[Speaker 2] (0:11 - 3:10)
All right, everyone, it is 10 a.m. and I like to start things on time so we can end them on time. So people in the lobby will just continue to trickle in and we'll get going. So before I call the meeting to order, I did want to take just a minute.

I think everyone probably received the email letting us know of the passing of Bill Gamble over the summer, but I did want to just take a moment in case anyone was not aware or didn't catch that email. It's a great loss for the college. Bill served us for about 20 years as a faculty in biology, and for any of you who weren't here, I was at the board meeting immediately following that announcement, and the board did a really great job of taking a moment to recognize his service to the college.

And so I wanted to just make sure that everyone was aware and, you know, to make sure that we give a little bit of love to his department because I'm sure it was a major loss for them. So we just want to recognize, you know, Bill's great service to the college and the board did a great job of that at their meeting, but I know not many people were present there. So with that being said, we'll call the meeting to order at 10.02 and we'll start with the approval of the minutes. Those minutes were outside from the last, the called meeting in July and then the prior meeting that we had in April. So if there's anyone who had, would like to move to approve those minutes, that's Joe and a second, Dana. Sorry, like my brain stopped working for a second.

Dana seconds. Was there any conversation, questions, comments about the minutes from those two meetings? Okay, so all in favor, aye.

Okay, any opposed? All right, those minutes are approved. And then so for the next part, we'll start with the report of the officers.

There's not a whole lot to report, so I've asked that each member take a moment to introduce themselves to the group, just because some of us may not be familiar faces. And so I'll start for myself, obviously. I'm Chanel Cook.

I have served Lee College since 2015 in a variety of roles and currently I serve as the division chair of learning frameworks. I'm grateful for all of you all and have been glad to already start sharing your voices. For those of you who don't know, there was conversations that happened over the summer that we were able to share the faculty concerns with the board and with President Adkin.

And so those conversations will continue to happen. I'm available. My office is on the third floor of the ATC, 345.

I also have snacks. So I'm open to hearing whatever concerns, questions, comments you all have and being the voice of the faculty. And so I think that's all I have to say.

I'm going to let Mark introduce himself.

[Speaker 6] (3:11 - 5:15)
All right. Hello, Vice President Mark Solis. I've been here nine years this past summer.

The first five were in advising and now I'm in learning frameworks. So I'm also upstairs with Chanel just a few doors down. I do have snacks, but I don't like to share them.

So don't come ask them for them because they're mine. I did want to use this moment just to do two quick announcements. So we do still have an open position for the position of professional standards and responsibilities, which I assume is making sure we're all professional and responsible.

So if anybody wants to take that mantle on, you can come and chat with us and we can try to get that settled. I also wanted to take a moment for those of you during convocation that we heard during the faculty update. We got a lot of great information from Jose Martinez, who's over student conduct and Title IX.

I just wanted to use this moment to pitch to y'all, if you can try to volunteer for some of these hearings and from some of these committees. It's really important that we get faculty representation on these. Bittersweetly, I've served on conduct, academic and Title IX.

And there's a lot of need for faculty input, especially for academic and conduct hearings, for us to be able to give our perspective as experts in the classroom curriculum and pedagogy. It's really eye-opening to see why some of the students do the things that they do. But it's also important for us to kind of give our input, like, okay, what does our syllabus say?

What are we doing in the classroom? That I won't say cost it, because I think we're all pretty good at our jobs. But what can we do to further address these issues so we can be proactive to make sure some of these conduct or academic issues don't happen in the future?

It's very time minimal in terms of commitment. So it's not going to add like another 20 hours to your week or anything like that. The only exception may be the investigator role, because as it sounds, you got to do interviews, which means you got to schedule appointments, which means you got to meet with people.

But other than that, it's not going to chew up a lot of your time. It's not going to chew up a lot of your attention. But it's a nice way to give back to your campus and also, like I said, really get insight into how some of our students think or don't think sometimes, if you want to think of it that way.

So I guess I am now Kathleen, if you want another short intro.

[Speaker 12] (5:19 - 5:32)
I'm Kathleen Walker Anderson. I've been with Lee College since 2018, English and Humanities instructor, and also started out in developmental education, English and Humanities. All right, and who's next?

[Speaker 11] (5:39 - 5:53)
Hi, I'm Kathy Pastore. I've been here since January of last year, so a year and a half. I teach business and administrative technology, and I do not have snacks.

I have an office, though, but I don't have snacks.

[Speaker 9] (6:00 - 6:53)
Hi, Francisca Castillo. I teach mainly Spanish, Spanish program, but I was also hired in the developmental education, so I still teach there and then also in the education, the learning framework. So I have three divisions, but my home division is tasked with that.

Joe, I am with benefits. I'm feeling bad because every time I join a committee, it runs out of money. So I am, this is it, this is the lifetime, so it runs out of money.

So I'm bad, I won't do it again, I promise. But so again, no money for again, for traveling with developmental through our faculty assembly. Hopefully that will change.

I will be attending the latest training, again, travel, right? We have, I guess, a few changes, so tomorrow is another training, so I'll be attending that, and again, I'll let you know how that goes next time. Thank you.

[Speaker 13] (6:59 - 7:00)
I'm Carl Taylor.

[Speaker 1] (7:00 - 7:07)
Computer technology is where I'm at. I've been here one year, so I'm still learning as we speak, so I'm excited to be a part of this, so thank you.

