The DCCFA Council met with Chancellor May on Friday, October
5th. As we discussed the
state of the District and our colleges, our conversations centered mostly
around the following categories:
·
8-week courses
·
Student Centric Network Implementation
·
10 Year Up or Out & Professional Development
·
Follett Book Program.
8-week courses:
At District, fresh analysis is taking place as more research
is studied over the idea of 8-week courses.
The research comes from the College of Charleston which implemented an
8-week schedule about seven years ago and has experienced higher student
success from this change. We also have
our own data from RLC, NLC, and EFC who all currently offer 8-week courses
during the Fall and Spring semesters.
There has been rumor circulating around the District that
EFC is at a 100% 8-week schedule, however, this is not true. For Fall 2018, EFC is at 60% 8-week courses
and plans to be closer to 80% 8-week courses in Fall 2019.
Chancellor May indicated that the decisions regarding length
of classes is a campus-level matter. However,
we have strong data that shows, in most courses, students prefer the 8-week
schedule. The District wants the
colleges to have options and to be flexible with trying new approaches to
scheduling to improve the success of our students.
As of now, about 18% of our students do not complete the
courses they sign up for. We can do
better than this! We need to focus on
where we are losing students. In
addition to more flexible scheduling, the District hopes the Follett Deal will
put books and needed supplies in our students’ hands on the first day of class
improving their possibility of success in the courses from the very first day
of class. The District also wants
students to be able to finish any degree or program within two years.
Finding the perfect solution to scheduling will take up to
ten years. As of now, the District is
looking into ways that students can give their preferences in addition to the
colleges. No one currently owns this
process. The District wants to make sure
that both students and faculty are not hurt in the process of change. We will all have input, and there will be
better communication. The key word is
collaboration.
The colleges can expect information sessions coming from
District very soon regarding scheduling possibilities and the data that
supports a flexible schedule for students.
Student Centric
Network Implementation:
On September 4th, at the Board of Trustees
Committee Meetings, a presentation was shared titled “Implementing a Student
Centric Network”. This presentation was
shared across the District over the next month.
The DCCCFA created a blog post about it as well: http://dccfa.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-dccfa-is-your-associationyour-voice.html
This presentation has received good and bad feedback from
faculty. The Chancellor helped dismiss a
lot of speculation, assumption, and paranoia surrounding this
presentation. First, this presentation
was developed from data collected from the Boston Consulting Group meeting with
faculty, the Faculty Council, staff, and administrators. In addition to meeting with faculty, the
group was given our Faculty Climate Survey results, committee reports on load
(created by the Faculty Load Research Group), and a survey that they created
and had faculty complete.
The two phrases that have caused the most concern were “High-Performing
Faculty” and “Current faculty members may choose to leave instead of adjusting
to new policy”. In giving feedback to
the Boston Consulting Group via survey and focus group, many faculty reported
that equity is very low when it comes to workload, class load, extra service,
committee work, student service, and other forms of institutional service. Ironically, then, much of the Boston
Consulting Group’s focus on these items regarding faculty performance came from
their research of faculty talking about other faculty. The Chancellor wants the District to do a
better job in the future capturing data about equity in terms of workload,
extra service, and institutional service, and he is strongly committed to
equity and fair treatment of faculty.
The Chancellor said his goal is to make all of our faculty great. Unfortunately, there is a lot of variance
across the colleges, and District hopes that master faculty and professional
development will help with this. There is NO plan of weeding out any
faculty. We do need more rigorous
standards in evaluating faculty and teaching.
The Chancellor wants this initiative to be “faculty-led”. We will always
need new faculty and master faculty to make our colleges and District continue
to grow and succeed.
Regarding extra service, questions in the research came from
faculty mostly. Faculty claim extra
service is not divided equally or by any logical or merit-based system. The District researched these concerns and
found them to be generally true. We will
see this become more equitable because soon it will be inputted electronically
and not by hand anymore. The process of
scheduling should become more transparent, logical, and equitable.
Main Goal: The Chancellor wants to have the best faculty
in front of our students. The
Chancellor, District, and colleges under
no circumstances want any faculty giving grades away that are not rightfully
earned by students.
As of now, the Boston Consulting Group is not writing any
policy. An RFP will go out for
implementation assistance for the various phases of this student centric
network implementation plan, and District will accept bids from several
consulting groups. However, BCG has done
good, thorough work, and BCG does want to do continued business with
DCCCD. As new policy is
being written, District wants to have faculty involved in that draft
review process, and the Chancellor wants to continue his practice of
submitting completed policy proposals a month in advance to the Board prior to
the Board voting on that item the next month.
The full Boston
Consulting Group Report will soon be made available to faculty.
To learn more about how faculty have been involved in the
process of developing the Student Centric Plan, please follow the following
links to the DCCFA Blog:
Faculty input with the Boston Consulting Group during the
development of the Student Centric Plan:
Faculty input regarding evaluation processes:
Faculty input regarding scheduling and load:
10 Year Up or Out
& Professional Development:
The 10 Year Up or Out Policy only applies to faculty hired in
Range 1 or 2 after September 1, 2015.
