Fascinating

FourSee Faculty Post: Reinvention 5-Year Data

Posted on behalf of Michael Heathfield and FourSee Math Faculty:

 

Here is a very disturbing graphic that will not be appearing at a Board Meeting anytime soon.  It paints a dramatic picture of what Reinvention has delivered for some of our students, communities, colleges and colleagues. Does it look good to you?

FTE Change

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some wiser heads predict this picture will get even more disturbing once fall 2016 registrations are factored into the frame.  Campus Zero is quick to ascribe falling enrollment to a recovering economy and improved employment. Of course, it would be heresy at Campus Zero to refer them to solid statistical evidence that for the middle class, the working class, and the poor the “recovery” did not indeed lift them up to where they were before the Great Recession.  These R words cover a mass of complexity, which is an anathema to the political class. These are dangerous blanket words in the wrong hands: Recession, Recovery, Reinvention and, lest we forget at our peril, Recruitment and Retention.

 

FourSee

 

 

 

 

Mike Heathfield & Math FourSee faculty

A Call for Partners in Resistance: Amanda Loos Published in Praxis

Check it HERE…

One particularly good part:

Why this is about social justice, and not just another love-hate quarrel between faculty and administration
The corporatizing of higher education is a national epidemic; community colleges are especially susceptible given their history as vocational institutions and the common misperception that this is their sole mission in a capitalist economy. While my colleagues and I have grown exhausted resisting its detrimental effects in and out of the classroom, CCC Administration and Board seem to have fully embraced a business model, failing to work with a willing faculty body as partners in self-reflection and change rather than steamrolling a “degrees of economic value” agenda.

And there is a great deal at stake.

By isolating programs geographically, CCC is continuing Chicago’s legacy of further disenfranchising already marginalized communities. The no confidence resolution issued by District Wide Faculty Council (FC4) emphasizes a fundamental disagreement between the Board/Chancellor and faculty on the mission of CC’s. It backs away from saying (though my colleagues have said it elsewhere) that these decisions reinforce Chicago’s racial, class, language, and gender divisions and segregation…

It doesn’t have to be this way – in fact, just the opposite. By meeting a basic right of access to education and, by extension, earning power, critical thinking, communication and problem-solving skills – CC’s can be a space where students become more aware of their own agency and empowered to resist systemic oppressions.

The potential for social justice extends far beyond personal/individual goal-attainment.

Read the rest. It’s worth the effort. I feel so proud and lucky to be her colleague.

UP-UPDATED: CASTpods: listen, if you like

UPDATED: March 31, 2016  May 3, 2016

In an active attempt to hybridize CAST content, Kamran and I decided to take a two-prong delivery approach for CASTivities this spring: we’ve kept traditional meetings, but we have actively sought to CAST (pun, absolutely and totally, intended) a wider net.

I have been working to diversify and digitize content via podcasts or what Kamran coined: CASTpods. Currently, we’re housing the CASTpods on Sound Cloud. You can take a listen there, which 0ver 150 almost 275 300 400 of you have.  Here’s a rundown of the first six current nine fourteen for the spring 2016 semester. Due to space constraints, some of the earlier CASTpods have been archived on Dropbox.

CASTpod #1 (archived)
In the inaugural CASTpod, Kristin and Kamran talk about the preliminary questionnaire results; bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress; and what historical figure Kristin identifies with and how Kamran would choose to die.

CASTpod #2 (archived)
In the second CASTpod of the spring 2016 semester, Kristin talks about the spaces where we learn with faculty member Elisabeth Heard Greer. Elisabeth also serves as the academic online coordinator for the English department. From Malcolm X’s car sitting on a platform at the newly opened MXC to Foucault, Elisabeth and Kristin chat about the physical and virtual places where we teach and our students learn.

CASTpod #3 (archived)
For the third CASTpod of the spring 2016 semester, Kristin talks about math education with faculty member Chris Sabino. As an impetus for our discussion, we reference Conrad Wolfram’s TED Talk: “Teaching Kids Real Math with Computers.” Chris waxes mathematical about why we teach students math, numeracy, the value of math education, and the conceptual and practical realities of math education.

CASTpod #4 (archived)
The fourth CASTpod of the semester is a conversation between Kristin Bivens and Youth Work scholar and teacher Michael Heathfield.  Mike is a youth work and assessment scholar who has an impressive publication and speaking record on both accounts. In our discussion, one that emotionally and intellectually engaged me as a Chicagoan, teacher, and scholar, we discuss the role of violence, social justice, and a staggering 47% statistic that you need to listen to Mike speak about.  There are changes underfoot and Mike most eloquently shows the impact of those changes on our students while suggesting privileging the recruitment of a certain kind of student at CCC.

CASTpod #5 (archived)
For the fifth CASTpod of the semester, assessment gurus Carrie Nepstad and Erica McCormack join me for a conversation about the Assessment Committee’s integral role at HW. At the end of the discussion, I draw the conclusion regarding apt disciplinary positioning that makes Child Development (CD) faculty the leaders in assessment. At the end of our CASTpod, we share worries about our CD colleagues, as well as wonder about the HLC’s next visit.

