Official DCCFA position on full-time faculty extra service

The District Faculty Council on Friday, April 8, affirmed its official position that full-time faculty should be allowed to teach up to 14.7 hours of extra service per semester, including Fall, Spring, Winter Term, May Term, Summer 1 and Summer 2. The Faculty Council supports the Board of Trustees policy regarding full-time faculty extra service, available at this link.

The Faculty Council believes that:

1. Students benefit more overall from instruction by full-time faculty;

2. Deans and faculty working together can best determine the specific number of extra service sections each individual faculty member should teach within a given term;

3. Maximum flexibility is necessary in order to ensure we have enough sections of a given course to meet student demand, particularly in disciplines where it is difficult to find qualified adjunct instructors;

4. Maximum flexibility allows the District to be as nimble as possible to meet the educational needs of Dallas County.

The Faculty Council is conducting ongoing discussions with District leaders, and officials at each college, with the goal of ensuring our extra service policy remains unchanged.

In keeping with our District's spirit of shared governance, the Faculty Council and Talent Central are planning a meeting on the afternoon of Friday, April 29, to gather faculty input, through compression planning, to develop consistency and equity in faculty workload. Each college faculty association president will nominate four or five of his or her colleagues to populate a pool of faculty who may be asked to participate in this compression planning session. Similar compression planning sessions will be convened to gather perspectives from other stakeholders, including academic deans, vice presidents, and presidents.

EDIT 4/26/2016: The compression planning sessions to discuss faculty workload issues have been canceled. The discussion is expected to resume in Fall 2016. The District Faculty Council will continue to monitor the situation throughout the summer and will update faculty as necessary.