Grounded in the work and priorities of the Academic Senate, Dr. Tania Anders, an Oceanography professor and part of the Earth Sciences program and current President of the Academic Senate shares her insight on the value of a great team with diverse experiences and strengths in the senate to support thoughtful work in the Senate, as well as in the classroom and lab.

Listen in for Tania's concise explanation of the Senate role, commonly called "the 10+1," into three areas of focus. You'll learn how DEISA + principles are at the core and how healing-centered practices can help us better support our newly hired faculty.

Join us as we follow the threads of our local Senate priorities, learn what is driven by state-level legislation, and how this impacts faculty and students. Enjoy!

Resources:

• "Governance Committees" Mt. SAC, https://www.mtsac.edu/governance/committees/
• Healing Centered Engagement (HCE) at Mt. SAC." Mt. SAC, https://www.mtsac.edu/pod/hce/healing_centered_engagement_info.html
• "Mt. SAC 2035." & Mt. SAC www.mtsac.edu/2035/ - "The college-wide plan to serve as the foundation of integrated planning. "Gives direction to accomplish the Mission and means to assess progress toward that goal."
• Mt. SAC Academic Senate. Mt. SAC, https://www.mtsac.edu/governance/academicsenate/

• Informational and resource page for the Academic Senate, Mt. SAC's faculty governance body makes recommendations to the Board of Trustees academic and professional matters. This is the best resource to learn about the 10+1, serving on committees, being a faculty coordinator or liaison, accessing Senate resolutions, agendas, and minutes, as well who is currently serving on the Senate - Professional & Organizational Development Mt. SAC.
• https://www.mtsac.edu/pod/
• Vision 2030 - The July 2025 edition
• California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office, https://www.cccco.edu/-/media/CCCCO-Website/docs/vision2030/vision-2030-report.pdfThe Chancelor's Office system-wide plan for "building the most inclusive, future-focused, student-centered and worker-centered systems of higher education in the nation."

Run Time: 34:14

To Find the full transcript for this episode click HERE

You have to build a strong team because you then also have to be able to rely on others doing their share so that you can bring it all together under the big umbrella. And so how does that translate into the classroom? Every student has a history that they bring in expertise and I think it's always mind blowing what our students bring to the table.

Welcome to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast. I'm Chisa Uyeki, a Mount SAC professor and librarian and I'm please to be your host for this season. Our goal is to keep you connected to our campus by bringing you the activities and events you may not have time to attend to share the interesting things our colleagues are creating and innovative ways they are supporting and connecting with Mount SAC students. Join me as we explore Mount Sac. In today's episode, I, Ivan Sanchez and I are joined by a familiar voice for our longtime listeners, former Mount SAC Podcast Co host, Tania Anders. Tania is an oceanography professor and part of the Earth Sciences Program and currently she serves as President of the Academic Senate. All California Community College faculty are impacted by the work of their local Senates. Join us as we follow the threads of our Senate's priorities.

Learn what is driven by state level legislation, legislation and how this impacts faculty and students. Grounded in the work and priorities of the Academic Senate, Tania shares her insight on the value of a great team with diverse experiences and strengths in the Senate to support thoughtful work as well as in the classroom and lab. Listen also for Tania's concise explanation of the Senate role, commonly called the 10 +1, into three areas of focus. You'll learn how DA SA principles are at the core and how healing centered practices can help us better support our newly hired faculty.

Hello, this is Ivan Sanchez, one of the co hosts of the Mount SAC Podcast. On today's episode, we are really excited to be talking with Dr. Tania Anders, professor of Marine Geosciences and Geology, former Mount Sac Faculty Sustainability Coordinator and current Academic Senate President.

This is Chisa Uyeki, co host of the Mount SAC Podcast. Thanks so much for joining us, Tania. As our listeners may know, you are quite familiar with the Mount SAC Podcast, having been a previous host. In fact, you and I sort of swapped roles. Do you miss working on the podcast?

