All faculty members of Cerritos College are asked to be patient with the present budget crisis. This was the most important message passed during the faculty meeting held on March 13.

Marilyn Brock, Interim Vice President of Academic Affairs, circulated a notice, headed, “Guidelines Given by Dr. Brock to the Deans for Fall Cuts,” that gave eight guidelines to toward reducing Fall Classes.

Carl Brengston, Dean, Library and Learning Resource Center, seemed least affected by the budget crisis as he explained, “I have two programs of which one is the library program. It is really one course: Library 100. So, we offer five or six sections about one course each semester.

Begston, also clarified the issue of hybrid versus online courses that was raised during the faculty meeting, as follows:

“Online courses are courses where the regular face to class meeting is replaced by online activity, so there is no face to face meetings at the class. However, online course instructors may require the students to come to campus for an appropriate exam, for mandatory orientation or for some other meeting.”

The hybrid courses on the hand is three units, might meet one hour per week on campus, and the other two hours of the class conducted online. So in a hybrid course, one or more scheduled meetings of the course, or face to face meetings of the course are replaced by online activity.”

The issue is sometimes students do not get that message. They do not understand. Students may see a course advertised as online, and assume they don’t ever have to come to campus. And that is false, and would not be a true assumption because, in some cases, instructors do require the students to come to class even if what they are taking is designated as online course.”

And in regard to the issue of the potential for students cheating taking online courses, Begston said, “In online courses, we authenticate participation through the Talonet systems. Students have to log into Talonet. We require that faculty use Talonet as a portal to their online class. So in order for the students to get to the information, they would need to log on with their campus student ID number and pass word , the same one they use in my Cerritos. So that’s basically our mechanism now.”

As to the background to the budget crisis, Brock said,“The state of California is funding Cerritos College with less money now than we have a year ago. And part of that is the reduction in the number of sections that would actually pay for us to have for students. We are funded on the basis what’s called FTE (full time equivalent student), and each class generate a certain number of FTEs, and then we are on the basis of that apportionment.”

We expect that approximately the same number will be taken out of the next spring schedule. Because three years ago, this campus was funded at over 17,000 FTEs and this next year, we are going to be funded at 14,000, so you could see the huge decline in the number of funded students that the state is allowing us to have.”

And with regard to how the budget cuts put to work at the college, Brock said,

“So, when the Deans meet with their departments, they need guidelines in terms of what they need to maintain in the schedule. So, this blue sheet is actually that; it tells the Deans what they need to protect, and then after that they will be able to figure out what they can cut out of their schedule. So, it is the general guideline from my office given to the Deans to be working with their department chairs and faculty, in terms of which classes are not going to survive.”

With regard to part time faculty and budget cuts, Brock said,

“And then, in some departments, we may have a part time faculty member who is teaching something very unique, that our full time faculty does not teach. For instance, in the computer information system, we may have a part time faculty member that teaches one of the specialized software programs, and so we need to maintain that, so we can offer that to students.”

And as to how the high demand classes are given priority treatment in the face of budget cuts, Brock said,

“And then, we run enrollment figures on all the sections on all the classes, so we know where the high demand is, both by section and by discipline. So then, if we are going to cut classes, we are probably going to try and maintain as many as the high demand ones as you can, and put the lower demand ones on hold until we get more money.”

Nguyen Pham, Science Major, said, “ last year, I couldn’t get some subjects because the classes were full before I was able register, and they were really very crowded. And before then, I was able to procrastinate for a couple of days and was then able to enroll.”

But now, we have to be right on that day to go into class right away.”

And what this delay in enrolling meant that Nguyen’s graduation was delayed in turn, as he had to take extra semesters including the summer session.

Nguyen, however attributes the problem in enrolling to the increased tuition fees at UC and Cal State. He said, “ I think the tuition fee went up for everybody especially at UC and Cal State, and students prefer to go to junior college because tuition fees are less, and student s are able to take the same courses.

Nguyen is also aware how the budget cuts have reduced the number of available courses in the college. Nguyen said, when it comes to the budget, I know that this summer there’s not going to be any independent Maths class. It was offered last semester. It all depends what class you need, but I hope to finish this semester.”