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Published on 1/3/2023.

Comments/Board Business

Land Acknowledgement:  President of the Board Biggin read the District’s formal statement recognizing our area’s Indigenous Peoples as the original stewards of the land that College of the Redwoods occupies. 

We acknowledge that the land on which we are gathered today is unceded territory of the Wiyot people who continue to live and thrive on this land today. It is surrounded by the traditional, ancestral, and present homeland of several indigenous nations including the Hupa, Karuk, Mattole, Tolowa, Wailaki, and Yurok that make up Humboldt and Del Norte Counties.

Member Comments: Trustees Dr. Mullery, Mathews, Pedrotti, and Biggin mentioned that they attended the Police Academy graduation.

Identify Areas of Advocacy for the Board of Trustees: One of the key roles of the Board of Trustees besides establishing, reviewing, and modifying board policies; hiring and evaluating the President; setting annual institutional strategic goal; and approving the annual budget is advocating for the District on local, state, and national levels. With this agenda item, the Trustees discussed potential advocacy ideas.  A few ideas were provided in the background information based on past conversations including:

• Increasing base funding to help community colleges restore previous enrollment levels and fund simultaneous online and in-person academic programs.
• Increasing childcare capacity in community colleges.
• Allocating funds for mental health, student basic needs, and campus safety.
• Allocating funds to meet pension obligations and strategic investments in workforce education.
• Increasing the maximum amount of instructional hours that an associate faculty member may teach.
• Continuing support for the creation of a common transfer pathway for community college students to CSU or UC (AB 928).
• Allocating funds to support faculty development.
• Allocating one time Non Prop 98 funds for affordable housing.

The Board’s Ad Hoc Committee for Advocacy will discuss this further.

President of the Board Biggin made several appointments at this meeting: She appointed Trustees Dr. Mullery, Mathews and Biggin to the Ad Hoc President/Superintendent Evaluation Committee; Trustees Dorn, Pedrotti and Dr. Robertson to the Ad Hoc Board Self Evaluation Committee; Trustees Kelley, Dr. Robertson and Student Trustee Madsen to the Ad Hoc Committee on Advocacy; Trustees Dorn, Mathews and Dr. Mullery to the Audit/Finance Committee; Trustees Dorn and Kelley as Board Representatives to the C.R. Foundation Board; Trustee Carol Mathews to serve as the mentor for Trustee Pedrotti; and Trustees Mathews, Kelley and Pedrotti to the Ad Hoc Committee to Review Chapter Two Board Policies and Administrative Procedures.

Consent Calendar Action Items

Approve/Ratify Personnel Actions: With the Board’s action today we welcome Lorraine Casazza as our new Instructional Designer and congratulate Jessica Howard on her employee change of status from Professor of Nursing to Interim Director of Nursing (a one year appointment).

We also say farewell to four colleagues. Jade Euan (Lead Public Safety Officer) and John Rios (Maintenance Specialist II – Painter) resigned from their positions. Rodney Bethune retired from his Student Services Specialist position as of December 15, 2022 and Jesse Wiedel elected to retire as our Communications and Marketing Coordinator effective June 30, 2023.

Tenure Review Report: I am pleased to announce that the Board approved the recommendation to grant tenure to Jessica Howard, continue the second year of a two-year contract for 2023 with Valerie Elder, Caroline Haug, and Amy Murphy, and enter into a contract for the 2023 and 2024 academic years with Daniel Chick, Ashley Knowlton, and Ernest Shull. The Board also agreed to enter into a contract for the following academic year 2023 with Cintra Agee, Karyn-Lynn Fissette, Susan Gehr, Kendra Guimaraes, Trevor Hartman, Robert Landry and Janis Polos.

