stccpa.org

Professional Association members:

Secretary

Thanks to all who participated in the Public Higher Ed. Advocacy Day last week. More than 600 students, faculty, staff, and administrators met with legislators to highlight the key challenges faced by colleges and universities across this state. Educators and students shared their concerns regarding affordability, access, and the related resources needed for student success.  They spoke out against the chronic and substantial underfunding that has plagued our campuses for more than a decade. Now, it’s time for all educators to communicate a similar message to their State Representatives.

1. The Commonwealth needs to reinvest in higher education. Educated citizens and a well-prepared workforce  increase productivity and fuel the state’s economy.
2. Note these concerns:

• Massachusetts state funding for public higher education is among the lowest in the country, while tuition and fees are among the highest.
• Funding for public higher education is down by 31 percent since FY01, despite a dramatic increase in enrollment. Academic support services have not kept pace with the  increased enrollment. An over-reliance on non-benefited, part-time faculty and professional staff has further challenged the effectiveness of our community colleges in particular. Our institutions are being asked to do more with less.
• As state support for our colleges has plummeted, (MA continues to rank among the lowest in the nation in per capita funding for public higher ed.), students and their families are being priced out of an education or saddled with debt in order to attend our public colleges.

• Governor Patrick’s budget proposal would increase taxes and target new funds for education and transportation.
• • The Campaign for Our Communities’ legislative proposal would support revenues that would serve public education, transportation and our communities through an increase in the income tax. It would also increase the personal exemption to reduce the impact on low- and middle-income families and seniors.

Contacting Representatives:

• To find out who your State Representative is, go to: www.wheredoivotema.com
• To reach your representative by phone, call the main State House number (617-722-2000) and ask to be connected to your legislator.
• To send an email to your representative, go to: http://www.mass.gov/legis/memmenuh.htm

Dear Colleagues,

We invite you to consider submitting a proposal for the 2013 Teaching, Learning Student Development Conference. This year’s theme is:

Community Colleges: Preparing Socially Responsible Learners and Leaders.

If you have a an innovative curricular or co-curricular practice, program or initiatives that you would like to share with other community college colleagues from across Massachusetts in the following areas:

Track 1: Social Responsibility – This track will present curriculum, programs and activities aimed at engaging students in their local and global communities and a focus on social change. Sample topics include service learning projects and programs; internship, externship, and experiential learning opportunities within the curriculum; international programs, social and restorative justice work in and out of the classroom, efforts to engage students in active citizenship, conduct protocol as it relates to education, community standards, and civility, and co-curricular activities designed to increase students’ levels of social awareness and participation.

Track 2: Democratic and Inclusive Pedagogies – This track will showcase pedagogies and programs seeking to make higher education more inclusive and engaging for all students. Sample topics may be inclusive teaching strategies aimed at specific populations such as Universal Design, best practices for including student voice in administration and policy decisions, curricular and engagement activities recognizing the importance of multiple world views, and student learning outcomes that focus on participation in a public democracy in both curricular and co-curricular contexts.

Track 3: Developing Leaders – Sessions offered in this track will highlight effective programs and activities that place students in leadership roles on campus and within the community. Sample topics include leadership development theory and practice, peer mentoring and supplemental instruction programs, conduits for student leadership such as particular experiences or curriculum, as well as programs that promote student leaders within specific academic programs

If you are interested in advancing our community college work in any of the three tracks and want to share your expertise with colleagues please visit TLSD 2013 www.middlesex.mass.edu/tlsd13/ Conference website to submit your proposal today!

Submissions of proposals are now open however the deadline is December 13, 2012.

Please bookmark the conference web site at: www.middlesex.mass.edu/tlsd13/

2013 Massachusetts Community College Teaching, Learning and Student Development Conference Committee members:

Phil Sisson, Vice President of Academic and Student Affairs, MCC, Co-chair TLSD13

Pam Flaherty, Chief Student Affairs Officer/ Dean of Students, MCC, Co-chair TLSD13

Appointment

A tentative appointment for one course shall be assigned first to those unit members with the longest seniority.  You should, under normal circumstances, be notified of your assignment at least five weeks prior to the beginning of classes.  You should be given a contract indicating the course(s) and salary to which you have been assigned.  If you have reappointment rights, your course must run in the event that an administrator who hires, fires, or evaluates DCE faculty is teaching a course in DCE.

