To the Board…
May 22, 2009
CODFA PRESIDENT STANKO ADDESSES BOT: LOOKS FORWARD TO NEW WORKING RELATIONSHIPS
Nancy Stanko, President of the COD Faculty Association, made the following comments to the Board of Trustees at its meeting May 21, 2009:
Good evening. I am Nancy Stanko, President of COD Faculty Association.
Congratulations to our 2009 "New" Board on participating in your first COD graduation last Friday. Just as I stated to the graduates in my speech, I hope that you succeed beyond measure in your roles as trustees. As faculty, we also plan to succeed beyond measure. We will work with you to determine what is in the best interest of our students.
We would like an opportunity to meet with you to discuss the reasons for our objections to the total rewrite of the Board Policy Manual. I have made copies for each of you of the verbal and written objections we have made over the past months. Please review these and communicate back to me how we can verbally discuss our concerns.
We are a college in transition. We have had Board members with their own agenda who have not had face-to-face meetings with faculty about issues that impact our working and employment conditions.
The restructuring and reorganizing (at least twice—some people count it as many as three times) has had an impact on us. In just one short year, we've had three presidents, two vice presidents, changes in deans that have included cutting one position, and many associate dean positions have been eliminated. We have many new vice presidents that we will work with. We look forward to being introduced to them. In the past, we had public forums before they were hired. This was a way to meet and greet them. We need stability.
The construction talk has included the possibility of new buildings being added; there is now talk of changing plans on the BIC—classrooms not being renovated in the lower level. Please use caution when making this decision.
We look forward to developing communication skills with one another with the goal of developing relationships of trust with our president, vice presidents, deans, and associate deans with our faculty.
Your actions and votes do have a great impact on community colleges and universities in our country, as well as our own reputation.
