"Lab" critics ignored years ago?

     [Update: see also subsequent post: Remembering 2003.]

     THIS SUMMER, I have been attempting to stay out of college and district politics as much as possible. Perhaps you noticed. I really wanted to take a break from that.
     Nevertheless, starting several months ago, I have been contacted by people who seem to want me to pursue the “story” regarding the (alleged) recent audit or report about facilities and programs in the Business Science and Technology Innovation Center (BSTIC) and the recent actions of top administration at Irvine Valley College with regard to those facilities and programs. (I’m not sure whether this is an IVC story or a broader one.)
     Some of these contacts have told me essentially the following: that, years ago (perhaps as long as nine years ago*), certain parties attempted to address perceived serious irregularities or inadequacies regarding (at least some) Computer Information Management (CIM)** and Computer Information Systems (CIS)*** courses. The issues concerned, among other things, the failure of students to attend labs for which they received credit and the failure of course instructors to run those labs or to run them appropriately.**** According to accounts I’ve received, efforts to address these perceived problems were rebuffed and dismissed by top administration, who seemed determined not to rock any boats—and perhaps to placate faculty who had particularly powerful district friends.*****
     I’m told, though I have not confirmed, that the recent report or audit concerns just such issues as those mentioned above.
     Is any of this correct? If it is not, I would certainly like to know the actual truth. If it is, confirmation would be appreciated. I'm told that the alleged audit is a public document, but, as far as I know, it has not been made available.
     Anyone with useful information can contact me at the college via email or through my private account. I’m not hard to find.
     (Feel free to comment here. But please do so responsibly.)

UPDATE/CLARIFICATION:

     One of my sources—a very reliable and knowledgeable person—sent this “clarification.” Referring to the period of perhaps five or six years ago, they said:

there was always an instructor in the lab. But he did not teach the lab. There were no "lab" assignments the way there are in a bio lab with an instructor. There was an instructor (Al Murtz, Nancy Bishopp, etc) who helped students who came in individually with their homework. So students were getting hours of lab credit in CIM or CIS for doing their homework in the lab, or not. Mostly they did homework at home. Instead of a lab of 40 students from the lecture attending at a specific time/day and getting specific lab assignments to do, they worked on homework with the teacher assigned to the lab for that hour. If no one came in, the teacher could just correct papers, do whatever. … [Another] problem with this arrangement [beyond students getting lab credit despite not attending the lab or attending and doing only homework] is that the lecture instructor did not "teach" or moderate the lab. So what happens if a higher level class in programming has a student come into the lab for help and the "teacher" assigned to the lab is a spreadsheet teacher?

     My source is of the opinion that the lecture teacher should be “teaching” the lab with assignments to earn the credit. But that’s not what was happening. Far from it.
     (My [Roy's] note: do keep in mind that two different schools taught courses involving computer labs; further, there are (or were) several "computer labs" on campus. These circumstances may be causing some confusion in interpreting some of my sources' claims.)

NOTES:

*According to my sources, the phenomenon of dismissing concerns about labs at IVC stretches back at least to the “Dennis White” era. White was hired as IVC's Vice President of Instruction in early 2003 and was canned in 2006. He was replaced by Craig Justice in June of 2007.

**Housed in IVC's School of Business Sciences

***Housed in IVC's School of Math, Computer Science, and Engineering

****According to California Community Colleges Guidelines for Title 5 Regulations, Chapter 6, Part 1—adopted by the California Community Colleges Board of Governors, July 9, 2007 and effective August 16, 2007—the following is an example of how units are to work for combined “Lecture and Lab” courses:
   “Three units = 32 hours (minimum) in-class lecture, 48 hours (minimum) in-class laboratory, plus 64 hours (minimum) out-of-class study. In this case, two units are awarded for lecture and one unit for laboratory.” [Note: IVC's CIS courses are the "combined" type.]
   According to reliable sources, years ago (and until recently), students (at least in the case of some lab courses at IVC) were not required by their instructors to attend lab, and those students who did attend used "lab" time for homework. Further, faculty often were not present for these "lab" hours.
   One source close to relevant governance at IVC told me: Only about a fourth of the Computer Science (CIS) Lab Hours per week are covered by an instructor at IVC. This means that most students are getting credit for lab hours (in CIS courses) without an instructor. “In my [reading of Title 5], that is a violation of the rule that instructors be present when students are earning credit. If an instructor is not present, credit cannot be awarded. … Title 5 regs regarding these labs are there expressly to eliminate a credit class as a place to ‘do homework.’”
   Other seemingly reliable sources with whom I have spoken hold this interpretation of Title 5. It is difficult for me to see how it can be interpreted otherwise.
   One source told me:
   “The School of Business [at IVC] has come to run their lab as a sort of service to the entire college. Thus, an instructor can direct his students to enroll in a ticket number and be able to use the computer lab’s better equipment. That seems great, but how does it jibe with Title 5 regs—to award students credit for using the college’s computers?”