CASTpod #6 (archived)
One CASTpod just wasn’t enough for talking assessment with Carrie Nepstad. So, Carrie joins me again this week for CASTpod #6 to discuss “Closing the Loop”–the Assessment Committee’s effort to take what we learn via assessment to improve our teaching and our students’ learning. Want to get involved? Check out the Assessment Committee’s page: www.ccc.edu/colleges/washington…ges/Assessment.aspx

CASTpod #7
Frank Wang, in the 7th CASTpod of the semester, discusses his National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Numeracy Infusion Course for Higher Education (NICHE) during his recent visit from La Guardia Community College (CUNY) to Harold Washington College (CCC) with Kristin. Dr. Wang defines numeracy as the “contextualized use of numbers and data in a manner that requires critical thinking.” Further, he explains how NICHE is similar to Writing Across the Curriculum programs on many higher education campuses, while explaining the importance of quantitative reasoning across curriculum in community colleges.

CASTpod #8
The mid-term and CASTpod 8 are here. And in keeping with being in the middle of things, in this week’s CASTpod Kristin talk about embodiment, quantitative data in context, and post-humanism. She calls on our colleagues to be aware of how you use technology in the classroom and she suggests the potential repercussions that go hand-in-hand with technology–disembodied decision making.

CASTpod #9
For the 9th CASTpod of the spring 2016 semester, Kristin interviews esteemed colleague Jen Asimow from Applied Sciences. In the interview, Jen offers practical, expert, and preliminary advice for thinking about re-designing courses using universal backward design principles. During the conversation, Kristin queries where should someone begin if they’re interested in re-vamping an inherited course? Or designing a new one? Spoiler alert: start with SPAS and SLOs. Teaser: you’re going to have to listen to Jen explain how and why.

CASTpod #10
Joining me for the first CASTpod post-spring break is Associate Dean of Instruction Cindy Cerrentano and co-chair of the department of English, Speech, Theater, and Journalism Sarah Liston. In a longer CASTpod, Cindy, Sarah, and Kristin discuss some data regarding high risk courses at HW, the importance of contextualizing these (and all) statistics, and connections between success, learning, and embodiment.

Kristin begins by asking a tough question: aren’t we always going to have high risk courses? If you accept the premise of that question, you’ll enjoy the dialogue that ensued.

Want to know more? You can read an article Cindy mentions: “On the path to Graduation, Life Intervenes” (chronicle.com/article/On-the-Pat…-Graduation/235603; and an article Kristin refers to “The Home that Me Doesn’t Exist Anymore” (www.buzzfeed.com/sandersjasmine19…nQVNEay)(written for Buzzfeed by an HW student, Jasmine Sanders).

CASTpod #11
If you’ve been at HW long enough, you know that my guest for CASTpod 11 has worn many hats: faculty member, department chair, dean of instruction, vice president, and primary HLC self-study author, Dr. John Hader. Hader has superbly served many roles in his more than 20 years at HW. In this week’s CASTpod, I pick Hader’s brain about his experience writing the self-study report from the last HLC visit nearly (gasp!) ten years ago.

We discuss what he learned, how he managed it, and expertise according to Barbara Oakley. Oakley uses neuroscience to explain experts as “mak[ing] complex decisions rapidly, shut[ing] down their conscious system and rely[ing] on their well-trained intuition and deeply engrained repertoire of [learned] chunks [of knowledge].” Experts wear many hats, and in our conversation, Hader explores some of his.
CASTpod #12
Did you know there are many spaces where students can work with a tutor? In this week’s podcast—the twelfth of the spring 2016 semester—BriAnne Nichols sat down with me to discuss the work the office of academic support does.

Teaching face-to-face? There are tutoring opportunities for your students. Teaching online? There are tutoring opportunities for your students. Teaching hybrid? There are tutoring opportunities for your students.

See the trend? There are numerous opportunities for you to work with academic support to further enhance your students’ learning. You can listen to BriAnne explain how you can get involved and what we currently offer. (And don’t worry, I think she’ll present more during FDW.)

CASTpod #13
Thinking about teaching without a textbook? In the #13 CASTpod of the spring semester, Math Department’s Jeff Swigart eloquently explains his choices to seek out alternatives to textbooks for the math courses he instructs using Open Education Resources (OER). When asked about the essential question faculty should consider before choosing an OER, he responded: evaluate the text before you choose it.

Whatever your position on OERs versus traditional textbooks from for-profit publishers, OER’s are current alternatives for faculty and students to deliver content in traditional classroom spaces. Further, an important and pivotal question for teachers and teaching: do we use technology to close or open learning opportunities?

CASTpod #14
Whether you can believe it or not, it’s almost the end of the 2016 spring semester. Looking forward, in a solo CASTpod #14, Kristin talks about the soon-to-be-in if not-already-in-your-inbox Faculty Development Week (FDW) proposal request for presentations.

The theme of FDW 2016 is Creating Connections Across Divides. FDW will be held at HWC from Tuesday, August 16 to Friday, August 19 (9am to 3pm each day).

Please submit your proposal by May 20.