[Speaker 13] (7:14 - 7:16)
Okay, so those are the officers.

[Speaker 2] (7:16 - 7:57)
Again, we do have a vacancy for professional standards and responsibilities, and if no one volunteers, we will start volunteering people, so I'm not afraid to volunteer people, just FYI. So that's happened. As far as moving kind of forward, at this point, we don't have unfinished business from our last meetings, so nothing there.

Any new business that we want to bring up? Or, sir? New business for now, and then after the president, then we'll have open forum, so I don't, that's probably going to lead to new business, so with that being said, take it away, sir.

[Speaker 1] (8:01 - 34:00)
Thank you. So I covered pretty much everything that I needed to cover on Monday, and we had a really robust discussion Monday afternoon. Were there any follow-up questions from Monday?

One other thing that I wouldn't mind sharing with faculty is an update on the Facilities Master Plan. So as many of you know, we've been working with Pfluger Architects to work through the Facilities Master Plan, which is scheduled to be completed in December. As part of the Facilities Master Plan, we'll be looking at the current use of our future facilities and setting plans for growth and expansion into the future.

We are nearing completion of the second stage of the process, which is called the ideation phase, and in the ideation phase, this is where we get to think broadly about what the college could be, or what it could look like 10 or 15 years down into the future, and so these aren't necessarily plans that I want to share with you today, but thoughts and themes that are starting to emerge as part of this process.

So we have the main campus here on Lee Drive. We have McNair. We have the Liberty Center that we currently offer classes in.

We're nearing the halfway point on construction for the Barbers Hill Branch campus, so I kind of want to go over what we're seeing in terms of those properties and this ideation phase with the Facilities Master Plan, and I'd like to start with McNair. When McNair was built in 2014, it was constructed as part of a joint operation and a federal grant, right? We received federal money in order to help construct that facility and to offer the career and technical education programs that we offer at McNair.

It was also intended to help revitalize and energize that particular community in which McNair resides. The problem that we have with McNair is that demand for those programs specifically is outpacing the capacity that we have at McNair. Now, our CTE programs kind of ebb and flow.

They'll grow and peak, and then, you know, interest will wane a little bit, and right now we're in a growth period, but we are out of space. Dr. Norris has been working feverishly to try and figure out how to expand welding, and we're even contemplating revitalizing the old TV building welding lab in order to meet immediate need right now. I say this to raise the long-term concern that we have with McNair, that its current capacity is going to be limiting in terms of growing these incredibly important programs within our service region.

We own quite a bit of property behind the building, but that is all in the flood plain, and so in order to build in that area, it would require raising the property up significantly and then expanding the drainage reserve. What's that called again? I can't remember.

The retention pond, yes. Expanding the retention pond, right, because we would be eliminating drainage by constructing in the flood plain. Very expensive, right?

If we were to expand outside of the flood plain where the building currently exists, the only real option that we would have would be to build over the existing retention pond, so we can't eliminate the retention pond. It means that we would be creating an underground retention pond. Very expensive, and the nature of these programs really don't allow us to build up, right?

These are programs that need access to trucking, delivery, to heavy equipment, not ideally suited for second floor instruction, so McNair is limited, but our demand for those programs continues to increase, and frankly, as we look at industry demand and we look at job opportunities in our community, there is a ample supply in these fields. We should be recruiting more students into these programs and expanding these if we truly want to meet the community need that we are facing. So a big question that we have as part of the ideation phase is what do we do with these programs and what do we do with McNair?

Now under the grant agreement that we signed in 2014, we are required to offer those courses in that location through 2034, or we're subject to recapture by the federal government. In other words, we'd have to repay the feds the money that they gave us, so I'm not talking about an immediate change, right? We have seven more years under the contract, but as we look into the future, we really had to ask the question, do we try to relocate some of those services to the main campus or do we look for another solution?

Because the long-term solution at McNair is too expensive, right? Once the grant is concluded and we want to grow these programs, it's far less expensive for us to expand those programs here on main campus or to do it somewhere else than it is to try and do it in that particular location. With that said, we considered main campus or we considered expanding and building a new campus on the property that we own on I-10.

We have a hundred acres that we own that's just off of North Main and the frontage road of I-10. That is pretty prime real estate. We have excellent visibility on I-10.

We have excellent accessibility. It's in the heart of all of the growth that we're seeing on the north side of town. There's a lot of opportunities there.

And so the theme that we're starting to see develop is the idea that we would like to build out our technology and CTE programs on the property in I-10 and essentially start to split services between the two campuses. Here on the main campus, our focus would be transfer and traditional associate degree education along with health care. And on the north campus on I-10 is where we would do all of our technical and technology type education.

And there's what we're seeing a pretty clear delineation of the types of programs and how those campuses would become more specialized. That hundred acres that we have up there would also give us the opportunity to grow and expand some of our industry partnerships where it wouldn't simply be Lee College buildings that are on that property, but we would explore opportunities to partner with some of the industry in our region to have some of their facilities there as well. And so in order for us to achieve that right, we have to go out to bond and we have to build and develop.

I'm not talking about something that's going to happen this year, but we're going to start working ultimately, I think, towards that end goal in terms of growing and developing the programs that are going to target students that want to live and stay in this community that are looking at a certificate or an associate's degree and then straight to work, right? These are not going to be the programs where we're looking at transfer. Our university center is not going to be up there.

We're going to be looking at students who want a two-year degree or certificate and then go straight to work in one of the industries in our community. Here on campus, then, we need to start talking about how do we revitalize this campus to create a more collegiate feel so that as we're looking at students who are looking at a more traditional college pathway, two-year transfer, go to a university, how do we energize this campus? How do we get those students here and get them excited about the opportunity?

We have a lot of old buildings on this campus. The average age of the facilities on this campus is over 40 years old. Our newest building is 20 years old.

We have an aging, aged problem on campus. Now, we all know that some of the outlying buildings like the adult education center and security building and some of the old TV buildings do not represent the college very well. They're in bad shape.

We've been talking about alternate solutions for those facilities for a long time. The real question that we have been evaluating as part of this process is what to do with some of the core buildings that we have. Who can guess which building, core building, is the one that we struggle with the most?

Yes. Mueller Hall. Bonner.

Not Bonner. Not Bonner. Bonner has its issues.

No, no. Bonner has its issues, but Mueller Hall creates the most problems for us. In fact, we were worried this year that we might have to close Mueller Hall because of foundation issues.

As the foundation has problems, it creates safety concerns because doors don't open properly like they should. If doors would stick because of damage to the facility, now we have an egress problem and a safety issue, which could ultimately require us to close the building until we can make those repairs. Mueller Hall has foundation issues.

It has plumbing issues. It has roofing issues. It's not ideal space for us in terms of lab or design interior use.

Mueller Hall is going to be the first one that goes because at this point, trying to improve Mueller Hall or to redesign it for better use is throwing good money after bad. Right? We're better off at this point to demo it and to rebuild something in its place in terms of a cost efficiency perspective and added value to the college.

So, Mueller Hall will likely be demoed at some point in the not too distant future. The other two buildings that raise concerns for us are Bonner. And many of you are housed in Bonner.

And I think you've been struggling with air conditioning issues for the last couple of weeks. The other facility that gives us issues is Huddle. And Huddle, we have other issues with Huddle.

We have accessibility issues with Huddle. There's no elevator to the second floor. That's problematic in today's age.

There's only one entrance into the facility that's even ADA accessible. And it's not great space. So, that's kind of the central corridor, right, as you look.

Bonner, Huddle, Mueller, that's right down the center. And so, one of the things that we're seeing during this ideation phase is, you know, with the elimination of some of these facilities, the creation of an east-west corridor and a big central plaza for the college. Something like that would help to create more of a central feel for the campus and a true gathering place for our students, both in terms of outdoor education opportunities, social activities, and then just beauty and green space, right?

Having that nice central corridor that essentially all the buildings surround and all the buildings look down on could really enhance the collegiate feel of our campus. We also have issues on this campus with our north-south corridor, right? If you look at the Pack and McNulty Haddock, they're separated, right?

All of that distance, no real good pathway or connection. It really almost makes it feel like a separate campus, even though it's directly adjacent to all of the buildings on the south side. So, creating a north-south corridor is also going to be a priority that you'll see as part of this ideation phase.

And what we would like, what we are currently looking at, is a dedicated decorative main thoroughfare pathway that goes along the east side of the library all the way to the Pack. Now, in order for us to achieve that, that means we have to do something with Gulf. And presently, we are considering eliminating Gulf Street.

Now, we already have an access issue with the east side of campus, right? Gulf gets us there. There's no good way to go from east to west.

We have the one-way street on the south side, and I know some of you have gone the wrong way on that a time or two. So, we need to correct that. So, as we started looking at creating connection between the north and south, it became evident that we needed to do a better job of creating access around the outside of campus, right?

So, that would require the addition of a full two-way street along the south side adjacent to the railroad tracks so that you could drive all the way around campus in one circle. It also means that we need to clean up the east side of our border up next to the residential area. I think everyone's pretty happy with the west side of campus, right?

Lee Drive, the trees, the parking, that feels more collegiate than the east side where it just feels a little jumbled. It's messy, right? So, creating the courtyard, creating the north-south connection, creating the 360-degree access to campus.

These are kind of the themes that are coming to light with the work that we're doing here on this main campus. And then, as far as new buildings and construction, we've only really talked about one new facility on this campus. There would obviously need to be remodeling of existing space to improve labs and access, you know, science could use a refresh and so on and so forth.

But, in terms of new construction, we would really like a welcome center for our students. The other problem we have as an institution is we don't have an obvious front door to campus. I know Rondell Hall is sort of that, but if you drive down Lee Drive, there's no indication that that's the front door to campus.

Most deliveries, most people turn in at the arena, you know, that little circle area. You know, some people who are not used to campus kind of think of that as, you know, go there automatically as maybe the front door to campus. But, prospective students, new students, parents, visitors, there's not a clear, obvious place where they should go.

And so, if Huddle is removed, the proposal would be to add a welcome center where Huddle currently resides and to connect that to Rondell Hall. And that would be all of the services that all of our students would need would be included in that welcome center and in Rondell Hall. The only time that they would need to go to the student center would be for physical support, you know, resource center for entertainment, right?

All of their advising, class scheduling, you know, financial payments, everything that our students need would be in that welcome center together with Rondell Hall. We would also redo the entrance way right there to really formally make it look like the main entrance into campus. That would kind of build out and complete the main campus, right?

So, if we have the technology and CTE center in the north and we redo and try to create a more collective, collegiate experience here on main campus, we think that that would be a really nice way to address all of our students' needs, right? In a more specific way to what our individual students are looking for. Barbers Hill is going to be a fantastic building for us and it could end up being a model that we can duplicate with other ISDs.