*****One of my sources, a very reliable sort, says:
   “The operation of labs and learning centers became a hot issue when the state added to Title 5 very specific requirements for the hours and content of such courses. … Many fought these requirements—the Math faculty, Reading, School of Business. They all had reasons, ranging from 'it doesn't apply to us' to 'that’s not how they do it at Saddleback' to 'we've always done it this way.'"
   My source identified one “area” at IVC that did not fight, but instead embraced, the spirit and letter of the requirements. So the negative reaction was not uniform at IVC.

Second largest for-profit sued

Raghu Mathur works
for Argosy in Orange

For-Profit College Group Sued as U.S. Lays Out Wide Fraud (New York Times)

     The Department of Justice and four states on Monday filed a multibillion-dollar fraud suit against the Education Management Corporation, the nation’s second-largest for-profit college company, charging that it was not eligible for the $11 billion in state and federal financial aid it had received from July 2003 through June 2011.
     While the civil lawsuit is one of many raising similar charges against the expanding for-profit college industry, the case is the first in which the government intervened to back whistle-blowers’ claims that a company consistently violated federal law by paying recruiters based on how many students it enrolled. The suit said that each year, Education Management falsely certified that it was complying with the law, making it eligible to receive student financial aid.
     “The depth and breadth of the fraud laid out in the complaint are astonishing,” said Harry Litman, a lawyer in Pittsburgh and former federal prosecutor who is one of those representing the two whistle-blowers whose 2007 complaints spurred the suit. “It spans the entire company — from the ground level in over 100 separate institutions up to the most senior management — and accounts for nearly all the revenues the company has realized since 2003.”
     Education Management, which is based in Pittsburgh and is 41 percent owned by Goldman Sachs, enrolls about 150,000 students in 105 schools operating under four names: Art Institute, Argosy University, Brown Mackie College and South University.
     In a statement Monday, the company denied any wrongdoing.
. . .
     According to the 122-page complaint, Education Management got $2.2 billion of federal financial aid in fiscal 2010, making up 89.3 percent of its net revenues.
     The states joining in the suit are California, Florida, Illinois and Indiana.
     The complaint said the company had a “boiler-room style sales culture” in which recruiters were instructed to use high-pressure sales techniques and inflated claims about career placement to increase student enrollment, regardless of applicants’ qualifications. Recruiters were encouraged to enroll even applicants who were unable to write coherently, who appeared to be under the influence of drugs or who sought to enroll in an online program but had no computer.
     According to the suit, recruiters were also led to exploit applicants’ psychological vulnerabilities — for example, a parent’s hopes of moving a child out of a dangerous neighborhood….
. . .
     Publicly traded for-profit college companies have recently been a target both of government scrutiny and whistle-blower suits. In 2009, the Apollo Group, which owns the University of Phoenix, the largest for-profit college, settled a whistle-blower case for $78 million.
     The complaint noted that Todd Nelson, the chief executive of Education Management, previously headed the University of Phoenix. At Phoenix, he signed a $9.8 million settlement with the Department of Education, which had found that Phoenix had “systematically and intentionally” violated federal rules against paying recruiters for students. Phoenix never admitted any wrongdoing in either that settlement or the larger whistle-blower settlement two years ago.
     The Justice Department complaint said Education Management’s compensation system was similar to the one at Phoenix; company officials have said it was set up long before Mr. Nelson joined it in 2007.
In 2003, Education Management’s chief executive was Jock McKernan, a former governor of Maine who now serves as chairman of the board. Mr. McKernan is married to Senator Olympia J. Snowe, a Maine Republican whose 2010 financial disclosure form lists Education Management stock and options worth $2 million to $10 million.

