Board Meeting Recap

Here is a recap of the work session discussion and board meeting discussion as it pertains to faculty:

Tuesday evening I called Doug Murray, board chairman to inform him about a potential contract violation. The attached budget assumption will show you that our 3.25% raise has been removed from the budget. This is different than what the budget team presented to Dr. Yowell at Presidents cabinet. He indicated to me that he would inform the board.

Work session, Wednesday 2-3;

Chairman Murray informed the board of our discussion. Followed by the statement that he did not see a problem with the budget not including the raise, if the budget was preliminary and subject to revision. The raise does not take effect until the second August pay, August 31. He also indicated that the union would be negotiating in August (I do not know where he got this information from).

The board agreed to remove the budget from the consent agenda so they could discuss further during the regular meeting.

Regular meeting, Wednesday 3 to ?

The budget was removed from the consent agenda and discussion centered around a preliminary budget or a month to month continuing budget. The board opted for a preliminary budget that could be subject to change. Trustee MeHaffe raised the question of violating the contract. The board agreed they would not willfully violate the contract and hoped that once the State budget is approved, the raise could be paid. Again there was mention of negotiation in August.

The budget was approved.

The board went into executive session, but I spoke to Chairman Murray and indicated to him that the budget the board saw is different than the budget the team gave to Dr. Yowell at Presidents Cabinet.

I will contact our legal representative at OEA to get a clearer picture and to see what Ohio Revised Code can be used if and when we need to file suit.

Wrong-sizing

The story goes that we needed to lose an English faculty position because the department was wrong-sized. I'm here to document that, indeed, the English department has the wrong ratio of full-time to part-time, as do most departments in the college. But far from agreeing that there are too many full-time faculty, the facts indicate the opposite; there are too many part-timers.

The guidelines set by the Ohio Board of Regents hold that 60% of the credit-hours in any degree program should be taught by full-time faculty or administrators at the college. There has been no enforcement of that provision, but many nearby state colleges and universities have done better. Sinclair has maintained a 60/40 FT/PT ratio all along, though recently their president announced that they were going to reduce to 50/50, primarily by attrition.

But what does research say about FT/PT ratios? For years, publication on this question concentrated on opinions: "We think that part-time faculty are an asset because..." or "...are a problem because...". The only empirical truth widely known was that part-time faculty were cheap.

Recently, a number of empirical studies explored issues related to PT faculty--and the results are dismal. Among them:

• Graduation rates decrease as the ratio of part-time faculty increases.
• Students are more likely to drop out if their required introductory courses are taught by part-time instructors.
• Students receive less service.Part-timers rarely are available to students outside of scheduled class time.
• Part-timers spend less time preparing for classes—a condition made worse by last-minute hiring and scheduling decisions that, in some cases, lead to an instructor being hired to teach a course after it has held its first meeting.
• Part-time instructors are often assigned to teach courses outside their areas of expertise.
• Essential non-teaching functions—student advising, campus governance, curriculum development—are not performed by part-time faculty; these responsibilities are increased to unacceptable levels for the remaining full-time faculty.
• Campuses fail to provide administrative guidance or access to resources for part-time faculty.

The research does not conclude that all part-time faculty are detrimental. It shows that there are actually two types of part-timer. One type consists of retired teachers or active professionals who take on classes for supplemental income or as a sort of community service; they usually perform just as well as full-timers. The other type is the "gypsy" adjunct who takes on 3-4 classes apiece at 3-4 different colleges, driving to and fro with the backseat of the car as office space, desperately hoping to break into a full-time tenure-track position somewhere. This overworked, undersupported drudge worker is most often the source of shortcomings.

A close examination of these points shows that eliminating full-time positions is contradictory to the administration's stated goals. We will not increase retention by pursuing policies shown to reduce it. We will not recruit successfully if there are insufficient full-time faculty to pursue it. We will not deliver "a personal experience" if significant numbers of our faculty are too busy to answer email, meet a student after class, or sponsor a student organization.

Of course, it's going to require rather deep changes at all levels of higher education administration in Ohio to reverse this sort of counterproductive decision-making overall. But there are probably things that can be done about it locally.

I've summarized the research I've condensed above in a short precis, with references, that I'll be happy to share with anyone interested.

Transition To Community College Police State? Complete.

The Editorial Junta has learned from reliable sources that KY's administration intends to install video cameras throughout the building, in addition to the immense, ancient Egyptian cameras already monitoring strategic areas.

Our sources could not speculate on the cost of the installation, but the decision to install them was taken recently, between budget cycles, and would not likely have been accounted for in previous budgets--i.e., an emergency or discretionary expenditure.

The Illuminator can only suppose the cameras will help KY and his minions keep better tabs on which administrators, faculty and staff enjoy eating lunch together, sharing a laugh in the hallway, or refraining from obligatory salaams and receipts-of-salaams, all activities in which the Empire has shown an abiding interest, for whatever reason, in this crisis.

Now, this: