💾 Archived View for rawtext.club › ~jmq › news › 2017-05-17-union-meetings.gmi captured on 2023-04-26 at 13:47:33. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Facing the imminent departure of my long-time colleague Nancy, who has often given me a ride to the Germantown campus for previous college closing meetings, I took up the offer of a different carpooling arrangement from a part-time English professor who would meet me in Silver Spring. This way I would begin to sever the mental association between college-wide meetings in Germantown and riding my bike to the Forest Glen Kiss-and-Ride. So today I took the more familiar route to the Takoma Park campus, from whence I walked across the bridge to Caroline's apartment building after stocking up on sections of newspaper from the recycle bins of houses next to Pavilion 3. The printed stories therein, concerning the latest fallout from the firing of James Comey, would only be needed as diversion for the ten minutes between my early arrival at the Galaxy apartments and Caroline's appearance at the door. After that, the newspapers merely added bulk to my bag, since conversations with colleagues could be counted on to provide better entertainment.
We walked to the Silver Spring Metro station and then boarded a Red Line train for its long journey to Shady Grove. As we approached the terminal station, Caroline called her mom to finalize the handoff of the car she would be borrowing for the last leg of this multi-modal commute. From the backseat of this car we helped ourselves to the granola bars left behind by its previous driver, in case the food options at the Germantown campus would be scarce now that classes and final exams had wrapped up.
We arrived at the Germantown campus after Dr. Pollard's opening address. The faculty and staff had already started to break off into their smaller union meetings, so Caroline and I found our way to the SEIU meeting in HT 122. There we heard from Anne McLeer about the newly-ratified collective bargaining agreement. This new contract contains good news for Alan Stover and other long-time adjunct II professors, who can now receive an additional 1% salary increase in recognition of their long service and ongoing professional development.
Tango Thomas spoke at the SEIU meeting to share some of the insights he's privy to as a member of the college administration. One of the new programs he's ushered into existence will help adjunct faculty who are interested in making the transition to full-time faculty, by providing advice on which catchphrases to use during interviews and which skills to build while still an adjunct. Tango also corrected some misconceptions on how the college deals with the vacancies that appear when a full-time faculty member leaves.
Bill Primosch took his turn at the front of the room and plugged a new one-day study skills program for incoming students, starting this summer and staffed entirely by adjuncts. For some disciplines the only professors who teach the courses are adjuncts, but for other disciplines this segregation will allow the part-timers to be seen contributing in a role they aren't usually assigned.
Rounding out the meeting were brief remarks by Seth Dietz, who talked about recent collaborations with other unions (especially the People's Climate March), and Heather Brown, who summarized the activities of our TPSS union forum this past year.
Throughout the meeting, Harold Williams divided his attention between the speaker at the front of the room and the notes he passed to me about the Spitz summer institute in Chadds Ford, PA, where I can acquire formal training on the software that controls our planetarium projector. I'm supposed to meet him in his office tomorrow to fill out the EAP form so that the college will spend professional development funds on my attendance.
On the original schedule, the union meeting was supposed to be followed by lunch on our own, with discipline meetings beginning only at 14:00. Because of the STEM student conference taking place this afternoon, both the Math/Statistics and Physics/Engineering/Geosciences discipline meetings were held starting at 12:15, with lunch provided by the respective dean. I opted to attend the Math/Statistics discipline meeting, which included a fun backmapping activity to clarify the dependencies between college-level skills and the skills taught in the prerequisite course. There might finally be a counterpart to MATH115A and MATH117A for the survey course that I've been teaching, if one of the proposals that emerged from this backmapping activity pans out.
I got a ride back to the Takoma Park campus with Mazen and Sharon, as I had suggested might happen when Caroline and I parted ways to attend our respective discipline meetings. I rested from the oppressive afternoon heat in the comfort of RC111, then took a swim at 17:20 and joined the Nolte Park ultimate game around 18:00.