A heated exchange between the president of the Academic Senate and another member interrupted an enrollment presentation during the Tuesday, April 4, meeting in the Distance Education Room 166.

The dispute occurred between Academic Senate President Darcie McClelland and Art History Professor Ali Ahmadpour over the amount of faculty involvement in the implementation of a new curriculum to spur enrollment.

“Unfortunately, as usual, there was no mention of the role that teachers play, whether they are part-time or full-time,” Ahmadpour said over Zoom during the meeting. “We are completely being forgotten.”

McClelland told Ahmadpour the particular issue could not be discussed at the current moment because the discussion is slated for a future meeting.

However, Ahmadpour doubled down on his efforts, resulting in a back-and-forth with McClelland.

“It is not your job to comment on everything,” Ahmadpour said during the meeting.

McClelland made one last attempt to remind Ahmadpour the issue was not up for discussion and warned him they were moving on before muting his Zoom call.

Following the brief verbal spat, Vice President of Academic Affairs Carlos Lopez presented the strategic enrollment management plan for the 2024-2025 academic year.

The tentative plan includes strategies and activities to increase enrollment, student retention and completion and improve the college’s enrollment planning with an estimated $20,000-30,000 in grant support from the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admission Officers.

“There’s grant funding associated with this and some coaching we receive,” Lopez said. “And that was actually an important element.”

These goals align with Guided Pathways and share the same mission to ensure a student’s academic success.

“For us, it’s the same. It’s exactly the same work,” Lopez said. “All of this is tied back to our students being successful, transferring, completing degrees and certificates, going into the workforce and eventually, sometimes, coming back to working here and teaching for us.”

El Camino experienced a 20.6% loss in full-time students, from 18,626 (2019-2020) to 14,787 (2021-2022).

Lopez said El Camino is in the middle of full-time student losses experienced across California Community Colleges and stressed enrollment needs to be rebuilt, especially when it concerns funding.

“Enrollment is a direct source of funding for California Community Colleges,” Lopez said. “We have until 2024-2025 to rebuild that base.”

Of those students lost, 12,704 were Latino, 3,695 were African American, 3,501 were Asian American and 3,398 were white.

Native American/Alaskan Natives, Pacific Islanders, ethnicity unknown and students aged 40-plus were also disproportionately impacted.

“So, those working, those real-working adults, we saw a really large loss of those students compared to the average student in the college,” Lopez said.

With the discussion highlighting plans for student engagement, Ahmadpour took issue with one of the goals: developing program pathways, including non-credit courses and dual enrollment.

But not all faculty shared the same energy.

Human Development Professor Kristie Daniel-DiGregorio welcomed creating new pathways to help students.

“Human development is just happy to be part of that conversation,” DiGregorio said. “We had contextualized courses for STEM or industry technologies. So we have that experience working in that space.

As he concluded his presentation, Lopez praised McClelland’s work thus far and his gratitude.

“I just want to say thank you,” Lopez said. “And I was remiss in pointing out that my co-chair this year [is] our Academic President Darcie and I am grateful for her stepping into that role.”

Editor’s Note: Corrected grammar errors on April 5, 2023, at 9:45 a.m.