To submit, follow the Google Form link in the CCC email announcement.

Compensation for Presenting: Part time faculty are paid $25 per 1 hour of presentation (a maximum of $100). This is in addition to any compensation administration offers for attendance. For example, if a PT faculty member presents two, 2-hour sessions they will be paid $100.

Full time faculty are comped 1 hour of registration duties for each hour of FDW presentation. Presenting does not count as additional attendance for required FDW time. For example, if an FT faculty member with standard registration duties provides two one-hour presentations, they will only be required to complete 28 registration hours.

As always, we invite a wide variety of useful and/or stimulating breakaway sessions from faculty, including both full-time and part-time. To help you frame (but not limit) your proposal submission, you might find it helpful to consider Creating Connections Across Divides–the FDW 2016 theme.

Some suggestions for sessions might include, but are not limited to:

+ Discipline Exhibitions: Past sessions like the Cadaver Lab Tour, Architecture Walk, and Creative Writing Workshops provide a sample of all the amazing activities and inquiries going on throughout the rest of our building. Our community is filled with experts from a wide variety of disciplines. It is often a pleasure to learn something from our colleagues’ expertise, and these experiences can often have unexpected benefits in our own classrooms. We are interested both in reprisals of past sessions and new ideas.

+Semester Preparation: Sessions that help faculty setup their Blackboard sites, re-design a syllabus, or think of a new plan for assignments and tests are useful to many faculty. We are interested in presenters who wish to provide a tutorial on different design strategies, lead a workshop, or facilitate a showcase of completed syllabi, Blackboard sites, or assignments.

+Science of Teaching: If you have been doing research on the science of teaching, it may be useful for our community for you to disseminate and share what you’ve learned.

+Technologies in Pedagogy: As technology changes, faculty will find more applications for various programs and devices within the classroom. If you have something you would like to share, we would be happy to put you on the program.

+Seminar Discussions: Are you interested in hosting a seminar discussion around a particular pedagogical question or topic? This year, we are encouraging proposals for open-ended seminar discussions in the hopes of fostering more exchanges of ideas and perspectives between faculty.

+Support System Tutorials: Everybody loves filling out travel reimbursement forms, but sometimes a tutorial on our various support systems can be useful. If you feel comfortable and experienced with a particular set of support systems, we encourage you to share your knowledge.

Again, these are merely suggestions, and we will be happy to consider proposals that fall outside the above topics and within or outside the FDW theme: Creating Connections Across Divides.

See you at FDW 2016!

 

Thanks for continuing to listen listening!

I have had the most worthwhile experiences talking with our colleagues about different topics. The discussions in CASTpods #4 and #5 haunt me still.

Have a listen, and look for a mid-term end of the semester survey about CAST in a few weeks in your inbox over spring break around finals week, as well as our new CAST space on the HWC/CCC webpage: http://www.ccc.edu/colleges/washington/departments/Pages/CAST.aspx.

On Twitter? Follow us there, too: @CASThwc

Is This Seat Taken? Don’t Mind if I Do.

NOTE: This post has been updated in a new post with a correction about the third paragraph.

In light of my post about the proposed new head covering policy, a few other people with knowledge of the proposed revision/consolidation of existing policies that there are more problems than that one. First a bit of background on the project: in an early January email to all District Presidents, VPs, Deans of Instruction, Deans of Student Services, Deans of Careers, Registrars, and 24 Vice Chancellors, Associate Vice Chancellors, Executive Directors and Directors, Associate Vice Chancellor of Academic Systems Michael Mutz, wrote:

As you know, we have reviewed each of our academic and student policies over the past few months with the following goals:

  • Streamline, simplify and condense policies.
  • Eliminate redundancy (between and within the Academic Policy Manual and Student Policy Manual).
  • Update/create new policies and delete policies that are no longer needed – focus on correcting policies with errors, that are out of compliance and/or create barriers to student success.
  • Separate procedures from policy.

Structural changes have been made.

  • Consolidated the policy content from the Academic Policy Manual and Student Policy Manual and created a new CCC Academic & Student Policy document
  • Revised policy content to achieve the four goals, above

Sounds like a good project! I like the clear parameters/goals. (Though, it should be noted that any policy manual ought to have a clear audience, and that a policy manual that has been streamlined for students would not include sections on “Faculty Program” and “Tenure Process” and a manual streamlined for, say, faculty and academic staff would probably not include information about sections on “Financial Aid Eligibility” and the like, which suggests that this project is really an effort to make things easier for Administrators, but whatever–no one but administrators reads policy manuals until they need them, so I’m willing to be open-minded and forgiving about this aspect.)

