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The news site of Santa Barbara City College.

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Nursing and automotive ranked top departments for faculty hires

Nursing+and+automotive+ranked+top+departments+for+faculty+hires

Following presentations last week from 15 department chairs requesting 18 faculty hires, the Academic Senate created a list ranking the hires from most to least essential.

Superintendent-President Anthony Beebe will have the final say on which positions will be filled. At this time, it is unknown how many of the requested positions will be filled despite the senate’s inquiries, but it is typically announced by the end of October.

The rankings were done Wednesday via three rounds of the Wopat method. A replacement hire for the associate degree in nursing was ranked as first priority, one for automotive sciences and technology came in second and early childhood education was third. The two replacement hires for English as a second language were ranked last at No. 18 and the other at No. 12.

There was confusion last week due to inaccuracies in the data being reported such as the amount of faculty in a department, the amount of classes in a department and the amount of students in each class. Pamela Ralston, the interim executive vice president of educational programs, clarified this issue before the ranking process began.

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“The easiest data for us in [the institutional research department] to pull is from the history department… It also works really well for English, sociology, and other lecture based programs with 3 unit classes,” she said. “… If you read the data that was sent to you and think ‘we only have two full-time faculty, how on earth could this say 16?’ it’s because the folks in institutional research don’t know how many full-time faculty you have. They are pulling data from HR, from scheduling, from the chairs and the deans. IR needs to have a red flag sent to them or the data will be inaccurate.”

Despite the presentations given for math and English department hires last week, neither of them made the top five on the list. They requested replacement faculty in preparation for Assembly Bill 705, a bill signed by Governor Jerry Brown, which will result in more math and English classes being offered Spring 2019.

Patricia Stark, academic senate president, referred to an email sent out by Anita Cruse, the director of assessment English division. The email summarized the affects the bill will have on the English and math departments.

“On October 1 Dr. Anita Cruse, who is chair of what is the newly branded placement and curriculum transformation leadership team, sent out an email out collegewide summarizing the changes required by the new legislation,” Stark said. “It will go into effect for our new-to-college students in the spring, and key among them is that math and English assessments will no longer be required for the majority of students, which will have major implications for our college.”

The requested mathematics replacement hire was ranked seventh on the list. There were three English composition and literature replacement hires, one of which was ranked ninth and the other two ranked 17th.

 

Editor’s Note:

This story has been changed to correct two factual errors

 

 

 

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