Dean's Blog Spring 2013

Welcome to Spring 2013!

 

As we move into the spring semester (January 2013) we continue to be busy serving ACC students, faculty and staff. Why do we seem to be busier even though ACC enrollments are down @ 9-10%? This is due to many things including two primary reasons…we often have the same number of students who have used us before (they just take fewer classes) AND our students (or ANYone right now!) can't afford all of the tech needed to be successful in school so they use our resources. Other issues include students check out and/or use our textbooks instead of buying them and the smaller things – gas and parking is always difficult so students come to campus and stay rather than coming and going. And when they stay at school, they come to "sticking" or "sticky" spaces" including libraries. Our challenges continue to be to meet existing needs, assess what and how we are doing and  continue to keep an eye on our rapidly approaching future campuses (Elgin, Hays), our upcoming future (Highland Mall) and beyond into our new taxing districts and renovation, new construction and – as needed – shifting resources and people to meet needs.

 

SOUTHERN ASSOCIATION OF COLLEGES AND SCHOOLS (SACS)

 

SACS visited ACC the last week of October, 2012. IRT staff members created a myriad of documents prior to the team coming and then during their visit met with a variety of visiting team members for a number of different reasons. IRT had no recommendations for improvement in the summative document and kudos from team members onsite. The final report was received by ACC on 1/3 and will be posted to the college's website next week. While our next SACS project is to define Elgin as a substantive change item (new campus opening and Elgin center closing) that document isn't due until mid spring 2013.

 

ADMINISTRATION

 

We continue to get to know the new ACC administration and have continued to find them receptive and inclusive – which has been wonderful. As you know, we are now under the academic side of the house and during the fall Vice President Mike Midgley was wonderful in working with me while Richard Smith was away from the college. I can't tell you how happy I am Richard is back on Monday, January 7th.

 

STRATEGIC PLANNING

 

Library Services Ad Hoc Strategic Planning Committee will continue to meet this spring. Our goal is still to create a three year plan for Library Services with an immediate charge to address the Library Services content needed for the college's Academic Master Plan (AMP). The basic AMP template can be found at http://irt.austincc.edu/masterplan/amp/ and support services pieces for the AMP process are to be completed at the end of April.

 

All library employees will have the opportunity to provide input through their managers. This input can include but will not be limited to either general information or ideas for campus libraries. The Ad Hoc Committee we also provide general and specific content and will consolidate other input and then post drafts for LS employees to review. Of course – as a support service – we will have our new ideas but are also vetting ideas we will be gathering from the academic/discipline master plans to be completed this month.

 

ORGANIZATION

 

The Ad hoc Head Librarian and Librarian Workload group was established last year to look at equity of workload in Library Services and provide recommendations in areas such as team work, facilitator work, reference hours, and collection responsibilities - to name just a few areas. This group's recommendations are being reviewed by LLT and – as appropriate – LLT ad hoc groups are established to further investigate specific areas. Although we will continue to review content, an example of the success of this group is: beginning with the FY '13 contract, Head Librarians off contract time was confirmed to be identical with faculty librarians through the group's work with Human Resources.  Additional changes may include balancing work responsibilities.

For the remainder of this FY' 13, we will continue to have Library Leadership Team meetings, Head Librarian's meetings, a meeting of Team leaders, Facilitators and Stewards and will call a "Five or Fewer" (years of service) meeting of "newer" librarians as well as a "More than Five" meeting with similar questions, discussions, etc. to get input from senior staff. LLT meetings in the morning proved to be successful and will be continued with every other meeting a conference call. Other groups have used a variety of ways to meet regularly as well and are still encouraged to explore alternatives to face-to-face only.

 

We will continue our Opening Day Collection team and projects for Hays Campus, Elgin Campus and Highland Mall libraries. Our Emergency Management Facilitator was very successful this past fall and we will continue to entertain suggestions of other focuses for our services and resources AND continue to review the successes or needs for changes for existing positions that might need to morph or go away.

 

TEACHING AND LEARNING

 

The IL Team continues to assess our own IL products, refine what we need and seek integration of student learning outcomes (SLO's).

 

I am a member of VP Midgley's committee tasked with a review of ACC's teaching and learning to support faculty professional development. The team is knee-deep in identifying what ACC had, has and needs to support faculty in maintaining and growing development content. I will share ideas from the committee as we move through the process. Mike sees the process as an evolving one with interim decisions for HBC space and management and then both short term and long term decisions in looking at management and organization and Highland Mall space.

 

COMMUNICATION

 

Library Services is making significant process in the transition of one wiki environment to another. Our original timeline is still in place and we will complete the process within this academic year. Remember our goals include not only transitioning to the newer product but also beginning use of the product with streamlined, current content.

 

FACILITIES

Existing Campuses

During this winter holiday ACC facilities re-carpeted Eastview, re-carpeted and tiled Northridge, re-carpeted and replaced the cork with vinyl tile at Cypress and removed the film from the Pinnacle windows in Technical Services and in the Library. While we had challenges at primarily Cypress and Northridge, all locations will be open by the first day of the semester.

New Campuses

Elgin Campus colors and materials have been chosen and we will have a stunning library for students, faculty and staff. The campus is on time to open August, 2013 and ODC is selecting materials.

Hays Campus plans are also completed and we have a wonderful space there for students, faculty and staff similar in size to Elgin. Hays will probably open by summer 2014.

Plans for library space at Highland Mall are almost completed and will be a smaller space with @7,000 square feet and reduced print materials. Our plans include moving the textbook collection from Riverside to Highland Mall. Library Services goals still also include moving Technical Services to mall space.

