Standard 5
Faculty
Team Members:
Susan Huard, lead, Dean of Learning and Student Development
Scott DeShong, Assistant Professor
Nan Hirst, Assistant Professor
Marie Kilbride, Director of Learning Services
John Kuchle, Professor
Leslie Potter, Associate Professor
Barbara Presson-Nilsson, Assistant Professor
Description
Quinebaug
Valley Community College has a faculty of 21 full-time and 69 adjunct members
as of the spring of 2001. From the time of the last full
accreditation report (1991), this represents an increase of two full-time
faculty members, up from nineteen. Nine of the nineteen
are still at the College. The number of adjunct faculty
members has also increased, rising from 39 in 1990 to the current 69.
The following
chart illustrates the ratio between the number of courses taught by full-time
faculty to the number taught by adjuncts.
Course Instruction by Section Full-time/Part-time
Semester/
|
Total
#
|
# Sections |
# Sections |
% Part-time |
Fall
1996
|
169 |
80 |
89 |
53% |
Spring
1997
|
164 |
90 |
74 |
45% |
Fall
1997
|
159 |
75 |
84 |
53% |
Spring
1998
|
166 |
74 |
92 |
55% |
Fall
1998
|
170 |
91 |
79 |
46% |
Spring
1999
|
178 |
89 |
89 |
50% |
Fall
1999
|
186 |
88 |
98 |
53% |
Spring
2000
|
196 |
92 |
104 |
53% |
Fall
2000
|
181 |
80 |
101 |
56% |
Since the last
five-year review, the College has essentially maintained a consistent ratio,
even as the total number of sections offered has risen.
All faculty
members must meet the Minimum Qualifications and Standard Equivalencies
set by the Connecticut Community-Technical College (CCTC) Board of Trustees to
show that faculty members are suited to the fields and levels of their
assignments. Among the 21 full-time faculty
members at the College, four have earned doctorates in their fields and the
rest hold Master’s degrees (except for one whose Master’s is in progress).
In addition,
the faculty brings many years of teaching and relevant professional experience
to the classroom. As of this writing, six faculty
hold the rank of full professor, five are associate professors, five are
assistant professors, and five are instructors.
All
recruitment and hiring at the College is done in accordance with Federal and
State laws and regulations regarding equal employment and affirmative action.
The Board of
Trustees is committed to ensuring equal employment opportunity.
In system-wide
materials such as the Collective Bargaining Agreement, as well as
in College manuals, provisions are made regarding responsibilities of faculty
members and criteria for their recruitment, appointment, evaluation, and
promotion. The selection of new full-time
faculty normally begins with deliberation by the full Division of Learning and
Student Development regarding what positions to open, with final decisions
being made by the President and the President’s Cabinet.
Positions are
then advertised in the Chronicle of Higher Education and in local
and regional general publications. A committee of
faculty and professional staff reviews applications and supporting documents
and then conducts interviews with the candidates it finds most qualified.
After the
interviews, the committee sends the Dean of Learning and Student Development an
unranked short list of candidates with commentary regarding each; the dean
lists strengths and weaknesses of the candidates and forwards the list to the
President, who makes final appointment decisions. Both the dean and the
President also interview finalists as part of the hiring process.
The College
has been attentive to meeting affirmative action goals.
Its Guidelines
for Recruitment, Selection, and Hiring of Personnel, filed in 1998
with the Connecticut State Commission on Human Rights and Opportunities, serves
as evidence of strong local commitment to fairness in hiring practice.
The College
continues in its commitment to enrich itself as it strives to increase the diversity
of both full- and part-time faculty. Because there are
more opportunities for replacement of part-time faculty and staff, special
diversity recruiting efforts have focused there, including advertising in major
regional newspapers and working with area universities to identify candidates.
Faculty
members are assigned to teach according to their specialties and are committed
first and foremost to teaching and student learning.
Because the
College is small, it makes effective use of the multiple specialties of faculty
members; for example, one faculty member in the sciences also teaches
photography, and another in the sciences also teaches history.
All faculty
members at the College belong to the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges
(4C’s), SEIU/AFL-CIO, and are thus covered by the 4C’s Collective Bargaining
Agreement with the CCTC Board of Trustees (July 1, 1997 to June 30, 2001), a
copy of which is provided to union members upon appointment.
The contract
is due for renegotiation as of June 2001. Salaries, benefits,
workloads, and lengths of contracts are set forth in the Agreement as
negotiated by the Board of Trustees and the union.
As the
contract is renegotiated typically every three years, changes in institutional
conditions result in adjustments in faculty workloads.
For example,
based on a recent Arbitration Agreement, the method for
counting contact hours for faculty workload was revised in the areas of science
and allied health.
A full-time
teaching load consists of twelve contact hours and a minimum of three weekly
office hours. Each full-time faculty member, in
addition to the primary commitment to student learning, participates in student
advising, academic planning, policy-making, course and curricular development,
and institutional governance. The Collective
Bargaining Agreement specifies that for responsibilities in addition to primary
ones of teaching and advising, and duties directly connected to these, each
faculty member shall devote an amount of time equivalent to the conducting of
one additional three-hour course per semester (thus 20% of one’s time, to
complement the 80% devoted to a twelve-credit load).
As evidenced
by committee
membership lists of the Division Council and College and system-wide
committees, each faculty member serves on more than one College committee. In
addition, many serve in some capacity on system-wide organizations and
committees, and many work with community and professional organizations.
Faculty
effectiveness is measured by several procedures that aim to review performance
to enhance teaching, promote service to the institution, and retain faculty.
The College
adheres to policies generated by the CCTC Board of Trustees.
Faculty
members are regularly reviewed, according to one schedule established for full-time
faculty and another for adjuncts. Full-time faculty
members annually negotiate their additional responsibilities, such as
professional and community service or scholarship and creative work, with the
Dean of Learning and Student Development. These activities are
formally linked to aspects of the College’s mission statement and annual
planning. Evaluations and completed
responsibilities are documented in faculty additional responsibilities plans and
reports in each member’s professional file, where
peer committees in the promotion and tenure process review them.
Promotion
committees are governed by rules designed to achieve equitable consideration of
candidates, as clarified in the Collective Bargaining Agreement.
The faculty
evaluative process, which has changed recently and is now titled the Faculty
Development and Review Plan (FDRP), is established at the system
level. The new process involves student ratings, classroom visits
by the supervisor, a self-appraisal, and an overall performance review by the
supervisor that is followed by the faculty member’s creation of an “action
plan” for professional development. Ideally, the new
process shifts from a focus on supervisor evaluation of faculty to a focus that
engages each faculty member more centrally in his or her professional
development.
Various
information sources and sources of professional development funding and
experiences are available, some supported by the campus professional
development committee and some organized and supported by the statewide Center
for Teaching Excellence (CFTE). Handbooks at the
College exist for both full- and part-time faculty: the Learning and Student Development
Division Handbook and the Adjunct Faculty Handbook.
Through the
CFTE, the system has recently established the position of CFTE Faculty Development Consultant at each
campus, to evolve as each college community finds appropriate.
The new
consultant at Quinebaug Valley is currently concentrating on helping faculty
members use technology in their courses, while also assisting all full-time
faculty members in creating their professional development plans for the FDRP.
Additionally,
each year the QVCC Foundation provides funding for a professional development
activity. Recent examples of these annual
activities include sessions dealing with the role of continuous quality
improvement in the classroom and modes of holistic learning.
For individual
professional development activities, faculty members apply to the campus
Sabbatical Leave and Professional Development Committee, whose members
represent a cross-section of College faculty and staff.
The committee
distributes funds supplied by the CCTC system. The amount available
varies year to year, and when funding was not available one year, the College
supplied its own funds to promote professional development.
When the
funding was reinstated the following year, College management applied the
retroactive funds to the current year’s allocation rather than reimbursing
itself for the previous year. The committee
develops rules about the annual distribution of funds by soliciting input from
all staff members who are eligible for the funding. It then informs the College
community of the guidelines and accepts and evaluates requests on the basis of
the guidelines. The committee’s recommendations
are then forwarded to the President for the final decision.
