LCCEA and Faculty
Council hold joint meeting on governance
|
by Bill Griffiths
|
Friday, Oct. 10 The LCCEA and The Faculty Council jointly
called an open faculty meeting for faculty to provide input regarding
a new governance policy and structure for LCC. In addition Mary Spilde
attended at the invitation of the Council. 15 faculty members besides
the members of the Faculty Council and its liaisons attended.
Bob Barber opened
the meeting with a brief statement outlining the events leading
to this meeting: The Accreditation Team determined that the College
had failed to meet Accreditation Standard 6 on governance. The
Board of Education met in June and charged Mary Spilde to produce
a plan to meet the Accreditation Standard. She created a representative
committee to make recommendations to her.
Bob then asked the audience for comments on what they
thought was important.
[Ed: As detailed notes were not taken I asked those
who commented during the meeting to restate their comments for
this article. Three people responded.]
Ken Zimmerman:
I had two main concerns that I expressed in the meeting.
The first, citing Thoreau's motto that "he governs best who governs
least", was that in creating a shared governance model, we don't
burden ourselves with an excessively complex system, trying to "govern"
areas of our activity that are going along just fine. In other words,
one way of encouraging shared governance is to let people wherever possible
govern themselves. Maybe a better label for this would be local decision-making,
or "decision making at the point of impact."
My second concern, relating to the process of creating
this model, pointed to a contradiction in the structure of the process.
As I understood it, the faculty committee will present its report
to the president as a recommendation, to be adopted at the president
and the board's discretion. In commenting that those with power seldom
give up that power voluntarily, I was trying to suggest that a process which is not itself a
model of shared governance would have a hard time coming up with a
valuable shared governance system. I was, frankly,
hoping for a statement from the president that she
continued
|
wsg 10/20/2003
|
|
|
LCC file photo
Sonya Christian
Introducing Sonya Christian, Associate Vice President for Instruction
by Anne B. McGrail
[Author’s Note: The following article is based on the
transcript of an interview Bill Griffiths conducted with Sonya Christian,
my own conversations with Sonya, and other documents.]
A Teaching Administrator
Not all administrators have close philosophical ties to faculty.
However, in working with, talking to, and reading about Sonya Christian,
the new Associate Vice President for Instruction at Lane, such ties
have become apparent to me. While Sonya is a committed administrator,
as evidenced by her doctorate in educational leadership from UCLA and
her most recent professional experience, she is wary of simplistic classifications.
“We are much more than our job classification at the college.
The strengths and view points I bring to Lane are shaped by all my past
experiences: my experiences as a dean, as a chair, as a faculty who
taught for 10 years, the training in my discipline, growing up as a
woman in India. When you come to an issue you should come with all
of who you are.”
In particular, Sonya brings her ten years as a math instructor
at Bakersfield College in California to her work at Lane. Perhaps
it is this personal integration of the values of teaching into her professional
life that leads her to say that “administration is a lot like teaching.”
continued
|
|
http://math.lanecc.edu/newsletter/news&opinion.html
|
|
|
Medical End Game?
|
by Gary Mort
When I think about inflation
I remember my parents being happy about a mortgage that was only 12%
in the early 80s and have mental images from history of people taking
wheelbarrows of money to buy bread during the hyperinflation that
occurred in eastern Europe after World War I. Mostly though I
don't think about inflation at all. Why would I? Economists seem
about as worried about deflation as inflation, and interest rates are
near a 30 year low. Then I think about medical costs.. continued
|
Columns
|
Speaking
Out
by Margaret Bayless
|
A couple of weeks ago about thirty faculty members,
with President Spilde present, had a discussion about the faculty’s
interests in shared governance. A participant asked others to name
specific issues that should involve the faculty in shared governance.
One of my answers was full involvement in the decision to fill vacant
positions, and I would now add hiring more full-time faculty. These
decisions not only raise contract issues, budget allocation issues,
workload issues for faculty, classified and management staff, but
they raise again the issue that we keep ignoring at Lane: the disparity
between the college’s commitment to part-time and full-time faculty
and what that means to the learning and working environment at Lane.
continued
|
Contract
Notes
by Michael McDonald, LCCEA Grievance Chair
|
As a consequence of my experience as Grievance Chair,
I have learned to pay special attention to Article 13 of the current
faculty contract, and especially to the stipulations of 13.4, concerning
Developmental Evaluations.
From my perspective, the majority of LCC faculty have
been fortunate, thus far, in having department and/or division
chairs who carefully observe the contract in initiating, and following
through on, developmental evaluations.
continued
|
Editorial
by Bill Griffiths
|
The current
process now underway for establishing governance principles and structure
for LCC illustrates some of the basic problems with the way this
college is run.
continued
|
Letters
|
Letters (2).
|
|
|
