As this academic year comes to a close, we are happy for this opportunity to reflect on a year of great progress for the faculty of PCC in the area of shared governance.

As the year began, the Academic Senate Executive Committee set as our top priorities restoring shared governance on campus and protecting the faculty’s primacy in the academic and professional matters known as 10+1.

In recent years, the college’s administration had regularly disregarded shared governance in making decisions; in doing so, the college repeatedly failed to follow its own policies. The college’s shortcomings in these two areas were noted by the accreditation visiting team in their exit report to the campus earlier this semester.

Our efforts to restore shared governance and get the college to uphold its policies required that the Senate take on a large number of issues, including realignment, hiring, professional development, normal closing numbers, the calendar, and reassigned time.

As a result of the Senate’s hard work, much was accomplished:

• We convinced the administration to put back on the table the realignment of the college’s instructional areas and encouraged the formation of a shared governance task force to fully explore the question of realignment.
• We successfully argued for an increase in the hire of new faculty after the administration’s initial proposal of 10 positions—to 36 positions!
• We effected the reactivation of the shared governance Professional Development Committee and the development of Policy 6030 to provide
  a coordinated and comprehensive professional development program. The program will bring the college into compliance with Assembly Bill 2558 and allow the college to meet an accreditation standard.
• We advocated strongly and persistently for the college to respect the normal closing numbers (NCNs) for courses that were approved through the shared governance process, believing that smaller class size results in greater student success.
• We supported the shared governance Calendar Committee in their recommendation of an academic calendar that includes a winter intersession, in agreement with student and classified leaders.
• We worked cooperatively with the administration to develop a Reassigned Time policy that will present reassigned time opportunities to faculty through a fair and open process while returning full time faculty to the classroom, whenever possible, to the benefit of our students.

With support from faculty across the college, we were successful in restoring much of what was lost in recent years, and we believe the faculty—and the college—is stronger for our efforts.

We are proud of the work the Senate did under our leadership, and though we will not continue as Senate leaders in the coming year, we strongly encourage all faculty members to do their part in strengthening participatory governance on campus—to do this more people must get involved and stay informed!

When we remain willingly uninformed, we become easily misinformed, and when we don’t have a clear picture of what is going on, it becomes impossible for us to contribute meaningfully to effecting positive change.

Let’s not lose the ground we’ve won in the area of shared governance. Much has been accomplished, but there is still much to do.

–Eduardo Cairó, Kris Pilon, Pat Rose, and Manny Perea