Highlights from the Board Report: February and March 2014

Highlights from the Board Report is a monthly irregular feature that highlights what one person finds to be important from the most recent Board Report. We read it so you don’t have to. You’re welcome.

(UPDATE: Apologies if you tried the links and found them less than helpful. I believe they are fixed now. h/t to Jenny Armendarez for the tip.)

So it’s been a long while since I’ve done one of these, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to know. As we swing into budget season, I thought it might be worth doing again. Not only that, but there’s some great news that I want to highlight on the Intertubes for perpetuity.

FEBRUARY

~Congratulations to our colleagues who earned tenure (Samar Ayesh, Luke Belz, Tony Florez, Janette Gayle, Joe Hinton, Sarah Kakumanu, Erica McCormack, Megan Ritt, Ray Tse, and Phil Vargas) and contract renewals (Cynthia Cerrentano, Amy Rosenquist, LaNisha Thomas)! The tenure group is a really amazing class and not least because they are so unfailingly collegial with each other and everyone else. Almost as amazing as the class of 2003 (here and here). I’m excited to see what they will have done at the end of their tenth year. And congratulations to our colleagues at other schools, too, though I’m left wondering what in the world is going on over at Kennedy-King? Out of 21 candidates, there were 3 resignations, 2 non-renewals, and an extension. Something isn’t working over there.

~There were some changes to VP approvals for cross-college assignments and overtime (related to CDL, no doubt). Now both VPs have to sign off instead of just the home college VP. Have fun with that!

~Some hiring happened, including a new IT Director at HW. Remember when District saved us all that money by consolidating all the IT jobs on Jackson? And now each college has Directors, Managers, and all kinds of stuff. Fascinating.

~Presidents hired consultants.

~Our Faculty Council President reported that she got a new one-way email up and running. yay.

MARCH

~Love the looks of the new Maternity/Paternity Leave policy. It only applies to non-bargained for employees, though. Hopefully it will make it into the new adjunct contract, if they ever get such a thing. Speaking of, when will that union get one? They’ve been teaching all year under an expired contract, yet, not a peep. Does their leadership not realize that 2/3rds (more actually) of our faculty are adjuncts? What did they say at the State of the College? 287 adjuncts? That’s compared to 120 or so full-time faculty. That’s a lot of potential disruption. Granted, they’re not all unionized, but still. A glance at The Adjunct Project tells the story of their pay relative to others who do their work (and it’s embarrassing).

~Concealed carry may be legal in Illinois, but it’s still not allowed on campus (which I’m personally happy about, lest we have to seek an answer to this puzzling question).

~Speaking of things related to “pay” and “embarrassing” there was hiring in March, and we have another new $100,000 Associate Vice Chancellor–this one is the Vice Chancellor of Decision Support (I swear I am not making that up). It’s a “new position,” too. (This suggests two things, immediately: 1) I want to have a contest for coming up with the most ridiculous VC or AVC title to be created and filled in FY15, with a pie of your choosing going to the winner; and 2) did anyone attend the “Meet the Vice Chancellors” gig (other than administrators)? And if so, how many were there? Was the two hour meeting taken up by introductions? Did some of them have to stand in the lobby so there was room for an audience? File your report in the comments if you went. In happier news on the hiring front, Tasha Williams, who was always great here, has been promoted to Dean of Student Services at Malcolm X. Congrats to her.

~The board approved a big contract for new furniture system-wide. The vendor is “responsible for working with CCC to design classroom furniture layouts, purchase, assemble, and install selected furnishings, and dispose of existing furniture district wide.” The first deliverable listed is, “Design classroom furniture layout for each classroom with faculty input.” We’ll see what that means, I guess. Anyway, I’m interested in this. I’ve been looking for info and research on classroom arrangements fo a year now and found very little.The only thing I’ve found is this from a book called Participatory Workshops by Robert Chambers that I borrowed from our CAST room.

~Various other things were purchased by Presidents who aren’t packing for Vermont.

~According to the Provost, GradesFirst is a big success. They also gave us a look at “a day in the life of academic affairs.”

~Pathways are an amazing success, too, we’re told, though if I’d seen this pathways presentation, which has to be one of the worst examples of PowerPoint usage that I’ve seen, I would have been struggling to stifle my giggles while thinking of THIS (called “Dear Presenter, Please Don’t Drive Me to Suicide During Your Presentation;” the language is salty, but right on in my humble).

~The Inspector General is on the job, too. More complaints, more investigations, more punishments (though only 32 of 256 complaints were sustained; in baseball language, that’s well below the Mendoza Line. I know that’s not really their fault, but one wonders at the wisdom of so much money and time and effort going to an office with a 12.5% success rate. Oh, is that an unfair measure of what they do? Does that fail to take into account the inputs? Join the club. But I digress.

~Faculty Council President Cristina Aguila said something, but I don’t know what because it hasn’t posted yet. I’m guessing that it was about how much communication has improved, and the IRB, and distance learning. That’s just a guess, though,