Wendy's new assignment

About five minutes ago, the IVC community received this email from Vice President of Instruction Craig Justice:

Colleagues:

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Wendy Gabriella, Professor of Anthropology and Academic Senate President, to Instructional Coordinator of Academic Programs, Office of Instruction, for the 2009-2010 academic year. Wendy will continue to co-chair the 2010 Accreditation Self-study Steering Committee. She will coordinate numerous operational projects for the Office of Instruction, including the Basic Skills Initiative grant program, Early College Program (Instructional Planning), some research projects conducted by the Office of Institutional Research, and will assist the Vice President of Instruction with enrollment management, program review, strategic planning, as well as other important projects.

According to the Academic Senate Bylaws, Professor Lisa Davis-Allen, Academic Chair of Visual Arts and Academic Senate Vice President, will become the President of the Academic Senate.

Please join me in extending our enthusiastic support for Wendy and Lisa as they serve in their new assignments.

It is my understanding that Wendy is receiving 100% reassigned time (i.e., reassignment from her regular teaching duties) to serve in this capacity and that she is not teaching any courses this semester.

It is no secret that VPI Justice, who has a reputation for intelligence and hard work, has been encumbered by startlingly numerous responsibilities since he came to IVC two or three years ago. (At IVC, deans, too, seem chronically overburdened.) That problem led to a proposal, last spring, to create a new IVC deanship—a Dean of Academic Programs, Student Learning, and Research. The proposal, however, was rejected by the SOCCCD board, perhaps owing in part to the need for frugality (or, anyway, its appearance) during this period of fiscal stress. (See April board meeting.)

A champion of openness and "process":

Wendy Gabriella has long been a faculty leader, but particularly starting in late 1996, with the emergence of a controversial conservative "Board Majority." (Arguably, the controversial "board majority" era continues to this day, though with somewhat different players.) In 1997, she and I twice sued the district board for its violations of the Open Meetings Law, when, repeatedly, the board met in closed session to make decisions that should have been made openly and with clear notice to the public.

(In those days, many objections to the board's conduct boiled down to the charge that the trustees and chancellor violated or circumvented established and legal "process"—something that nowadays is sometimes expressed in the demand for "transparency." It was during this period that the board violated its own policies and "best practices" (or so said the accrediting agency) in promoting the administrative career of Raghu P. Mathur over seemingly far more qualified candidates, especially in selecting him as chancellor of the district. Mathur continues to be chancellor of the district.)

Wendy also assisted in district students' repeated and successful challenges to the board's restrictions on student protests (initially with regard to administrative and board behavior that jeopardized the colleges' accreditation) and adoption of new "speech and advocacy" policies that violated student speech rights.

Most recently, Wendy led the effort to challenge the district over its disregard of a state statute giving faculty (i.e., the Academic Senates) the right to mutually develop (along with the district) a faculty hiring policy. That effort was successful and, by some accounts, constituted a landmark victory for faculty governance rights in the California community college system.

Epoch-shatteringly delightful!

Recently, I posted about a district almanac page that presents the distribution of grades given to students at our two colleges (during the Spring semester of 2006). The upshot: the faculty of our colleges—and especially Saddleback faculty—give lots more A’s than any other grade. (See What we have here is failure to evaluate.)

I’ve done a little research since then, and, as it turns out, this kind of grade information is fairly readily available, owing to such entities as the website Pick-A-Prof (PAP). According to Wikipedia,

Pick-A-Prof is a pay-to-use online website found at www.pickaprof.com that hosts professor reviews and other academic tools and services for university students and professors. …
…
The site posts grade histories of professors. The grade history graphs display the distribution of grades from A’s to F’s.

This feature displays the semester(s) a professor teaches a particular course and the average GPA each professor gives in that course. While searching for a course, the site shows the professors teaching the course, a 5-star rating system ..., the number of student reviews submitted for each professor and the percentage of students who dropped the class.
…
Many professors say the website portrays their courses unfairly and students will hesitate to take their classes if the grade distribution reported on Pick-A-Prof does not match their definition of earning an “easy A.” ….

I found a year-old article in UC Santa Barbara's Daily Nexus (New Web Site Evaluates Professors) that reports that

Pick-A-Prof won a lawsuit against University of California, Davis in 2006 that opened the gateway for the widespread publication of professors’ grades. The site sued the school claiming that professors’ grades were public record after the university had originally given out the grades but then refused to release them.

I’ve been told (but need to verify) that our own district has handed over grade distribution records per instructor to Pick-A-Prof.

So I visited PAP, and, sure enough, PAP has the data, at least for IVC. (One must register to access PAP's data, but there's no charge.)

I looked up Professor Roy Bauer and found that the fellow gives lots of A’s but many more B’s and his “G.P.A” (i.e., the average grade he gives) is slightly below 2.0 (C) for “Intro to Philosophy” and slightly above 2.0 for “Ethics.”

Bastard!

Naturally, I provided a review of this fine fellow. I gave him five stars (the maximum) and wrote that he is “epoch-shatteringly delightful.”

And it's all true.

For those youngsters who were mystified by my earlier allusion to Cool Hand Luke:



I think I'm beginning to like this Anderson Cooper fella:

Exit Tuffy

Tuffy the Titan gets pink slip from Cal State Fullerton (OC Reg)

Poll: Should O.C. colleges slash liberal arts to save money? (OC Reg)

One on One Interview with George McGovern (OC Reg)

McGovern gave a talk last night at the Nixon Library.