QVCC faculty
members take advantage of these and other opportunities to grow professionally,
often using their own resources in combination with professional development
funds, to maintain competence both in academics and pedagogy.
Until two
years ago, individuals could apply for funds from the campus CFTE committee.
At that time,
to focus on enhancing the quality of teaching in ways that would benefit the
most College staff members possible, the committee established a policy of
awarding funds to individuals only for CFTE-initiated projects, rather than
sponsoring the development of individuals in their specific academic fields.
To this end,
CFTE has sponsored regular adjunct faculty workshops and others on topics such
as The Spirit of Teaching.
Three members
of the faculty have taken sabbaticals in the ten years since the last College
self-study, and a fourth faculty member’s sabbatical proposal has been approved
for the 2001-02 academic year. The Collective
Bargaining Agreement specifies terms for faculty sabbaticals, although there is
no guarantee of sabbatical time. Sabbatical leave
requires approval at the CCTC system level; the current Agreement requires that
the total of sabbaticals result in no cost to the system.
The College
provides orientation to and monitoring of standards of ethical practice.
Periodic
College-wide training sessions apprise new employees of their responsibilities. Faculty members are
alerted to College or system ethical policies via memoranda and written policy
statements. College staff are required to sign statements indicating their
understanding of policies. These statements are reviewed
periodically during evaluation periods, such as promotion or tenure.
Moreover, the
Learning and Student Development Division Handbook catalogs all pertinent
statements of professional practice, including the areas of sexual harassment,
ethical conduct, racism, and acts of intolerance. The College
administration takes seriously its obligation to monitor adherence to these
standards.
The Collective
Bargaining Agreement specifies that faculty members at all ranks have freedom
of expression in the contexts of their research and publication, teaching, and
membership in the College community and broader communities, while the
Agreement also stipulates that each faculty member is responsible for
regulating the use of “controversial” matter in the classroom and for
maintaining clarity and accuracy in his or her utterances as a member of the
College community. Also, the Agreement indicates
that faculty members must negotiate with the institution regarding rights to
any monetary returns from their research activities.
Staff members
with academic responsibilities, but who are not members of the teaching
faculty, include the library and learning center staffs, learning and academic
support specialists, professional lab assistants and tutors, and the director
of co-curricular programming. All staff members in this category (commonly referred
to as ACLs—Administrators, Counselors, Librarians) belong to the 4C’s union and
are covered under the Collective Bargaining Agreement, which ensures that
salaries, benefits, and job security are appropriate for each position as they
are for faculty positions. Criteria for appointment,
evaluation, advancement, and termination are published as appropriate for each
position. Hiring and promotion proceed
similarly to that of the faculty, ensuring that non-faculty staff members with
academic responsibilities are appropriately qualified.
Staff members
in this category are eligible for and regularly receive professional
development funds and opportunities from the same sources as members of the
teaching faculty do. Since the College’s last
self-study, four ACLs have been granted sabbatical leave for further study.
Appraisal
Quinebaug
Valley is proud of the quality and range of academic preparation represented by
its faculty. Students benefit from the variety
and breadth of degrees and areas of interest that underpin classroom teaching
at the College.
The ratio of
full- to part-time faculty at QVCC is commensurate with that of most colleges
in the CCTC system. Nevertheless, the reliance on
part-time faculty is of concern to the College as it is for many other small
institutions. For example, program coordination
becomes more complex, scheduling difficulties occur, and occasional problems
with adjuncts result in workload concerns for full-time faculty members.
Unfortunately,
financial considerations drive the tendency to hire adjunct faculty instead of
permanent full-time staff to meet enrollment demands.
Following the
recent Arbitration Agreement concerning the fine arts and the sciences, the
established workload unit correspondence limits the College’s ability to assign
multiple sections to faculty members to teach in those disciplines.
Thus, there
are fewer sections available to students.
Recruitment of
full- and part-time faculty members from a diversity of backgrounds can be
difficult for the College, and QVCC has struggled to meet this challenge. The
current faculty reflects a multicultural heritage that far exceeds that of the
local labor pool. Although the College has made use of opportunities to broaden
its diversity—especially through recruitment of adjunct staff—the institution
remains ambitious toward even greater diversity in the future, in the belief
that increased staff diversity will benefit students’ experience at the
institution.