The challenge that we face as an institution is that we are located in the southwest furthest corner of our service area, right? We're not centralized at all. And so, outside of Goose Creek, Barbers Hill, and to a lesser extent, Crosby, most of our students have to travel a significant distance to take advantage of any of our services.

Clearly, in order for us to meet our regional needs, we need expansion. And the Barbers Hill takes us to the east and we're very excited about that. But we need more services to the north.

And so, as part of this, we're looking at the next branch campus that we would try to pursue after Barbers Hill would likely be a branch campus located in Dayton. Now, the advantage of Dayton is it's more centrally located. Students from Crosby, Dayton, Liberty, you know, our next three largest ISDs would be within 15 minutes of a Lee College facility.

A full branch campus in Dayton would allow us to build out and invest in the types of programs that they're the most interested in having up in the north. The Liberty Center is a very nice operation for us, but what they're clamoring for is career technical education. They want welding, they want HVAC, they want electrical and plumbing.

We don't own the facility up there and investing in the Liberty Center is impractical in terms of building out the types of labs that would be required for the types of programs that they would like in that region. So, a branch campus would give us the opportunity to invest in the types of programs that are the most interesting to the students in those regions. And doing it in Dayton allows us to centralize at a location that would hopefully allow us to attract students from Crosby, which we're currently losing many to San Jack, right?

We want to pull them back in and it would be closer for them to go to Dayton than it would to go to San Jack. That's kind of our long-term facilities master plan as it's starting to shape up. Now, after ideation, you know, we have planning and finalization are the last two steps, where once we have some goals and objectives, we'll start talk, we'll begin the discussions and the planning about how we could actually achieve that and what steps and what order we would take in order to realize some of these goals.

How many of you have been here for 10 years or more? Very nice. How many of you have seen us remodel a space and invest and a few years later remodel and reinvest in the same space?

Our dollars are very limited and we have to be wise and prudent in the way that we invest. The primary point of this exercise is to ensure that we avoid doing that very thing, investing and then reinvesting, because what we built out might have scratched a small need at the time, but it wasn't done with a long-term perspective or a long-term plan about what the college is going to need over the next 5 to 10 or 15 years. So sometimes we are dragging feet on maintenance or repairs or replacements on our facilities presently because we are trying to get through this facilities master plan before investing in facilities, right?

So right now we know Mueller Hall is not a long-term solution for us. We've been very reticent to put any kind of money into that facility because we're not talking about a 20-year or even a 10-year investment. It's a two or three-year investment.

And so please be patient as we finish this out. There are many things that we know that need to be done and we are intentionally pausing on some of this work because we want to make sure that we're investing in a way that makes sense long term. A big change or a big construction project that you will likely see this upcoming year is replacement of the piping system, right?

So we have our covered walkways. We installed those to hide the pipes, the elevated piping that goes. Elevated piping is more subject to environmental decay and erosion than if we put it under the ground.

But moving those from up high down into the ground is expensive. We have millions of dollars set aside for that project and it is very disruptive as you can imagine, right? Digging up all of campus and burying these piping.

I mean basically it's like the infrastructure construction part of any new facility and we're going to be doing that in real time as we try to teach and offer courses. So you're going to see lots of planning and lots of notification coming out as we get ready to start on that project. As we go through that project, other things, other significant changes may take place.

I'm not committing or promising anything, but it might make sense for us, for example, to take Mueller Hall offline at the same time that we're doing a major construction project with moving the piping underground, right? And so there will be some disruption this year. And what I would ask from you as we go through some of this disruption is to notify us of your needs.

We will try to do a better job in facilities of communicating the plans out to make sure that you know what's coming beforehand. I know facilities hasn't always done a good job with that and I have heard the consternation that you have had with the disruption that that causes in your classes. I need them to do better and I need you to communicate openly when these plans come out if you're having issues.

And I need you to be willing to compromise where you can for the sake of trying to keep this work going. Unfortunately, our blocks of time that we have on campus where we can engage in facility construction projects without disrupting classes is about four weeks out of the year. That's not enough time for us to get some of these projects done.

And so that will be coming and I hope you're all prepared for that. With that said, are there any questions about the Facilities Master Plan or anything else that you'd like to ask me? I don't really have any other updates beyond that.

[Speaker 10] (34:07 - 34:31)
So one of the big things that we've heard about consistently between convocation session between the faculty update is the evolution of Vision 2028 as a strategic plan as it relates to technical programming and obviously facilities and everything else. But we didn't hear much other than baccalaureate programs for academic and transfer. How is that going to be evolving in the short and intermediate terms as it relates to strategic?

[Speaker 1] (34:33 - 36:12)
That's a good question. So some of the key initiatives with regard to academics and transfer. So we're pursuing in earnest the development and addition of a university center on campus, right?

With the idea that we want universities to come and teach their courses here on our campus and to provide dedicated space for them and an opportunity for our students to continue their education even after completing their degrees here. If I can be really candid with just my own personal evaluations, we do a much better job with our academic instruction and meeting demand for our students than we have with career and technical, right? We have far more unmet need on the career and technical side than we do on the academic side.

And so that's why you're seeing a lot of focus being put on that in terms of strategic planning and direction going forward. But 60 percent of our students declare that transfer to a four-year institution as their ultimate academic goal when they enroll in college here. And so I don't want to dismiss that or to minimize that.

