If you attended the February 7^th Board meeting or were able to tune in via the webcast, you would have heard several faculty voice their concern over the status of the contract negotiations between the District and CRFO.  After public comment Dr. Roger James and Dr. Mary Gelinas discussed the draft strategic visioning document with the Board.  After some discussion the Trustees took action to forward the draft strategic vision to constituent groups for advisory input.  Dr. Angelina Hill agreed to send the draft vision to all constituent groups and the community members who participated in the five strategic visioning sessions.  We want to get the advisory input by February 24 to give the administration time to get the final strategic vision ready for the March 7 Board meeting.

Several personnel items were approved and/or ratified by the Trustees.  Meggan Smith (Scholarship Program Coordinator), Tyler Hines (Public Safety Officer), and Jennie Randolf (Principal Accountant) were hired as new staff members.  The Board approved Amber Buntin’s move from the Del Norte Professor of Mathematics position to the open Professor of Mathematics position in Eureka, Renel Nordeman’s transfer as the Account Clerk in the Business Office to Payroll Technician, and Kelly Carbone’s change from the Manager of Student Retention to the Assistant Director of Residential Life.

The Trustees approved the employment of several associate faculty: Alain Chirinian—Interdisciplinary-Basic Skills (Noncredit); Alexa DeJoannis—Biological Sciences; Brenda Drew—Nursing; Elanna Erhardt—Library; Matthew Hamilton—Nursing; Lindsay Harrell—Nursing; Chrystal Helton—Interdisciplinary Basic Skills (Noncredit); Yung Lee—Nursing; Carole Lewis—Psychology; Ian MacKelvie—Counseling; John Packer—Administration of Justice; and Kerry Sweeney—Nursing.

The Board executed a first reading of two board policies and four administrative procedures including:  AP 4103 Work Experience, BP and AP 4240 Academic Renewal, AP 7120-4 Recruitment and Hiring of Associate Faculty, AP 7211 Faculty Service Areas, Minimum Qualifications, and Equivalencies, and BP 7250 Educational Administrators.  I will review the Board’s suggestions on the APs and make appropriate changes before uploading to the website.  The two board policies will go the March 7^th Board meeting for a second reading.

The Trustees approved the academic calendar, Prudence Ratliff’s nomination to serve on the Humboldt County Workforce Development Board, and the College’s action plan for homeless students. The Board also had an opportunity to review and discuss the criteria and nomination process for the Kathy Smith Leadership Award.

If you didn't read the Board packet, the intent of the award is to recognize an individual employee or a group of employees who embody both the letter and spirit of leadership excellence within the CR community.  One award may be given each year to a CR employee or group.  Honorees will be selected in accordance with certain criteria, based upon the degree of demonstrated leadership excellence and the impact of the honoree’s actions.  Based on the Board’s suggestion, Wendy Bates will revise the award evaluation committee to include representatives from the faculty, management council, staff, and students.  I want to acknowledge and thank Director Wendy Bates for her excellent work on developing the award criteria and nomination process.

The Board approved the Tenure Report and Recommendations. Kristy Carlsen, Sean Herrera-Thomas, Lisa Sayles, and Angela Stewart were awarded tenure.  Two year contracts were approved for Nicole BryantLescher, Jennifer Burlison, Christopher Callahan, Derek Glavich, Darius Kalvaitis, Natalia Margulis, Matt McCann, William Meriwether, and Wendy Riggs. One year contracts were approved for Amber Buntin, Andrea De Cleyre, David Duberow, Anibal Florez, Mickey Jarvi, Bernadette Johnston, Cheryl Norton, Katherine Schoenfield, and Shemya Vaughn.

There were several items of importance noted in the Administrative Reports:

• The faculty of the Forestry Department, with full support of the administration and the Board of Trustees, started the process of gaining the Society of American Foresters (SAF) accreditation. 
• To prepare the 2017-18 preliminary and final budget reports, we will bring to the April Board meeting a set of budget assumptions for student enrollments, revenue, and transfers.  The initial draft budget assumptions will be reviewed by the Budget Planning Committee and will include a high and low range along with a specific recommendation or best estimate. 
• The Department of Finance is scheduled to release the $33,146,000 in construction funds at its July 2017 meeting.  The District has already received $3,412,000 for the preliminary plans and working drawings phases of this project.  The State will not allow us to begin the public bidding process prior to the release of construction funding by the Department of Finance.  Therefore, our plans to begin construction this summer will be pushed back. 
• We submitted a substantive change proposal to ACCJC to expand distance education offerings. The College made a request to offer fifty percent or more course offerings via distance education for 9 additional degrees and 4 additional certificates. This proposal will be reviewed by the ACCJC later this month.
• Our faculty and staff colleagues are doing a marvelous job drafting the self-evaluation. We’re on track to submit the document to the ACCJC this summer. The Accreditation Oversight Committee and the subcommittees are reviewing drafts of Standards I, II, and IV. The draft of Standard III is in progress.  I expect to submit drafts of Standards I, II, and IV for the Board’s review and comment on March 7^th.  I want the Board to have ample opportunities to review what the information in the self-evaluation before I ask them to sign off on the final document.

I want to acknowledge the commitment of Dr. Angelina Hill, Dr. George Potamianos, and Dr. Peter Blakemore for shepherding the self-evaluation writing process.  I also want to thank the members of the four Standards committees for their work on writing the draft the draft responses to the Standards. The Standards committee members are:

• Standard I: Paul Chown, Angelina Hill (chair), Darius Kalvaitis, and Ed Macan
• Standard II: George Potamianos (chair), Shannon Sullivan, and Angela Stewart
• Standard III: Wendy Bates, Peter Blakemore (chair), Bob Brown, Connie Carlson, Lee Lindsey, and Steven Roper
• Standard IV: Mike Haley, Crystal Morse, George Potamianos (chair), Todd Olsen, Mark Winter, and Ron Waters