Action/Discussion Items

Approve Monthly Financial Status Report: Here are few takeaways from the report:

• A small amount of Property Tax Revenue was received in the month of September. We expect a more significant amount will be received in December. 
• Our Enrollment Fee and Nonresident Tuition revenue is still higher than at this point in time last year due to the increase in enrollment activity. 
• Salary and Benefit Expenses are higher than at this point in time last year but are under budget. 
• Our overall total revenue and expenditures are slightly higher than last year.
• We still plan to transfer $90,000 to the Child Development Center, $67,122 to the Shively Farm, $820,000 to the OPEB fund for a total of $977,122.
• The monthly financial status report shows a projected 2022-23 Unrestricted General Fund ending fund balance of $6,291,606, or 17.5% of Unrestricted General Fund expenditures.

Informational Reports

Humboldt Economic Development: Scott Adair and Dianna Rios discussed the economic challenges and opportunities facing Humboldt County.

District's Academic and Mental Health Support Services: Vice President of the Board Dr. Robertson made a request at the December board meeting for the administration to discuss how we are supporting the academic and mental health of students. Interim Vice President of Student Services Morse provided a report at this board meeting. Her presentation is included in this blog summary.

Caring Campus: We have always known that our students make a choice to enroll and stay at CR if they are welcome and commit to staying here if they feel cared about. If students don’t feel connected to CR, they are less likely to persist and succeed, regardless of the academic interventions and support services we have provided.  While higher education has primarily focused on the faculty’s role in student retention, we want to make retention a day to day priority and create a district wide culture of student retention and success by engaging our classified staff in helping us retain students. To that end, we have partnered with The Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC) to create a Caring Campus initiative at CR that will help us increase the connectedness with students and by extension, increase the likelihood of students maintaining enrollment at CR.

Our Caring Campus initiative is an intentional effort to make students feel welcome and a sense of connectedness to the institution, engages staff who are typically missing from student success efforts, helps staff connect with one another and with other employee groups to create a positive college environment, creates behavior change that influences culture change across campus, and encourages us to reexamine the policy barriers we have put in place that block student success.

I want to thank Taryn Whitacker, Matt Gilliland, Emily Chang, Sherrie Porter, Andrew Nichols, Katrina Hanson, Iris Leal, Anissa Vang, Augusta Solem, Laura Meglemre, Amy Miller, Johanna Helzer, Kevin Crotty, Elizabeth Nilsen, and Courtney Sousa for serving as our Caring Campus Professional Staff Leaders.

Interim Vice President of Student Services Crystal Morse provided an excellent summary of CR Caring Campus initiative to the trustees at this meeting. I encourage you to take a look at Crystal’s presentation which I attached to this blog summary.

DEIA: Results of the DEIA Climate Survey: The Chancellor’s Office has put significant political and fiscal resources toward advancing and imbedding diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) principles in community college academic and operational processes. Over the past few years, we have made some effort toward this effort—to varying levels of success.  The Human Resources Office deployed a survey this past fall semester as part of their program review process that captured employee thoughts relative to our DEIA efforts. I provided the results of the survey to the Board at this meeting. I want to share a few quantitative and qualitative takeaways from the survey results:

Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each of the below statements as it relates to the overall diversity, equity, and inclusion culture.

Quantitative Responses

	STRONGLY DISAGREE	DISAGREE	NEUTRAL	AGREE	STRONGLY AGREE	DECLINE TO STATE	TOTAL
The leadership at CR encourages diversity.	2.35% 2	3.53% 3	21.18% 18	38.82% 33	31.76% 27	2.35% 2	85
Management shows that diversity is important through its actions.	5.88% 5	3.53% 3	22.35% 19	38.82% 33	27.06% 23	2.35% 2	85
CR is committed to improving the diversity of employees.	3.53% 3	10.59% 9	25.88% 22	28.24% 24	29.41% 25	2.35% 2	85
CR fosters a workplace that allows employees to be themselves at work without fear.	8.33% 7	13.10% 11	13.10% 11	34.52% 29	28.57% 24	2.38% 2	84
CR respects individuals and values their differences.	5.95% 5	11.90% 10	23.81% 20	29.76% 25	26.19% 22	2.38% 2	84
The leadership at CR treats all employees fairly.	8.33% 7	9.52% 8	22.62% 19	33.33% 28	22.62% 19	3.57% 3	84
At CR, employees appreciate others whose backgrounds, beliefs and experiences are different from their own.	2.35% 2	11.76% 10	20.0% 17	40.0% 34	21.18% 18	4.71% 4	85

