INTRODUCTION

Los Angeles Mission College is a comprehensive community college in the Los Angeles Community College District. One of nine colleges in the district, Mission College was established in 1975 and has occupied its present campus location since 1991. The new campus is full of potential with several new buildings_, the newest being the Library/Learning Resource Center which opened within the past year. The college is in the process of acquiring more land adjacent to the campus to continue expansion of buildings. Student enrollment continues to increase, and the college has added new courses and programs to address the needs of its students. New computers and other forms of technology have increased in recent years and allow the college to better position itself to serve the information technology needs of the community.

The last Accreditation Site Visit Team was on the campus April 4 through April 6, 1995. At that time, there was sufficient concern raised by the Team to warrant a recommendation that a focused site visit take place to review the Midterm Report and the four general recommendations made. The Site Visit Team consisted of Louis Murillo, President, Miramar College, who served as the chair of the last Accreditation Self Study Site Visit Team, and Leon Baradat, Professor, MiraCasca College.

The Team members received the Midterm Report several weeks prior to the scheduled visit which took place on November 18, 1997. The Team met with several members of the Mission College community including the president, other administrators, the Academic Senate leadership, the Classified Senate leadership, selected members of the ICAN, faculty and others. Given time constraints, the Team did not meet with district personnel or members of the LACCD Board of Trustees. The Team is very appreciative of the warm reception extended by the members of the Los Angeles Mission College community and the extent to which they provided candid feedback.

The Team thought the Midterm Report was lengthy and cumbersome to read. The format was confusing and several sections referred the reader to other portions of the study rather than addressing the matter directly. Information included in the Appendix should have been properly referenced in the body of the Report. There were at least two glaring omissions in the Midterm Report. First, there was little mention of recent strategic planning which the president has initiated within the last six months. Second, there was no mention of a publication which defines the role and responsibility of the shared governance committees.

Recommendation 1: A comprehensive strategic plan needs to be developed by the college that should include program review, a specific plan of action of how it will address all that is required to fully implement the new Library/Learning Resource Center, and how it will address similar building projects in the future.

Response: The Midterm Report did not adequately address this recommendation. The response focused uniquely on the "Improvement: Continuous and Never-ending (ICAN) Council" and its efforts in the area of program review. It claims that "Mission College has developed a new approach to master planing" and asserts that Los Angeles Mission "intentionally" rejects long-range (5-10 year) planning and has substituted for it annual program reviews, objective setting, and implementation strategies. It suggests that five-year plans are "at best suppositional" and that long-range objectives "restrict the envisioning" of other, perhaps more usefull, goals.

In attempting to validate this planning process, the Team learned that, contrary to the Midterm Report’s assertion, long-term planning of a more traditional nature is actually being conducted, but that the Midterm Report simply did not describe this activity in any detail. This was explained as "an oversight". In fact, Los Angeles Mission is served by an ICAN subcommittee on long-term planning as well as by a strategic planning committee that is independent of ICAN. These omissions were troubling to the Team.

The ICAN-executed program reviews seem to be progressing satisfactorily, but this process is hardly an adequate substitute for strategic planning. Because the Team only learned about the existence of Mission College’s long-range planning activities on the day of its visit, it was unable to assess its efficacy.

The report gave considerable detail regarding the use of the new Library/Learning Resource Center, and a visit to that facility left a very favorable impression of availability to students of computers and multi-media instruction. By contrast, the same cannot be said for the library itself, since the lack of staff prevents it from being open on Fridays. Indeed, by 1 p.m. on the day of the visit, a Wednesday, the library had not yet been opened. The emphasis on making electronically delivered information available to students at Mission College does not seem to extend to books and periodicals.

Seriously complicating the college task of bringing this large facility on line is the absence of district funding sufficient to pay for staff and maintenance. To poorly fund such a valuable facility seems short sighted. Further, the classified staff complained that it was not adequately consulted during the planning stages of this facility and that several of the problems with the building and grounds now being experienced could have been avoided through better consultation.

Regarding the point in the recommendation about planning more carefully the construction of future facilities, the Midterm Report indicates that the college is looking into acquiring more land. But, the report also points out that there has traditionally been little cooperation among various campus committees that are collectively supposed to plan new construction. It is, however, hopeful about better coordination in the future.

Recommendation 2: The district and the college need to ameliorate the disparity that exists between full- and part-time faculty ratios in order to better meet the needs of the college’s diverse students.

Response: There have been a few new faculty hires since the last accreditation site visit. The ratio of full- to part-time faculty has gone from 38:62 to 50:50; however, this resulted from a significant reduction in class sections which omitted many adjunct faculty positions this fall. The college and the district find themselves in deep financial peril which has not allowed Los Angeles Mission College to add more regular contract faculty. The college and the district should maintain the hiring of additional full-time faculty as a high priority. Failure to do so will further stress limited faculty to enhance existing curriculum and develop new courses and programs to meet expanding student educational needs. Adding more faculty would also create a community college environment that is comprehensive and fully participating in shared governance responsibilities.

Recommendation 3: The district and the college need to develop a long-term fiscal plan to properly provide for an appropriate level of college and district reserves and to publish and disseminate this information widely.

Response: A key alert given by the last Accreditation Visit Team was that although the college was to be commended for obtaining funding from external sources and through its economic development efforts: "The college is cautioned not to become too reliant on these sources of funding nor to balance its budget on these resources." It appears as if little if any fiscal planning has taken place since the last visit. In fact, the fiscal condition of the college and the district are in more dire straits compared to three years ago.

In years past, the Los Angeles Community College District allowed Los Angeles Mission College to over spend its budget without repercussions other than accumulating debt. One rationale used to justify this fiscal pattern was that as a developing and growing institution, Mission College needed more resources. Since Mission College and other selected colleges in the district were not admonished or made to feel accountable, these spending patterns persisted unabated. Recently the budget rules have changed.

The new chancellor has required that all colleges pay back over expenditures and that no college be permitted to spend more money than is allocated to it. Consequently, Mission College had to pay back $375,000 for 1997-1998 for over expenditures made in the previous fiscal year. This budget reduction has had a devastating effect on the college. Nineteen classified positions were eliminated early this fall, and 120 class sections were cut from the schedule with 35 more sections reduced from the spring, 1998 schedule.

College and district budget planning remains an area that requires immediate attention. No effective short and long-range planning can take place until such time as immediate and pragmatic budget allocation models are in place to meet the diverse needs of the colleges and district operations. Until such time as these fiscal parameters are in place, the future of the college and the district remains questionable.

Recommendation 4: The college needs to define its governance groups and clearly describe their functions, purposes, and limitations of authority, their interrelations and goals and widely disseminate this information.

Response: The college has taken some steps to better define its governance groups although the Team was in agreement that more progress should have been demonstrated in the past three years. The Midterm Report was vague in responding to how the college had addressed this recommendation. In fact, while on location, the Team was advised that the college had inadvertently omitted some shared governance information from the Report. Later, this document was distributed and explained.

It appears tat the shared governance system is still evolving. There is an organization chart that identifies the relationship of committees to constituent groups and the decision-making process. More campus discussions are required to complete a comprehensive shared governance model that includes their functions, purposes, and limitations of authority, their interrelations and goals and strategies and timelines to achieve these goals. This formidable task of defining the shared governance process is deemed essential.