Good Evening and happy new year. We are glad to begin the spring semester. As always, It will be a busy term, but faculty look forward to the start of classes and seeing our students on Tuesday.

In retrospect, 2018 was a significant year of change at our school; the coming calendar year promises even more change at every level. We hope, of course, that change also means progress, and progress in the right direction. At this time last year, we spoke about the need to reflect on change, and to evaluate and absorb the implications collectively and in due time, and on some issues, the college community took some time to do so. On other fronts, this wasn’t possible or available, and perhaps we can all keep working to do better. Building ample time and meaningful dialogue into the process always leads to better collective decisions. It also seems clear we are all better off when decisions are made based on good public policy by high-information leaders who care about the common good.

So our wish this year is that our College continues to evolve through dialogue, deliberate collaboration, a culture of rigorous dissent, and honest conversation about real students, as they are, in all of their variety and complexity at our school. As we’ve learned over and over in the past several years, complicated problems require complicated solutions and a longer timeline than anyone can estimate. So here’s to more variety and complexity in 2019.

It’s been three years since COD’s Board fired a past college president, and three years since COD was placed on accreditation probation. Our school suffered through the headlines in the wake of that time, and we all worked hard to repair the damage done to the College. While our national accreditation and our local reputation is largely restored, and we celebrate the work President Rondeau did to move our school forward and wish her well in her next endeavor, it is fair to say we continue to uncover work that needs to be done at COD, even as we enjoy an improved outlook overall for our school and our students.

But hard work and general resilience cannot fully insulate us from the challenges posed by yet another crossroads. As we head into the next year with another presidential vacancy and significant changes in state-wide leadership, it is important that the COD Board and administration continue to build collaborative and responsive relationships with faculty and staff in order to understand and resolve issues for our students and our school. After all, Board members come and go; Administrators come and go; even students, as important and central as they are to our work, individually spend a very short time at our school. It is front-line faculty and staff who persist, and our institutional memory, knowledge, and experience keep the engine running while the other pieces change around us.

While change is inevitable, and it can be argued that higher education on the whole is facing similar challenges, we really do seem to experience more than our fair share at the College of DuPage. We can’t help but wonder if it may be possible to mitigate some of the whiplash and change fatigue by asking ourselves, as we contemplate various significant issues, will that change actually create improvement, and does it really need to happen right now? Or can we take some time and gather more ideas and dialogue about it before we decide? In that vein, we appreciate efforts to revisit the SLRP (Strategic Long Range Plan) in whole and over time, and we hope for increased time to incorporate and uphold stakeholder input on that document. We appreciate efforts to contemplate and discuss the appointment of an interim president (and we look forward to working with Vice President Caputo in that capacity). As in these two examples, we hope that other searches and organizational decisions will take time, not haste, and rely on the expertise and take seriously the point of view of the stakeholders who are here for the duration.

Of course one cannot let the night pass without some reference to the announcement last week by Dr. Rondeau of her imminent departure to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. I look forward to my invitation to visit. While coming out of the blue at this juncture, I balance the sense of loss with the realization that this was a calling that she could not deny. It is not yet time for the heartfelt farewells since we have two more months of shared work ahead, but I will say that for these past two years it has been my honor to work with Dr. Rondeau as the faculty representative. She has modeled the covenant leader to the maximum.

Thanks in large part to her work, the college is in excellent shape to navigate the transition. The selection of fine senior cabinet members has been a hallmark of her presidency. I don’t wish to prejudge your discussion of the succession planning (item 10), but I am quite confident that our members would be accepting of an internal appointment of an interim president.

In similar vein, I see no reason at this point to alter course on major initiatives like Pathways, for example, about which you will receive an update this evening. More than fifty faculty members are involved or have been involved in this complex, evolving, multi-dimensional undertaking and I sense a high degree of shared commitment in this work. Not everyone shares that view of course.

I do need to share a sense of, for want of a better word, change fatigue among a significant fraction of our members as they see the disappearance of another president, the appointment of another interim, the installation of a brand new provost, even for some the consequences of Pathways, and the prospect of a reorganization, with pieces moved around big and small. I know that change is part of the business, but I am urging careful consideration of all the issues and proper engagement of all the players so as to minimize any unintended consequences.

