Need help understanding acronyms and terms? Use this glossary of common terminology to help you decipher what college administration, faculty, and staff are saying.
Abbreviations and Terms
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| Term | Definition |
|---|---|
| AB 1725 | Legislation passed in 1988 that established California community colleges as postsecondary institutions responsible for providing transfer programs, remedial courses, and vocational training. The legislation shifted power to local boards, emphasized the role of faculty and the Academic Senate in governance, and established new funding formulas. |
| AB 705 | AB 705 is a bill that took effect in 2018. The bill requires that a community college district or college maximize the probability that a student will enter and complete transfer-level coursework in English and math within a one year timeframe and use, in the placement of students into English and math courses, one or more of the following: high school coursework, high school grades, and high school grade point average. |
| Academic Senate | The Academic Senate is the official representative body of the faculty and makes recommendations to the Administration of Folsom Lake College and to the Los Rios Community College Board of Trustees with respect to academic and professional matters. |
| Accreditation | The act of accrediting or the state of being accredited, especially the granting of approval to an institution of learning by an official review board after the school has met specific requirements. FLC is accredited by the Accrediting Commission for Community and Junior Colleges of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges. |
| Advanced Education | A high school student who is enrolled in college courses. |
| Articulation | A connecting link between two or more schools. Articulation agreements between Folsom Lake College and 4-year colleges list courses that transfer and meet general education and/or major requirements leading to a Bachelor of Arts degree. |
| Assessment (learning) | Strategies aimed at more effectively measuring, as well as guiding, student learning than is typically possible with traditional testing methods. Leaning assessment stresses the ability of students to think analytically, to understand and communicate at both detailed and "big picture" levels, and to acquire life-long skills that permit continuous adaptation to workplaces that are in constant flux. |
| Assessment (classroom) | Used to collect feedback, both early and often, on how well students are learning. Classroom assessment provides faculty and students with information and insights needed to improve teaching effectiveness and learning quality. Faculty use feedback gleaned through Classroom Assessment to inform adjustments in their teaching. |
| Area (instructional) | At FLC, the term used to identify a concentration of academic disciplines and/or departments within an administrative unit assigned to a specific dean. |
| Base Budget Allocation | Minimum operating overhead. Department/Discipline/Unit specific supplies (e.g., consumable supplies, software, small equipment < $200); travel and conference; maintenance contracts. |
| California College Promise Grant | Enrollment fee waiver for qualified California community college students, formerly known as the Board of Governors Enrollment Fee Waiver (BOGW) |
| Canvas | A web-based instructional delivery system. |
| Catalog | The catalog is the official college publication with general reference information and specifics regarding course descriptions, major and degree requirements. |
| Categorical program/funding | A source of funding that is provided to the college for a specific purpose. This type of funding can only be used to cover expenditures that are allowed under the guidelines and regulations of that particular categorical program and State accounting guidelines. |
| Class Schedule | A list of courses and sections offered each semester and summer session. The days, hours, location and name of instructor are also listed in the schedule. Schedules can be accessed online. |
| Classified Senate | The Classified Senate is the official representative body of classified employees. |
| Collegial Consultation | AB 1725 requires College Presidents to consult collegially with Academic Senates before making decisions regarding academic and professional matters. Details about FLC’s processes are contained in the FLC College Participatory Governance and Collegial Consultation document. |
| Combined Section Classes | Two or more class sections taught by the same instructor at the same time, e.g. work experience classes. |
| Community Room | FLC main and EDC each have a Community Room. The rooms are designed for multiple uses, including hosting college sponsored community meetings or programs. |
| Content Review | The primary method for establishing within-discipline prerequisites. Step 1: Faculty members in the discipline assess the material used to teach the course and decide on a list of skills without which students would be highly unlikely to succeed. Step 2: Determine how students would acquire those skills, usually through a course, but perhaps involving other factors such as how recently the course was taken. These can be documented by including a “prerequisite skills” section in the course outline. Step 3: The student outcomes of the prerequisite course should be shown to match those skills without which students would be highly unlikely to succeed. In other words, the exit skills of one course should reasonably cover the needed entry skills for the next course. |
| Content Validation Study | An assessment validation study in which content experts from English, ESL or math assess the extent to which each question on a given assessment instrument tests for the entry level skills they previously document students must have to be successful in each of the classes into which the assessment places students. The results must meet a State established standard for the test to be approved for use at a given college. Must be preformed by each college for each of their assessment tests. |
| Corequisite | A course that a student is required to take the same semester as another course. |
