President’s Cabinet Meeting
Minutes of the January 27, 2020 meeting were approved as written.
Name(s) with strikethrough were absent.
CGC Consent Agenda Items:
Classified Staff Association
A request was made to amend the Classified Staff Association Constitution & Bylaws to change the terms of all officers, President, Vice-President, Secretary and Treasurer from two-year terms to one-year terms. The motion carried unanimously.
A request was made to extend the Learning Environment Awards to include adjunct faculty. The motion carried unanimously.
VP for Student and Academic Affairs
Muriel Mickles reported that faculty advising is going to happen. Kim French and Kevin Riley held a second training for faculty after the last town hall meeting.
Muriel stated that History Day will be held on March 28th. Matt Poteat sent out an email asking for volunteers. Muriel asked that if you volunteered in the past, please consider doing so again this year.
Muriel said that Philmika Reid will be holding a resource fair. She will bring community services to the CVCC campus, which will be held in the student center. No date has been set, there will be more information soon.
Muriel reported that a site visit from the Perkins Group will be held on March 25th. This group will be looking at CVCC’s processes to see how and what the college is doing and make recommendations on anything that might need improvement.
Director of Strategic Initiatives
Will Sandidge was absent.
Classified Staff Association
Connie Deacon reported that the classified staff is busy as usual. The next meeting is scheduled for March 18th and will include a visit from Foundation Board members to discuss the use of Foundation funds. CSA can apply for and utilize up to $10,000 of Foundation funds to benefit students each year.
Connie stated that the committee is working with Market at Main on fundraising ideas, selling a “Cougar” burger or hot dog and possibly having a pancake breakfast. A percentage of the profits will go back to the CSA.
Connie reported that the Habitat for Humanity project has a location for Miss Coles’ house. A 12-week work schedule has been sent out; staff and students are encouraged to participate.
VP of Facilities and Finance
Lewis Bryant reported that the preliminary deadline for purchases is March 16th. He stated that next year’s budget, since enrollment is down, M&O budgets versus actual spend should be reviewed. More to come on future budget planning.
Lewis stated that George Crofoot (The Budd Group) will be presented an award for his excellent job performance from The Budd Group on Monday, March 9th on campus.
Lewis stated that with Amherst Hall and Campbell Hall renovations potentially being on hold, maintenance will be performed on the following areas around campus: tree trimmings and landscaping, updates to the cafeteria, restriping parking lots and repairing steps, HVAC equipment maintenance, and cleaning out some of the lab equipment and disposing of old equipment.
Lewis reported that DEQ performed an annual inspection of the retention pond at the back of the campus. Due to excessive tree growth, the trees will need to be removed. VCCS will pay $60,000 for this to be completed.
VP of Information Technology
David Lightfoot reported that progress is being made with the conversion to the new phone system. Faculty has been emailed letting them know they will be receiving the Bluetooth headset this week and their phone will be converted on March 23rd.
David stated that some phones have been converted in Accounting and IT is also working with the Learning Commons and Enrollment Management.
David said that the desire is to align the phone selections with the web menus. For example, if someone is on the Student Support page, the phone number listed on the webpage will present the caller with a similar set of options as the webpage menu.
David reported that the system office piloted an email security service that integrates with Office 365, it is now required for all colleges. This will be implemented in early March. This new service will cost about $10k in FY ’21. At this time, there isn’t enough information on how it will impact faculty and staff.
David stated that William Osborne, with the assistance of William Perez, moved the webserver and other required services to Microsoft’s Azure Cloud. This move means the website is no longer impacted by local power interruptions, and if the need to increase web resources to support more hits, the webserver can increase the resources with Surfaces and an Internet connection. This also costs less than the local design.
Director of Human Resources
Randall Franklin reported on staffing updates. He stated that the research analyst position will be reposted with an updated job description and title to attract a different pool of candidates.
Randall stated that the Chief of Police position is closed, the committee has the referrals and will schedule a meeting to narrow down the list of candidates.
Randall reported that the Associate Vice President position closes tomorrow and has attracted a very strong pool of applicants.
Randall said an offer has been made and accepted for the open Administrative Assistant position at Jefferson Forrest High School.
Randall stated the committee for the Career Coach at Liberty and Staunton River High School's met and candidates have been narrowed down to two finalists.
Randall reported that the committee for the Help Desk position met once, but still need to determine the candidates to be interviewed. Chris Jordan has all screening information for this position.
Randall said open enrollment for benefits will be May 1st through May 15th. More information to come.
Randall stated there will be a Diversity Strategic Planning event held on March 9th and March 18th. The Chancellor is pushing this initiative and Virginia is the first state to have a cabinet level Chief Diversity Officer position. Randall will coordinate participation to one of these events.