It just hasn't been at the forefront of what I've been looking at during the last two or three months.

[Speaker 13] (36:20 - 36:23)
I want to be clear with all of you.

[Speaker 1] (36:25 - 41:59)
The work that you do, the value that you add, you are the reason that students are coming to Lee College. And I want to make sure that we're providing the types of spaces that you need to be successful in your instruction to our students. I would like to see our students, our academic students and our technical education students, leave here and be impressive to wherever it is that they're going, right?

Better prepared for entering the workforce than students from other institutions. More successful in their university studies than other students from other institutions. The strategic plan is going to go through some significant revisions.

So we, the 2028 plan, we would be failing in our duty as administrators if we waited until 2028 to redo the plan, right? It's a five-year plan that's meant to be iterative and it's updated usually on about a three-year cycle, right? So you never actually hit the time period when you're setting your goals.

This year will be one of those years where we do a significant review and revision to our overall strategic plan. In terms of how you will see that rollout, in October, we are going to do a board workshop where we talk about our strategic plan in Vision 2028 as it currently sits with the board and get them prepared for the work that we're going to try and do this year to do a revision and a relook at our entire strategic plan. So that is the beginning of the process.

We're not reporting on changes or decisions that we've made but letting the board know this is where we are and how we think that we need to modify this going forward. Faculty assembly will have key roles in the revisioning of the strategic plan and the development of some of those new objectives, some of the new measures that we'll be using for evaluating ourselves. And so I want to seek as much input as I can from the faculty about how we can improve some of our outcomes.

Transfer is still a primary objective for us. As a college, transfer and time to completion are issues for us, issues where we are below average at the community college level in Texas. I hate that we're below average because we have so many advantages at Lee that many of the other institutions do not have.

You know, we don't have the issues that the big colleges have and we have more resources and we have more community and industry support than most of the small colleges have, right? I believe we're right in that sweet spot where we can be truly excellent, right? We have more industry support than most colleges our size or smaller have.

To put that into perspective, as I've talked with my colleagues from around the state, most of them are looking at declines in property values, right? Because the economy is suppressed right now. And the only way that they're making up for the same state appropriations budget cuts that we're dealing with is by raising taxes.

They're literally going to increase their tax rate to try and collect up to 8% in additional revenue to make up some of the difference. We don't have to do that. Because even though property values are flat or declining, we have so much new industry and so much new growth in our community that we have an increase in our values.

That's a reflection of the industry and the area that we live in. We have the advantage of being in a community that isn't isolated like the small communities out in rural Texas, right? We're essentially an extension of the Houston economy.

But we get to have the connection and the unique identity in the city of Baytown like we were a small college out in the middle of nowhere. So I look at what we do and I think we should at least be average in every aspect. And I would like to shoot for above average in most of these key categories.

And so transfer is a significant concern. Time to completion is a significant issue for us, right? The fact that we're behind average in Texas on those two are major concerns.

And so we still want to invest in those. But as far as transfer goes, we probably have seven or more existing initiatives that we're working on right now. And so I haven't spent a lot of time talking about the work that is already in place and already ongoing.

We need to work through those initiatives before we start talking about new ones. And so it's real and I don't want to dismiss that. It just hasn't been new.

[Speaker 4] (42:03 - 45:43)
First of all, I'd like to say thank you for the open discussion on not only the planning that's going on right now. I also appreciate your comments the other day on looking at things like salary adjustments and not just looking at treading water, but actually looking at CPI plus perhaps a bit more as the budget allows. And I definitely appreciate that.

And today's discussion on the facilities. And so I did want to ask a few questions and provide some food for thought that kind of hit me as you were going over several of these items. Partly logistics, partly more of the vision here.

One of them, it's looking at relocating some of our technical programs to say a northern campus. Many students in those programs will need some academic courses as part of their coursework. And so I'm kind of wondering what that would then look like for their experience navigating between perhaps two campuses where they're here for the academic courses they need for their degrees, but then they're heading up there for their technical courses that they need.

I have that kind of rolling through my mind is what did that logistics actually, how does that pan out? Another question that I have is, you mentioned molar in particular, and I understand it does have foundation issues. In my mind, I'm kind of thinking towards root cause, whether it's a geologic issue for the nature of the ground below it, or whether it's a construction issue, what's causing that.

Because if it's a geologic issue and we rebuild on the exact same spot, the question is, will that come back to bite us later anyway? So I have that kind of rolling around in my mind. And then on a related note, I know I'm throwing a lot at you, taking notes.

When we talk about possible disruptions to, I'm assuming, various buildings on campus as a relocating the pipes underground. I'm not sure what the nature of those disruptions would be, but if we're looking at, say, extensive, say, disruptions for, well, we can't use this particular facility because we are having to redo the pipes and things like that. I'd actually see an opportunity there that I'll throw out at you, because there are certain bottlenecks that exist in our facilities.

But if things are coordinated in a certain way, we can relieve those bottlenecks, but at the same time solve some of the disruption issues that we could potentially see with the pipes. I'll give you an example. One of the big bottlenecks we have right now is we have a grand total of one general chemistry lab to support all programs at the college.

And if we are looking at a significant disruption on the use of that facility with the upcoming renovations, I can't help but wonder if in the new construction, and I understand the timelines may not match up here, but if there was a way to align things so that, say, in the new constructions, if we could have plans for setting up a facility that's an alternative while, say, work is being done elsewhere, but then as everything finishes, all of a sudden we will find ourselves with now multiple labs set up to now relieve the bottlenecks and allow things to run a little smoother. And then the last question I have is I'm curious about the timeline of the bonds themselves. Like, when would we be looking to go out for them, and what is this going to look like?