| Cross-listed Class | Some courses may be listed in more than one discipline, e.g. Communications Media 305 and Photography 425. Each student enrolls in the specific course he/she wishes to appear on his/her transcript. The same faculty member teaches students enrolled in both courses together at the same time. |
| Cultural Sensitivity Study | An assessment validation study in which a group of diverse employees (representing different genders, ethnicity, cultures, and abilities) assess the extent to which each question on a given assessment instrument is free of offensiveness, insensitivity and unfairness. The results must meet a State established standard for the test to be approved for use at a given college. Must be preformed by each college for each of their assessment tests. |
| Data Warehouse | A database specially structured to optimize reporting and querying. Advanced on-demand reporting systems benefit greatly from this type of data structure as data can be read and manipulated much more quickly thereby making reports which support the college's planning and decision making needs immediately available. |
| Decision Support System (DSS) | A system developed specifically to support the planning and decision making needs of a particular entity. The Insider is intended to serve as a sort of portal to a wide variety of information sources and therefore serves as FLC's DSS. |
| Discretionary Fund | A source of funding that may be expended to cover any expense incurred by the college (e.g., supplies, temporary staffing, small equipment, etc.) that is allowable under State accounting guidelines. |
| Dismissal | A student is subject to dismissal when he/she has earned a cumulative grade point average of less than 2.0 in all units attempted in each of three consecutive semesters. A student must see a counselor to petition for readmission. |
| Ed Code | The California regulations that specify what colleges are required to do in a variety of areas in order to operate legally under state law and receive state funding. |
| Educational Master Plans (EMP) | The annual process by which departments, service areas, and work units plan their future course, and identify resource staffing and facilities needs as they relate to the college’s direction as documented in the FLC Mission, Vision, Values Statements and Strategic Plan. |
| emplid | PeopleSoft employee ID number assigned to all employees district-wide and used on documents related to individual employees, e.g. absence forms, pay advisories, etc. |
| Enrollment Management | Refers to the combination of planning, reporting systems, analysis and decision making necessary to optimize recruitment, marketing, class scheduling, program development, productivity for the benefit of students and the health of the institution. |
| eServices | The Los Rios online enrollment system used by students to register for classes, print class schedules, pay fees, access unofficial transcripts, etc. |
| First Census | The date when enrollment activity for semester length classes is measured for state funding purposes. It is also the date when many colleges make semester-to-semester comparisons of enrollment, weekly student contact hours (WSCH), and student demographics. Generally speaking, first census occurs on the Monday of the 4th week of classes for an 18wk semester and Monday of the 3rd week of the semester for a 16wk semester class. |
| Flex | State approved Flexible Calendar option for districts wishing to provide professional development time/activities for faculty. Los Rios CCD has two flex days each at the start of the fall and spring semesters. Participation is required for all full-time faculty, as well as for those adjuncts whose classes fall on the actual Flex days. Failure to document required Flex hour participation may result in a loss of pay for missed hours. The FLC Professional Development Committee coordinates FLC’s Flex program. |
| Formula Hours | See section 4.2 of the LRCFT contract. |
| Full Time Equivalent Faculty (FTEF) | One (1.0) FTEF represents one faculty member teaching a full load or several adjunct faculty together teaching a full load. FTEF is used to represent the costs associated with teaching. Faculty loads can be greater than 1.0 FTEF based on a number of factors and faculty can also meet their load obligation through reassignments (e.g., 0.60 FTEF for serving as Academic Senate President). Faculty workload requirements/ obligations are defined in the LRCCD and LRCFT contract. |
| Full Time Equivalent Student (FTES) | One (1.0) FTES is based upon a student attending 15 hours per week of lecture class multiplied by 35 weeks in an academic year or 525 student contact hours. Calculation adjustments are made for lab time and short term classes. FTES is the used as the basis for State funding. |
| Guided Pathways | Guided Pathways is a statewide, student-centered approach that provides all students with a set of clear course-taking patterns that promotes better enrollment decisions and prepares students for future success. The Guided Pathways framework also integrates support services in ways that make it easier for students to get the help they need during every step of their community college experience. |
| H: drive | A network drive set up on all users' computers which is routinely backed up to tape. A great way to back up your work related files onto a college server is to simply copy them to the H: drive. |
| Innovation Center Makerspace |
The Innovation Center Makerspace is a student and employee resource located at the Main Folsom campus in Aspen Hall FL1-130 dedicated to the exploration of knowledge and Making. |
| Intranet | A secured, local Internet (called an Intranet) in which more sensitive systems such as Socrates, rosters, and future reporting systems reside. You must log in to the Intranet (see Quick Links on the Insider home page) but can do so from home, as well. |
| Learning Cluster | While sometimes used as a synonym for “learning community,” typically learning clusters are less structured and/or less complex than learning communities. Clusters are typically smaller (often just two classes) and with minimal/passive links between the classes. |
