The Riverside City College Academic Senate expressed support for all students at its first meeting of the spring semester held March 3.
During the meeting, Academic Senate President Jo Scott-Coe opened the discussion about the Board of Trustees recently passing a resolution verifying students’ right to a public education regardless of their immigration status.
Scott-Coe advised members of the senate to know their rights, educate, protect and defend, leverage shared governance, create safe and inclusive spaces, and engage in allyship.
Sally Ellis, the Library & Learning Resources Department Senator, talked about how the library is prepared and will continue to provide students with a safe public space.
“We have flyers, we have red cards, we have gone through thousands of things. We’ve tried to prepare all of our employees to protect our students as best as possible,” Ellis said.
Kinesiology Department Senator Jim Elton also suggested that every department should have Know Your Rights cards and educational flyers available in any place students interact.
The members of the senate also discussed a new business for independent study procedures.
“Lower-division independent study courses provide individual students challenging and in-depth study or practicum experience on approved topics within any subject area under the direction of an instructor,” Ex-Officio Senator Kelly Douglass said. “Independent study courses provide the students experience in planning and outlining a course of study with their independent study instructor and under departmental supervision.”
Some faculty instructors are advocating for how useful this program will be for psychology, art, art history, and biology students. They question whether it will give students an opportunity to build an art portfolio or create STEM-based research projects. Art Department Senator Will Kim explained that Fine Arts students could build exhibit preparation or a commercial portfolio using these new procedures.
“You don’t have specific classes that are for applying your skills directly to either the gallery or commercial art. Usually, those things happen on an individual basis as the students move or they acquire,” Kim said.
Douglass touched on the course name change that will take effect next month. It involves five and their corresponding honors classes in a statewide name alignment project happening across all California Community Colleges. She uses ENG-1A or ENG-100 as an example which will now be known as ENGL C1000.
Scott-Coe and new Vice President Star Taylor reported about the RCC Bookstore markup and how this has affected students by having to drop classes because they could not afford the right textbook. They will have an update at the next meeting March 17.