The DCE Collective bargaining agreement and other relevant documents are available on the MCCC website http://mccc-union.org/dcecontract.htm.   A hard copy of the DCE contract can be obtained from your local MCCC chapter.

MCCC Fall Conference information and materials are available online at
this address:
http://mccc-union.org/FallConference/index.html

For planning purposes, it is important that you register online by
Monday, Oct. 22 at 4 p.m. Our planning committee has worked hard to
organize workshops with something of interest for every full- and
part-time faculty and professional staff member. I hope you will be
able to join us for a good time with friends and colleagues from Cape
Cod to the Berkshires, not to mention the always popular raffle
drawing with five $100 cash prizes.

I look forward to seeing you on Oct. 24.

Best,
Joe LeBlanc
MCCC

Thanks for keeping me in the loop. I don’t view your comments as a dispaly of distempter; they reflect the frustrations of many on campus.

A statement hobbled by equivocations might soothe those with more sensitive souls but, given the seriousness of the matters at hand, a timorous message would be a disservice to the campus community. The administration should be told bluntly why Shared Governance failed to retain the confidence of many whose interests it was supposed to represent.

There are times when frankness is far more valuable than diplomacy when striving to secure the common good. I commend you for having the strength of character to address these painful issues in a forthright manner.  I’m quite certain I am not alone in my admiration for you and your efforts to develop a body which encourages the administration to become more open, responsive and accountable to all who work at STCC.

You can be certain that salient points rasied in your draft will be considered by the members of the Professional Association during our September 26 meeting.

Nicholas Camerota

Shared Governance is dissolved and will not be revived at this time.

The committee to restructure SG has arrived at the decision that this form of governance is not tenable on this campus in the current climate. In order for SG to thrive, it is essential that the Administration, especially the Office of the President, support and uphold the decisions made by the committees.

Following the NEASC accreditation process, we received instructions from the commission to look at how SG is not working on this campus and to fix it. To begin this process, the Coordinator of SG (Pamelyn “PJ” Jongbloed) met with President Rubenzahl to discuss how to approach this process and how to address the needs from the NEASC response.

A committee to restructure SG was convened through the coordinating committee. At our first meeting, we discussed what we saw as the problems of SG and how we should proceed. The resounding sentiment from this group, which surprised none of us, was that there was no support of SG from the Administration on campus. The committee decided that we needed to get a clear statement from President Rubenzahl on how the Administration would support any form of SG. The three most recent Coordinators of SG (PJ , Joe Maciaszek, and Brandon Poe) met with President Rubenzahl to discuss what SG means on this campus and to express that he and his Administration had to do to share in this governance for it to be affective.

So, President Rubenzahl attended meetings of the restructuring committee and we started a discussion about what needed to be done. The committee felt that a contract needed to be established outlining the role the Administration would play in this new iteration of Shared Governance. President Rubenzahl agreed to compose a draft of this agreement that we would discuss at the next meeting. That draft was bland and non-committal and was not accepted by the committee. Brandon Poe, with the agreement of the committee, drafted a new statement.

At the next meeting of this committee, with the President’s input, we worked through the points in that new draft and decided on language that was agreeable to all. The result of that exercise is the Agreement which was presented to the campus through the Forum at the end of the Spring. At that same Forum, we all voted to dissolve Shared Governance while voting to have the committee to restructure meet again to present options, or models, of how Governance can continue on our campus.

The result of that meeting is just this: There appears to be no model of Shared Governance that can hope to work on this campus. The morale on campus is abysmal and the mood seems cynical that the Administration would honor, much less participate in, any governance structure which does not allow for carte blanche. It is the strong recommendation from this committee that SG not be restructured and our response to the NEASC letter state as much.

Brandon Poe,
Chair of the Committee to Restructure Shared Governance

Nicholas Camerota
President of STCCPA
The membership unanimously approved the suggestion that PA President Camerota co-sign Dr. Poe’s letter

Unanimously endorse at the STCCPA chapter meeting.