| Learning Community | Any one of a variety of curricular structures that link together several existing courses---or actually restructure the material entirely---so that students have opportunities for deeper understanding and integration of the material they are learning, and more interaction with one another and their teachers as fellow participants in the learning experience. The courses comprising a learning community are more likely (than a learning cluster) to be linked such that each course actively reinforces the others, often based on a common theme. |
| Matriculation | The state-mandated process that all new students follow to help ensure success in meeting education goals. Matriculation includes: assessment, orientation, counseling, registration and follow-up. |
| Meta Majors | Meta-majors are groupings of similar areas of study designed to help students narrow down their interests and decide on a major. Exploring meta-majors will help students pick the right classes and complete their educational goals on time. |
| Noel-Levitz Student Satisfaction Inventory | Administered every three years at all four LRCCD colleges to measure students’ satisfaction with a wide range of experiences. The results of this assessment are intended to be used as a blueprint for improving institutional effectiveness. National norms are available for comparing porpoises. |
| Online Grading System (OGS) | The system through which faculty access their class rosters, grade rosters, student contact information, and submit drops during the semester. |
| Outlook Web Access | A means for accessing from a non-LRCCD computer your college email (see Quick Links on the Insider home page). |
| Participatory Governance | Participatory Governance is a structure designed to ensure all members of the college community the right to participate effectively in governance and the opportunity to express their opinions at the campus level and assure these opinions are given every reasonable consideration. |
| PeopleSoft | The Los Rios District's integrated administrative system which combines databases containing student records, finance, class scheduling and other data with transactional processing capabilities for such things as admitting and registering students, processing adds and drops, processing payroll, etc. |
| Permission Number | Every class roster is assigned 20 specific permission numbers which are used by students to add into class after a term or semester has started. The instructor gives the permission number to a student, who will use it to add the class either online or at the Admissions counter. |
| Prerequisite | A course that a student is required to take in order to demonstrate current readiness for enrollment in another course or educational program. For example, prior to taking ENGWR 301, a student must complete ENGWR 300 with a grade of "C" or better. |
| Prerequisite Establishment | While a prerequisite can be used for up to two years before it is proven to result in improved student success, within-discipline prerequisites can be established with nothing more than a content study. Out-of-discipline prerequisites require a far more rigorous approach. Students must be shown to be significantly more likely to succeed having had the intended prerequisite course. Please contact the OIR for support in establishing these prerequisites. |
| Prerequisite Validation | The process used to validate a previously established prerequisite. Typically performed by surveying both students and the faculty member(s) teaching the class. |
| Productivity | A ratio of fundable student enrollment activity to the costs associated with generating that activity. It can be derived for a given class section, an entire department, or the entire college. For semester length classes divide the number of students enrolled by the number of hours they meet each week (Weekly Student Contact Hours, aka WSCH) and divide by the FTEF allocated to instruct them. Also referred to as WSCH per FTE. |
| Program Review | Program review is the process by which individual disciplines/departments and service/support units systematically evaluate their past performance to facilitate continuous improvement, guide resource allocation, and assist the administration and Board in making decisions about programs. Program review is a required activity spelled out in Accreditation Standards and LRCCD Board policy. |
| S: drive | The shared network drive to which employees save various documents, pictures and other files they wish to share. Note that there are actually two S: drives, one on the instructional and another on the administrative networks. |
| Smart Classroom | Technology enhanced classrooms typically having a computer at the podium with Internet access as well as a projection unit and presentation screen. |
| Socrates | A District wide tool developed by faculty to provide support for both the new and existing curriculum. |
| Strategic Plan | A high level institutional planning process that begins with visioning and the development of a mission and later progresses to the identification of specific goals, objectives, implementation strategies, key performance indicators, assessment methods, and feedback loops to ensure what is learned through the planning process benefits students, the community and the institution. |
| Success Rate | Actually "Course Success Rate," this is an overly simplistic but easily derived measure of success in the classroom accepted and used nationwide. It is defined as the number of A, B, C, and Cr grades expressed as a percentage of the total number of grade notations awarded (A, B, C, Cr, D, F, I, NC, F, W). That is, the proportion of students that have not dropped by the first census that ultimately earn a successful grade of A, B, C, or Cr. (Note that while D is a passing grade it is not considered a successful grade in this definition.) Course success rates can be derived for a single class section, all sections of a given class, an entire department, or for the entire college. |
| Title 5 | Another name for California Ed Code regulations. |
| Transfer Advocate Program (TAP) | A program that pairs instructional faculty with counseling faculty to work in teams with the college articulation officer to develop a thorough understanding of transfer requirements within majors and to specific transfer institutions. |
| Weekly Student Contact Hours (WSCH) | A value, used to measure enrollment activity, derived for semester length classes by multiplying the number of students enrolled by the number of hours they meet each week. WSCH and FTEF are used to derive productivity ratios. |