April 28, 2020 Minutes

Council of Department Chairs

Please note that these minutes reflect discussions that happened on the date of these minutes. Due to the COVID-19 situation, things are rapidly changing. For official policy, please wait for documents from the appropriate offices.

Attendees (4/28/20): Curtis Bennett, Barbara Taylor, Tangan Gao, Chris Brazier, Henry Wu, Andreas Bill, Babette Benken, Christine Whitcraft, Dessie Underwood, Lisa Martin, Margaret Karteron, Rick Behl, Kris Slowinski, Will Murray (invitee, incoming Chair)

  1. Approved agenda
  2. Approve minutes
    1. April 14 minutes, approved.
    2. April 21 minutes, approved.
  3. Announcements
    1. CNSM – Operations
      1. Welcome Will Murray to CDC
      2. College Nominations
        1. URC
          Need a nomination among the Chairs. Andreas Bill is nominated and accepts the nomination.
        2. Academic Senate
          Need additional nominations as soon as possible.
    2. ASM
      1. No new update
    3. Academic Senate
      1. GE B SLOs were discussed.
    4. Dean’s Report
      1. The University receives about $41 million from federal COVID-19 CARES Act. Half of the fund will be used to support students financially. Student Affairs are handling the distribution of this fund. The remaining CARES Act fund will be distributed to various units of the University after the fund distribution to students has been completed.
      2. The budget forecast for next two academic years: The University is planning for a scenario of a 5% budget cut next year (with a second we believe much less likely scenario of 10%). The provost’s office is actually hoping it will be slightly under 5%.  With a 5% cut, due to reserve monies, the cut will most likely be limited to cuts of assigned time at the department level, excluding RSCA assigned time. Each department should carefully plan their total units of assigned time during AY 2020-2021. The final revise of California state budget for AY 2020-2021 will come in September. So department/college should be planning for 15% cut in assigned time. There will be more uncertainty for the AY 2021-2022 budget which will heavily depend on the state economy.
      3. Part of the CARES Act fund will be used to cover expenditures that were required by the COVID-19 outbreak (resources for remote instruction, course material development, instructor training during the summer, etc.)
        CSU CO has a task force which is looking into issues/possibilities of what the fall semester will look like regarding face-to-face/alternative modality instruction. We expect that the CO’s final decision/guidance will come around May 15.
      4. If we are required to keep the current social distance of 6 feet due to COVID-19 in fall semester, virtually all our classes must be offered remotely due to classroom capacity, except for a very few classes such as very small graduate classes or labs. If we still have to take care of the high risk group of students and faculty, then we may need to have remote offerings for any class with high risk individuals..
  4. Associate Deans
    1. Academic Programs
      1. Final Exams
        A Berkeley academic senate policy noted that online video proctoring through Zoom raises privacy concerns as well as equity issues.  We recommend that faculty be aware of these concerns and consider not using zoom proctoring of their exams.
      2. SOAR
        Update on freshman SOARs online. The college is constantly fine-turning our SOAR logistics for this summer. The college is assembling online modules for our SOARs. Each department should provide SOAR related videos and/or ppt files to the college no later than May 8.

        Update on transfer SOARs online. We only have two SOAR dates for all transfers. Transfer SOAR is much more complicated than the freshman SOAR since students come in with dramatically different course credits. As in previous years, faculty advisors continue provide academic advising through EAB and Zoom meetings. In addition to major course recommendations, faculty advisors will also provide advising on upper-division GE courses this summer. The college will provide trainings to faculty advisors on GE rules in early summer.
  5. Department Recognition of Graduates
    1. Departmental plan
    2. Social Media
    3. Other: General discussion/brainstorm. Each department decides its virtual graduation: to have or not have and when (late May or June).Most departments were looking at a June recognition.Science Education was looking at a May recognition.
  6. Planning F2020
    1. Courses - For Friday, please list courses that:
      1. Require face-to-face (upper division labs? others?)
      2. Lower enrollment: Highly suggested face-to-face (grad classes?)
      3. Lower enrollment: Strongly preferred face-to-face (some U.D. classes?)
      4. Other category needed?
        General discussion/brainstorm. Each department should examine its course offering such as graduate courses and lab courses to see whether there are any courses which can be offered face-to-face or partial face-to-face with social distance.
    2. Multi-section course discussion
      1. if online provide option of one instructor preparing main material that other instructors could use? (ideally for technophobes - not required of all instructors)
      2. Other ideas? General discussion/brainstorm.
    3. FLCs
      1. Faculty Leaders – please suggest
        Please send your nomination to Curt by this Friday.
      2. Modules
        1. Kelly Young suggested a module on empathy
        2. Others recommendations
          1. Community in a virtual setting
          2. Case studies in virtual classrooms
          3. Virtual homework sets and exams
          4. Alternative modes of assessment in an online environment
      3. Please send your suggestions to your department Chair or Curt by this Friday.
      4. Types. How many of each?  Any additions?
        1. O: Turning a class into an online class (as per national standards for online)
        2. L:  Doing a lab remotely consistent with national standards
        3. N: Remote teaching for novices
        4. R: Reflecting on remote teaching and how to do it better
        5. C: Course based FLCs
      5. General discussion/brainstorm. The goal of FLCs this summer is to prepare faculty for effective remote teaching in the fall semester. All faculty should be ready for fall teaching. Each department collects the needs from its faculty and send them to Curt by this Friday.
    4. FERPing Faculty
      It appears that the CARES Act fund will reside on the state side and if it directly pays faculty on FERP, that could jeopardize their retirement status in CalPERS. If at all possible, the college will compensate those FERP faculty who will attend trainings this summer in a way that will not affect their retirement status.
    5. Lab kits
      Possible ways of delivering class lab kits to students in fall semester are discussed such as student pickup or mailing them to students. The potential cost and funding resources are also discussed.
  7. Graduate Programs
    1. Mentoring Policy
      Postponed to next CDC meeting.
  8. Open Discussion
    N/A
     
  9. Meeting adjourned at 3:35pm

Submitted by Tangan Gao (Chair, Mathematics and Statistics)

Meeting Minutes were APPROVED on Tuesday, May 5, 2020

*Note: This reflects discussion on the date of the CDC meeting about policies, not actual policy. Faculty and staff should wait for official communication on each subject before acting.