Qualitative responses to the above statement included the following:

• The new HR leadership is much better than the past leadership and is making strides to assure that state and federal guidelines are met and individual employees are treated fairly and are informed of options available to them. Insufficient training and intervention in harassment and bullying at the Dean/Faculty/Union levels are insufficient.
• Management could work on their attitude toward diversity.
• Professors should have to undergo more training for how to work with students who are second language learners and disabled students.
• If I were a MAN I'd be getting paid for working out of class. Leadership here needs to be aware of each individual and the work they are doing. 
• There is widespread belief among employees that our cultural obsession with DEI is a fad and that higher ed.'s embrace of this fad is damaging our credibility and harming students by teaching them that race and gender are the most important aspects of their identities.
• CR is doing fine in the diversity department. But let's focus more on employee morale, performance, attitudes, and inclusion.
• I appreciated our recent training with Stepping Stone. This seems like a good direction to be moving in. Other diversity trainings/PD has fallen short of expectations -- the ACUE training was more about how to teach online and I did not feel truly addressed diversity (I think our in-house class by Lisa Sayles was more effective). There was one about 5 years ago about implicit bias that I think was helpful in informing teaching practices.
• We need diversity amongst our faculty. 
• More chances for these diverse differences to be showcased would be wonderful. (Ex. cultural celebrations that staff & faculty can participate in).

Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each statement as it relates to hiring and recruitment.

Quantitative Responses

	STRONGLY DISAGREE	DISAGREE	NEUTRAL	AGREE	STRONGLY AGREE	DECLINE TO STATE	TOTAL
CR takes active measures to seek a diverse candidate pool when hiring.	1.18% 1	10.59% 9	30.59% 26	32.94% 28	17.65% 15	7.06% 6	85
There is diversity among the people a job candidate will meet/see on his/her first visit to CR.	8.33% 7	14.29% 12	23.81% 20	30.95% 26	16.67% 14	5.95% 5	84

Qualitative responses included:

• In the staff arenas I would mark this very positively, but the low marks are in respect to faculty.
• We should hire more people who have shown their commitment to the college over time, rather than new people unfamiliar with the campus and community.
• I think we are working toward this, but not there yet. Not trying to be overly critical, it is a long journey! Earlier announcements would be good. Not sure where they are currently advertised, so can't comment on that part. A more welcoming, warm interview process could make candidates of diverse backgrounds feel more welcome (e.g. potluck with opportunity to meet folks, talk to students, see more of the campus).

Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each statement as it relates to career development.

Quantitative Responses

	STRONGLY DISAGREE	DISAGREE	NEUTRAL	AGREE	STRONGLY AGREE	DECLINE TO STATE	TOTAL
Employees of different backgrounds are encouraged to apply for higher positions.	4.94% 4	12.35% 10	30.86% 25	28.40% 23	14.81% 12	.64% 7	81
Employees of different backgrounds are treated fairly in the internal promotion process.	5.00% 4	6.25% 5	32.50% 26	33.75% 27	13.75% 11	8.75% 7	80
There is a career development path for all employees at CR.	15.85% 13	23.17% 19	29.27% 24	17.07% 14	9.76% 8	4.88% 4	82

Qualitative responses to this statement included:

• This varies by staff, administration, and faculty advancement. Staff advancement is much more equitable than faculty advancement, which is limited to a core group of individuals. Hiring from within leads to a homogeneous faculty in leadership positions because numbers of full-time faculty representing diverse populations are miniscule.  Vocalizing concerns can minimize opportunities for advancement.
• It's a struggle to be heard, appreciated and compensated at CR!
• Many associate faculty appear to feel (and report) experiencing feeling disrespected.
• Don't see the path - at times it seems like a "good ol' boys network" where long term, especially male employees, are put in higher or administrative positions.

