Responses to 2020 Survey

  • Group name: Student Services Planning and Budget Team
  • Group chairs: Rob Mieso and Marilyn Booye
  • Discussion date: July 30, 2020

Members participating: Laureen Balducci, Marilyn Booye, Nazy Galoyan, Keri Kirkpatrick, Michele LeBleu-Burns, Lisa Mandy, Rob Mieso, Dennis Shannakian, Tim Shively

Questions and Responses

Question 1: What do you believe works well about the current governance system? Please list.

Response

  1. SSPBT has a broad range of constituencies with college-wide representation. - Membership comes from the Academic and Classified Senate, ACE, FA, and DASB. - Co-Chairs are selected by the group and any member can be selected to serve as a co-chair.
  2. All areas of Student Services are represented and members are given an opportunity to contribute to the discussions and decisions.
  3. Members are able to review issues, concerns, changes, etc. in these meetings and are presented with information from other areas as well.
  4. Members are expected to take information back and share with their constituency groups.
  5. SSPBT is an open meeting so guests are allowed to attend and participate. - This adds value to the meetings and allows for greater input and information sharing.
  6. Meeting information is always posted to the SSPBT website. This includes the meeting notes as well as presentations when available.

Question 2: What do you believe does not work well about the current governance system? Please list.

Response

  1. SSPBT is a Planning and Budget Team for Student Services and there needs to be more time set aside for the planning aspect of the group's work.
  2. Pre-set options are often brought to SSPBT members to vote on versus creating the options in the meeting themselves. - Members feel that they are 'rubber stamping' these set options instead of being involved from the very beginning.
  3. When disagreements arise in voting on these options, the process doesn't feel very democratic and questions arise on the role SSPBT plays. - When everyone agrees a decision is made and moves forward. When there are disagreements, SSPBT seems to turn into more of an advisory role and decisions will move forward whether they were agreed to or not.
  4. Members also would like more collaboration between the other PBTs on campus when discussing issues so they can then make more informed decisions. - Members would have a holistic or global perspective of how it affects their area but other areas on campus as well. - Currently they don't have the entire picture before they make their decisions. - Our current view is limited to how it relates to our area and not campus wide and it can feel like we are working in a vacuum.
  5. It would be nice to have a calendar or timeline of items that will need to be addressed by the SSPBT committee for the year if possible. - This would allow more time for planning and discussion before the decision(s) would need to be made.

Question 3: Ideally, how would governance groups and processes be structured at De Anza? How would this work in practice? Please provide a summary.

Response

Communication and participation need to be improved between the governance groups. It was suggested the governance structure should be renamed 'Participatory Governance' (PG). Each person has their own area of expertise and can contribute their knowledge to governance meetings. In this regard, maybe a joint PBT meeting could be scheduled every quarter to discuss or just inform on various topics PBTs are working on. A campus wide invitation would then be sent out to attend.

Question 4: In the ideal structure you suggested above, how would members of the governance groups be selected? Please provide a summary.

Response

The structure we have and our membership does give us representation from various constituency groups. Some clarification in regards to the 'at large' position needs to take place (originally it was for faculty but it is not clear in the Handbook). Either rotating the two areas every year or having one from each area, faculty and classified, was suggested. It was also noted that if an appointed member is not attending, the designated group should be notified and maybe a substitute appointed in their place. Representatives from other PBTs attending was also mentioned but there is concern regarding the amount of time being committed to multiple meetings.

Question 5: All other recommendations and comments

Response

Regular meetings and more collaboration. SSPBT is currently scheduled twice a month. Maybe a regularly scheduled meeting can be made with another PBT as well during one of their meetings. IPBT meets weekly on Tuesday, Campus Facilities every quarter, and APBT each quarter/as needed, according to their websites, so these last two would be more difficult. Instead of College Council being just a decision-making body, make it a place to disperse information for all areas of the campus.

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