One month ago, Mark Curtis-Chavez was an item in the consent agenda. One month on, he is here in the flesh occupying a seat at the cabinet table. I wanted to welcome him once more. In early conversations, he has already shared one initiative around enrollment with us in which he identifies faculty input as important to its success, and we look forward to working with him on that and other ideas in the coming months.

Turning to this evening’s agenda, you are set to approve renewal of the employee benefit plans tonight: item 8.d. I can report that our members did approve the college’s health insurance proposal with 88 % of the members voting in approval. I appreciate the effort made in crafting this proposal that will moderate the alarming and perhaps unexpected increases in premiums for the existing high deductible plan.

Nonetheless, when change is mentioned relative to insurance, emotions run high; people fear losses in something that is intimately essential and personal. And, it seems, the price always goes up. Given the inevitable tightness of the timeline between getting reliable data in July, to finalizing a proposal by August, people feel rushed, under-informed, and insecure. A lot of work went into the education process and I want to thank our Welfare representatives for their effort in this.

I am haunted by a phrase I heard at a board meeting back in 2016: the need to bend down the cost curve. Of course it is necessary to have costs commensurate with revenues. Health insurance cost increases constantly outpace revenue generation, largely due to factors beyond local control. Inevitably, this problem will be revisited again. Are there perhaps more radical approaches to the whole health insurance question to be explored here? Something perhaps to explore going forward.

Good evening. Tonight we congratulate our retiring faculty colleagues listed in the Board Packet: Professor Barry, Professor Reed, and especially Professor Tallman, who served many years as a CODFA leader and as our local Grievance Chair during some very difficult times. We wish him a well-earned retirement and the satisfaction of knowing that his intelligent and persistent efforts have been affirmed by what has transpired in the past several years. We also wish Associate Vice President Karen Kuhn all the best and appreciate her work at the College of DuPage.

There are several important items before the Board tonight that have long-term implications for teachers and students, especially the Strategic Long Range Plan update. As COD faculty continue to weather significant changes in administration and organizational structure, there is a serious theme emerging in faculty questions and concerns that is also evident in the Planning Update itself: establishing priorities in the short term and the long term means including and accepting the work and insight of higher education professionals, including full time faculty, staff, and administrators who will be working on the front lines to realize these plans. So while it is valuable to be inclusive of representatives from these groups, it is essential to be able to show where and how their contributions are manifest in the document itself. It is one thing to have a voice at the table; it is another thing entirely for those voices to manifest into reality.

As we begin another new academic year here at College of DuPage, I would like to welcome all the new fulltime faculty members. By my count we have fourteen teaching faculty, two counselors, along with three temporary one-year appointments. Some have already worked at COD for many years, while others are brand new to the college, and some from far-flung locales. We wish them all well and look forward to working with them going forward. It is an exciting time to be working at COD. In all the right ways.

I also want to recognize another new addition, or should I say potential addition, as the appointment of Mark Curtis-Chavez is subject to your approval this evening (Item 8.k). Firstly, the merging of student and academic affairs under one cabinet position makes sense strategically. Secondly, speaking as one who served on the search committee, I believe that Dr. Curtis-Chavez will bring the right kind of experience from a background of large institutions not dissimilar to COD, and in the kinds of innovative projects highly relevant to our work here. I know that Jackie and I, along with the rest of CODFA leadership are committed to working with Mark to move the college along through challenging yet exciting initiatives such as Pathways. Proper alignment of services will be crucial for the success of this process.

I know that many of our members have yearned for stability at the pinnacle of academic affairs and, hopefully, this appointment will provide that stability and allow the remaining organizational pieces to fall into place. I would like to thank Kirk Overstreet for steering the academic ship these past few months.

So, in the fond hope that this is not premature, on behalf of the full-time faculty I would like to extend a welcome to Dr. Curtis-Chavez and we look forward to working with him in the months and years ahead.

Good evening. This is an exciting time of year, and I know my faculty colleagues are looking forward to the start of classes on Monday morning. The reciprocity we experience in the classroom with our students is always the best part of our fall semester.