I do think it’s a bit strange that among those reviewing the only people who could possibly represent a faculty viewpoint are those who would do so through their imaginations and those administrators who, like Armen, for example, are former faculty (No CCC Union leadership? No FC4 leadership? Not even a nod? Puzzling), but perhaps that happened indirectly (i.e., someone on the list understood that they would pass this along) or by other means like administrators sending the link to faculty or something. Or, maybe, just maybe, they (AVC Mutz, the VC to whom he reports, or all or some of those at Campus Zero) concluded (or assumed) that this kind of project is an administrative one and so within their sole purview (a.k.a. a “Make-It-Work” Initiative). But that stuff, for now, is neither here nor there; I do not want to focus here about why faculty don’t (seem to) have a seat at this table, even in the review stage–to restate for absolute clarity: this is not a complaint about process–but instead seek an answer to whether there are substantive problems with this proposed set of policies that are going unaddressed or unconsidered (or, maybe, under-considered) on account faculty absence at the “table.” So I’d like to focus your attention here, on substance, at least for now.

Why limit the focus in this way, when process is such a big part of the current concerns? Because regardless of the process issue, I think faculty perspective on that third goal in particular (“Update/create new policies and delete policies that are no longer needed – focus on correcting policies with errors, that are out of compliance and/or create barriers to student success.”) might have some things to say that might be helpful and while the process discussion is important, we won’t get to the substance if we don’t temporarily bracket the process problems.

So, what is the substance of which I speak? Well, there’s good stuff, for sure! For example:

(more…)

Three for Thursday

Here are three options for you to check out to see what’s going on in a discipline other than your own:

~Declining Student Resilience: An article from Psychology Today about the massive spike in recent years of student needs for psych services. I have MANY criticisms of our district office, but I cannot deny that they did a really great thing in establishing Wellness Centers across the colleges and putting Michael Russell in charge of all of them. I have not seen as much of the kinds of things discussed in this article as they report–perhaps our students are more resilient than the typical, traditional student?

~The Hit Charade: From The Atlantic, an eye–opening article for anyone interested in Pop Culture (or with kids who listen to a lot of Top-40) about how a handful of unknowns who are the architects of the ear candy that dominates the pop radio airwaves. Also has some interesting stuff about re-use, artistry, and the music market.

~What Does the Giraffe Say: Speaking of music hits from Scandinavians, it turns out that giraffes DO have something to say, though not quite as catchy as “Jacha, chacha, chacha, chow!”…

Another Response from an Expert on the Child Development Program

HWC Superstar and Child Development faculty member Jen Asimow has, in the spirit of her colleague’s thoughtful and excellent response to the initial meeting and announcement of the “plan,” has taken some time to detail her thoughts about the official announcement through annotation of that announcement. You’ll find her writing in italics. She asked me to post it here, and I am happy to oblige.

As a member of the Child Development faculty at Harold Washington College, I am writing this response to the following announcement.  My comments are in blue italics after each section.

This response is not meant in any way to be disrespectful to the writer of this announcement.  We know that the administration of CCC work under very different conditions than faculty and cannot possibly say what they want or believe.  They serve at the “largesse” of the Chancellor, so they can in no way speak out against her or the people who work for her.  I have absolutely no doubt that the administrators at any of the affected campuses do not think that this decision is a good idea, do not believe that it serves students, or that it will be good now or in the future for the City Colleges as a whole. 

 

Faculty and staff:

We are writing to inform you about important changes in City Colleges of Chicago (CCC)’s Child Development and Education programs as we continue the implementation of the College to Careers (C2C) initiative.

Background:  City Colleges’ C2C initiative is designed to ensure our educational programs fully prepare students for the demands of employers and transfer universities so they can seize one of the more than 600,000 jobs coming to the Chicago region in high-demand careers over the next decade.  We do this through partnerships with employers and four-year universities who not only help design our programs but also provide our students with internships, employment and transfer opportunities.  Additionally, we ensure our curriculum is relevant to real-world expectations, and we invest in faculty and staff, equipment and facilities to make sure students have access to the best education available.

 

The City Colleges has for years (its entire existence prior to Reinvention and the C2C initiative) committed itself to investing in faculty and staff, equipment and facilities to ensure that students have the best education possible.  This is not new to this initiative and the insinuation is misleading and unfair to all of those who spent their careers working for City College’s students in years past.  In addition, partnerships with four-year universities have existed since the beginning as well. This is nothing new.  In Child Development, we have forged partnerships throughout the city and surrounding areas over the years, by ourselves, without the help or support of district initiatives.

 

Each of our seven colleges serves as the official home for a C2C focus area. Last year, Harry S Truman College was designated as the C2C hub for Education, Human and Natural Sciences.

Action:  There will be a phased transition of Child Development and Education programs to Harry S Truman College.

Rationale: To better serve students by bringing together district wide faculty and staff under one roof, into one hub.   Specifically:

  • Consolidate our investments and gain efficiencies to better support our students.

 

I do not know how this is more “efficient.” Since when is asking people, both faculty and students, to spend more time commuting, efficient?  Consolidation is not a good thing either.  It minimizes diversity of thought, which is necessary to move systems forward. It centralizes talent, rather than spreading it out where it is needed and it takes access away from the vast majority of communities in our city.  I am not sure what “consolidate our investments” means.  The only district investment in the Child Development Program is the faculty.  Unlike nursing, or the medical degrees which require expensive laboratories and equipment, the cost of the Child Development program is no different if we are all at one campus or several.  Yes, we are all accredited, which has an additional cost, but national accreditation is an investment in the programs that is minimal.  Consolidating us as people is a terrible idea.  Cutting off our ability to work in communities where our students live and learn does not gain efficiency and it most definitely does not better support our students.  In fact, it does exactly the opposite.

