and the non-doing of that by others. I heard her say how few visited other campuses, that day that we went as a Board to sit in that forum. There were only six or seven teachers that came to visit with us, and she made the point, I thought, that more [instructors] needed to participate as she and husband did to go out to the campus….

…We talked about gas prices. And I related that, when this subject was first brought up, that I had a family room full of 18 to 20 year olds, because my son is a college freshman, and that was early in the semester. And many of those young fellas—surfers all—were going to OCC and to Golden West, and I can report to you, on the most unscientific poll ever taken, that they have decided now, at three dollars a gallon, to return to our local campuses! And I think the marketplace is at work, and it’s going to play a role in this.

Now, one of the most striking marketing things that I heard in recent weeks was an ad by our colleagues over at UCI, touting the quality of their teachers, being No. 5 in the nation, a striking contribution and quality in our community. Bill [he turns to Bill Jay] has addressed the merits of part-time faculty, and I would think we ought as a Board be thinking about more part-time faculty, especially star faculty that we might recruit from UCI to come over and teach some courses that would be a draw to students. These young people [students] shop the marketplace; these students look for name and identity, and I think we need to think outside the box and take advantage of the opportunity of part-time teachers. Maybe some of those part-time teachers that [students] are presently going to OCC and Golden West to take classes from might be available to us….

PADBERG: I am going to support the item. One thing that, I think, we’re missing…is the complaint that I hear from my constituent groups that there are not enough classes of the required courses for transfer for students, or they’re not scheduled at convenient times, so [students] have to go to other colleges…to get those. I know that this has been an experience of friends of mine….

HO: …I think the main detractors for students who live in our district, we are not meeting the demand of the classes, and that’s why I propose a mechanism in which we can see, recognize the demand…and respond to it…. [Ho is referring to wait lists and surveys.]

WAGNER: I think I agree with everything Trustee Jay said except his part about supporting the item. I think you’re absolutely right-on about what we need to do in terms of finding out what the students want, and what’s troubled me about this item, what troubled me …when the million dollar item came to us [months ago], and we scaled it back to $100,000—…our focus here with this program is still the wrong focus. What the hundred thousand should have been spent doing was answering the questions that Trustee Jay has asked. What do the students want? Not, OK, let’s try something new; let’s try a new coordinated marketing campaign; let’s do a surfer and have a logo. –All of those may be appropriate down the road, but I don’t feel we’ve done our homework to know that those are what’s appropriate…We aren’t sure we even need a marketing program, and we won’t know what a marketing program ought to say until we know why we don’t have the enrollment we want, and that’s things like, surveys of other districts and what they offer, that’s things like surveys of our students…Those are the things that we ought to be spending a hundred thousand dollars for.

LANG: …There’s a lot of wisdom in some of your comments…I don’t think there’s any question that we need to have a marketing program. I think the question is, is what the focus of that marketing program needs to be…We’re trying a lot of soft things—putting ads in movie theaters, etc…and we really don’t have a good idea whether that’s going to generate the additional student enrollment that we’d like to see…If we understand that students are looking to have a unique program here that they can’t get somewhere else, perhaps that’s what will generate additional student enrollment…It’s seems to me that…one good use of funds…would be to do some polling, to find out, OK, what is it that’s going to bring students here?

[Traci then explained that much of the work that Wagner and Lang identified as important is actually being done by enrollment management groups on the two campuses; they are active and they meet each week, she said. Chancellor Mathur, too, explained that the item under discussion concerns only marketing, and that much other work is being done beyond the marketing.]

MILCHIKER: [Reading from her notes for the forum:] Jeannie Egasse said that she wasn’t sure that Frisbees and surfer logos and things worked. Her kids are surfers, and her kids really didn’t like these things…She said other teachers would like to go out [for outreach at High Schools], but they would like to be given some release time so that they don’t have to go out on their own time….

THE NOVEMBER 14 BOARD MEETING, Part I

I attended most of Monday’s board meeting, and so here’s what I saw. It’s late, and so I’m gonna make this quick.

