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ORDWTHE

Volume 22, Number 5 February 2006

www.fascc.org

In this Issue√ Negotiatios ......................1√ Tsunami Thank You. .......2 √ Wal-Mart Resolution ......2√ fyi ............................... 3√ Thanks for Giving ......... 4√ Adjunct Corner ...............4 √ New Members .............. 5√ Bumping Process ..........6√ New Web Page ..............7√ Enrollment Issues ..........7√ EC Reps ......................8

Negotiations

A couple of weeks ago, I ran into one of our newer faculty

members who nonchalantly asked me how negotiations were going. My response was short: although we had been meeting, the progress has been incredibly slow. She then asked, “Well, how long do these negotiations take?” Those of us who have been through several rounds of bargaining with the County and the College know that there is no pat answer to that question. Each round

of negotiations has its own unique set of problems to resolve—and the point of negotiations is not to achieve any old settlement in an artificial time frame but to reach an agreement that we can live with and that addresses our issues.Having said that, though, I have to admit that this round of negotiations has been one of the most frustrating since I’ve been negotiating our contracts as president of the union. What’s frustrating are not the issues: In the past, we’ve always managed to work out solutions to difficult proposals. What is frustrating is the lack of focus, the lack of dedicated time to begin working on solutions to get the contract settled. Eight months ago, May 13, 2005 to be exact, the FA notified both the College and the County that we were ready to begin bargaining. Although we’ve had 6 or 7 formal sessions since then and a couple of

subcommittee meetings, the fact of the matter is that no real decisions have been made and most of our subcommittees were not able to meet during January but not because the FA Negotiating team members were not available. The biggest problem to negotiations progress is the availability of the members of the “management” side of the table. Although we “hear” that these negotiations are important, management’s lack of availability, reluctance to free up calendars and/or to meet in the evening after all the other meetings are over speaks volumes that settling this contract is NOT yet A PRIORITY for management! So how long SHOULD these negotiations take? If both sides focus, free up their calendars, hold sessions long enough to get

How Long Should These Negotiations Take?FA President Ellen Schuler Mauk (right) caucuses with Negotiating Team during the January 24 meeting

see Negotiations page 2

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THEWJoyce Gabriele ..................................... Co-EditorKevin Peterman ................................... Co-EditorKevin Peterman ...............................Photography

ORD

RESOLUTION TO BOYCOTT WAL-MART

WHEREAS, NYSUT has a long history of support for all working people and is committed to equal opportunity and equal pay for working men and women; andWHEREAS, Wal-Mart ranks last among retailers in terms of equality and fairness to women, routinely discriminating against women, paying them less than men for the same jobs and promoting men ahead of women; and WHEREAS, Wal-Mart has received over $1 billion in subsidies from state and local governments, yet locally owned businesses spend three times more than Wal-Mart in the local and state economy; andWHEREAS, Wal-Mart managers throughout the country encourage their underpaid employees to avail themselves of government social programs including Medicaid and food stamps; andWHEREAS, Wal-Mart has fired pro-union workers, eliminated jobs when workers joined unions, and illegally discouraged workers from joining unions; andWHEREAS, Wal-Mart refuses to pay its employees (associates) a living wage; andWHEREAS, Wal-Mart destroys three jobs for every two that it creates; therefore be it RESOLVED, that NYSUT urge members to patronize union stores and to protest Wal-Mart’s presence in New York State; and be it further RESOLVED, that NYSUT seek legislation similar to Suffolk County’s Health Care Security Act (I.R. 1903-2005) which requires that all covered employers spend a minimum level of funding on health care for employees based on the number of hours worked in the year. Specifically:• Covered employers shall make minimum health care expenditures not less than $3.00 per hour per employee on behalf of their employees each year.• No covered employer shall deduct any payment made from an employee’s wages, salaries, or other compensation, or reduce any employee’s wages, salaries, or other compensation in order to finance compliance with this law.