The College is also
challenged in its efforts to hire faculty from outside the local area. Although
QVCC does advertise nationally and its faculty salaries are competitive with
other community college starting salaries, the College has only hired two
full-time faculty members from outside the region in the past five years.
The technical
subject areas pose greater problems, given the unfavorable salary competition
between industry and education. The College’s
repeated unsuccessful searches in the area of plastics technology are an
illustration of this problem. Also, the College’s
limited ability to place tenure-track faculty at the assistant professor level
rather than the instructor level, which is permitted by the changing demands of
the academic labor market, creates field-specific inequities among full-time
faculty members’ salaries and ranks.
While the
faculty’s qualifications are sufficient to accomplish the College’s mission,
its members are stretched to cover all required tasks, as are staff members in
other areas of the College. In keeping with the
institution’s Learners First philosophy, faculty members give greatest priority
to those responsibilities directly related to teaching and learning.
Course and
curricular development, academic planning, and advising students, as well as
participation in policy making and institutional governance, tax the faculty’s
ability to meet fully their responsibility for teaching and learning.
At the time of the last NEASC evaluation,
there were nineteen full-time faculty members to accomplish the goals of eleven
committees on campus. Currently, 21 full-time faculty members staff twelve such
committees. In 1996, the College began streamlining and combining committees,
setting up a process of active monitoring of committee outcomes. Faculty
members now serve on more work groups and ad-hoc committees and have fewer
standing commitments. The CCTC system has placed greater emphasis on faculty
members’ additional responsibilities, and thus the required labor has
intensified. Clearly, the faculty at QVCC commits itself to an extraordinary
amount of non-teaching work and accomplishes a great deal, but many are
concerned that the work could begin to detract from time spent teaching courses
and otherwise working with students.
Some full-time
faculty members believe that the promotion system does not adequately meet the
College’s needs. QVCC often has more faculty
members deserving of promotion than the allotted dollars will cover.
The College
was fortunate to receive seven promotion slots this year, and thus was able to
promote all recommended candidates. Next year presents a
special challenge since many of the recently hired faculty and staff will be
eligible for consideration for their first promotion, and it is not certain
that an adequate number of promotion slots will be available to accommodate all
qualified applicants.
Also, some
express concerns about using sabbatical leave to pursue continuing professional
development. Because of the contract provision
that sabbaticals should be at no cost to the system, it is not difficult to
receive a full-year sabbatical at half pay, whereas it is difficult to receive
a half-year sabbatical with no pay reduction. The latter normally requires that
the petitioning member use the time to produce work that contributes strongly
to the system’s articulated goals.
Most faculty
members feel they have full academic freedom as stipulated in the Learning and
Student Development Division Handbook and the Collective Bargaining Agreement,
particularly with regard to classroom teaching. Freedom to develop
content, choose texts, use a variety of teaching styles, and present
potentially controversial material is largely seen as not infringed. However,
some faculty members are concerned about losing control of decisions regarding
their teaching. For example, the College has entered
into a contractual partnership with an outside vendor in which the vendor
specifies course content in return for donating necessary equipment.
In addition,
some faculty members are concerned that administrative oversight of the faculty
is increasing and that centralizing tendencies of the CCTC system will restrict
academic freedom. For example, although all QVCC
faculty have been involved in the system-wide common course numbering process,
there is concern that the process will result in common course descriptions and
eventually common outcome expectations across the system and diminish the
individual faculty member’s freedom to control course content.
Finally, some
faculty members are uncomfortable at having to sign various ethical conduct and
security documents required of all State employees, largely because they
consider themselves committed to ethical professional comportment that is
already implicit in their positions.
The faculty at QVCC
is outstanding in its support of its members through mentoring, collaboration,
and collegiality. Support for full-time faculty
occurs in various contexts—for example, orientation programs for new hires
(such as the QVCC Faculty Academy’s Camp Quinebaug) and the College’s strong
participation in CFTE’s Teaching Partners and Teaching Coaches programs.
