Chaparral 2024-2025: Organizing Your College Knowledge with Senate President Cameron Hastings

Organizing Your College Knowledge with Senate President Cameron Hastings

Chaparral spoke with Senate President Cameron Hastings about her process as President and how she stays on top of all the happenings at the college:

Cameron: This is not going to be a very exciting answer, but the one thing that helps me a lot in my job is to stay organized (not that my current office mess would suggest this is a strength of mine). It took me the first year to get the rhythm down for when agendas needed to be posted, emails needed to go out, reports needed to get to the Board of Trustees or Academic Affairs etc... Throughout that first year, I kept track of all of the things I did and when I did them so that this year it would be a bit easier since so many things related to my position happen monthly or annually. Though there are a lot of tasks that repeat, much of what the Academic Senate does emerges from out of nowhere. I might have very little on an agenda ten days out from a meeting and then get several emails with items that need to be addressed. Keeping a running list of future meetings helps me plan ahead though every once in a while, something falls through the cracks.

My best resource is a strong understanding of both how the college works and who does the work. Having two decades of experience at the college has really helped me in my job. Over this time, I have sat on numerous committees, taskforces, and the senate. I have also participated in events like Women's History Month and in grant work such as the Faculty Inquiry Network. The point of me mentioning these experiences is that I have learned along the way how the college works and who I need to ask if I need to get something done. When I applied for my job in 2004, my supervisor at the time at another college mentioned that she knew GCC from its model of shared governance. Navigating this shared governance process over time has helped me in my current role. I have also taken the time to note who is responsible for different aspects of the shared governance process, and college functions overall, so I know who I need to communicate with to get something done. I am never afraid to reach out to get answers to my questions or to ask for advice from the wise colleagues who are likely to have the answers.