Deputy Director of the CEDC

     Many of course still remember Greg Bishopp, former Saddleback dean and IVC faculty, who retired three or four years ago.
     It has just come to my attention that his son, Colin Bishopp, is a member of Team Obama:

Colin Bishopp

Colin Bishopp is the Deputy Director of the Clean Economy Development Center (CEDC), a non-profit organization that helps public officials and community leaders create jobs with clean energy projects. Colin joined CEDC in 2010 as its first Director of Business Development. In that capacity, he developed the Clean Economy Roadshow, an economic organizing platform that has helped to create jobs in thirteen states including Colorado, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio and Oregon. Colin is also the lead architect of the Gulf Coast Sustainable Economies Project, a collaborative effort to help twenty Gulf Coast communities diversify and strengthen their local economies. Prior to joining CEDC, Colin led various projects for the Change to Win Federation, first as Virginia State Director, and later as State Policy Director for the Home Performance campaign. In 2004, Colin taught courses in American politics and culture at Benedictine University. Colin earned his master's degree at the University of Chicago and his bachelor's degree at the University of California, Berkeley.

Congrats!

Jack Wu thanks Tom

Thank You, Tom Fuentes Wu’s World, Newport Beach Independent, August 5, 2011

Harry

     One of the greatest pop singers (and songwriters) of the last fifty years was Harry Nilsson, an eccentric and very troubled and very talented man. He died at age 52 in the early 90s.
     I was checkin’ out Hulu last night and came across this documentary about Harry that appears to be available there for free for the time being:

Who Is Harry Nilsson (And Why Is Everybody Talkin' About Him?) (Click on the link)

     I watched it. Loved it. I highly recommend it. (John Lennon and Ringo Starr are all over it.)
     Here’s Harry’s greatest performance (as many of us believe), which ironically is a cover of another band's song:

     Love it, love it, love it. I remember it so well. First my radio, then the family stereo, became a church, and I worshipped that song. What an amazing performance and production.
     Though Harry was a wonderful songwriter, this particular song was written and originally performed, not by him, but by the underrated Badfinger, two years earlier. (The two main talents of that band—and composers of the song—later committed suicide, but that's another story. The song was the result of combining Ham and Evan's two unfinished songs.)
     Harry was pretty special. When he was breaking up with his second wife, he produced this marvelous ditty:

     My favorite lines:

I’m goin’ insane
There’s no one to blame
So fuck you

     Here's Harry on the Smothers Brothers' Comedy Show, probably in 1969 or 1970 or so. I recall seeing this then:

     If you pay strict attention, you'll notice that the audience is fake. I mean, there's no audience there. (No doubt they played the tape of Harry's performance before an audience and recorded their reaction. Then they bounced that on top of Harry's performance.) Evidently, Harry was desperately afraid of live performing. —Well, no. He seemed to have no problem with live performing. His problem was with performing in front of an audience. Evidently, this was the result of a very bad experience he had in the late 50s.
     You've gotta love a guy that's that messed up.
     (Another fake "live" performance from about the same period: for British TV. Really good.)

• Listen to Jump Into the Fire, featuring superdrummer Jim Gordon, who, a dozen years later, heard voices that told him to kill his mother. He did.

New "whale" license plate—designed, in part, by IVC adjunct Bill Atkins

New Whale Tail license plate debuts (OC Reg)

A brighter, sunnier Whale Tail license plate is now available to California drivers, three years after artist Wyland asked the state to stop using his original design. ¶ Bill Atkins, a Laguna Beach graphic designer and illustrator, worked on the new image with Elizabeth Robinette Tyndall of Contra Costa County after winning a design contest…. (continued)

Atkins is Irvine Valley College’s "part-time faculty member in Digital Media Arts" (according to IVC).

Serban gets the axe (but gets a nifty deal, too)

[UPDATED] ~ RE former SOCCCD Vice Chancellor Andreea Serban:
From Friday’s Santa Barbara Independent:

Serban Placed on Leave of Absence

SBCC Showdown Results in Embattled President’s Departure

   Shortly before 4 a.m. this morning, after a nearly 12-hour hearing, the Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees announced that President Andreea Serban will be leaving the school on a paid leave of absence effective immediately. Described by the school’s recently hired attorney Craig Price as “a positive and agreed-upon conclusion,” the deal, which was brokered behind closed doors and with several lawyers present, brings to a close more than seven months of public speculation and controversy over Serban’s future at City College.
   The specifics of the deal, read into the record by Price during the predawn hours, include Serban’s paid leave of absence from now through June 30, 2012. At that time, the early termination provision of Serban’s existing contract (which was meant to expire June 30, 2014) will be implemented and the outgoing president will be given 18 months of her current salary (roughly $215,000 a year) plus full benefits as she is shown the door. Additionally, Price explained that Serban will retain her title of SBCC’s Superintendent President during her paid leave while also being “available to assist the college during the transition and in other ways” yet to be determined. A formally drafted document detailing the specific terms of the severance package will be presented and voted upon at a future Board of Trustees meeting.
   The meeting—which featured two hours of often intense public comment, including an impassioned speech by former City College president Peter MacDougall in defense of Serban, and some 10 hours of closed session negotiations between trustees, lawyers, and Serban—concluded with a 5-0 vote in favor of the conditioned termination. Trustee Morris Jurkowitz was absent for the vote (he bailed on the grueling marathon of a meeting right around 2 a.m.) while Trustee Joan Livingston abstained.