Well, it's really nice to be here with the two of you. And yes, I I love thinking back of the time when I was one of the hosts of our podcast. I very much enjoyed working on the podcast. I'm a people person and I'm also always eager to learn new things and the podcast basically offered both of those things, I was able to meet so many people from across campus. I was able to learn more about their work and the needs of their areas. Sometimes also which was interesting or needs that their students have. And most definitely that's helped me as I stepped into the role as Senate President then, because we're a very large campus and it's exciting to learn about all the amazing work that's being done, while also realizing that we have challenges and areas where we can improve and grow, especially our cross campus collaboration and find kindness and support for each other. So I think the podcast helped prepare me for for this a bit too.

All right, so for our listeners who may not be as familiar with the role of the academic Senate, could you give us your elevator pitch explanation of what the Senate is?

Absolutely. So the quick answer is always that Senate is part of a campus's shared governance and responsible for the 10 +1. Before I took a deeper dive into Senate work, which first was as faculty professional development Coordinator, then as Senate co Vice President, and now as Senate President, I was never really sure what does 10 +1 even mean? What is that? And so that's why I like to simplify it and narrow it down to three broad areas which are curriculum, student preparation, success and professional development. So it's no coincidence that those are exactly the three areas that we have councils for. Right? Senate councils. We have cni, we have fpdc, and we have speak. And so those represent those three, three areas. And then of course, those councils have committees serving underneath them.

I would say curriculum work over the past few years has really taken on a central stage because we have to implement as Senate, we're responsible for implementing a lot of legislative changes. And one example would be common course numbering. Right. For general education courses, which our campus is going through right now. So a lot of these things are not local Senate decisions, but actually decisions that come from the state and that all senates of our 116 community colleges have to implement. So sometimes it's sad for me when people are like, why are you making us do this? And that and that. And we're like, we're basically the messengers and we have to do these things. And so that's a big role.

And curriculum has definitely been a big one. An additional important role Senate plays on our campus in regards to the shared governance piece is that we collaborate with the campus leadership and we come to joint decisions at amac, for example, which is the Academic and Mutual Agreement Council, and one example there, because it'll be coming up soon again is that that's where we do the final ranking of faculty positions that then go after they go through amac, to the college president for recommendation. So that in a nutshell, I would say is those three big areas and the shared governance piece this season on.

The podcast, we are exploring the theme of innovative and creative pedagogy and ways that we can authentically connect students with course content. When you're looking at those three areas and the priorities for this year for the Academic Senate, how do those priorities support innovative and creative pedagogy and foster relationship building?

Yeah, thank you for that question. As I just mentioned, one of the big areas is faculty professional development that the Senate does. And so as we, meaning the Senate, take a big picture approach and looking at big picture goals and initiatives that we have to take into consideration. So locally that would be Mount Sac 2035, for example, or our commitment to Healing Centered Engagement, or at the state level, from the chancellor's office, Vision 2030, that really helps inform the kind of professional development that we should be offering for our faculty and offers us the opportunity really to build new exciting professional development. And we have so many experts on our campus, we can just tap into our own local experts to, to do those things. And so I think that as we build these new professional development opportunities for our faculty, then we can translate those into innovative and creative and most importantly, supportive course content and delivery for, for the students. And I have personally thought more and more about how and what we can do as a campus to apply Healing Centered engagement in our daily work. And I think that mostly really what we need to practice is kindness, collaboration and supporting each other.

And if we actively think about how we can do that through our courses, then that's really a win. That's just what we need to do for our students and for each other. You know, as I said, there's often also external things that drive the Senate. We have some new requirements coming down with title five. So for example, our course outline of Records, which is of course the document that we go by what we need to be teaching in our courses, those now have to align with DA sub principles. And that means we also have to, that's a new requirement. We need to integrate culturally responsive pedagogy. So as we know these are things that are coming down from the state, we need to do those.

We as Senate, we can support our faculty by asking someone who's an expert on our campus, please develop some professional development so we can help faculty as they implement those changes in, in their courses and into their course outline of record. So those would be some examples in which ways we can do that as a Senate and support that work.

That is really cool to hear about how the course outline of records are going to be aligned with DA sub plus principles. Is there something specific that you're really excited about in terms of a potential professional development that we can offer faculty?