In many ways, it’s been an eventful summer at COD, and today and yesterday my faculty colleagues have expressed their worries and concerns in various ways and at various volumes. We read enrollment reports, and we speculate about cause and effect. We watch our sections climb in headcount and hope our classes run as scheduled. We ask questions about the summer search for the new provost and the intricacies of Pathways developments over the summer. We worry about the insurance update and we fret about the inconvenient Blackboard shut down. We look at the ongoing squabbling in Springfield and the looming fall elections, and we wonder what it means for our students and for higher education. And beyond our district and our state, we look at what my outstanding colleague Tom Carter referred to as “dark times” in his moving speech on stage yesterday at Inservice, and we wonder how we can help our campus can become a safe and equitable place that changes people’s lives.

And yet, we must try to make progress on these issues; as Professor Carter put it, “we are morally required to try to make the world a better place.” As educators, we care about the common good and we have faith in our ability to contribute to it through the classes that we teach. I am always proud of my faculty colleagues who speak up about their concerns, whose ideas and experiences can lead to better decisions at COD when it comes to these worrisome issues. Sometimes, it is hard to have faith that progress might be made, but we keep at it, and we will come in Monday morning ready to do good work.

Firstly, I would like to recognize Chairman Mazzochi’s recent appointment to the
vacant seat in the 47th District, where she will take over from the long-serving Patti
Bellock. Having observed at close hand our Chairman’s rapier intellect and zest for
debate, I have no doubt that she will contribute significantly on the wider Illinois
stage just as she has, and hopefully will continue to do at least for a time, in our
own smaller theatre.

Of course, June 27th was a singular day for public unions with the Supreme Court
finding in favor of one Mr. Janus against the AFSCME. Whatever the merits of the
arguments, we must deal with the consequences, as indeed we had been
expecting these many months. While the New York Times described it as a
crushing blow to unions, we incline at this point to a more sanguine view. This is
not the end, not even the beginning of the end – or even the end of the
beginning; but that is a different speech.

We expect our members to keep faith in CODFA and the representation we
provide, even in the absence of any obligation to do so. I would advance the
argument that College of DuPage is the beneficiary of a strong organized faculty.
Back in January 2017 we gave a presentation to this board about CODFA. We
made the following points that bear repeating:

• Organized labor can promote harmonious relationships with employers (granted
  this gets tested at times).
• Strong organized labor ensures a proper balance of power in the organization. (We
  could look back on recent history as an example of this.)
• A strong association can advocate regionally and nationally on behalf of students
  and the institution and not just for itself.

I encourage skeptics to examine what has been happening nationally in states
where there have been disruptive strikes, walkouts, and protests by educators. All
of them in states where unions are weak or non-existent and where working
conditions have been driven progressively worse. Surely not a model for
promoting student success.

We are far from that sorry pass in Illinois despite the abuse that is hurled upon
our state. We look forward to maintaining a strong association for everyone’s benefit.

There is a common misperception that teachers do not work in the summer. Sometimes, when people find out what I do for work, they can be quick to comment, “wow, I’d love to be off for three months in the summer.”  I never know how to respond exactly, but usually in my head, I’m thinking, “define “off.” Because if you’re a faculty at a community college, when the spring semester ends, the work starts up and it doesn’t quit. Besides summer teaching assignments, it is common for COD faculty to complete a wide variety of work in June and July, ranging from attending conferences, workshops, and trainings, to working on committee projects for COD, to completing research, fieldwork, writing, and editing commitments. COD Faculty also work in summer advising, or on Pathways Working Groups, or plan in-service activities and site visits. We inventory program supplies and review annual data, and we attend regular committee meetings. We present papers, prepare exhibits, complete service for our professional organizations. Indeed, while the work may not be 9 to 5 or within the confines of an office or a classroom, and while the College is, technically, closed for business on Fridays, many of us seem to spend more time at work in the summer than we do during any other term.

Sometime around July 5th, the panic starts to set in, too. We realize we haven’t read too far into that stack of books and articles that accumulated during the previous year, or we need an extension for the revisions that journal editor requested, or we have a new course to prepare that starts in six weeks. Time flies quickly, and the August scramble begins. In the past few days, I communicated with a few dozen faculty about Fall Pathways work, and each one referenced a lengthy set of summer activities. While summer work may not be as visible or as structured, it is what makes the engine of education run smoothly year-round.

Next month, we’ll begin the fall semester, and as colleagues ask each other, “how was your summer? what did you do?” the consistent answer from faculty in every field, will be, “I worked.”