The room filled up pretty well with red-shirted CSEA members, some of whom were gearing up to address the Board during the “public remarks” portion of the meeting. But before we got to that, Trustee Fuentes led everybody in a rousing Pledge of Allegiance, but not before he offered some seriously weird patriotic blather:

FUENTES: “…Young men and women, some members of this district, are at the battlefields around the world defending our freedom. Let’s join together in pledging our allegiance to that flag, and that nation, that they defend.”

I stared at him, trying to figure out what makes him tick. It was like trying to understand a moray eel.

Trustee Padberg invoked the Lord, but that’s the essence of invocations, I guess.

For some reason, trustees really love to hand out awards and plaques and such, and so, with the help of Student Trustee Ho, four “teacher of the year” awards were presented, followed by photo ops. Recipients included Dottie Sherling and a fella named Pearlstein—they both teach Math at IVC, I think—and Susan Hecht and Robert Parsons of Saddleback.

Fuentes, who wore his standard extravagant “master of ceremonies” persona—complete with too-loud voice and subtle but theatrical gestures—seemed a little lost when he called out the four names and only Ms Sherling showed up. Maybe the other three were sending a signal. Could be.

I know I’d show up. I’d grab the plaque and say, “well it’s really very lovely to be here, and I owe it all to—well, I sure as hell don’t owe it to these people, who can’t even be bothered to visit the college, ceptin' for Nancy over there!”

How come nobody ever does something like that?

As I said, the classified staff did a pretty good job making their case for receiving a better contract than the district is prepared to offer. One woman explained that you “can’t get excellence" if you're only willing to pay for "mediocrity.” One guy named Cherry, I think, outlined the facts about other categories of employee in the district and the sometimes surprisingly generous raises they have received. Some administrators, he said, received as much as a 30% raise! And the Chancellor! Sheesh, the fellow is the second highest paid Chancellor in the system. (2nd? Good Lord, who’s the first?)

I’ve gotta say, most of these classified employees were very articulate and they made a strong case for their having been treated most shittily. Some referred to a study done by Johnson and Associates that showed that classified employees are definitely underpaid in comparison with similar workers elsewhere. Connie Z of IVC explained that the kind of raise CSEA was asking for its 450 workers would cost much less than the raises given to administrators, a crew of 28 people.

Well, it all sounded good to me, but the Board seemed unmoved, but who can say.


During their reports, Trustees referred to their meeting two weeks ago with Accrediting officials. They kept saying that things went well, but they also seemed kinda tense about these Accreds, like maybe they’re expecting to get wacked real good up side the head. They all looked flinchy, if you ask me.

Raghu explained that he gave an address to the Kiwanis Club in Laguna Hills. I thought he was kidding, but I guess not. He yammered a bit about some study that attempted to quantify the “economic impact” of our two colleges. Evidently, we bring something like a trillion dollars—or maybe a billion, or was it a zillion?—to the county. How do they measure something like that? I bet they just make it up and hope nobody asks questions.

Trustee Marcia Milchiker talked a bit about the “academic calendar” issue. I do believe that the “District Calendar Committee” has experienced lots of disagreement, and it has decided to recommend to the Board that the two colleges adopt different calendars—IVC would adopt one that allows for a winter inter-session. I’m told that Chancellor Mathur supports this idea.

In the end, of course, it will be up to the Board, just like everything else.

Student Trustee Paul Ho told one or two classic jokes of the self-effacing variety:

HO: “…Besides teaching me math, [Professor Sherling] also taught me that there’s actually three types of math student: one that can count and one that cannot count. [Laughter.] .... I attended the veterans ceremony, and [Mathur and Roquemore] were willing to let me speak, and I told them that I will speak free of charge and I think that your audience will agree with me that I am worth every penny of it…. [Laughter.]


Paul repeated one of his themes: the need for more classes, especially science classes. He spoke about the need for wait lists and student evaluations of online classes. He seemed to be underscoring the paucity of data for measuring the success of such courses. I think he’s an Empiricist or something. The fellow wants facts. It was refreshing.

Eventually, they got to items 27 and 28: goals. As you know, thanks in part to the help of a pricey consultant, the board has written some “district” and “trustee” goals. They're crap. The Saddleback College Academic Senate responded to this crapulence by editing and rewriting the goals with a big red pen. The IVC Academic Senate has endorsed the Saddleback red-ink editing effort. But, on this night, there was no mention of the two senates. Maybe that’s because Raghu and Co. actually incorporated some of the senate suggestions. Does anybody know?