One of the areas that I've thought about a lot and that really goes more in that healing center engagement is how can we as faculty become better partners for each other and then also as a result for our general campus community. So not creating very supportive, for example, 10 year process or onboarding processes. And so that's an area that I've always felt really passionate about. And I think with the healing and center engagement, we have a real big opportunity now. I personally would love to see us develop professional development for faculty who would like to serve on tenure committees and help them learn about how can you be a good mentor? How do you help people to not drown but float? How do we not set traps, but actually be supportive in the process? And that is, I think, a good opportunity. I think HR has started making an effort there because they now started, they piloted last year a mentorship program for new faculty and they're continuing it into this year. But I would like to see the Senate and you know, FPDC would be the, the body for us to do that is to develop some training for faculty who want to serve in, in those roles so that we can really nurture our new faculty as they come on board and create that culture of care for all of us. Because of course that's going to translate into the classroom with our students.

A lot of the work we do as Senate we have to do and gladly do in collaboration with our faculty association. So we can't just develop things and say, please just do this now. We can't force people to do things. So some areas will require asking the faa, is this something you would consider for the contract. But it's definitely. That's one of my passions is, is to help make our onboarding process at Mount SAC for faculty more equitable. There's a lot of subjective language. You know, why, why are some faculty needing to do a portfolio that's, you know, a mile thick and others just 5 inches or less? Why can some do an electronic one and others not? There's so many things.

And so the new faculty seminar has been a wonderful way for us to onbo faculty. But that's another thing I would like to see is Maybe a continuation into a second year that maybe then doesn't meet as often, but where these cohorts stay together and still support each other. Because everybody loves the new faculty seminar. I think that's definitely professional development opportunity that we've created for the new faculty. That is amazing. I think we also need one for people who want to serve on the tenure committees.

Tania, what you were just talking about made me think of two things. One is that I know in many of our programs we've looked at implementing cohorting because we know how successful our students are when they're cohorted. It makes sense that faculty, when having that peer support, would similarly be really successful. One idea that I know was implemented, I think it was in political science, that you'd have to be a big enough department to do it. But they had every new faculty member had a mentor who was not on their tenure committee, which I thought was a really interesting approach. So you had someone you could go to and kind of ask anything you didn't have to worry about. You know what?

That's a great example of that being a wonderful approach. Why is that not standard across campus then? If we see something that works well, let's make it a standard. Let's say these are best practices. Let's all adhere to them. I would also really like to see. I don't want to be too prescriptive. Definitely not. I'm not that person.

But it would be nice to have some guidance for departments that have tenured faculty or tenure track faculty to say, you know, in year one, let's focus just on your classroom and onboarding and, you know, you have to write your portfolio. Very busy with all that. By year two, across campus, again, same standards. Let's think about what should be added to the 10 year process by year three. For sure, there should be something like we have senate and governance and operational committees. Pick one. But that's also handled very differently right now across campus. And it leads to a lot of anxiety and uncertainty on our tenure track faculty because they hear others.

What they're doing is like, should I be doing this too or not? Why don't we have like some shared best practices? And I love that what you're saying. If there's a department that does the mentorship. And again, I'm also very happy that HR is also experimenting with that.

I know different faculty have different capacities. Some new faculty have been teaching for years or have been here as an adjunct for years. So the needs might be different for sure. But I know when I was Senate president. I definitely heard from some faculty, oh, my committees told me I can't do any committees. So. And I think you're right, that's going to depend on the person. So we don't want to be too prescriptive.

But my hope would also be that by year three, you're looking out at the campus, not just in, in your department and in your teaching. And the whole thing is to have a balance, I think, between it.

Absolutely, yes.

And I like these themes of balance. Avoiding prescriptives while still maintaining a certain standard. I really love the idea of setting a standard in terms of what each year should look like for tenure track faculty. And I think what you both mentioned makes complete sense. In that first year, you focus on your classroom and your portfolio. And then by year two, year three, we're looking at what additional involvement the person can start participating in. Because otherwise there's, there's just, it just doesn't seem to be standardized at all. It doesn't seem to be objective.

