Dear Faculty,
We hope your finals week goes smoothly! Below are some important updates we have on some recent events and situations here at Dallas College. If you have questions about any of them, please reach out to your campus representative.
URGENT: BlackBoard test settings change
Tech support has confirmed a change was made to the eCampus/BlackBoard test settings that they (Dallas College tech team) did not know had been made. They are working to find out why it was changed and whether it can be returned to its original state, but in the meantime, this is to let you all know that you need to check your “test” settings for any final exams or other assignments you are giving through eCampus. If you use the “Force Completion” setting, but do not normally use the “Set Timer” option with it, the “set timer” option was automatically turned on and set to 60 minutes (so basically now the Force Completion setting cannot be used alone – it can only be used with the timer). This is obviously a problem if your intent was to allow students more than an hour to complete that assignment, so you will need to edit the test options and change the time to something longer. If you normally use both “Force Completion” and “Set Timer,” you should be fine, but we recommend checking to confirm your time length is still the length you selected, just in case.
Board of Trustees and Faculty Contracts
If you did not listen into the special Board meeting on Thursday, December 2, we strongly encourage you to listen to it before tomorrow’s Board meeting when they will vote to remove the rolling aspect of our contracts. The Board members were pretty open about their opinions of faculty and how they see us in this meeting, and it is helpful to hear it yourself rather than hearing what others take from it. Although a transcript is available, the transcript was auto-captioned live, so contains errors and doesn’t show who is talking, so listening directly provides a clearer picture. The meeting also shows how Dr. May and Dr. Lonon fit into their roles and how much power the Board wields over them. Please also notice that they specifically state that even if they leave in 3-year contracts as an option, the Board of Trustees will be looking to see them used sparingly, rather than as the norm for faculty contracts. Specifics of this intent would be built into the procedures developed in response to the new Board policy, so faculty need to pay attention to those processes and advocate for a voice in developing those procedures with administration wherever possible.
Please make plans to listen into the Board of Trustees meetings tomorrow as well. These meetings are open to the public, so if you want to attend, you are always able to do so. Based on how the last meeting ended, there is a possibility they will continue to discuss whether to shorten our maximum contract length to only 2 years if Trustee Flores brings it up again. They meet at the Dallas College administration building downtown (see the link for where and when). The work sessions begin at 10:30 a.m., with the regular board meeting scheduled to start at 4:00 p.m.
Campus Holiday Luncheons
Please make plans to attend the holiday luncheon at your campus, even if you only stop in for a short visit. For many of us, it is our first real opportunity to gather as a campus community since the pandemic, and I know it would be nice to see everyone. Make sure to RSVP – the forms are still open as of this morning!
Adjunct Faculty Templates
As many of you have heard, there was a request from administration, primarily led by Terry DiPaolo, to have curriculum committees develop template for the “top 20” courses (those with the highest enrollment and number of sections typically offered each semester). This request was made without inclusion of faculty in the development of the instructions, requirements or timeline and included a first deadline of December 17 for a significant amount of work to have been completed and decisions to have been made, all without compensation for the faculty asked to do the work. Faculty from the Curriculum Committees themselves, the Schools reps, the Faculty Association, and other groups reached out to various administrators questioning how the decision was made and why faculty were not included in developing the timeline and format for this development project, as well as how these templates would be used once completed (i.e. the “mandatory for all adjuncts” element that takes away their academic freedom). Some of the curriculum committee chairs scheduled a meeting with Terry DiPaolo and Greg Morris on Friday, December 3, to which the other chairs of “top 20” courses and DCFA President Tommy Thompson and DCFA Vice President Margo Silva were also invited to attend. Minutes of this meeting were written and shared by Jennifer Siemantel, Chair of the Biology CC. As it stands right now, our understanding is that the December 17 deadline has been cancelled and the curriculum chairs and administrative leadership are planning to meet again in January to continue this conversation and develop a plan that addresses the stated need without sacrificing academic freedom or asking faculty to develop templates without proper compensation. Please reach out to your curriculum committee representative for more information if you haven’t heard anything from them and your discipline is one of those listed in the minutes file as having a “top 20” course.
Over-Enrollment Compensation
Over-enrollment compensation for any faculty who qualify will be paid in your December paycheck. You should have received an email from AST before Thanksgiving providing you with a link to review your over-enrollment calculations and report any errors you saw. A few faculty noticed that the “hold-harmless clause” did not appear to have been applied properly in their over-enrollment total and reported that error. Dr. Greg Morris confirmed that the hold-harmless clause should have been used in these cases and AST is reviewing the calculations for all faculty to ensure anyone whose over-enrollment was accidentally miscalculated will be recalculated with the hold-harmless clause taken into consideration. For your reference, the hold-harmless clause refers ONLY to when courses were allowed to run with fewer than the normal course minimum due to documented need, so this miscalculation should only have affected a small number of faculty. For example, if a course whose normal minimum is 15 is allowed to run with only 9 students in it, the hold-harmless clause says that this section will be treated as if it did reach the minimum of 15 students. This clause exists because if Dallas College decided the course was necessary for students, the faculty member should not be penalized for agreeing to teach a course that did not meet the minimum. The clause says that this course will be treated as though it did reach the minimum, so the SACH (student ACH) should have been calculated as though the course had 15 students in it, not 9, when comparing to the course ACH for over-enrollment pay.
New DCFA Council Members
Per an election held when the prior Eastfield campus Faculty Association president and vice-president stepped down, the new EFC president is Andrew Tolle and the new vice-president is Patrick Patterson. Brookhaven campus Faculty Association president, Jennifer Allen, has been on temporary leave from the Council and her role as campus president since August 2021. Because she has decided not to return for the spring, and Peggy Mason, Interim BHC President, has decided not to continue in this role, Brookhaven will be represented on the DCFA Council by Josh Rose for the spring 2022 semester.
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