Submitted to NYSUT for consideration at the 2006 NYSUT Representative Assembly

in May.

A belated thank you for your generous donation towards my trip to Indonesia. It was a once in a lifetime experience and one I will never forget. Your “Community Outreach” reached those in need half way around the world and for that I am very greatful.Love,Liz Foley

Tsunami Recovery

something accomplished, we could wrap this up in a very short period of time. The FA is ready, but the real question is: When will these negotiations become management’s priority?

-Ellen Schuler Mauk-

Negotiations from page 1

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fyiREMINDER

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS - The deadline for 2005 FA/SCC Benefit Fund Prescription Drug claims is April 30, 2006. NPA will mail prescription drug printouts to faculty in March. If you do not want to wait for this printout, you also have the option of getting a printout from your druggist. The Prescription Drug Claim Form is available from the Fund Office, Southampton 224D, Ammerman Campus or you can call Mary at 732-6500 or go online:

http://www.fascc.org/benefits/prescription1.pdf

OPPORTUNITY PLUS AT SCCCA representative from Opportunity Plus (an innovative 403(b) tax-deferred variable annuity (TDA) designed specifically for NYSUT members and agency fee payers) will be on each campus this spring. The dates are as follows:

Ammerman2/1 & 3/1 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. A 101B

East2/15 & 3/15 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. O214

Grant2/8 & 3/8 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. MA219

etc.Congratulations to Cindy Megill (Horticulture, East) who was recently honored by the Cornell Cooperative Extention for her assistance with the horticulture component of their SOAR Program.

SPRING ADJUNCT/OVERLOAD CHECKS

Faculty teaching the Spring 2006 semester will receive seven adjunct / overload paychecks beginning March 2 & ending May 25.

WAL-MART RESOLUTIONAt the December Executive Council meeting the EC unanimously approved a resolution urging NYSUT members to patronize union stores and to protest Wal-Mart’s presence in New York State and seek state legislation requiring employers to provide funding for health care benefits for their employees. (See page 2 for the complete resolution.)

BOT UPDATEAt the December Board of Trustees meeting President Pippin’s contract was extended five years effective September 1, 2006.

ESTEE LAUDERThe FA has Estee Lauder Warehouse passes for the following Saturdays: March 4, March 25 and April 1.Please call Anita at the FA office (x4151) for details.

PROMOTION WORKSHOPSExecutive V. P. Kevin Peterman, along with Campus Deans, will be conducting Promotion Workshops in March. The workshop is a must for any faculty member interested in the promotion process. More information will be in the March issue of THE WORD.

BELATED THANKSA special thanks to all who contributed raffle gifts for our annual Holiday Party:

Certilman BalinDaniel H. Cook

Davis VisionDiamond Jewelers

Hyatt Regency WindWatchJean Ann Scharf

Mirkin & GordonSari Byrd

Stacey Braun

IDENTITY THEFT WORKSHOPSThe FA has arranged for NYSUT workshops on Identity Theft/Fraud to be conducted during Common Hour on each campus. The workshop explores to what degree your identity is at risk, the latest techniques thieves are using to obtain your personal information, how to protect yourself and your identity, and what to do if you become an identity theft victim. The dates are:

AmmermanMarch 1 11:10 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. BSC - Old Field

EastFeb. 15 11:10 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. S -211

GrantMarch 8 11:10 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. MA - 120

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This program uses group buying power to provide members with substantial discounts on heating oil. Participants also receive a free lifetime 24-hour service contract with carefully screened full-service local suppliers. First-year membership fee is $25; second year membership for NYSUT members is free. Free annual cleaning and tune-up along with automatic delivery are some of the benefits included. This program is currently available in limited areas in New York. Visit www.heatusa.com for more information.