It's, it leans more subjective than objective. And I think you're right. You hit the nail on the head, Tania, with the, the word anxiety. There's. Where there's uncertainty, there's anxiety. And I think that it goes back to working conditions, are students learning conditions. And so I love that everything kind of gets, you know, connected back to the classroom, no matter, you know, no matter what we're, we're talking about. So I wanted to ask you, Tania, reflecting on your time in the classroom, whether this was in a lab or any in the field with your students, since we're focused this season on, on the craft of teaching, we'd love to hear about any approaches that you have used successfully to connect students with your course content.

So I feel like as an oceanography professor, I, I have some easy ways. In one, we do a field trip to the coast, so that's always amazing. So taking them out, that's definitely something that always works for students. It's not only the seeing hands on, applying what you've learned in the course material, but that's also really where the team feel starts to grow and where people, you know, they can chat on the bus with each other, get to know each other better. They get to know me better. That's always where they open up and where they start while you're sitting at the picnic table having your lunch. That's where they start asking the questions that they're really eager to hear about. You know, my person also like they, I tell them at the beginning of the semester that, you know, that I'm from Germany originally and, you know, growing up speaking the two languages, that I'm not a native speaker and that I, you know, I have two children and all of that.

Those things. And then they. They ask. They're curious, and they don't dare ask those things when you're in the confinement of your regular classroom, which is so unfortunate. So I. I think field trips are really an amazing way to do that. So faculty who don't have field trips attached to their classes, you know, use the wildlife sanctuary for a day, go over there, or sit outside under a tree one day. I think it might be worth it to just have this very different experience in terms of content I always teach.

Really, the thread. Thread that runs through my class is climate change. And, you know, we're lucky we're in the state of California where people are very interested in learning about this topic. I. Why was it Texas A and M for 15 years? And that was a state, an area that was very heavy in oil and gas, where it was harder to talk about that topic with students. And here everybody's very interested. Sadly, of course, we're an area also impacted by climate change through the wildfires and mudslides and, you know, various other things. So that's always been my in with the students, because you can make it very applicable right away.

And so I think that's one thing that we all want to try our best in that we help students see. This is how it can. Whatever I'm teaching you, this is how it connects to the real world and asking them to share their experiences also. Or say, I have a student like, I'm gonna miss class next week for one day because I'm going to a wedding. But I've had a student, I'm going to a wedding to Cancun. I'm like, awesome. Bring back sediment samples. And then we show him under the microscope and look at him.

I mean, it's, you know, creating this welcoming space. And so, yeah, I felt very lucky. My discipline really allows to connect with students in many ways that make it fun, a fun space.

I really love that. And just, you know, hearing about how you create a flexible and warm and inviting place for your students, you emphasize that learning doesn't always happen in the classroom. Oftentimes, most of the learning doesn't happen in the classroom. It happens when you start applying these things out in the real world. So it's really awesome to hear. As Senate president, I am sure you have had a host of experiences, and I'M curious to hear about how often do they find their way into a lesson plan or in the classroom. Is there anything you have learned as academic Senate president or experience that could translate or find its way into the classroom?

I think the biggest thing I've learned or well, I guess I'm not surprised. It's just a reality one is aware of. Key is to have a good team around you and a team that brings different expertise. We're very intentional in hoping that people will step up to roles in Senate and especially on our executive board that give us a broad representation across campus. So we have four officers on the Senate, which is myself, a Senate president, and then two vice presidents and the Senate secretary. Those are the four officers. We are all from different areas of campus. I'm from the natural Sciences.

Raul Madrid, who is one of the co vice presidents, he's from Political Science. Shelley Doonan is from, her department name is Too Long Culinary. She's an expert in cte, strong workforce. And then we have Sarah Mestiz as our Senate secretary and she's from counseling. So whenever there's questions that have to do with resolutions or changes in the law, I'm like, well, help me understand this, right? And so it's amazing and so fun. And because there's so much work, you have to build a strong team because you then also have to be able to rely on others doing their share so that you can bring it all together under the big umbrella. And so how does that translate into the classroom? Every student has a history that they bring in expertise. And I think it's always mind blowing what our students bring to the table.