As we’ve reported elsewhere, the Board has not made public the “Chancellor” goals. They remain a secret. Recently, one of the senate presidents asked Mr. Kinsler, the district’s lawyer, about the Board’s refusal to reveal the Chancellor’s goals, and Kinsler reportedly said that the Board takes the position that, legally, those goals “are not a public document.” Jeez. I seem to recall that the IVC Academic Senate has resolved to ask the Board to come clean with these goals. I mean, if taxpayers are gonna give a guy a quarter million dollars each year, shouldn’t they be told what he’s trying to do?

Chancellor Mathur explained that they’ve added a goal that says something about engaging faculty, staff, et al., in shared governance, but Trustee Fuentes, using that overly-deliberate televangelist delivery of his, got weird again and insisted that the phrase “to best serve the taxpayer” be added. I think that Raghu counter-suggested the phrase “students and taxpayers.” Yes, that's it!

They were pleased as punch. Everybody else just stared.

Trustee Bill Jay focused on a “goal” that concerned the expansion of distance ed, but he was concerned that it seemed to be focused on “just technology” and not “general education” courses. Lapsing into incorrectness (and 1952), he launched into a mini-lecture about the value of engineering degrees: “You can give a young man” an engineering degree, he said, and he’s set. How come we can’t put together a good engineering program?

Item 30 concerned “additional funding for colleges’ marketing, outreach and recruitment strategies.” Tracy Daly and her crew were requesting $229,830 of basic aid money for that purpose.

Right away, Don Wagner adopted a sour look, as though he'd just entered an IVC restroom. He does that.

This item produced the most interesting discussion of the evening, I think. [I'LL TRY TO POST TRANSCRIPTS OF THESE REMARKS TOMORROW.] Fuentes and Wagner have some kinda right-wing take: that you need to let the marketplace decide where students go. Somehow, Fuentes was put off by the idea of spending money to get students to go to our colleges. I seem to recall Fuentes saying, at a previous meeting, that if some kid in South County wanted to drive all the way up to OCC, then “God bless him.”


Well, Mathur and the rest of the board seemed to take the contrary view, that we are now in a “competitive environment,” and the other districts of Orange county are spending big money to get to our students. The days of “we will build it, and they will come” are over, said Raghu. If we don’t attract students, we will lose enrollment and we’ll have to lay people off.

Someone screamed.

There was some discussion about outreach. Raghu alluded to faculty “resistance” to participating in outreach at the high schools, but, he added, they now see the need for that. (I think he was trying real hard not to piss anybody off.) He said that we need to ask ourselves whether we want to grow or not. If we don’t compete for our share of students, we won’t grow, and we’ll have to “reduce staff.”

There was some speculation about the drop in enrollments experienced across the state. Chancellor Mathur guessed that the phenomenon has to do with the availability of “distance education,” which is growing by 10-25% yearly. So we have to provide that, too, he said.


Tracy Daly presented an overview of the fall marketing campaign, which, it seems, was viewed as a success by most trustees. Evidently, the campaign targeted “18 to 22 year olds.” Its theme was “the next step,” i.e., the step after summer.

Huh? I thought they meant that step off of the surf board and into the drink!

Tracy explained that her efforts are paying off: IVC had exactly 1 fewer students than last year—which means that the decline has been reversed or stopped. Saddleback headcount was up by 151.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc!

Bill Jay climbed on one of his hobbyhorses: that the best marketing is offering classes at local high schools. High Schools! High Schools! High Schools!, he seemed to say.

Fuentes used the term “cancer” to refer to the phenomenon of districts luring students from outside their own area. He looked pretty sour too.

Wagner seemed to express skepticism about the inference that the fall marketing campaign worked. How can we know that it did any good at all? How do we know it wasn’t something else that changed the numbers? He looked peeved again.

Well, that’s about when I had to leave, at about 9:30. I’ll try to find out what else happened, but nobody tells me anything.

Jack the cat says "Hey." --CW