Respondents were asked to indicate their level of agreement with each statement as it relates to inclusion.

Quantitative Responses

	STRONGLY DISAGREE	DISAGREE	NEUTRAL	AGREE	STRONGLY AGREE	DECLINE TO STATE	TOTAL
Employees of different backgrounds interact well at CR.	2.47% 2	4.94% 4	16.05% 13	51.85% 42	23.46% 19	1.23% 1	81
Management at CR demonstrates a commitment to meeting the needs of employees with disabilities.	3.70% 3	8.64% 7	28.40% 23	33.33% 27	19.75% 16	6.17% 5	81
Employees of different ages are valued equally by this organization.	3.70% 3	11.11% 9	27.16% 22	35.80% 29	19.75% 16	2.47% 2	81
Racial, ethnic, sexual and gender-based jokes or slurs are not tolerated at CR.	5.00% 4	2.50% 2	10.0% 8	40.0% 32	40.0% 32	2.50% 2	80
CR provides an environment for the free and open expression of ideas, opinions and beliefs.	11.11% 9	12.35% 10	24.69% 20	32.10% 26	18.52% 15	1.23% 1	81

Qualitative responses to this statement included:

• This is a tough section to complete because there is not a lot of diversity in the faculty to base these ratings on. But when there is diversity in a group communication is encouraged, but many remain silent around issues related to diversity.
• Communication is lacking
• This may be true for staff, but not among faculty and administration. Faculty and administrators live in ideological bubbles. Imagine how a person would be regarded if he or she said, "I don't think sex or gender can be altered" or "I think the most qualified person should be hired for the job regardless of race."
• As long as such is not perceived as offensive.
• I think more training in facilitation and how to interact with others with different opinions would be helpful. 
• CR does NOT provide an environment for free and open expression of opinions and beliefs. It is actually the complete OPPOSITE. Many employees on campus walk in fear of leadership. We NEED to have leadership who is Open to new ideas, whose ego does not get in the way of better the college, working environment and learning environment. It starts at the TOP!

Employees were also asked to respond to their personal experiences, policies and procedures, and diversity training. I encourage you to take a look at the full survey results—which I attached to this summary blog.

I appreciate everyone who responded to the survey. The results clearly show that we have done a lot in terms of how we’re moving our DEIA initiatives forward. The results also that we have a lot of opportunities to improve. The results will be discussed with the EEO Committee and other district governing and planning bodies in the spring.

Organizational Reports

Classified: President Engman thanked the IT and Maintenance staff for all they did to help the students and make sure the college was able to adequately deal with the effects of the earthquakes. She also mentioned that there’s a need to replace John Rios (who recently resigned from the Maintenance/Painter position last month).  

Student Trustee: Trustee Madsen noted that ASCR held a holiday party last month and started working on a SWOT analysis.

Administrative Reports

President/Superintendent's Report: In my written report I noted that we placed an advertisement in the October 31 Times Standard thanking the community for their support of our re-formed football program. I also noted some of the takeaways from the LAO’s 2023-24 Fiscal Outlook:

• Economic Conditions Weigh on Revenues: The longer inflation persists and the higher the Federal Reserve increases interest rates in response, the greater the risk to the economy. The chances that the Federal Reserve can tame inflation without inducing a recession are narrow. Reflecting the threat of a recession, the LAO's revenue estimates represent the weakest performance the state has experienced since the Great Recession.
• State Faces $24 Billion Budget Problem and Ongoing Deficits: Under the LAO's outlook, the Legislature would face a budget problem of $24 billion in 2023-24. The budget problem is mainly attributable to lower revenue estimates, which are lower than budget act projections from 2021-22 through 2023-24 by $41 billion.
• Save Reserves for a Recession: The $24 billion budget problem in 2023-24 is roughly equivalent to the amount of general-purpose reserves that the Legislature could have available to allocate to General Fund programs ($23 billion). While the LAO's lower revenue estimates incorporate the risk of a recession, they do not reflect a recession scenario. Based on historical experience, should a recession occur soon, revenues could be $30 billion to $50 billion below the LAO's revenue outlook in the budget window. As such, the LAO suggests that the Legislature begin planning the 2023-24 budget without using general purpose reserves.
• Recommend Legislature Identify Recent Augmentations to Pause or Delay: Early in 2023, the LAO suggests that the Legislature question the Governor's Office about the implementation and distribution of recent augmentations. If augmentations have not yet been distributed, the Legislature has an opportunity to reevaluate those expenditures. Moreover, in light of the magnitude of the recent augmentations, programs may not be working as expected, capacity issues may have constrained implementation, or other unforeseen challenges may have emerged. To address the budget problem for the upcoming year, these cases might provide the Legislature with areas for pause, delay, or reassessment.