By
design, faculty members are housed together in offices to promote
cross-disciplinary activity. Interactions among
the faculty include an ongoing information literacy project, an
interdisciplinary seminar course that focuses each semester on a different
historical period, and cross-disciplinary work to improve developmental
learning for students in mathematics and English. There have been
campus-wide thematic projects, such as a semester in which various courses and extracurricular
events coordinated a focus on issues concerning water.
Faculty
members frequently team teach courses and develop offerings wherein several
faculty share planning and lecturing responsibilities.
Faculty
members enthusiastically and regularly collaborate when planning events and
recruiting audiences for guest speakers. Descartes Day, which
involved contributions by faculty from mathematics, philosophy, English,
biology, fine arts, history, and allied health, was one example of the high
degree of teamwork evident among faculty and staff.
Another new
co-curricular project is the formation of a team that recruits, mentors,
auditions, and ultimately selects the College’s student commencement speaker.
The faculty’s diligent commitment to learners and professional development is
formally recognized through the College’s designation as a Learning Champion by the
League for Innovation in the Community College. QVCC is the only Connecticut
community college with this designation and one of 61 nationally.
The
faculty also enjoy a strong collaborative relationship with the Instructional
Technology department. A mutually respectful and
supportive relationship permits compressed video performance, software
selection, web site creation, bulletin board construction, and the
identification of new equipment and technology to be discussed and implemented,
usually under the guidance of the Instructional Technology Committee (a group
representing both the faculty and the technology staff).
For
adjunct faculty members, program coordinators and other full-time faculty
provide superb mentoring. Full-time members participate in
the orientation of new and returning adjuncts each year, and the campus CFTE
Committee annually presents an adjunct faculty workshop.
Adjuncts are
also eligible for professional development funding.
Projection
·
While Quinebaug Valley falls within measures used to
benchmark the ratio of full-time faculty to adjunct faculty, the College will
continue to be watchful of the ratio and ensure that new positions are used as
appropriate to solidify full-time representation within each discipline area.
·
Efforts to seek long-term affiliations between adjunct
faculty and the College will continue. The College will
continue its commitment to support adjunct faculty through College-sponsored
professional development and mentoring activities.
·
The College will continue its efforts to advertise broadly
to create an adjunct faculty candidate pool, reflecting at least the region’s
diversity.
·
Policies generated by the CCTC Board of Trustees, contract
agreements negotiated through the collective bargaining process, and internal
policies reflected in the Learning and Student Development Division Handbook
will continue to guide faculty activities and associated review processes.
·
Professional development funding is allocated to as many
professional staff and faculty as possible. However, costs
associated with professional development often outstrip the monetary awards
made, especially for national conferences and are particularly burdensome for
faculty and staff members in lower ranks. Quinebaug Valley
should make strong efforts to identify other funding sources to supplement
currently available professional development money.
The new
Faculty Development and Review Plan is expected to impact this funding.
·
Faculty will continue to seek representation on system
boards and committees so that the College’s interests and needs are considered
in the formulation of system policies and procedures.
Documents
Academic
Area Policies Manual
Adjunct
Faculty Handbook
Arbitration
Agreement, January 2000
Banner
Reports and Data Extracts:
SWRZ107 FL-Overload Assignments
SWRX108 FL-Contract Analysis
SWRX109 FL-Non-Instructional Assign
SWRX 115 FL-Department Load Summary
Camp
Quinebaug materials
CFTE
Faculty Development Consultant materials
Collective
Bargaining Agreement between the Congress of Connecticut Community Colleges and
the CCTC Board of Trustees
Committee membership
lists, 1995-2000
Faculty additional
responsibilities plans and reports
Faculty
Development and Review Plan
Full-time
faculty members’ resumes
Guidelines
for Recruitment, Selection, and Hiring of Personnel
Learning
and Student Development Division Handbook
Learning
Champion designation, League for Innovation in the Community College
Minimum
Qualifications and Equivalencies for Faculty Positions
Teaching
Coaches documentation
Teaching
Partners documentation