It is just so fun. Like having students from around the world, for example, is already fun because I had a student from Guam once. I'm like, oh my God, you're like so close to major earthquake areas, you know. And we talked about the looking at plate tectonics, look where you live. But then I also, I remember one student, he was such a gifted educator himself, and he started creating a study group around him that was just, it was just so beautiful. I've had students where one's English maybe wasn't as good as in others. And then they sit together and they translate it into the common language that they have and chat about it in that way. I mean, it's just, it's all about teamwork, you know, and expertise.

And I think that's something that's important for the Senate and it's something beautiful to see in the classroom as well.

So I'm guessing you do a lot of group work and group exercises in your classroom. That's something I love to use in the classroom as well. And I think it's such a good tool to have in your tool set.

I love that you're talking about the strength of your executive team being the diversity of that team.

Right.

And then, of course, that I think is one of the great strengths of Mount Sacred is the diversity of our student body and how that translates so many of our students into teachers for all of us.

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, for sure. I know that we briefly had talked about one of the areas that Senate is going to be working on this year, which is professional development. I just wanted to share also that you may have read where we're close to having a new contract, and as part of that contract, there will be an opportunity for faculty to do more professional development in the area of day sub plus. And so that is, as Senate president, I asked my councils, you know, hey, these are focus areas for this year. Can you please support it? So one of the things I will be asking our faculty professional Development council to do also is create almost like a catalog, a list, whatever you want to call it, of the different days of trainings that we offer on our campus so that faculty that want to put a special emphasis on that this academic year and beyond that, they have an easy way to find those things. So I'm excited for that opportunity for faculty that the faculty association has or is currently negotiating for us, because it will be another opportunity for faculty to come together from across campus, learn together, and translate all. All they learn into the classroom.

So that's another area. There's a lot of work ahead. You know, another big area is dual enrollment. For this year, for example, we're in the process of looking to have a faculty liaison for dual enrollment, which, when we talk about equity for students, you know, it's another beautiful thing that we can offer is students to take classes with us while they're still in high school. Comes with challenges in that area also, but definitely opportunities.

So if a faculty wanted to get involved in all of these wonderful projects, what would you recommend? What's like a small step in the right direction that they can take to begin sort of participating in all of these wonderful things that are going on on through Senate and. And beyond?

Yeah, you know, you. You bring up an important point is that we are all so very busy, so the more we can pre digest for people and package in a way that it's easier to see and find. That's why I'M thinking the DA trainings that we have like a separate list almost somewhere so that one doesn't have to necessarily go on the POD Connect calendar to be searching. So helping make it easier. I try to send out announcement and emails to faculty also to keep them as informed as possible about the Senate work. We're currently working on another one of our goals for this year. And Shelley has really been leading this effort to create a Senate handbook for faculty so that people can understand better. This is what Senate does.

These are all our committees, our councils, and this is in general what they do. And how can you get involved? What are we asking you to do? And I'm hoping that maybe the other committees and councils that we have, or mostly committees across campus that they would do the same. Because faculty come to me and they're like, well, what does the basic needs committee really do, you know? Or the budget committee or what happens on pac? And it would be nice if all areas on campus would have like a little two sentence statement. This is the primary topics that we deal with here. And then faculty could choose where they would like to get involved. So that's one of my goals too, to maybe help all areas of campus to please do that so that it becomes easier for faculty to see where, where they would like to learn more and invest their energy in.

That fits right in with the theme that you were talking about of all of us supporting each other.

Yes, right.

So people wanting to get involved, wanting to support the work of Senate or other areas on campus, but maybe not knowing where to get started or what it looks like or what it would, what it would entail. I know that you have been doing something that we started earlier of the Senate Academy. So could you talk just for a minute about what that is and how that might help faculty learn about the work of the Senate.

