De Anza College’s Academic Senate discussed overlapping and concurrent enrollment policies because of accreditation concerns on Monday, April 21.
Academic Senate President Erik Woodbury said De Anza does not currently have a policy disallowing overlapping enrollment — when two classes have overlapping schedule times, which has happened and can only happen with faculty intervention.
“I think we should have something written down, whether that something is ‘we don’t do this ever’ or, ‘we do it and here’s how,’” Woodbury said. “The complication is students are going to miss 10 minutes of class, and you need to provide the way to make up that 10 minutes.”
The California Code of Regulations Title 5, Section 55007 allows for overlapping enrollment if the student has justification, official approval and missed time is made up.
Sukhjit Singh, curriculum committee representative, motioned to create a policy on overlapping enrollment “with mindfulness to student impact and accreditation.”
“According to Kathryn (Maurer), our current Academic Senate district president, we are on notice for accreditation at district level for both colleges for not having a policy on file,” Singh said. “Which means currently we do not support them, and if our accreditation is at risk, we need to do something.”
Patty Guitron, vice president of the Academic Senate, said there used to be a form both faculty members involved in a student’s overlapping enrollment could fill out.
“On the form, they had to show the plan of how the student was going to make up the work,” Guitron said. “Part of the issue was faculty didn’t want to do that because they didn’t get compensated for it, and it was extra work.”
Woodbury said there is a difference between students coming in late compared to students being enrolled in two classes because of the funding the college receives from the state.
“I’m guessing at some point someone said, ‘well show us how you made up for this because the state paid you for the student taking this many hours,’” Woodbury said.
Felisa Vilaubi, English Performance Success counselor, said she believes disallowing overlapping enrollment will negatively impact De Anza students in fulfilling their requirements.
“Working with students, this happens often, and it does affect their ability to get their classes and transfer,” Vilaubi said.
“When this practice was in place, they didn’t account for how much time it took for a student to get to the class,” Kevin Glapion, DSPS counselor, said. “So if it was an overlap of 10, it might take 10 minutes to travel, and it wouldn’t come up until you missed 20 minutes of class.”
Mary Donahue, part-time faculty representative, said she is concerned that a policy allowing a student to overlap enrollment will negatively impact faculty members. Donahue also questioned how an overlapping enrollment policy would take effect in regard to faculty member work.
“Would the faculty member be forced to spend extra hours unpaid to catch up this person?” Donahue said. “Or could a faculty member say no, this person can’t enroll in overlapping? Whose decision would it be, and what kind of pay would a faculty member get for having to catch up someone?”
Woodbury said disallowing overlapping enrollment takes the responsibility of telling a student no from the faculty members to the institution, but that “we cannot imagine all of the different reasons why someone may need this.”
“I think we should give ourselves flexibility to have a process that we can evaluate as it comes up,” Woodbury said.