 

  • Concentrate our resources to provide students with access to excellent facilities and strong partners.  The partner list includes: Chicago Public Schools, Jewish Council for Youth Services, and Christopher House, who are among the nearly 50 employer partners who have hired CCC students for education-related jobs this fiscal year.  Some of our transfer partners in Education include: University of Illinois at Chicago, National Louis University and others.

 

The entire paragraph above is misleading.  In my opinion, the facility at Truman is far from excellent, relative to the relatively new campus at HWC, KK, and soon-to-be open M).  Currently the Truman campus is fine, much like the old MX; the bathrooms could use an update, and the child development lab school should probably be completely rebuilt. They currently do not have a wonderful teaching lab, as we do at HWC.  Perhaps there are plans for updating Truman College.  I am not sure about that and I would welcome that if we were to move there.  However, in its current state, it is not the excellent facility they are claiming it to be.

The “partnerships” described above are also not quite accurate.  Over the past 15 years at HWC, I have developed partners with 10 times the few mentioned above.  Each of the 5 affected campuses has done the same.  What will happen is that all of those wonderful partnerships will dissolve, and only those few partnerships on the north side will remain. 

The transfer partner list is also extremely misleading.  Over the past 2 years, several of the Child Development faculty, myself included, has worked on articulation agreements with four-year universities.  This work was funded by the Early Learning Challenge Grant, which came to higher ed in Illinois via Race to the Top funds.  The district office agreed to allow us to partner with these universities, and signed MOUs about our involvement. The new partnership with UIC is the result of 15 years of my work with UIC.  That work was between HWC and UIC, even though we all agreed that any agreements would be for all of the colleges (the more the merrier!)  To insinuate that this partnership has anything to do with the consolidation with Truman College is false.  Our relationship with National-Louis has existed far longer than my tenure at CCC.  What isn’t mentioned is that Daley College worked for the past 2 years to develop a partnership with Xavier College.  Now that partnership is signed, it is essentially useless, as Xavier chose Daley because of its proximity.  This is also true for a partnership with Roosevelt and HWC.  Again, the work was based on proximity to local campuses.  To claim that these partnerships have anything to do with this decision is false.

Here is a current list of my child care partnerships at HWC:

Cook County Child Care Center

Concordia Place

Rainbow Daycare

Loop Learning Center

YMCA of Evanston

Carole Robsertson Center for Learning

Taylor Center

The Children’s Center

Downtown Learning Center

Marcy Newberry Association

Paolo Freire Center

Chicago Public School

State of Illinois Child Care Center

St. Vincent de Paul

The Nia Center

Guadalupano Child Care Center

Chinese American Service League

Christopher House

Bridgeport Child Development Center

Children’s Home and Aid Society

The list goes on and on.  These are just a few off the top of my head. This is a much more interesting list than the partial list provided in the announcement.  . These partnerships span the city, serve diverse populations, and provide on-site field placements for our students.  Now multiply that list by 5 and that is what is being lost at the expense of this consolidation

 

Child Development and Education Programs Transition

Beginning in the fall of 2016, Harry S Truman College will house City Colleges’ Child Development and Education programs as part of its College to Careers emphasis on education, human and natural sciences.

  • Programs transitioning to Truman are:

o   Basic Certificate (BC) in Child Development Pre-school

o   Basic Certificate (BC) in Family Child Care Business

o   Advanced Certificate (AC) in Child Development Pre-school

o   Advanced Certificate (AC) in Child Development and Infant Toddler

o   Associate in Applied Science (AAS) in Child Development Pre-school

  • Additionally, the BC, AC, and AAS in Social Work will be consolidated over time into a new AA (transfer pathway) in Social Work to be offered at Truman College, because the industry is moving to requiring a bachelor’s degree so this will help ensure our students have a credential that corresponds to job market demands.
  • Students enrolled in Child Development and Education at Daley, Harold Washington, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X and Olive-Harvey Colleges will continue their programs at their current colleges through the end of the spring 2016 semester.
  • New incoming students will be able to begin their Child Development and Education programs studies at Truman College for the fall 2016 and spring 2017 semesters.

 

Should we send them there? 

 

  • At the end of spring 2016, all students in Child Development and Education at Daley, Harold Washington, Kennedy-King, Malcolm X, and Olive-Harvey Colleges who have not completed their Child Development certificate or degree must transition to Truman College to complete their program. Students should work with their advisor at the beginning of the spring 2016 semester to plan for this transition.

 

It is my understanding that as a part of a legitimate “teach out” and “sun setting” of programs, HLC requires adequate time for students to complete their program or certificate.  I am confident that means that students who enrolled this summer, before the announcement at any of the affected campuses, have more time than what is indicated above..  Forcing them to move earlier is contrary to our accreditation. For more information about a Teach-Out Plan, see: http://policy.hlcommission.org/Federal-Regulation/approval-of-teach-out-arrangements.html?highlight=WyJ0ZWFjaCIsIm91dCIsInRlYWNoIG91dCJd

 

  • Child Development 101 and 102 will continue to be offered as part of the Addiction Studies pathway at Kennedy-King College and the Occupational Therapy Assistant pathway at Malcolm X College.