     For possible hints of the reasons, see Remember Andreea Serban? But who knows.
     This following piece that appeared a few days earlier should cast some light on what is really going on. You might want to look at the comments too (to the above piece).

City College Trustee Recall Efforts Underway as Rumors Swirl over President Andreea Serban Firing (July 27, 2011)

     Three of the four newly seated Santa Barbara City College Board of Trustees got some unpleasant news Tuesday morning: Efforts are officially underway to have them recalled little more than seven months after being sworn into office. A group calling itself Take Back SBCC—the same outfit of vocal citizens and past and present City College staffers that earlier this month levied Brown Act violation allegations against the Board of Trustees for, in part, their recent handling of school president Andreea Serban’s evaluation—served Trustees Marsha Croninger, Lisa Macker, and Peter Haslund at their respective homes with the paperwork necessary to pave the way to a potential recall election early next year.     
     Saying that the motivation for the budding recall effort is essentially the same as the rational behind the highly publicized Brown Act claims, Take Back spokesperson Ray O’Conner, a professor emeritus at SBCC, explained in the wake of the servings, “Ever since they were elected, [Croninger, Macker, and Haslund] have made it quite clear they want to remove the Superintendent President [Serban] and, in the process, they have basically been taking a sledgehammer to the whole governance process at the college.”
     Interestingly enough, the recall efforts were made public less than 24 hours after the Board of Trustees announced a special closed-session hearing for this Thursday specifically to address “potential litigation” related to three presumably related topics—“written demands [the board] has received from an attorney representing President Serban,” a “written complaint from a private attorney representing Take Back SBCC regarding Brown Act compliance,” and, perhaps most telling, potential “Public Employee/Discipline/Release.”
     The meeting, which will be held prior to the trustees’ regularly scheduled meeting on Thursday afternoon, will mark the sixth time this year they have met behind closed doors to discuss matters related to Serban. The previous five, all part of a historically protracted performance evaluation that added up to no less than 12 hours of talk time, ultimately resulted in, to hear acting Board President Haslund tell it, “no reportable action.” That is to say, as attorney Craig Price, who was hired by the trustees this past winter when concerns over possible Brown Act violations first arose, put it last week, “The results of the evaluation should never be reported out unless it changes the status quo of the employees contract. That did not happen so there was nothing to report.”
     For her part, Serban, who is technically still under contract to lead the school until June 2014, expressed a certain degree of “surprise” about the recall news while opting not to comment on the specifics of why she needs a lawyer or if she felt that the results of her evaluation—which reportedly concluded with both her and the seven-member Board of Trustees each writing and placing lengthy letters into her personnel file—rose to the level of reportable action.
     “It is a confidential matter and, as such, it is not something I can comment on at this time,” explained Serban. And, while just four months ago it was revealed that Serban was a finalist for the presidency at a Los Angeles area community college (an option which, she explained at the time, was being explored because she found it increasingly difficult to work with the new board majority of Croninger, Macker, Haslund, and Marty Blum), she offered this week that she remains committed to SBCC and working with the entire Board of Trustees to “do what is best for the college … I truly love the college,” said Serban. “And I feel very positive about where we are as an institution … I am going to continue to do my job as best I can.”
     As for the trustees facing the recall efforts, Haslund expressed his strong frustration about the recent plot twist. (It should be noted that such efforts are no easy undertaking as a Notice of Intent to Recall by no means guarantees an actual recall election. Before that can happen, O’Conner and company must, among many other hurdles, secure more than 11,500 certified signatures per trustee to be recalled.)
     Explaining that confidentiality laws prevent him, or any of the his fellow trustees, from disclosing what exactly has been the motivation behind the many actions that Take Back SBCC is crying foul about, Haslund said of his would-be ousters, “These are, of course, well-intentioned people and it is their legal right to do this, but it is a diversion and nothing more. We all care deeply about this school. We were elected and we are trying to do our job … I guess, if you don’t agree, then you make up stuff and try and recall [us].”