Board Meeting Details:
- January 10, 2012 at 4:00PM
- Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Room LRC-133
- Main agenda items begin at 4:00PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 5:40PM or earlier
- Meeting Agenda
- Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
- Warrants
This meeting will focus on a presentation from the college staff on workforce partnerships through the Sierra College Center for Applied Competitive Technologies (or “the CACT”, pronounced ‘CACKED’ since we tend to develop acronyms for everything around here).
We’ll also be doing the first revision of the college’s 2011-12 budget. We expect a $4.6MM deficit this year, which will bring our reserves down 11.59%, still just within the range of the Board policy to maintain prudent reserves of 8% to 12%.
On Monday, I’ll be posting some thoughts about Governor Brown’s budget proposal for 2012-13. It presents some major challenges and some opportunities to shape our future if we choose to seize them. Time will tell.
If you’re in the 530/916 area, I hope you’ll join us to share your perspective. Or you can comment here and I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting.
Every year, Sierra College undergoes an independent financial audit to verify that our books and financial controls are in order. The Board oversees this audit through its Audit and Budget Committee.
Thanks to our crack team at the President’s Office, I’ve got an electronic copy of the audit for the 2010-11 fiscal year, which started July 1, 2010 and ended June 30, 2011.
Audit opinions are rendered in an odd code. A “qualified” audit opinion means you have work to do. An “unqualified” audit opinion means that there are no exceptions and the audit is clean. We’re very pleased that this is an unqualified, clean audit opinion.
You can check out the audit here:
If you have any questions, I hope you’ll let me know in the comments!
Board Meeting Details:
- December 13, 2011 at 4:00PM
- Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Room LRC-133
- Main agenda items begin at 4:00PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 5:40PM or earlier
- Meeting Agenda
- Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
- Warrants
We’ve got a relatively heavy agenda for this meeting. We’ll be reviewing the latest independent financial audit for the 2010-11 fiscal year. Our finance office always seems to pass audits with flying colors, but it’s a good opportunity for trustees to ask questions about the college’s fiscal health.
We’ll also get a preview of the new SierraCollege.edu, which is set to go live in January; hear a presentation on the Sierra College Natural History Museum; and get an update on athletics and Title IX.
This also happens to be our annual board organization meeting, where we elect a Board President and Vice President. It has been an honor to serve as Board President during this last year.
If you have any feedback, please don’t hesitate to leave it in the comments, and I’ll carry it into the meeting! If you’re in the 530/916 area, we hope to see you there.
Board Meeting Details:
- November 8, 2011 at 4:00PM
- Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Room LRC-133
- Main agenda items begin at 4:00PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 5:40PM or earlier
- Meeting Agenda
- Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
- Warrants
This meeting will focus on presentations from college staff on two different academic programs: the drama/music department, and Academic Foundations (also known as Basic Skills).
One of the challenges that every community college faces, especially in an era of declining resources, is how deep our remedial efforts should go when students arrive who aren’t prepared for college-level work.
We have a great effort, started by President Chavez, and continued now by President Duncan, to better coordinate expectations with our feeder school districts, and ensure that their students are fully prepared for college by the end of their senior year in high school.
I’m looking forward to this report. If you have any feedback, don’t hesitate to leave it in the comments, and I’ll carry it into the meeting!
Board Meeting Details:
This is a relatively light meeting, beyond some personnel issues we have to deal with, and a report on our accreditation follow-up.
If you have any questions or input for the meeting, please leave a comment or send me an email message!
Board Meeting Details:
This meeting will be action-packed. Our September budget adoption is the top item on the plate, and we’ve approved the use of our reserves to buy us time as we work over the next year to re-align our expenses with our newly lowered state revenues.
We’ll also formally approve the college strategic plan that we spent time reviewing in August, and do our board self-evaluation to discuss where the board can improve in helping to drive the college’s progress forward.
If you’re in the 530/916 area, I hope you can join us and share your opinions!
