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Reflections on a Day of Civic Engagement
I find it revealing to compare this morning's opening meeting of the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Student Success with the afternoon meeting at the office of Councilmember Marc Elrich. Rather than level such serious charges as hypocrisy or arguing in bad faith, it's probably a safer generalization to say that all of the parties in these negotiations could afford to be a little more self-critical and to question their assumptions about the other parties' motivations.
At the Blue Ribbon Task Force, music professor Heather Brown put forward the suggestion (originating with Alan Stover) that courses taught by part-time faculty could remain on the schedule with more relaxed minimum enrollment standards than apply to the courses taught by full-time faculty. This suggestion met immediate resistance from Jim Sniezek, dean of chemical and biological sciences, who said it would get "nasty" to mandate different enrollment thresholds based on the cost of employing the instructor. I've run into Jim at several recent civic engagement events, including the Craig Rice/DeRionne Pollard/Jack Smith town hall at Blair High School (concerning MCPS and MC budgets for FY18) and the community meeting with Takoma Park residents (concerning the plans for a new Math Science Center on that campus). His broader point was that course cancellation decisions are made section-by-section rather than by rigidly enforcing an 85% enrollment target (which actually applies to each discipline in aggregate: for instance, a few 50%-enrolled biology courses can still run if most of the other biology sections exceed 90% enrollment). When deans meet to decide which sections to cancel, Jim says they generally do take into account the overall cost of keeping the course on the schedule, including faculty salary and the cost of restocking supplies. This section-by-section discretion obviates the need for any uniform enrollment target based on the rank of the instructor.
My own suggestion, which received a fuller response from Jim after Heather left, was to reduce administrative bloat by examining full-time staff positions (such as the programmer analysts who keep our cloud software going, including Banner, Blackboard, and MyMC) and soliciting bids from faculty with the right skill set to perform those duties on a part-time basis. This suggestion was inspired by a Washington Monthly essay and my own experience working for a department chair who also happens to be a Banner guru. If the college is willing to rely so heavily on contingent labor for their core function of teaching, why would they not also use temporary contracts to fulfill a non-core function of supporting IT infrastructure?
Jim's fuller response to this suggestion held that AAUP contracts prohibited "exempt" positions from taking on additional compensated duties with the same employer. The circular shifting of blame---administrators blaming unions for cluelessness about unintended side effects of their demands during the bargaining process, unions blaming the county council for not exerting enough leverage over the administration in setting budget priorities, and county council blaming administration for not delivering on promises even during years when the budget is fully funded---undermines the commitment to accountability featured prominently as a concluding sentence in the college mission statement.
In private conversation after the task force concluded their hour of listening, Jim rephrased his objection as the more general observation that unions approach negotiations with insufficient awareness of what it takes to run a college.
In the afternoon I attended a 90-minute meeting with Marc Elrich, accompanied by MC adjuncts Carol Hinds, Bill Primosch, and at least six MCPS paraeducators who responded to Travis Simon's invitation. Because of the imbalance in numbers, most of the discussion focused on the anticipated repercussions of not fully funding the MCPS budget. However, the three MC representatives managed to make Marc aware of the similarly dire consequences facing adjunct faculty in the event that the council makes a counteroffer $5 million shy of what was requested. Marc seemed unimpressed, saying that the council regularly underfunds other agencies with union representation (including the fire department, police department, and waste management), all of which are able to maintain their commitment to the union contracts by making cuts to non-core areas of their operations.
As a former teacher himself, councilmember Elrich is probably the most sympathetic to the concerns of employees teaching classes and supporting the learning environment. He's the only councilmember who scheduled more than one listening session with educators in MC and MCPS. These upcoming sessions with councilmembers offer the perfect opportunity to make them more aware of the hardships facing part-time faculty.
As Marc pointed out, throwing more money at a set of problems will have little impact if that money is not spent wisely. These spending decisions can be influenced through the channels of communication that the administration has opened for us, including the upcoming BRTF listening sessions and the accompanying online suggestion forms.