A big — THANK YOU — to the Faculty Association for their very generous donation of 23 turkeys toward the Thanksgiving Food Drive at the Grant Campus. Since we opened the doors back in 1974 we have helped to provide Thanksgiving Meals to those in need during the holiday season. Over the decades, we have come a long way from the 7 families we helped back in 1974. This year we helped 130 families of our Campus community. The recipients were families from our English as a Second Language Program, the Kids Cottage, the EOP Program, the Trio Program and the Counseling Office. We house an active food pantry on the Grant Campus. Students volunteer to help to keep the pantry in running order. We are now looking to see if anyone has any freezers they would be willing to donate to the pantry. If you have a freezer available please call Sr. Mary Ann at the Grant Campus — 6279. Once again, THANKS for your support this year with our program. I am deeply grateful for your help and support. May your coming holiday season be filled with joy and peace. For it is in knowing people such as you that makes my job enjoyable.

Sr. Mary Ann BorrelloGrant Campus Activities

Know Your ContractArticle V, B. 4. A d j u n c t f a c u l t y w h o a r e subsequently hired as full-time faculty shall be given credit for adjunct teaching experience in their placement on a full-time faculty salary schedule. Thirty (30)

Heat USA

Thanks For Giving

http://memberbenefits.nysut.org/

AdjunctCorner

to thirty-two (32) credit hours (or twenty-four (24) to thirty (30) in the case of English faculty) shall be considered as one year of teaching experience for the purpose of placement on the full-time salary schedule. Adjunct credit hours accrued only in credit-bearing primary, secondary and/or non-discipline courses (e.g., CS 15) at the College shall count toward placement on the salary schedule. Courses taught on a part-time basis at another regionally accredited institution of higher education shall also be added to the above computation on the basis of one (1) credit hour added for each two (2) credit hours employed in the discipline. Courses taught on a non-credit basis shall not count toward step or toward promotion. 5. (a) When an adjunct faculty member is hired full-time, he/she shall be given the rank he/she held as an adjunct, except as limited by Appendix A, 2,d. (b) In the event that an adjunct is hired as a full-time faculty member, if the adjunct had been employed in rank for thirty (30) or more contact hours (or twenty-four (24) or more contact hours in the case of English faculty), the minimum time to be served for eligibility for full-time promotion shall be reduced by one (1) year. Only adjunct contact hours accrued in the discipline in which the faculty member has been hired to work full-time shall be applicable toward full-time promotion in rank in that discipline.

In MemoriumRichard Schraml

1921 - 2006

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New Members

- Dan Linker -

Donna CarraNursing - Grant

As a professor of Nursing at the Grant campus, one of Donna Carra’s goals is to help her first year nursing students shed some of their anxieties and relax and gain confidence. After I spoke with her for only a few moments, it became obvious that this is a task for which she is well suited. Her very friendly, calm, and to the point manner quickly create a comfortable and open environment, which is certainly a tremendous asset for her in the classroom, the same classroom in which she herself had been a student. Born in Deer Park, Long Island, Donna attended SCCC on the Grant Campus and graduated with an Associate’s Degree in Nursing. Her further academic credentials include a Bachelor’s in Nursing from St. Joseph’s, and a Master’s in Nursing from Malloy. Additionally, her professional experience in the field is quite extensive. For twelve years Donna worked as an LPN at Good Samaritan Hospital, during which time she became an RN, and then continued at Good Sam as an RN for another year. From there she went to Winthrop Hospital where she worked in the Operating Room. It was during this time that she was awarded the BA and MA degrees. They were busy years. After leaving Winthrop in 2000, Donna began serving as a manager for Long Island Blood Services, and continues to offer her services per diem in that capacity. The spring of 2005 found Donna adjunct teaching on the Grant Campus, and by the fall of that year she occupied a temporary full-time position. She is eagerly anticipating the spring semester of this new year, as well as her future career at Suffolk. With much field experience and a specialty in Medical/Surgical Nursing, Donna brings considerable expertise to the Nursing Program at Suffolk Community College. As a new homeowner, she also remains quite busy between her professional duties and working on her home. But when she is taking a break from both, she enjoys the outdoors in general, particularly traveling, biking, and the beach. One of her favorite destinations is the Caribbean, which she has visited many times. So if you hear steel drums music wafting down the hallways, please stop by and say hi to one of our new members.