 

This is one of those decisions that remind us of how little the district understands our work.  The Human Development series is a much sought-after requirement for many programs and for transfer.  Limiting access to these courses will result in students having to go elsewhere for these prerequisites into Nursing School, Med School, Physical Therapy School, etc.  Here, I am not referring to the programs that will be available at MX.

 

No faculty or staff positions will be eliminated as a result of this change.

 

This too, is a very simplistic view with a lot of “maybes” and “best-case scenarios.”  I know that the focus here is not about the adjunct faculty, but we at HWC have adjuncts who have served our students for almost as long as I have and longer than both of the other full-time faculty members.  They bring their expertise to the classroom as professionals who are on the front lines, in the field.  This loss is monumental. 

However, I believe that the above statement refers to full-time faculty.

Let’s take a look at the numbers.  We currently have 16 full-time Child Development faculty members.  In order to have enough classes so that each of us can teach a full load, Truman will have to grow exponentially in the next year. 

This semester, Truman College is offering 23 sections of Child Development Courses = 81 credits. This is the equivalent of just about 5 full-time faculty.

In order to keep us all, they will have to fill about 80 sections of Child Development Courses. = 240 credits.

This is fifth grade math.  Even I can do it.  It is clear that there will be RIFs, so saying that there will not is their way of keeping everyone calm. Of course, the first to go will be the handful of untenured faculty in the program.  What a loss.

Now, let’s look at this another way.  This semester Olive-Harvey is offering 17 sections of Child Development Courses.  If those courses fill at a 60% rate, they will have about 400 child development students this semester.  Now, let’s assume that a rather large number of these are duplicated students (sitting in more than 1 child development class).  If we consider that about half are duplicated, that leaves about 200 students who are in the Child Development program at Olive –Harvey this semester.  Those students also take English, Math, Humanities, Social Sciences, and so on.  If you take away their reason for going to Olive-Harvey, Olive-Harvey’s enrollment will drop. Over the long term, this could mean the loss of jobs in every department.  This is not an extreme view or a conspiratorial one; it is simply a fact.  Everyone should sit up and take notice of this.  This isn’t just about Child Development.  It is about education for all in an institution that is supposed to be serving all.

 

 

All locations are accessible through public transportation, the CCC shuttle service, or both, so students should be able to access the campus no matter where they are coming from. The Truman campus is easily accessible by the CTA Red Line – it comes right to Truman’s doorstep – and the CTA 78-Montrose bus line as well as being within a short walking distance of other bus routes.

 

This is where the rubber meets the road (excuse the pun).  There is NO WAY that the busing system provided by CCC or the CTA can make this happen.

If you look at the CCC website under Shuttle Service, you will see how the current schedule and routes move and how they currently don’t even serve to Truman College.  There are some that go to the Red Line, which goes to Truman, and perhaps there is a plan to develop a more comprehensive busing system to unnecessarily move students around the city, but as of today, the Shuttle Service does not address the needs of students who are being forced to “consolidate.”

So, I moved on to the CTA. I just spent a couple of hours on their website and this is what I found.

Daley – Truman16.9 Miles In order to arrive at Truman by 6:30 Take 2 buses and a train Cost $4.50 Total Travel Time = 1 hr. and 28 minutes
Daley – Truman16.9 Miles In order to arrive at Truman by 9:30 Take 2 buses and a train Cost $4.50 Total Travel Time = 1 hr. and 26 minutes
Olive-Harvey – Truman19.2 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 6:30 Take 2 buses and a train Cost $4.50 Total Travel Time = 1 hr. and 28 minutes
Olive-Harvey – Truman19.2 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 9:30 Take 2 buses and a train Cost $4.50 Total Travel Time = 1 hr. and 24 minutes
HWC – Truman College5.9 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 6:30 Take 1 train Cost $2.25 Total Travel Time = 29 minutes
HWC – Truman College5.9 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 9:30 Take 1 train Cost $2.25 Total Travel Time = 29 minutes
Malcolm X – Truman College8.7 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 6:30 Take 2 trains Cost $4.50 Total Travel Time = 54 minutes
Malcolm X – Truman College8.7 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 9:30 Take 2 trains Cost $4.50 Total Travel Time = 53 minutes
Kennedy King – Truman College14 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 6:30 Take 1 train Cost $ 2.25 Total Travel Time = 55 minutes
Kennedy King – Truman College14 miles In order to arrive at Truman by 9:30 Take 1 train Cost $ 2.25 Total Travel Time = 55 minutes

 

I chose 9:30 and 6PM as arrival times for Truman as those are the most traditional times classes are offered for day and evening students.  These are just examples, but you understand our concern. 