[Speaker 1] (45:43 - 54:05)
All right. Four questions. Perhaps I could start by sidestepping some of those questions just a teeny bit right now.

Keep in mind that the planning that we're doing right now for the most part is kind of at the 20,000-foot level, and some of the questions that you're asking are much more operational 5- or 10,000-foot level. So we haven't totally flushed out everything that you're talking about. As far as general academic courses at the North Campus, we have discussed that to some extent.

Not to the point that we have a fully flushed out plan, but to us it makes sense that, you know, not on a mandated cohort basis, but kind of structuring classes on a cohort basis, providing those classes so that if students follow the recommended course schedule, they can take all of their classes at the North Campus, and they wouldn't be required to come to South Campus. If they want more flexibility, then they might have to come to South Campus to take some of their general academic courses, right? So we are considering that.

We are considering different ways of approaching that than just having a full, very flexible, duplicated schedule at the North Campus that we have here at the South Campus. But the goal is to, as efficiently as possible, provide all of the services at the North Campus so that those students have their entire experience at that campus without needing to come to South Campus, probably more than just the first time that they register for class. I mean, the first time that they enroll, right, at our Welcome Center that we want to have here on campus.

All right, your second question was Moeller Foundation. Yes, so I do not know what the root cause for the problems are, and I'm not sure that I care enough to ask because at this point, it doesn't really matter. Now, in terms of if there are structural issues with the soil or the ground, under the Facilities Master Plan as it's developing, that would be the very center of our main courtyard.

So that would be all green space where Moeller is. So, you know, unless we change things, I don't know that that will be an ongoing concern for us with regard to that location specifically. Your third question, oh, yes, yes, yes.

So part of the disruption will simply be the massive construction taking place in the courtyards, right? We'll likely have to dig up some walkways. We're going to have trenches laid all over the place.

I mean, you can imagine the disruption externally. As far as disruption to the buildings themselves, I believe that that disruption will be limited to short time periods because we'll be able to do most of the construction and installation. It'll simply be the short period that's required to actually switch the connection from the building to the new system once the infrastructure is totally installed and ready to go.

However, that is speculation on my part. You know, a project this big is going to require architectural work and planning, and we'll have more details to share in terms of how disrupted that's going to be when we're actually ready. We have been putting this off until we finish the facilities master plan because we don't want to install pipes in an area where we're just going to have to dig them up and redo it in the future.

As far as addressing some bottleneck concerns, I don't know if there'll be a lot of synergy that we can take from the pipe project and addressing some of those concerns, but I've looked at our college as a whole, and I would just comment that we really need to go through a restacking exercise. We have departments that are in different locations and spread across multiple buildings, and there's not a lot of cohesion in some areas with regard to who's located where and where they teach courses and where the labs are located, and we do have some bottlenecks in terms of how many labs of a specific type that we have available for specific demand. In the utilization study that we've conducted, we have tremendous capacity.

We're grossly underutilizing our space. Part of that is due to the fact that the space is currently constituted is inadequate for our needs, so we have a dozen very small classrooms that don't have any classes officially scheduled in them because they're not very suitable for the teaching environment. We have labs that aren't being used because the labs aren't ideally suited for the classes that need labs, and so as part of that restacking, you know, there could be some reorganization of where offices are located and where classes are taught, but we also need to do a revitalization of our labs in general to make them more suitable and more suited to purpose, and I actually look at that as a separate project probably from the pipe because the piping is going to be all outside, and the only disruption to the building is going to be the connection period.

Did I miss anything? Oh, the bonding. Yes, the bonding.

So how many of you knew the president at Temple when she worked here? All right, so since taking over as president at Temple, she has worked through two bonding referendums and got both of them passed, and so I've been picking her brain about how do we do this, how long does it take, how do we get the community on board. You know, anytime you issue new bonds, it usually comes with a tax rate increase, and so you're asking people to vote to pay more money in order to support the institution.

Once the facility master plan is complete and we have a timeline of what we think is most important to least important and a real plan for what we would actually need to raise money for, I would think that we would have at minimum a year of campaigning to do before we go out to vote. So the absolute earliest that you would see a bond go out for vote would be the spring of 2028. If we go out in the spring of 2028, we'd start collecting that money the following year, which means construction wouldn't start till 2029.

So as you're looking at this, you know, you're not going to see a bond referendum until 2028 at the earliest, and I wouldn't be surprised if that gets pushed to 2029. Construction starting in 29 or 30, two years minimum and probably closer to three for some of the facilities that we've been talking about. So we're talking about 2033 or 2034 before you see completion on some of these facilities.

Any other questions?

[Speaker 2] (54:05 - 54:09)
We've got six minutes left, friends. Okay.

[Speaker 13] (54:10 - 54:15)
No, it has to be, I know it's because it has to be recorded for the...

[Speaker 7] (54:18 - 56:16)
So I understand we've been talking about the structure and everything, but what about like advertisements? And on the technical side over at McNair, so I teach millwright studies. A lot of the people probably in this room don't even know what a millwright is.