Board Retreat Details:
- Saturday, August 6, 2011 at 8:00AM
- Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Rooms LR-201 and LR-133
- Main agenda items begin at 8:00AM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 12:45PM
- Meeting Agenda
- Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
- Warrants
As planned since our organizational meeting this past December, the Sierra College Board is holding two retreats this year, and our second one is this Saturday. One noticeable change is that our new President is aboard, and so we’ll be spending most of the morning hours with him, setting up a framework for evaluation.
In the afternoon, we’ll come back into open session to work on strategic planning, priorities and goals for the rest of the year.
We’re all excited to have the year-long board vacancy filled in advance of the retreat, and we are looking forward to swearing in our new colleague, Bill Halldin, at the beginning of the meeting.
The public is always welcome at our meetings, though retreats typically draw less attendance than meetings where we vote on policy decisions. If you’re in the Rocklin area, you’re welcome to join us and share your opinions at the meeting. As always, if you leave a comment below, I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting directly.
Board Meeting Details:
I have been ridiculously forgetful this entire week, and just now, I discovered something else I forgot to do: this blog post about today’s Sierra College board meeting! My sincere apologies for the delay in getting this up.
We expect 90% of our business at this meeting to be focused on appointing a replacement for our colleague Elaine Rowen-Reynoso, who resigned her seat to focus on her recovery after a long absence from the Board.
We received 23 applications for the vacancy, and as of this hour, we currently have 20 applicants still in the process (several withdrew or did not meet residency requirements for the seat).
If you’re in the Rocklin area, I hope you can join us and share your opinions at the meeting. As always, if you leave a comment below, I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting directly.
Board Meeting Details:
The June board meeting is here – and we’ll be holding it at our Tahoe-Truckee Campus. Up on the agenda this month is the initial adoption of our 2011-12 budget (despite the fact that, as of this hour, the State Legislature still has not passed the state budget we rely on).
We expect 2011-12 to be deeply in the red. We are strategically using our reserves to keep students in their classes and employees in their jobs. We have a lot of work to do over the next twelve months to align our expenses with our revenues so that we can pass a balanced budget for 2012-13.
We’ll also hear an update on our progress and academic programs at the Tahoe-Truckee Campus, hear a report from the Citizen’s Oversight Committee for the Tahoe-Truckee bond measure, discuss our partnership with the Sierra College Foundation, and discuss our facilities master plan.
If you’re in the Tahoe-Truckee area, I hope you can join us and share your opinions at the meeting. As always, if you leave a comment below, I’ll do my best to carry your input into the meeting directly.
In my role serving the Sierra College Board of Trustees as Board President, I’ve called several special meetings for next week.
The Board will continue its deliberations to select a new President over dinner on Monday evening, May 9. You can see the agenda for this meeting here.
On Tuesday, May 10, we will meet with the Presidential Search Advisory Committee, formed by the Board last December, and give them a status update on our progress. You can see the search committee meeting agenda here.
If we have news that we can share with the Search Committee at that time, we’ll be excited to do so. Either way, they’ll understand where the process is at.
Finally, our regularly scheduled board meeting will be Tuesday, May 10 as well. The Board has set aside time to continue deliberations in closed session during that meeting, too.
The Board is committed to making a public announcement of our selection immediately following a final decision. If you’re a Sierra College employee, you’ll receive an e-mail as quickly as possible. Since I know many folks are following this process via Twitter and Facebook, I’ll also post the news as soon as it’s public.
On behalf of the Board, I want to thank the college community for their continued patience as we make this momentous decision to select an excellent President to serve Sierra College.
Regular Meeting Details:
- May 10, 2011 (Closed Session at 2:30PM, Open Session at 3:30PM)
- Sierra College Rocklin Campus, Learning Resource Center, LR-133
- Main agenda items begin at 3:30PM, public comment for items not on the agenda at 5:40PM
- Meeting Agenda
- Contracts (General / Capital Projects)
- Warrants
