An Open Forum for Faculty at Santa Rosa Junior College
The AFA Dialogue has been created to air concerns of all faculty. The AFA Update is the factual voice of AFA, while the AFA Dialogue encourages conversation and publishes personal opinions about workplace issues and political concerns. We invite any faculty member to submit letters, articles, or opinion pieces. The opinions contained herein are solely those of the writer, and AFA neither condones nor condemns these opinions. AFA reserves editorial prerogatives.
AFA welcomes your feedback!
Submit comments, letters, and/or articles
via email to afa@santarosa.edu or via fax to (707) 524-1762.
AFA members who submit
original articles of 500 words or more
that are published in an issue of the AFA Dialogue
will be awarded a Stipend of up to $50.
The Holy Triangle:
Disciplinary Expertise, Student as Human Being & Faculty Professionalism
by Julie Thompson, AFA Chief Negotiator and
Regular Faculty Member in the English Department
First, thank you to all of the faculty members—and classified colleagues—who have contacted AFA reps to share your thoughts about our recent publication, “AFA’s Response to Dr. Chong’s ‘Important Budget Letter to the College.’” And thanks to the twenty faculty members who participated in our first brown bag lunch and discussion on Wednesday, May 10. While some faculty members thought that AFA’s publication wasn’t aggressive enough and others thought it was mean-spirited, the vast majority of the faculty have shared—via texts, emails, in-person conversations, and group discussions—their relief that this much-needed conversation is taking place. What we’re hearing is that scores of faculty members are experiencing their own version of a set of broad strokes—a zeitgeist—that AFA has been distressed about for several years. These broad strokes include increased workload, micromanagement of the faculty, faculty demoralization, administrative overreach into faculty concerns, disrespect for the faculty as a body of professionals with obligations to our areas of expertise, and compensation that doesn’t reflect the realities of our workload.
Faculty report that they’re working most evenings and most weekends, simply to keep up. And they report that they work numerous hours during the summer, too, revising curriculum, keeping up with their evolving fields, and doing departmental and college service for which there is no time during the academic year. It has struck me, the past several years that I’ve sat in the audience and applauded my colleagues being honored at the Senate’s Faculty Recognition awards event, that one faculty member after another is extolled for giving their lives to SRJC: late nights, weekends, summers.
Now, my AFA colleagues will probably want to throttle me for saying this, but, for years, I’ve been at peace with working more than forty hours a week. (I will, however, say that I was stunned by the workload my first couple of years.) And I’ve generally been okay with the hours I put in over the summer as I research, read, write, and reimagine new teaching and learning experiences for my students for the upcoming year. I teach English, and in my field—as in every field—the professional and intellectual landscape is ever changing. In addition to the new material, there are all the books and essays and poems from the recent and deep past that I haven’t yet read and thought about. You’ve seen the bumper sticker: So many books, so little time. Anyway, the world of stories and poems and essays is the world that makes life cohere for me. It’s my calling, my vocation. It is who I am. When I found my field, what I found was a portal that would take me into a body of work—a stable as well as constantly changing collection of texts, an ongoing conversation, a methodology—that helped me to make sense of my life, my society, my world. Immersing myself in it—even in the summer—gives me joy. I’ve heard other faculty members say similar things about their own fields: biology, plant science, theater, administration of justice, chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, art.
I believe that when we find the thing that ignites us, the thing that, at least in part, defines us, most of us don’t count the hours. When we’re given respect, we don’t count the hours. When we have freedom to approach our teaching and our work with students with honesty and authenticity, we don’t count the hours. When the work we do is protected—from outside interference, from political agendas, from micromanagement, from unreasonable demands—we blossom and excel. However, what we experience first-hand and hear from our colleagues is that respect, freedom, and protection do not describe our current working conditions. Conversely, we believe that when we can assume respect, freedom, and a supportive protection from the administration, Chancellor’s Office, and legislature, we do better work. And when we do better work, students learn and thrive. And when our students learn and thrive, we create a healthier, more vibrant society. It’s complicated, but it’s also simple.
A union’s job is to fight hard for its members in some fundamental areas: compensation, workload, working conditions, and that fight has everything to do with teaching, learning, and the health of individuals and our society. AFA is committed to fighting for compensation that allows faculty to live in the county in which they teach. We are committed to fighting against increases to our workload because those increases often have nothing to do with teaching, learning, and the content of our disciplines and, usually, much to do with satisfying some kind of bureaucratic demand. We are committed to creating working conditions that preserve faculty independence, professionalism, and autonomy.
What individual faculty members choose to do within the parameters of the Contract is up to them and their professional conscience. We occasionally hear a complaint that the faculty can’t do such-and-such because “AFA wouldn’t let us.” Not so. What we object to is making one person’s, one committee’s, one administrator’s “good idea” a mandate for all faculty. Good ideas eventually—even quickly—become stale. I’m guessing that we’ve all had the experience of a lesson or text that worked beautifully in the fall and fell flat in the spring—or worked beautifully in the 9 a.m. class and not so well in the 10:30 a.m. class. Faculty must have the freedom to be nimble and responsive to the human beings we teach, counsel, advise, and support. I want a Contract that gives me the time and flexibility to be nimble, creative.
We know our areas of expertise, we know our students, and we know ourselves as faculty members. I work with the union because I want to protect that holy triangle for each faculty member: the faculty member’s relationship to—and embodiment of—disciplinary knowledge; our students as human beings looking for meaning in their lives; and our knowledge of our strengths and weaknesses as faculty members. Those three elements work together in unique and artful ways for each person. The dynamic changes over time.
There are very real and constant pressures—and mandates—from outside forces. The State legislature, the Chancellor’s Office, and our accrediting commission are all looking for a magic pill or formula that will ensure that the community colleges crank out more graduates for less money. When the latest magic pill comes onto the market, people rally behind it. The legislature funds it. And the faculty—instead of being free to focus on their disciplines, their students, and their own intellects and skills that should determine how they teach the students in their classrooms, are expected to divert their energy, time, and creativity to fulfilling someone else’s mandate. This diversion drains us, and it diminishes us as professionals who have moral obligations to our disciplines and to the wellbeing of our society.
Our Contract can be a point of resistance that rejects the “magic pill” model by protecting the faculty’s professionalism and independence. From AFA’s perspective, contractual resistance to prescriptive mandates and panaceas helps to make possible the good work that all SRJC faculty members are doing for our students and our community, in their departments, on committees, in the Senate. We trust our faculty colleagues to sort the holy triangle for themselves, and AFA is committed to negotiating a Contract that protects them in that work.