And we are having problems putting butts in the seats due to that fact that we don't have any advertisement. There's no targeted advertisement and there's nothing out there saying what we do. I mean, people can leave my program and make 60 to $80,000 with a certificate, but we can also bring people in that are wanting to pursue engineering type of pathways as well.

Because with that mechanical area, you know, it's going to bring people in that have interest in those types of programs as well. That is one thing since I've been here and I haven't been here that long, but has not been discussed is advertisement is getting the information out there to people targeted ads on social media and things of that nature and explaining the programs. Because as I said, when our open houses happen and stuff like that, most people don't even know what we do.

And there is such a need in this area. You're talking about 150 petrochem plants in a 50 mile radius, but also every single manufacturer, food manufacturers, the airport, they utilize maintenance mechanics to rebuild their equipment. We can place people everywhere in the Houston area.

There's always a need for millwrights and industrial mechanics. How can we get that out there?

[Speaker 1] (56:19 - 59:17)
So, you know, I've spoken a lot about our need to better meet community demand for employment opportunities. And you're speaking right up my alley, right? In my mind, there are two things that we need to do.

And as you've mentioned, the vast majority of high school students don't understand all of the programs that we have. They don't understand what that job looks like, what they would be doing. They don't understand how much they make and they have no idea how easy it will be to get a job with that type of training.

So the first part of what I say we need to do a better job of is recruiting students early. And I'm talking junior high students. Helping our junior high students in our ISDs to have a better understanding of what these programs are and how beneficial and financially successful they could be with some of these certificates and degrees.

And we're not alone in that need, right? Exxon Mobil and the college are actively partnering on recruiting efforts at the junior high level to try and get students more excited about this prior to starting dual credit and getting into high school where they could start taking courses that would accelerate their pathway to completion. We also need to do more traditional advertising on some of these items for students who have already graduated, right?

I mean we're always the most interested in students coming directly out of high school. That's our main pipeline. But we have a huge contingent of students over the age of 25 or students who are retooling and coming back to school that would benefit from similar education and information regarding opportunities.

And so it's kind of the chicken and the egg argument, right? We want to grow our programs but we want to make sure that we have the infrastructure in place to grow our programs before we get really excited about growing our programs. And so the recruitment and advertising budgets and approach will be an integral part of the plans that we're making as we're talking about growth and advancement of some of our programs.

That's not to say that there isn't advertising and recruitment that we should be doing currently. And we are starting to discuss and work on how we can improve that and what types of investments we need to make. But you know I've been in the job for two months or so.

Only so much we can get done this amount of time. Yes.

[Speaker 5] (59:19 - 1:00:06)
So I want to say also I think Marcus has been working really hard to market those programs out there. Which was one of the reasons he had the open house out there with all of the demonstrations so that the community would better understand. But the other thing that's happening is Dr. Marino and I have been in discussions about how to incorporate CTE programs into kids at campus, kids at college. And so how do we create junior high based camps in the summer to be able to do some hands-on activities to better understand these programs before they choose a pathway in the eighth grade. And so we are working on that. I would love to say it will be ready next summer but I'm not going to promise.

But I think that will that will help some of that as well.

[Speaker 1] (1:00:08 - 1:01:24)
Fair question and it's an area of focus and has to be right. I'll speak candidly. We did a study about you know potential bachelor programs and we looked on it based on current enrollments and current student interest.

I'm more interested in taking the approach of looking at bachelor programs to meet community demand and community need and then recruiting students to fill those pipelines right. I think that will make us better stewards of resources and better community builders than waiting for students to tell us what they want. Because you've all worked with students, many of your students think that they know what they want and they change and they're figuring it out.

They don't know and they they lack information right. The better job we do in informing our students and helping them to find meaningful employment, the more successful we'll be as an institution. And so we have recruiting, planning, building, program development all focused on trying to to meet that need and make sure that our students have the best opportunity they possibly can after graduation to become meaningful contributors back to society.

[Speaker 2] (1:01:25 - 1:01:43)
Okay I think we'll move on because if we let him talk, he'll talk all day. If we let him talk more, he'll keep talking. So plus we're also out of time.

Any burning announcements that we need to share? Yes, sure.

[Speaker 8] (1:01:45 - 1:02:27)
While we have you Dr. North, in learning frameworks we're starting the conversations around AI and ethical usage and things like that. And so I was just curious if we could learn more about what's happening with the English department and the grading with the new AI program and what that'll look like in the syllabus so we can help students understand it because a lot of times they'll come to us with general questions about all their classes. Yeah.

And then also just kind of how we're protecting their the work that we're putting in there and then how we're protecting sort of the faculty feedback that we're using in the program. And then have we heard about department scholarships if there's an update on that?

[Speaker 5] (1:02:27 - 1:03:59)
Do not have department scholarships this year. So on the AI for the English department specifically, that program is actually a closed loop system. So it's being built to utilize the rubric that they created and grade it internally.

So nothing's being released externally. So student work is not going out into the universe somewhere. And all of that work goes into the system without a name on it.

It's using the feedback systems that they've created. They're training the AI agent to grade as they would grade. We did create a blanket statement for the syllabus.

I can't remember exactly what it says at this moment. But we can share it, certainly. I think it says something to the effect of AI is used to train.

We're going to use the student work to train an AI agent, but your work is not being released. Or I don't remember how we worded it exactly. But in that way, it's not like we're feeding it into Chad GPT or something, right?

We're training an internal agent that doesn't go outside. Does that answer your question? Are other departments going to be moving to that system?

