Meeting & Agendas

Meritza Tamez motioned to approve the minutes. The initial motion was made by Kenyetta Hutson, seconded by Emily Olson, and all the Committee members approved.                                                                                  

The minutes were approved.

Dr. Meritza Tamez called the meeting to order and gave updates regarding the realignment. Dr. Tamez disclosed that she is under an NDA and is sharing what is publicly available at this time. The Executive Deans have completed their hiring process. Dr Tamez has been selected as the Executive Dean for Student Rights and Responsibilities. She notes that her attention is on the college’s student-related policies, the academic policies, and the AR that goes with the corresponding guidelines and procedures.  So right now, we don't have any clarity on what the new rules are going to be.

Dr. Tamaz recognizes there are questions regarding who the point of contact will be for students, staff, and faculty (at this point, the Deans were the formal or informal point of contact) and how they will be able to communicate with them. These people will also be tasked to triage concerns before becoming formal referrals and especially when working with complaints. The executive deans and AVCs are addressing this concern. Dr. Tamaz and AVC Dr. Martinez have been working on laying out the plans for this position. Dr. Tamaz requested feedback from the meeting attendees. Primarily requested for any reasons for unease or apprehension. Additionally, Dr Tamaz asked for any specific roles that the Deans have served that may be overlooked.  The Dean of Student Rights and Responsibilities Office is now the Dean of Students Office.  It's going to be my responsibility to make sure that we're not forgetting about those duties and those tasks, and that they're getting reassigned somewhere, so I just wanted to open up to a discussion about that.

Kristine Elderkin: Our campus security authorities, mandatory reporters under the Clery, and whoever ends up working with you to fulfill these responsibilities, will consider all this as we move forward. I am curious to know if there will be a training for the new Deans. 

Dr. Meritza Tamez: Thank you.

Emily Olson: I appreciate what you’ve shared, Dr. Tamaz, about how much this is going to impact all the policies and the work that we've been doing. We've been doing the academic Integrity Subcommittee met briefly. You know, one thing to talk about is how we're integrating AI right now into our guidelines and procedures. How do we make this supportive of faculty and students when you remove an entity that is so interwoven into our processes?  And so I just can only imagine how you fill that role and gap to ensure students know where to go and faculty know who to turn to.

Kenyetta Hutson is interested to know if Dr. Tamaz will be providing a comprehensive list of the duties that her role will entail and if she will be sharing them with this particular meeting attendees or the committee.

Dr. Meritza Tamaz expressed that discussions are going on regarding job descriptions that the Deans are doing and maintaining my list of things, because they range so widely from being an adjudicator on a student conduct case and those points of contact, as I mentioned, but they're also approving academic-related appeals. So I can share the list of the things that I'm thinking about to see if there are things that I'm missing.

Kenyetta Hutson thanked Dr. Tamaz for answering her question and acknowledged that she is not expecting a list of duties, but rather was interested in how it all works.

Dr. Meritza Tamez planned to get feedback from the Deans, because they are still doing their roles. In case you didn't know this, the Deans are still sitting in their Dean roles until at least December. So any other thoughts or concerns that you want me to take back to the other executive Deans, as I'm working with them on these proposals to figure out who that next layer of leadership is going to be keeping an archive of everything and making sure that Troy is the next and last agenda item, or Kenyatta.

Behnaz Dehghani: He didn't confirm it, but I believe Kenyatta talked to him a couple of days ago.

Kenyetta Hutson: We met on Wednesday and came up with, or what I learned is that the Ambassador program is already established, as the Riverbat ambassadors. So I learned that we're not working on an ambassador program. We're working on an advocate program. And what the plan is, or the ideas that were discussed, is to utilize students from the SGA and implement some type of planning during their retreat that they've had for the past couple of years. And it occurs in August. So we discussed things like printed materials that he would draft some type of training for. But yesterday I located a training that had for academic integrity and also for student conduct that is already established online, it's not just for students. It's also for faculty, so they can set an appointment. There's a calendly list as well, and they can set an appointment and get that training, so perhaps he can utilize one of those links either as a hybrid or the printed material, or just do an online training with that group.

Dr. Meritza Tamez: Are you referring to an Acc link? Because I'm wondering if that's Patty's link to her training.

Kenyetta Hutson: It's an ACC link. And there's the student conduct and also great dispute, training.

Patty Zuniga: Yeah, that's the one.

Dr. Meritza Tamez: Mentions that Troy has reached out to Patty to get the same training for those students. Deans were moving very fast in the realignment process, and everybody is busy, including Troy. Hopes that he will be able to update everybody at the next meeting. Are there any additional concerns regarding the two items or minutes?

Estrella Barrera offered support to colleagues at Student Affairs. She expressed her wishes to help make this transition seamless. 

Dr. Meritza Tamez thanked all attendees and motioned to adjourn the meeting. The initial motion was agreed upon by Estrella and seconded by Patty Zuniga.

Meeting Adjourned: 11:20 am

Next Meeting Date: June 13th, 2025
Time: 11:00 am - 12:30 pm
Location: Zoom