Our students have returned, and in their world, everything is as normal as can be when a lot of them are in the throes of figuring things out – parking, navigating from one class to the next, timing lines at Starbucks. Faculty – both full-time and adjunct – are excelling at the jobs we’ve been hired to do. As the kids say today, this is “our jam.” (Kids may not really use those terms any more – I’m about three years behind on my tv and movie watching so I know I’m not that hip.)

I do know that being at these meetings is not really our idea of a good time.
Already, things have happened that are not likely to be forgotten. A prospective full-time faculty member had a job offer rescinded. Phone calls were made to new hires to give them the “opportunity” to rescind the full time positions that they had worked so hard to earn. I don’t know what prompted that kind of drama. There are rumors out there that you were planning to lock us out. I hope that’s not true. I’m not sure it matters any more.

What do we need to do to get this done? Is it about Promotion?

I researched promotion schemes at the 30 Pathways schools in the first AACC Guided Pathways class. I was able to get a pretty good look at 26 of them – of those 26, 20 had promotion schemes very similar or even identical to our current structure.

Is it about evaluation?

I went back and read our HLC site visit report form April 2017.

Higher Learning Commission – Core Component 3.C
Institution has the faculty and staff needed for effective, high-quality programs and student services.

We met this criteria at the April 2017 site visit. I’m not sure what the indicator is that we are sub-standard on this front.

Two components of this that I think are of special concern to this board are 3 and 4:

3. Instructors are evaluated regularly in accordance with established institutional policies and procedures.

4. The institution has processes and resources for assuring that instructors are current in their disciplines and adept in their teaching roles; it supports their professional development.

Our contract defines the policy and procedure, so I think that #4 gets at the crux of it. Does our evaluation process assure that instructors are current in their disciplines and adept in their teaching roles?

Right now, full-time tenured faculty are evaluated based on teaching, advising, curriculum development, institutional committee work and other relevant activities. Student evaluations are conducted every three years – and sometimes more often than that. So far, HLC has deemed this process as meeting their standard. What is our indication that this doesn’t meet HLC standard? Why hasn’t administration shared this concern with us sooner?

Our proposal is a way for all of us to move forward.

There are things we wanted that we won’t get in that proposal, including financial increases on Summer, Insurance, Professional Development.

Current faculty salaries pool is 2.7% lower than it was in 2016. Our proposal to increase the base salary by 3% means that the pool increase each year would be 4.85%, 4.6% and 4.45% each year. Keep in mind that does not include promotions or retirements.

Cost of the entire proposal is less than 1% of the fund balance and is only about $800,000/year more than what you have proposed.

Our negotiation team has worked hours developing proposals and debating the rationale behind these proposals. Again, this is “our jam.” If you want to geek out about HLC criteria or monetary value of proposals – we’re your people. Ask us questions.

This whole process was not set up by any of us in this room. It was a previous board and previous leadership that decided against interest-based bargaining. It was previous leadership that thought discussions around this table would poison relationships between academic affairs administration and faculty.

I think we’ve proven otherwise.