Oh yeah, absolutely. And I really, really love that you started that, by the way. People like it a lot, which I'm very excited about. So we use that time because our Senate meetings are usually, they're so filled with agenda items that we have to get through that we felt. And she probably was seeing that, like when do we have other opportunities to talk to our faculty and tell them more about the work of the Senate. So we, we still do that. We have a Senate Academy once a month and people can zoom in and we usually try to have one topic, a theme. So it might be committees and councils and how can you get involved? And what is, what does it mean to do that? We sometimes have a, have as A topic just like, how does the Brown act work? What is Robert's Rules? And like, so people can feel comfort when they're actually at Senate and understand this is how this body works.

Those are some examples of what we do there. But often what's been really cool also is people just pop in and just start asking questions. So I, I, it's one scheduled for one and a half hours and I definitely try to have enough time where people can just feel like, hey, this is an opportunity for me to talk to my Senate and just ask some questions.

That's so great. Thank you for sharing that, Tania. It's exciting. It continues and, and grows.

I'm making an effort for faculty to be able to come to me more often. And as you know, as former Senate president, there are a lot of meetings that one attends and few breaks. But I, I'm, this year I'm making the effort to really have people understand Thursday is Senate Day. You know, it's either Senate exec or full Senate, Senate Academy on Thursdays, Senate office hour on Thursday. So I'm, I'm making an effort to be by my phone every Thursday from 10 to 11 and then from 4 again from 4 to 6. I'm actually considering also just sending out a zoom link so that it's just nicer to see each other. So I'm still working on, on that when I might be able to do that maybe from that four to six block. And of course I'm always accessible to faculty, but I know how it is.

It's like the same when you were Senate president, right. Somebody walks by your office and you're just, you're not there and why? Because you're in so many meetings. Right. And so I want to be accessible for our faculty so that they feel like they can have their voice heard. The Senate.

It also can make it much quicker to figure something out because a lot of times we do emails back and forth and I know you and I have talked about responding to emails. Doesn't happen until the rest of the workday is over. So then they won't get back to you where instead you could have a 10 minute conversation. And a lot of times that's going to work out better.

Exactly. So that I've been telling faculty that I appreciate phone calls because if I happen to be able to take the call and then it's like 5, 10 minutes and it saves you probably an hour of email back and forth. Completely agree.

So I heard a lot in our conversation about a focus on kindness, on collaboration as we talked about supporting each other. I think bringing that through to the Senate and then all of us being able to bring that through to our work with students is really a shared goal. So I appreciated hearing from you about that. I want to thank you for taking the time to speak with us today. It was terrific to hear about some of what was going on and we really appreciate your work.

Thank you so much, both of you. And it's really nice to be back in this space.

Thank you so much, Tania. I think the main thing I took away is how excited you are about some of the projects and the initiatives and excitement, I believe as a sociologist, of course, is contagious. So I really appreciated you sharing that excitement and enthusiasm and I hope that it inspires some of our listeners to start getting involved in governance and that it's not just legislative stuff, it's. It's things that are going to affect our students. The DAESA plus trainings, I am like, as soon as that comes out, I am jumping on that because it's so needed in our classrooms and I'm always looking for ways to celebrate diversity, to promote it, to bring in different perspectives. So thank you so much for sharing your excitement for the projects like that. I also wanted to add that, correct me if, if I'm mistaken here, but adjunct faculty can also participate in committees as well. So when we, you know, so we just had a faculty speaking of the basic needs committee in sociology, join the basic needs committee.

So if you're an adjunct and you don't think that this necessarily applies to you, you know, you, you are more than welcome to participate in these projects and committees. So.

And additionally, the DA funding for training is extended to adjunct faculty as well, which is fantastic.

Yes. And there are even subcommittees that specifically have positions that ask for our part time faculty. So yes, absolutely.

Awesome. Thanks so much, Tania. Be well. Take care.

Thank you.

Thank you for listening to the Mount San Antonio College Podcast, brought to you by Mount Saks POD Office and created in partnership with Avant House Media. Original music created and edited by Nira Azira. Be sure to check out our growing library of over 230 episodes and let us know your thoughts. You can reach me Chisa Ueki at C U Y E K Iountsack. Edu Wishing you an amazing year and happy listening.