Here’s the link to the UB article: Higher ed has a wicked problem. Here are 7 solutions (universitybusiness.com)

In my verbal comments, I thanked the staff who came out to the Eureka Campus in the early morning hours on December 20 to take care of our students, support each other, make sure our website and phones were operable, and assess the damage caused by the earthquake. I want to mention each person by name: Jose Ramirez, Johanna Helzer, Max Capps, Travis Ammer, Kevin Crotty, Dan O’Connell, Ethan Hale, Charles Reed, Henry Buchanan, Chuck Arnold, Mark Bernards, Kirt Frischknecht, Paul Chown, Josh Stanley, Jade Euan, Jesus Hernandez, Darren Turpin, Crystal Morse, Julia Morrison, Kerry Mayer, Alia Dunphy, Ashley Mitchell, Ericka Barber, Erik Sorensen, Michael Perkins, and Academy of the Redwoods Principal Arnold King. I don't want to forget to recognize Max's dog Sven who put in a 15hr day with us.

I also noted that this will be Kerry Mayer’s last Board meeting as the Interim Vice President of Instruction. I thanked her for serving in this capacity.

Interim Vice President of Instruction Report:  Kerry’s written report congratulated students in our Computer Information Systems program for their efforts during the National Cyber League Fall 2022 competition season. Our students reinforced their learning, developed the necessary skills for the workforce, and earned a skills "scouting" report that recognizes their abilities and can be presented to employers to demonstrate the student's job readiness, further bridging the gap from curriculum to careers.

In her verbal comments, Kerry thanked the Trustees for approving the tenure report. She also mentioned that she and the Deans/Directors will be conducting a final course cancellation meeting on January 4.

Vice President of Administrative Services Report: Julia’s written report included the Budget Advisory Committee’s (BAC) revenue-contingent spending priority recommendations. The recommended spending priorities are items the BAC feel should be considered for funding if we meet the unrestricted general fund reserve balance goal of two-month reserve balance.  The BAC recommended that the administration funds that exceed the reserve balance goal toward:

• Unfunded Program Review Plans/Resource Requests
• New Student Housing Project Design and Construction
• Community Stadium Upgrade Project
• Health and Safety Needs
• Equipment Replacement

In her verbal comments, Julia mentioned that she is working with the insurance inspectors to assess the earthquake damage to our Eureka Campus buildings.

Interim Vice President of Student Services Report:  Crystal’s written report noted that Katrina Hanson, Augusta Solem, and Iris Vasquez were accepted to participate in a leadership training opportunity designed to support the classified professionals who are engaging in Caring Campus at our college. This training is organized by The Institute for Evidence-Based Change (IEBC), with generous funding from the College Futures Foundation (CFF) and is in partnership with the California Community Colleges Classified Senate (4CS). The professional development sessions will be held from 1-3pm on the following dates:

Session 1: Friday, March 3

Session 2: Friday, March 24

Session 3:  Friday, April 14

Session 4:  Friday, May 5

Session 5: Friday, May 19

Session 6:  Friday, June 9

Crystal noted in her verbal comments that we are helping students who have been displaced by the recent earthquakes by providing housing in our dorms and with the Arcata House. She also spoke very highly of Darren Turpin and his commitment student success and care.