Faculty Load and Extra Service update

During the July 22 work session of the Board of Trustees, one trustee asked numerous questions about faculty extra service and expressed concern that a faculty member had earned $77,000 per year in extra service pay. As evidenced in Board meeting agendas and minutes going back to 2006, some trustees have expressed concerns about inequity in faculty load and extra service. In addition, the July 22 work session discussion was a continuation of a conversation started during Spring 2016 in response to a request from Talent Central to discuss equity in faculty load and extra service (which some faculty took to be an effort to reduce the amount of extra service teaching that full time faculty could perform).

Given the concerns raised at the July 22 Board work session, the Faculty Council requested a special meeting with Chancellor May and Chief Talent Officer Susan Hall on July 27, at which time we shared with the Chancellor our perspectives on faculty extra service teaching, which affirm in more detail our previously articulated position of April 8, 2016 that the current guidelines for full-time faculty teaching extra service are working well.

Each DCCCD college takes steps to ensure faculty who are teaching extra service do not perform that extra service during designated office hours or during hours when they perform their contractually obligated institutional service. Some locations do not allow daytime extra service teaching at all unless the dean, vice president, and president approve, and then only when qualified adjuncts are not available to meet student demand for daytime sections. In addition, any faculty teaching daytime extra service must keep an updated schedule posted in the division office and outside his/her office door to indicate when office hours are kept and institutional service is performed.

Rather than resort to policy changes, instructional leaders throughout the District – including the faculty council and the academic vice presidents – have reiterated that deans and faculty collaborating closely are best able to determine the number of extra service sections an individual faculty member successfully can teach. From a student learning and student success perspective, current extra service practice – within existing policy – is working well.

To respond to concerns expressed by the Board of Trustees on July 22, Chancellor May asked the Faculty Council to convene a diverse group of instructional leaders to study the equity of current practices in determining faculty load across the District and to recommend solutions to situations where inequity currently exists. The Council will recommend convening a task force consisting of Council members, the academic vice presidents, and instructional deans to discuss these issues and make recommendations. The group also will call upon leaders of critical support functions, such as Susan Hall (who leads Human Resources) and Chief Innovation Officer Tim Marshall (who leads District IT, which runs our software infrastructure) to provide technical and operational input, and the seven faculty members of the DCCFA Welfare and Benefits committee (which is chaired by DCCFA Vice President Tommy Thompson).