STAFFING

 

Given our openings and the ongoing freeze on filling jobs, we have made additional changes for Library Services for spring 2013. They include:

 

·       Shaula and Rosemary will continue to split time for supporting Head Librarians at Cypress, Northridge and Rio Grande and they will work with Northridge library staff to interview hourly applicants to select and train a 19 hours a week for Administrative assistant support for Northridge.

·       Cheri will split her time as Senior Library Assistant between Round Rock and Northridge Libraries.

·       Eddie will continue to split his time by providing Administrative Assistant support for Eastview and Riverside.

·       Bridgette will continue to support Pinnacle (Library) and the South Austin Library, so she will split her time as Administrative Assistant between South Austin Campus library and Pinnacle Library locations.

·       Francine will continue to serve as a 19 hour a week Administrative Assistant for Tech Services and when we determine that we need to step up support to assist with Elgin and Hays activities, we will increase her hours for Technical Services within legal limits.  When the freeze is over NRG will continue with 19 hour a week Administrative Assistant support and Tech Services will receive the fulltime open LS AA position.

·       Riverside (without a full time Senior Library Assistant AND a fulltime Library Assistant) is assessing their circulation desk support needed and are submitting a request to me for additional hourly support for spring/summer.

·       Nathaniel will be working at Round Rock circulation temporarily to assist us while Cheri splits her time between Round Rock and Northridge.

$TATE FUNDING

Given the continued uncertainty of state and college funding we will continue to follow the Texas legislature this spring. Current plans for the statewide database program continue through August 2013 and we are continuing to explore costs and membership in other consortia. As before – at this point in time, the database core for the FY'13 year will NOT change.

OTHER…

·       We continue to refine the statistics/recordkeeping with our new data gathering software.

·       We continue to focus our all-LS staff development days and the spring 2013 focus is "emergency management training."

 

Finally, as everyone knows our IRT AVP Richard Smith has been out this past fall. I have prepared a document for him that outlines some specific activities I have handled this past fall as acting AVP for IRT. I had big shoes to fill…the AVP for IRT has numerous and diverse areas of responsibility. His position requires a large and broad knowledge base and his work touches everyone in the college. I thought I would outline a little of what I did to – in small part – explain what Richard does and assist in his absence. Richard supervises support areas for teaching and learning that include Blackboard and he is in charge of the design of the Highland Mall Emporium. Additional IRT areas include:

 

·        Distance Learning – delivery of hundreds of credit classes online and management of Channel 19

·       Instructional Technology - all media production and instructional technology services which provides staff and resources to help faculty and staff design and develop instructional activities and course materials with technology tools to match discipline-specific student learning outcomes.

·       Virtual College of Texas (VCT) - a collaborative of Texas community and technical colleges that deliver distance learning classes (Although this is not ACC's activity specifically, the ED of VCT reports to Richard.)

·       Instructional Computing and Technology - includes open access computer centers, media centers, faculty resource centers and classroom technology

·       Network Services - provides server administration for instructional network applications and network support for the computers supporting all IRT functions.

And of course

·         Library Services.

Just a few IRT activities from this past fall include:

 

Academic Master Plan (AMP)

 

Suzie Thomason - in her role as Director of Instructional Technology - has worked with Dr. Solis' office – specifically with Stephanie Hawley who is in charge of the AMP process. The academic side of the house is finishing their AMP content WITH budget content estimates by the end of this past fall semester. Administrators' jobs include reviewing content, standardizing as needed, consolidating budget content, eliminating redundancy, etc.  While support areas (Kathleen, Business Services, us, etc.) could create drafts in the fall - our timeline begins after the winter holidays or now. That is, we are to receive academic plans from Mike, then create plans that include what we want to do and also what is do-able from the AMP plans we have reviewed. Our IRT deadlines are this spring. This past spring I was contacted by a number of departments who needed help finding dollar amounts for elements of their AMPs.

 

Blackboard (BB)

 

I worked with Seth – the Blackboard administrator - on a few things. They included the use and cost of existing SafeAssign software on BB; the use and cost of Turnitin - a competing software; request for cost for AMP re: Turnitin by English and by History and an email for the spring semester advertising SafeAssign to ACC full and part time faculty.

 

Distance Learning/E-Texts

 

I was asked by Mike to meet with a vendor who was in Austin to meet with educators on delivering e-textbooks.  I prepared an assessment of the vendor product for IRT managers and VP Midgley's.

 

Network Services

 

Following a meeting – this past fall where we worked with the ACC project manager for Highland Mall on the Emporium and for IRT services and resources, I attended a meeting on authentication software. The current status is that Melanie Dickerman is ready to go with testing the authentication software that IRT has purchased against the ACC IT LDAP server, when IT can insure that the server is back under warranty, etc. IRT has tested it as much as we can without being on a live LDAP server and rolling out a test campus. Our IRT software should be ready to be tested before the end of January.

 

Distance Learning

 

I worked with Robert on a number of things this last fall including our IRT SACS meetings, Q and A on the use of BB SafeAssign, the vendor e-book questions and completing an answer for a student forum question on TV/RTF internships for students….Channel 19, etc.

 

Instructional Development

 

IDS staff were busy during SACS week and late in the fall assisting sabbatical applicants with designing projects. Suzie and I will be discussing a need for a process required for applicants to go through when consulting with IDS staff AND integrating IDS staff into the sabbatical process.

 

The current Faculty Senate president requested a workgroup to discuss faculty development Teaching and Learning Center. I have been working with Suzie Thomson to draft comments to correspond to the Senate President two documents proposing using IDS staff to support a faculty development process.

 

ICT

 

Tech trade out has been moving along AND on top of that project, Tom and Bruce's staff have had to weigh in and assist LS managers on support for the re-carpeting projects.