The policy requires affected faculty advance one salary range within
their first 10 years of employment. Furthermore, in
order to be eligible for a 10-year milestone raise, one must have achieved that
range advancement within the first 5 years of
employment.
That range advancement is required to maintain one's employment
with the District, and can be achieved either through education or through an approved
discipline-specific development plan (where one credit hour would be equivalent
to 16 clock hours) {see DEA
(LOCAL) for full policy}. If faculty opt for the discipline-specific
development plan, they are supposed to come up with a plan with their dean
to be documented and submitted to HR. Unfortunately, there are no guidelines
from the District on how to do this. While some have already done this in the
District, some have not been able to create such plans due to lack of
procedures to guide the faculty and deans. There is a possibility for professional
development and other institutional service activities to count towards this,
but procedures need to be developed.
The District wants to meet with the Faculty Council and more
faculty to whiteboard ideas to develop a strong process. This plan was meant to grow and develop
faculty to better enhance student success.
The District does not see this policy that would lead to all faculty getting
Ph.D.’s. The District wants there to be
several packages to choose from.
A first step will be making sure there are Professional
Development Centers at each college.
Ideally faculty will be able to take Professional Development courses at
all colleges in our District just like our students are able to take our
courses at any campus. We will also see
more offerings and opportunities come out of LeCroy.
In the process of researching the procedures for changing
ranges, it was discovered there are a few terminal degrees equivalent to Ph.D.’s
currently in Range 1 and 2. One such
example would be the Master of Fine Arts.
This is currently being evaluated by the District, and we should see a
solution to these terminal degrees being excused from this requirement and/or
be moved into the appropriate range based on the content of the degrees.
Faculty have also wondered why the District has
not provided tuition reimbursement when advancing in salary range via
education. In the past, the Faculty Council recommended to the Chancellor that
receiving a raise when advancing a range was preferable to tuition
reimbursement, since that raise would forever be built into a faculty's salary
and would compound with future raises. The Faculty Council is interested in
exploring whether faculty currently have those same preferences
Follett Book
Program:
At the September 4th, Board of Trustees Committee
Meetings, the District presented a program that it had already developed with
Follett to the colleges for the first time. {Please see the attached file for
the original Follett Program PowerPoint.}
Since this program is still in the early stages, we do not have all of
the details regarding how the program will work practically as of now. District within the
last week formed a committee to work out all of the details regarding
implementation of the program.
Faculty will be represented on this committee. Brett Dyer (NLC FA President & Art
Faculty) and Shaun Gilligan (CVA FA President, DCCFA President, and Government
Faculty) are both on the committee, along with Dr. Shawnda Floyd the current
Vice President of Instruction at NLC and Dr. Greg Morris the current Vice
President of Instruction at ECC.
There are a lot of details to be worked out, but as of now
these are some of the things we know:
·
CFO John Robertson will oversee implementation. For a proposed Summer I 2019 rollout, we have
until March, effectively, to work out the implementation plan specifics.
·
Faculty
will still be able to choose their textbooks, and will have the same range
of choices they have now.
·
Digital books will be encouraged since they help
to drive costs down, but hard copies and a print-on-demand option may be
available.
·
There will be an additional fee most likely for
printing unless the students print themselves.
·
OERs are still encouraged, and more resources
from District will be put towards this.
·
Submission of textbook orders by the
deadlines will be crucial in the process.
·
This will help with 8-week classes insuring
students have books/materials in hand on the first day of class.
·
Tentatively, once students register for classes,
they will have access to their online “book shelf”, and they will be contacted
where and when to pick up any printed or hard copies of texts or materials.
·
We may be able to negotiate lab kits for courses
that may require blueprints, art supplies, and lab equipment, etc. Regular supplies like notebook paper, pens,
pencils, etc. will not be included.
·
All students will be charged $20/credit hour
that will be added to their tuition to cover this service. This charge will be applied to all courses
whether textbooks (free or not) are required or not.
·
Even after this
tuition increase, DCCCD students' tuition and books cost will still
be substantially less than the other "Big 6" Community Colleges.
{Please see slide 6 of Follett Program PPt Update}.
In the recent past, faculty were included in the discussion
for a plan like this:
In Closing:
The Faculty Council knows there are a lot of changes happening
constantly at our colleges and within our District. We ask faculty to be flexible, involved, and
confident that their voice is always welcome and heard. Please know the Faculty Association, YOUR
association, will always support and fight for faculty rights and academic
freedom.
We
also believe the District and Chancellor want what is best for our
students. Did you know that Chancellor
May was a first-generation college student, and he would not have been able to
finish school without the care and support of his professors? This is one of the many reasons why he is so
focused on the student experience and having the best faculty. Many of you might also recall that Dr. May
also started his educational career as an adjunct faculty member at Cedar
Valley College.
The
Faculty Council wants to encourage us all to collaborate to better the experience
of our students, improve their success, and create the strongest and best
college district in the nation.
Thank
you for all that you do!
