Academic Senate gathers for the first meeting of the Fall term to discuss student, faculty and academics affairs concerns

The Riverside Community College Academic Senate hosted its first meeting of the term to discuss important topics and updates related to students, the faculty and its academics for the 2025-26 year in the college’s Hall of Fame room on Sept.8 

Kelly Douglass, the curriculum committee chair, discussed a change in course funding that will cause Riverside City College and Riverside Community College district as a whole to lose money. 

The California Community College Board of Governors passed new regulations for the attendance accounting method last year. The attendance accounting method is the way the state reports its compulsory education and funding which are designed to compute the number of full-time equivalent students served by a school. 

This change causes RCC to lose its financial apportionment with courses that have a “lab overhang.” A lab overhang happens when a course does not equal out to a whole number of units because of the attached lab that slightly raises instructional time.

The course outline of record showed that there was a small amount of extra lab time that was going unpaid for. When the unit hour math was calculated, some lab courses were equaling out to be more than a whole unit. These courses included English, world language and dance. Students were receiving the units they were paying for, but also allowed a little more instructional time without them being charged. 

This is concerning to the Senate because these labs were funded by the state. RCC was getting an apportionment for all units even with the lab overhang. With these new regulations, this will change. Despite the efforts of Dr. Lynn Wright, Vice President of Academic Affairs, who fought for the 19 districts that have these types of distances in their units, the state denied Wright’s efforts in May of last year. 

Instructors will be affected because this will result in having to revise their classes so they equal a whole unit. 

 “Anything you think of will alter classroom instructional time, full-time faculty load, part-time faculty pay and caseload for instructors,” says Douglass.  

RCCD was one of the two largest districts affected by this, so RCCD was granted an extra year to come up with a resolution to revise the courses affected by these new regulations.

Amy Vemillion, nursing ADN (RN) department chair, also spoke at the meeting, advocating for bachelor’s degrees in nursing to be achievable at the community college level. ASRCC had sent out a bill last year for this, which got vetoed by the governor. The reason being for the funding that the state already gave for their concurrent nursing programs linked with four-year institutions. For example, how RCC has a linked nursing program with California State University Fullerton and California State University San Bernandino.

LaTonya Parker, president of academic senate for california community colleges, drafted a new bill to send to legislation, on which Vermillion is trying to gain senate support on.

Vermillion states that there are only four classes that differentiate nurses with an Associate Degree in Nursing and nurses with their Bachelor of Science in Nursing.Vermillion mentions how offering the BSN at the CC level in California will be in the students’ best interest because it will only cost $10,560 to receive your BSN. Opposed to a California State University, it is $34,341 and even greater at the private level, being $72,363, especially for a four class difference.

Vermillion gives background to the urgency of getting this bill passed by mentioning how the future of nursing in 2011 said they want 80% of nurses to be baccalaureate and prepared by the year 2020. 

“Currently, we are at 64%,” states Vermillion.

There are only five states on the West Coast that do not offer the BSN at the CC level, which includes California. There are 84 community college to BSN programs nationally, but only 13 states are currently authorized. 

“Right now, most nurses are coming out of private institutions, but offering the BSN will bring in more nurses,” says Vermillion

ASRCC voted in favor of supporting this bill.