-If a student leaves work at 5 PM (not unusual for a working person) and wants to get to a 6PM class, it will be impossible if that student is near Daley or OH.  It will be nearly impossible if that student is coming from MX or KK.  If that student is coming from HWC, she might make it.  All of these calculations are based on students who are already on these campuses.  Most students will be coming from other places.  This will add time to their commutes.  The above CTA calculations are “best-case scenario.”  I have been commuting on the CTA for my entire adult life.  If the schedule says that I need 38 minutes for my commute, I plan at least an hour.  We all know this to be true.  This is ALL dependent on the buses and the trains running on schedule, that the student does not need to eat or go to the bathroom, or attend to any other adult life responsibilities.

-Students who attend morning classes will no longer be able to get their own children safely to school.  There won’t be enough time.

-Students who attend afternoon classes will not be able to get back into their own neighborhoods to pick up their children from school.  There won’t be enough time.

-Students will have to pay for additional childcare for their own children so the extra hours required to travel to and from school are covered.

-This “consolidation” will force students to spend less time with their own families, at work, or doing homework.

 

It is my belief that this model is untenable.  These students will not be able to make this transition and the City Colleges will lose them. 

Moreover, the city will lose good people who want to become teachers, but won’t be able to because of the aforementioned (and many other) problems.

 

This transition represents a unique opportunity for all our Child Development students, faculty and staff to be associated with best-in-class programs, helping to ensure all students are prepared to reach their goals – whether those goals are to transfer to a four-year university or to move immediately into an in-demand career.

 

This is not an opportunity, nor is it unique (do you remember the Nursing consolidation?)  This is a loss of opportunity.  There is nothing in this plan that improves our already accredited and excellent programs.  It reduces them.

We have been helping students reach their goals for years and years.  Don’t insinuate that this is somehow an improvement – it is not.

 

A similar communication has been shared with students.  A list of Frequently Asked Questions is attached to this email.

 

For any additional questions about this transition, please contact Peggy Korellis, Dean of C2C at Truman College, pkorellis@ccc.edu or 773-907-4321.

 

For questions or concerns about my responses, please feel free to contact me at Asimow@sbcglobal.net.

 

 

Next Up!

It’s week 13. 75% of the semester is in the books!

Monday, 4/7: Last drop day for students; Erasing the Distance Performance (12:45-2pm, Rm 103);

Tuesday, 4/8: Faculty Council Meeting (3:30pm, Rm 1046); Humanifest-OH!–Chicago Latino Film Festival Screening of “The Eternal Night of the Twelve Moons” (5:30p, Rm 323); Humanifest-OH! Field Trip: Edward Gorey Exhibit at Loyola University (5:30pm, RSVP to emccormack@ccc.edu);

Wednesday, 4/9: Les White’s Dad, Dr. Alexander White talks “Lessons from the Holocaust” (5:30-8p, Rm 1115);

Thursday, 4/10: Career Fair (10a-2p, Rm 102/103); Humanifest-OH!–Chicago Latino Film Festival Screening of “The Eternal Night of the Twelve Moons” (11a, Rm 323); Humanifest-OH! Faculty Jazz Recital (11a, Basement!);

Friday, 4/11: SGA Leadership Conference (9:00a-4p, All Over); Humanifest-OH!–Chicago Latino Film Festival Screening of “The Eternal Night of the Twelve Moons” (12:30p, Rm 1115);

Saturday, 4/12: Spring break!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cross Talk: Physics (again!)

Cross Talk is a regular feature, highlighting three to seven items on some discipline taught at the college. We should all know more about what our colleagues know, teach, and love. Lifelong learning, blah, blah, blah, and all that jazz.

Yes, yes…I’ve missed many of these, and yes, yes, I did Physics earlier, I know. But big things are afoot in the weird world of physics:

~Watch as Stanford physicist Andrei Linde learns about the discovery of supporting evidence for his Cosmic Inflation Theory. I still can’t say that that I remember a time that science made me cry, but my allergies sure did start acting up while I watched (and if you want to know a little more about what was said, some explanation is here):

~Two more explanations of the findings: one in Slate for Humanities majors and one in Wired for those not terrified of sciencey words.The upshot is that they managed to “detect a signal from the beginning of time.”

~Good chance they found “Dark Matter”, too.

~A great piece explaining a famous quantum physics experiment and the very weird findings (a.k.a., Bell’s Theorem).

~This one is probably my favorite out of these. It is a reminder that often Physics is fantastic (as in “fantasy”): “This move beyond the visible has become a fundamental part of science’s narrative. But it’s a more complicated shift than we often appreciate. Making sense of what is unseen—of what lies “beyond the light”—has a much longer history in human experience. Before science had the means to explore that realm, we had to make do with stories that became enshrined in myth and folklore. Those stories aren’t banished as science advances; they are simply reinvented. Scientists working at the forefront of the invisible will always be confronted with gaps in knowledge, understanding, and experimental capability. In the face of those limits, they draw unconsciously on the imagery of the old stories. This is a necessary part of science, and these stories can sometimes suggest genuinely productive scientific ideas. But the danger is that we will start to believe them at face value, mistaking them for theories.”

~Care for an example? How about this: “Life is a Braid in Spacetime.”

~On particle smashing (for regular people).

