Your Climate Survey Responses Pay Off; Return Week Meetings Modified Based on Faculty Input

The DCCFA Faculty Council takes seriously the input and suggestions received from all members.

One of the most recurring themes from direct input, as well as from answers to questions on the biennial faculty climate survey, is that Return Week leaves faculty feeling worn out rather than invigorated for the new academic year.

While it is extremely unlikely that the District will stop conducting Conference Day during Return Week, we do have some good news to bring to faculty. The annual Wednesday “curriculum workshop” that in recent years had convened at Richland College, for all program coordinators, lead faculty, and deans to attend, has been canceled. Indeed, faculty across the District have told the Council personally, and through the climate survey, that they thought the information presented at the "curriculum workshop" could be shared with faculty both more broadly and in a way that wouldn't require travel to another DCCCD college or location on a second day during Return Week.

Instead, the CTE and general education curriculum meetings will be conducted during the afternoon breakout sessions at the annual District Conference Day on Friday, August 24. Separate sessions tailored for new faculty, and for seasoned faculty, will be offered. In addition, discipline and program committees will be invited to schedule lunch meetings during District Conference Day, for which tables will be reserved and for which faculty may register during the Conference Day registration process.

While the faculty council still will continue pushing for Conference Day to be scheduled on Monday rather than Friday - if it must be scheduled during Return Week at all - we still believe that condensing the curriculum workshop into Conference Day is a much more efficient and effective use of faculty time.

SECOND REMINDER: Please Participate in Part 2 of the DCCFA Climate Survey by Friday, March 9

Every two years the DCCFA gathers feedback from members through a Climate Survey. Many of you took Part 1 of the Climate Survey in Fall 2017 to convey attitudes on controversial issues such as compensation. We thank you for your input, as it has helped inform and shape our ongoing conversations with our college and district leadership in our shared governance model.

Now we are conducting Part 2 of the Climate Survey, which includes the ongoing questions that are asked every two years, in the Spring semester of even numbered years. The questions are adapted from the American Association of Community Colleges “Competencies for Community College Leaders.” The questions should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. Your participation helps us represent your interests. The survey is housed on a web server owned and operated by a DCCCD faculty member, and only the cumulative results are shared, so your responses are anonymous.

As has been practice for each previous administration of the climate survey, your faculty association president will share the quantitative results with you and your College President, and the DCCFA Faculty Council will share the results with the Chancellor.

Please take the time to provide your feedback by clicking on the link below to complete the survey before Friday, March 9, 2018:

http://webteched.com/FacultyEvaluation2018Part2.aspx

Please note that recent rain events and power and internet service outages - including those that may not affect your home or campus, but rather could affect telecommunications equipment somewhere between your computer and where the survey server is located - may sporadically interrupt one's ability to complete the Climate Survey. To minimize possible disruptions, please plan to take the complete survey as soon as you click the survey link.

DCCFA Offers Two Upcoming Opportunities for Faculty to Provide Input

The Faculty Council plans two initiatives specifically designed to gather input from faculty. 

Student Progress Reporting Survey

From Feb. 1 through Feb. 15, a survey will be made available for faculty to provide both structured and open-ended input on the issue of student progress reporting. Details about that evolving conversation can be found in this post from Jan. 18. All faculty are invited and encouraged to provide input. Messages will be sent by each college’s faculty association president, and academic vice president, when this survey is live. Results gathered from this survey – which will be completely anonymous – will be analyzed in detail by the Faculty Council in order to craft the best possible student progress reporting system to serve our diverse student population while not imposing excessive and unproductive labor burdens on the faculty. These findings will then be shared with The Instructional Leadership Team, which includes the district and college instructional leaders, for implementation.

Part 2, Biennial Faculty Climate Survey

From Feb. 19 through March 2, Part 2 of the biennial Faculty Climate Survey will be administered. Part 1 was administered in Fall 2017, and a selection of results are available at this post on the Advance Blog, in which are links to raw data from each of the seven colleges. Whereas Part 1 of the Faculty Climate Survey gathered faculty input on issues of compensation and shared governance, Part 2 includes questions that are designed to gauge faculty attitudes on the overall climate within the various college chapters of DCCFA, the colleges, and the District. Results gathered from this survey also will be completely individually anonymous, and only aggregated results by college will be reported and shared with the college presidents.

The Faculty Council encourages all members to participate in both the Student Progress Reporting survey, and the DCCFA Biennial Faculty Climate Survey.