The first faculty senate meeting of the spring semester sparked resolutions and opportunities to move in a new direction for the college.
The senate met on Tuesday, Jan. 26, led by senate president Michelle Lewellen, and primarily focused on a resolution regarding sabbaticals and featured a presentation about the Cerritos College website.
Lewellen said,”The resolution was for sabbatical decisions to remain within the faculty, and not the board of trustees.”
The resolution would give administration a greater approval role on all levels.
There was a back and forth discussion between some of the senate members, some had not heard of the resolution, and it left questions.
Dr. Fierro wanted to make sure that if the resolution passed, that the senate needed to have benchmarks to show the board of trustees.
Not everyone agreed with the resolution however, the senate ultimately approved the resolution.
Early on in the meeting Miya Walker represented the Web Standards Committee by giving a presentation on the current status of the school website.
Walker went through what a website is supposed to do, along with the different designs that have occurred since its inception in 1989.
“We have about 18,000 pages [on our website], while other schools have about seven or eight thousand,” she said.
She revealed a chart that showed over 5,000 pages had to do with archives and over ten thousand pages were about faculty and departments.
Some of the current trends and something many other schools are doing with their websites are lessening text and having more graphics with vibrant images.
Walker revealed that the goal is to use OmniUpdate which would cost $84,500 and $12,500 per year for maintenance.
There are currently 403 authors that can update the website, and with OmniUpdate, the committee can add more authors that would assist in the design.
Finally, she presented the next steps of the committee which were: acquiring a new web platform, contracting a new web design firm, and having focus groups to help get faculty opinion on any updates.