Dean of Institutional Effectiveness
Kris Ogden reported that the Great Colleges to Work For survey (part of The Chronicle of Higher Education) will open on March 9th. Dr. Capps will be sending out an announcement to everyone next week. The survey will go to all administrators, a sample of exempt classified staff, all full-time faculty and a sample of adjuncts.
Kris stated that budget requests are being solicited from each department for the annual budget prioritization process. All requests are due March 6th.
Kris reported that positive feedback was received from the SACSCOC Vice President. The final report is due April 1st. The outcome should be made available sometime in June.
Kris said the research analyst posting closed this week. Unfortunately, no candidates were selected for interview and the position will be advertised again, possibly rewording the job description.
VP of Institutional Advancement
Chris Bryant reported on graduation events from the foundation standpoint. The bonfire was a hit last year and if approved, would like to hold another bonfire again this year. The foundation wants to create a packet for graduates to include: a letter from the foundation, a networking list, and an invitation to be part of the linked in community, which is called Wiser. The foundation is also working on developing a CVCC alumni transparent decal for vehicles to be given out during graduation.
Chris stated that on St. Patrick’s Day, there will be a pot of gold for staff/faculty/students to drop their spare change in.
Chris reported that March 25th will be the big celebration event for those who have donated to the foundation. Currently, there are 87 donors who have donated over $22,000. The goal is 111 donors for $27,000.
Chris stated there will be a unified sock day during the enrollment open house on March 19th.
Part-Time Staff Association
Sarah Jarrett started off by thanking everyone that participated in the “Name That Tune” event. The next event will be a pizza fundraiser on April 1st. Vito’s Pizza will be here on campus. This fundraiser will support the student emergency fund and the book fund.
Sarah also thanked Dr. Capps for attending the last meeting of the Part-Time Staff.
Director of the Title III Grant
Elizabeth Narehood reported that the Title III Project is continuing to review data from the 2019 Fall Semester. Related to the MALL, when looking more in-depth at instructional influences on success outcomes, it appears there has been a significant impact. Additional analysis was completed looking at attendance rates at the MALL and found that for credit students, average success rate ranged from 55.26% for 1-5 visits to 82.14% for 10 or more visits. This Illustrates that students receiving more services can make a significant difference on student success.
Elizabeth stated that during the last Title III Steering Committee meeting, Rachel Madigan and Leidra McQueen presented on Beacon of Hope’s first semester on campus. Beacon of Hope shared increased fall-to-spring retention rates at 78.6%, higher than the college average. They also shared high usage rates of student services with 41% using either the MALL or Writing Center. Kevin Riley provided an update on Fall 2019 Early Alert Goals at the last steering committee meeting, generated at the request of the Navigate Leadership Team. Some of the recommendations moving forward are to work on increasing faculty participation courses, designated progress report campaigns and flagging students with a fail, unsuccessful or withdrawal in their course. It should be noted that many of the faculty are doing interventions on their own, so there could also be better education on documenting those in the system. The committee also approved edits to Title III proposal goals and objectives to align with the Annual Performance Report system. The APR is in progress and due next week.
Cynthia Deutch reported that the faculty advising pilot is moving forward. Kimberly French and Kevin Riley are taking the lead on organizing this initiative. There is a clear schedule for rolling this out, with about eight faculty who are piloting this and will be working with students by early to mid-March. Some colleges are looking into using Zoom for faculty advising, that may be an option for CVCC.
Cynthia stated that it’s time for faculty awards, an email has been sent out requesting nominations. Charles Poff is leading the committee for the Outstanding Faculty Award.
John Capps reported that Greg Sullivan has resigned as the Director for the Regional CTE Academy. Advertisement for the job should be posted soon. This position will be subsidized by external funding (possibly a corporate donor) rather than state funding. The CTE Academy is the most important, public initiative that the college has going on right now.
John stated that Senator Tim Kaine will be visiting CVCC on Friday, February 28th and Senator Mark Warner will be here on March 18th to learn about the Beacon of Hope and CVCC initiatives that support student success.
John stated that the college needs to be prepared for the Coronavirus outbreak. Questions were asked regarding faculty having a web presence in the event the campus had to be closed. Muriel stated that full-time faculty should be web ready but that not all adjuncts would be.
John said that he would be traveling to Richmond with Cynthia Deutsch and others on Monday, March 9th to celebrate her receiving the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia Outstanding Faculty Award.
With no further business, the meeting adjourned at 2:52 p.m. The next President’s Staff meeting is scheduled for March 9, 2020.