~Probably the universe is just a simulation. Likely a hologram. Maybe some computer from the future trying to figure out how it came to be and running a Monte Carlo experiment. That would explain a lot, wouldn’t it?

~Science is always moving on from ideas and theories, too, as shown by this list of “science ideas ready for retirement,” as chosen by prominent scientists.

~Feynman is still the best, though. Watch this guy talk about Physics for six minutes and try to stay uninterested.There’s a whole series of them. This one was particularly fun to watch.

~And if that freaks you out, there’s always the physics of the curve ball to consider. Oh, and take heart–there aren’t any black holes after all.

Website Wednesday

Website Wednesday is an occasional feature in which we highlight one (or a couple) of sites from the Billions floating around the Intertoobz that just might help you with your Herculean task of educating inquiring minds. Any and all suggestions for future editions are welcome.

Flowing Data is a “Data Visualization, Infographics, and Statistics” site that makes beautiful, fascinating pictures out of numbers. Want to see a visualization of “Where People Run” in a bunch of major cities (such as Chicago)? No problem. Want to see a poster with visualizations of famous movie quotes? No problem. Want to learn about how to make data visualizations or recognize liars or see some great ones? No problem. It’s all there.

College Night at the Goodman Theatre

Buzzer The Goodman Theater has started running a “College Night” for new plays. With $10, a student ID, and a password (see THE FLIER), students can get free pizza while talking to Goodman artists and then see a performance of the latest Goodman play.

The next one is coming up THIS WEDNESDAY, and features a play by Tracey Scott Wilson called Buzzer. It looks like another powerful play from a fantastic playwright and it’s an undeniably great deal.

Please pass the word to your students or at least print and post the flier someplace.

h/t to helpful Goodman intern, Sam Barickman for the heads up.

Weekend Reading: Super Bowl Edition

Haven’t done one of these in a while, but have managed to collect a bunch of stuff on football that might be educationally provocative or useful for someone. So here goes:

~On football intelligence; minds in context;

~If you’re a fan of North Dallas Forty or ever wondered what life was like (in terms of injuries) for NFL players , especially those on the margins, you’ll find this article by a now retired player/skilled blogger captivating; or this one about the “hard life of an NFL long shot;”

~Or maybe you’re considering boycotting the NFL or wondering why some people might–here’s one argument for it;

~One for the Bears fans–on Doug Plank, the original #46;

~Maybe a short piece of Sports Philosophy on team affiliations and adoption?;

~How the money on NFL teams is distributed across positions (a great visual graphic), including this year’s Super Bowl teams;

~Maybe you’ve been following the whole concussion controversy and want to know more–here is a fascinating article on NFL helmets and here is a piece on the concussion-related litigation and the future of the league;

~Or maybe you want to learn more about the teams playing, in which case you should check out Pro Football Reference (for an example of what can be learned with a bit of time and interest, check out this article on injuries in 2012);

~Perhaps you need to read just one more article (or five) on Richard Sherman.

Cognitive Dissonance: A Sports Story about a Transgender Woman

Cognitive Dissonance is a regular Monday feature in which a post is presented that, if read, may provoke “a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.” I hope these pieces will provoke thought, if not conversation.

If you read about golf or blogs or transgender issues (or all three), you have probably seen this mix of stories unfold over the past two weeks, but if not, it is full of interesting points for discussion.

First there was a story about a putter, published on (ESPN owned) Grantland, that was then pushed out by various means to much acclaim, initially. And then a backlash began. The story, which began as an exploration of a putter and its inventor, morphs into a detective story that features the debunking of various aspects of the life of the inventor (credentials and work experience), but then becomes something else when the author finds out about the inventor’s status as a transgender woman. In the time period between the writer’s initial work on the article and its publishing, Essay Anne Vanderbilt (a.k.a., Dr. V, the inventor of the putter) committed suicide.

1) The original article is here.

2) There was a great response from Cristina Kahrl, who is a sportswriter and editor at Grantland and also a transgender woman.

3) Grantland also published an apology (with explanation) from the Editor that highlights their thinking, their process, their blindspots, and their promises.

4) There was, to be sure, also plenty of commentary about it (as here on Gawker and here from the “paper of record”).

If you only have time or interest to read ONE of these, read either #2 or #3. After that, you might want to read more, but from either you’ll get a good sense of what’s involved. And if you’re interested in reading MORE about the intersection of sports and transgender issues, check out this profile of MMA fighter Fallon Fox and what she goes through. Or this brief piece on another sportswriter who transitioned, quite publicly.

UPDATE: ESPN’s Ombudsman has published an article about the whole thing that describes it as “Understandable, Inexcusable” and runs through a lot of interesting issues from the publishing/reporting/editing side of things, as well as from the human/ethical side of things. Also, the Arizona Republic published a story that includes material gathered from interviewing Essay Anne Vanderbilt’s girlfriend and business partner.

Cognitive Dissonance: Real Education

Cognitive Dissonance is a regular Monday feature in which a post is presented that, if read, may provoke “a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth.” I hope these pieces will provoke thought, if not conversation.

The stories in this piece are familiar enough for most of us. By the end of it, though, the author seems to be at a loss about what to do. Which begs the question: what to do?