[Speaker 8] (1:04:00 - 1:04:02)
Yes. Are we going to be required to start using those? No.

[Speaker 5] (1:04:03 - 1:04:52)
The entire reason that we looked at this as part of a grant that we were writing is that we have, in light of legislative changes and dual credit not taking TSI testing, we were concerned about the differences in grading between high school-based dual credit courses and what was happening on our campus. And there was about a 30-point difference when we looked at the data. And so they standardized an assessment at the end of the course, and we wanted to make sure that that grading was consistent.

And so because just of the volume of essays that were going to have to be graded, this is how we were trying to get around that workload. So no, we're not asking this to be incorporated anywhere else. This was strictly for English purposes.

[Speaker 3] (1:04:52 - 1:06:59)
And I can elaborate. So it's still in the developmental stages right now. The AI research team emailed out and said that they curated the front-end design for it, and faculty have until...

Well, my division's faculty have until the 28th to provide feedback to kind of look at it. And the way in which that I'm going through... Okay, so I get the sections from Alex.

Alex batch downloads them. I then get them, delete all sensitive information, and create a file system for record-keeping. And then basically, I have to convert all PDFs into Word documents, and then they get those, right?

Faculty annotations are only mine. And so right now, the division is grade norming. So that way, I am in more alignment.

Pretty much I am with the way in which the division grades. And the only thing the AI research team gets is a blank Word document, and then my annotations with it. And so that is in response to kind of faculty's concerns about privacy.

And so I'm okay with it with regards to kind of the AI agent using my annotations there and my numerical score. But I know that having gone through a grade norming session yesterday, I'm in alignment with faculty overall. The way in which that it's going to get deployed, it's still in the developmental stages, right?

And so they said that they have some interesting patterns, but they haven't released those yet, and we're going to meet with them. But they're still on that developmental stage where they have the front-end version kind of design. Faculty will provide feedback, and then they'll take that feedback.

What they've requested from me is a sort of granulized grading system, or for me to granularly grade student essays, which that means of just kind of a point value system, which is extremely tedious. But because I'm more familiar with what it is that they're doing, I'm just taking on that. And then I communicate in our division meeting what exactly the AI team is doing and where they are in the developmental stages.

And right now, it's still in development.

[Speaker 5] (1:06:59 - 1:07:05)
We're early, but it's been hours and hours and hours and hours of years' work.

[Speaker 8] (1:07:06 - 1:07:12)
One last question then. Are students able to say, I don't want my work graded this way?

[Speaker 3] (1:07:14 - 1:07:14)
No.

[Speaker 5] (1:07:15 - 1:07:26)
The student is still getting the instructor grade. This is just for us on our side to see where grade norming needs to occur and where there's big discrepancies in grading.

[Speaker 8] (1:07:26 - 1:07:32)
So they'll still be getting faculty feedback from the faculty, not generated through this system.

[Speaker 3] (1:07:32 - 1:08:38)
No, there's going to be no, like right now, the way in which that it goes is that faculty have all, well, for lack of better words, authority on the grade and the feedback. That is still their responsibility. On this backend, it's still developing the AI agent to kind of see exactly how it'll assess student work.

If students have strong reservations, because I'm still able to kind of go through it, I may be able to kind of be like, OK, I'll wipe these kind of away. Or whenever I get a document and I see that there is something that is very revealing about them, then yeah, I can easily kind of remove those. Because I work really closely with Alex and get those, I'm able to still see it, right?

Because I have to convert all PDFs. And the majority of students do submit work as PDFs. And then I have to export them into Word documents.

I'm able to kind of see things. I'm like, OK, well, this needs to kind of go through. And so if there's like really strong reservations or something that comes up where I'm like, oh, yeah, maybe we should just take that up.

That's not a problem on mine to kind of do that. But blanket, no.

[Speaker 8] (1:08:40 - 1:09:30)
I think that'll be helpful for if I know you've crafted the syllabus already, the statement. But I think for them to truly understand, because a lot of students do have a lot of fear about AI. Some use it blanketly.

Some have a lot of fear about it. So I feel like with the syllabus, for us too in Learning Frameworks, because we look at, we have students pull up all their syllabi in all the classes. And what does one professor say in this class versus another class?

So they understand we're human and they have to deal with us separately, right? It's not just across the board. We're all the same.

So I think that'll be really helpful for them to understand how the closed loop is very important, I think. And then also just that their comments are still coming from their professor, I think, because they're like, well, if I can't use it, they shouldn't be able to use it.

[Speaker 5] (1:09:30 - 1:09:39)
Yeah. And I think we were careful in our verbiage when we created the statement for the syllabus that it doesn't say AI is grading your syllabus, right? Because the instructor is still grading it.

[Speaker 3] (1:09:40 - 1:10:10)
And I think it's important. I think moving forward of having professional development on what is media literacy and then also what is critical media literacy connected to critical AI literacy, because I do often hear misinformation being circulated around and be like, yeah, that's not actually what it's doing, or that's a different AI system. And so just having better knowledge rather than just going to the class and providing misinformation to students, that I think is more for the future professional development that needs to happen.

[Speaker 2] (1:10:12 - 1:10:32)
All right. Thank you. So just an FYI, if you guys have questions that you'd like to ask, you can send them to me.

I have a president's meeting with the president next week. So if there's anything we didn't get to or anything that pops up between now and then, you guys can email me. We can bring them to him then.

Otherwise, all right, we're going to adjourn at 1111.