Orange County Register

Previously, part 1 and part 2 of this thread of postings discussed SOCCCD’s (Irvine and Saddleback Colleges’) and Cerritos College’s accreditation challenges; Orange Coast College (OCC) is another local institution recently receiving a “Warning” from the Commission (ACCJC/WASC).

In a 2007 report, the visiting accreditation team of the time made several recommendations for OCC to act upon prior to a March 2008 follow-up visit and an April 2008 report. The lack of progress on the 2007 recommendations ultimately led to OCC’s placement on Warning Status this last June.

In order to remove the warning and avoid a course of action by the Commission that would result in losing its accreditation, OCC must address these recommendations:

1. OCC must speed up the process of identifying “measurable student learning outcomes for every course, instructional program, and student support programs.” Furthermore, OCC must “incorporate student learning assessments into course and program improvement.”

2. OCC must overhaul its program review processes “to include a comprehensive and meaningful analysis of data, with particular emphasis on student enrollment, program completion, retention, success, and achievement of student learning outcomes and make improvement to its programs based on the results…”

3. OCC must change its planning and budgeting processes to encompass more long term planning and enhance its transparency “with the instructional stakeholders [being] made more aware of the procedures and criteria employed.”

The Commission expects a report by March 1, 2009 and a full correction of the deficiencies by June of 2009.

As to this list, the student learning outcomes (SLOs) matter is one appearing on many community colleges’ accreditation reports these days.

The ACCJC SLO requirement goes back to 2002 and has received mixed reception by college administrators and faculty—from being called an intrusive, unfunded mandate with origins and intent similar to No Child Left Behind to being heralded by true believers as the ultimate panacea for almost anything that ails a classroom, campus, or district.

The truth, of course, is likely somewhere in between these polarized reactions; nevertheless, in this writer’s view, in addition to potential infringements upon academic freedom and faculty evaluation, the expectations surrounding SLOs are mind boggling; the ACCJC/WASC requirements for the ongoing defining, measuring, assessing, discussing, and reviewing SLOs and then implementing findings in every class and program could easily consume more time than an instructor spends teaching, potentially an 800 pound gorilla. Well, more about SLOs (Cure or curse?) in another posting.

The second and, to a greater extent, the third item, suggests problems at the administrative level; furthermore, a discussion with some OCC employees suggests that once again, as in the SOCCCD and Cerritos cases, top level administrators (in this case the president) and/or the Board of Trustees are failing to be inclusive of all “stakeholders” or campus constituency groups—um, read that as leaving faculty and staff out of the decision making processes.

Since two other schools in the same district, Golden West and Coastline, did not receive such ACCJC warnings, one must wonder how much OCC President Bob Dees figures into the mix.

A search of The Coast Report, the OCC student newspaper, uncovers a May 14, 2008, article by then Managing Editor Brittany Barnes. According to Barnes, “Allegations about Orange Coast College’s accreditation report being censored by administrators have caused rebuttals across campus, including President Bob Dees’ President’s Log on the OCC Portal, flyers condemning outspoken faculty members and e-mails disputing both sides.”

She goes on to report, “Several faculty members presented a notebook documenting what they said were transgressions by the administration in presenting their points of view to a state accreditation committee on April 15. The faculty alleges that administrators censored or changed their input to the team about the climate of the campus.”

This sounds so much like what happened to us at Cerritos and what appears to be happening in SOCCCD one might wonder if the administrators involved graduated together from Excluding Faculty 101.

In fact, last fall our Academic Senate President, Bryan Reece, made the following comment about administrator censorship at Cerritos: “The Faculty Senate has recently expressed serious concern over the accuracy of Standard IV (the governance standard) of the accreditation report. … The most egregious change can be seen with regard to the self evaluation sections. …The original document prepared by the governance standard committee included recommendations for improvement … In the revised document, all original comments under the Self Evaluation headings have been deleted and replaced with one small phrase: ‘The College meets the standard.’”

Widespread speculation among faculty last fall and spring that our own now-gone-elsewhere president, Noelia Vela, was behind the “edits” was one of many factors contributing to a campus-wide No Confidence vote.

The denials offered by President Bob Dees are reminiscent of those offered by Cerritos’ administration, as reported by Barnes, “Dees denies that the accreditation report was changed in any way and listed facts he said are relevant to the issues.”

Excluding Faculty 101, where do these administrators take this course?

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