Here’s a brief report on the JCAC meeting on Monday, 5/5/14, from 3:30 to 5:00
In attendance: Dave Shapiro, Jill Lund, Gina Lorenz, Rosemary Sutton, Terence Hsiao.
Here was the agenda:
- Clarify Non-Medical (death, etc.) Leave Requests (JL)
- Discussion on our mutual interpretation of the following part of Article 8.06 (GL)
8.06 Moonlight Assignments
Full-Time Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty members may request to teach an additional six (6) credits per quarter as a moonlight load(s), provided the appropriate Dean has approved and the credit load per quarter does not exceed twenty-one (21) credits.
Scenarios:
- FTT Faculty is scheduled to teach three classes and teaches one moonlight
- FTT Faculty is scheduled for 1/3 reassigned time, teach 2 classes, and one moonlight
- FTT Faculty is scheduled for 1/3 reassigned time, teach 3 classes, and one moonlight
- Phased Retirement (RS)
- Fund the ELP FT Faculty position from International Programs funding (GL)
Here is what we talked about:
1. The question Jill brought up was about what faculty, especially associate faculty, are to do when they know they are going to miss a day (or more) of work (teaching, mostly) in cases where they are not ill. (For example, suppose I know that my beloved niece is graduating from college two months hence; I would like to attend her graduation, but it means I will miss a day of teaching.) While fulltime faculty are entitled to use up to one leave day per instructional year for personal leave (Article 15.20)—to be deducted from compensable or non-compensable leave balance—associate faculty have no provision for being able to schedule a day off in advance, even if they make arrangements to cover the class with a sub. Currently, our contract only allows the use of sick leave for days that a person is actually ill; whether we can change this is something we will explore in future iterations of the CBA.
2. This was a discussion that has emerged out of administration wondering whether release time should be figured in the total number of credits a fulltime faculty member is teaching when he or she has requested moonlight teaching (or in some special cases, has had to pick up a moonlight when another faculty member is out on medical leave.) We all share an interest in quality teaching and avoiding faculty burnout, so the question arises whether, for instance, it is keeping with those interests if a faculty member is, say, teaching four classes (even if one or more is online) and also has a 1/3rd release time. We didn’t come to an answer about how to decide this, but we did agree that it seems like an overwhelming workload and one that probably should be discouraged.
3. Gina presented a draft of an MOU that will enable the College to offer phased retirement to faculty members who are at least 55 years old and who have been tenure-track/tenured faculty for at least 10 years at Cascadia. The basic idea is that the phased retirement can be over a two-year period; a faculty member can reduce his/her load to 67% the first year and to 50% the second year, upon approval of the Chief Academic Officer. We hope to have the final version of this MOU crafted in the next week or two and bring it to JCAC for approval.
4. This was a discussion about the possibility of funding a fulltime faculty in ELP with monies from the International Program. The wrinkle here is that state law prohibits the use of “soft” (non-allocation) money for tenured positions. The main thing we talked about was a model that Edmonds uses which creates a category called “Permanent Status” that is essentially tenure in all but name. In this model, there is a three-year probationary/professional development process (just like tenure-track), at the successful conclusion of which, a faculty member achieves so-called “permanent status,” which grants them essentially all the rights and protections that tenure does; it’s just not called “tenure. While this seems like an interesting “work-around,” we (mostly I, Dave) expressed concerns that this has the potential for drawing a distinction between faculty fulltime faculty members that could be problematic and counter-productive. We have an interest in inclusiveness among all faculty and to the degree that this might separate ELP faculty from non-ELP faculty, we want to resist it. I wondered why we couldn’t just move money from the International Program funds to meet some other college-wide budget need, thereby freeing money up to pay for a regular tenure-track position. Terence was skeptical that this could be done, but said he would look into it.