The English Department at the Ammerman Campus has recently welcomed s e v e r a l n e w f a c e s , including Colin Clarke. As a new faculty member, his casual confidence and

Colin ClarkeEnglish - Ammerman

ready but subtle sense of humor have already added to the daily goings-on of the department. Colin hails originally from Little Falls, NY, by the Mohawk River. His journey downstate to the Island was not direct, but was constantly marked by academics and pedagogy. Colin received his Bachelor’s Degree in English from Amherst, where he also worked part-time in a nursery school. After graduating, he took several random jobs, including working for record promotions. Yet the pull to be in some form of teaching capacity led him to employment at a Webster, MA-based school that was part of the Federal Even Start program, which focused on pre-kindergarten education and provided GED preparation for parents of the children in the program. He greatly enjoyed working in an academic environment devoid of discipline issues, and to that eventual end he entered graduate school. Several years later Colin was graduated from George Washington University with a Ph.D. in English. During his time there he worked several odd jobs, perhaps the most unique being the compiler and writer of the Complete History of the National Association of Retired Federal Employees, or NARFE. Upon graduation he was offered and accepted a position as an English professor at Louisiana Tech. and remained there for four years. Colin was hired here at Suffolk last fall and had a successful first semester. His main academic focus is on 20th century poetry, but his publications span a much wider range. Along with his wife and nine month old daughter, Colin lives in Port Jefferson. He is a college basketball nut, and also enjoys fishing and cooking. As his wife works with ceramics, Colin also considers himself fairly adept at accidentally breaking pottery, particularly in transport.

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The teaching loads of both full and part-time faculty have occasionally been affected by last minute course cancellations. When cancellations do occur, faculty then are often placed in a situation in which they must “bump” other faculty from their assignments. The “bumping” procedure which will be outlined below was developed jointly by the FA and the College Administration in the late 1970’s in order to provide all full-time faculty with full teaching loads where ever possible, to comply with the contractual provisions that affect the assignment of courses, and to be as leastdisruptive as possible to the schedules of other faculty. Before we outline the bumping process in such instances, you should know that the Administrators’ first priority in scheduling the full-time faculty regular teaching assignments is to provide each full-time faculty member with a full load during the day program in the discipline on the campus to which he/she is assigned. This scheduling of basic load assignments should also accommodate the contractual provisions of seniority, compact scheduling and maximum number of preparations. After full-time basic load assignments are made, all other unstaffed courses are assigned as overload or adjunct courses on the basis of seniority to faculty within each discipline, first to full-time faculty and then to adjunct faculty according to the contractual provisions affecting such assignments and the preference sheet submitted by each faculty member. However, once a course is cancelled, regardless of whether the course is staffed by a full-time faculty member or an adjunct, the procedure known as “bottom bumping” should be implemented. The following is a general outline of this procedure:

1. The full-time faculty member who has lost a regular day section may select any section in the master schedule (that he/she is qualified to teach) which is either unstaffed, part of an adjunct assignment, or part of an overload assignment. A full-time faculty member who is thus removed from an adjunct or overload assignment may take a section from the least senior adjunct.

2. In the event that there are no unstaffed, overload or adjunct day courses available, a faculty member may bump a course assigned to the least senior faculty member in the discipline on his/her home campus.

3. Should there be an insufficient number of contact hours being offered on a campus to provide faculty on that campus with a full load during the day program, a faculty member may bump a course assigned to the least senior faculty member in the discipline college-wide.

4. Any faculty member who is cancelled from a section, and such cancellation results in fewer than three-fifths of the load provided on the home campus, must bump the least senior faculty member in the discipline on the home campus in order to maintain his/her home campus designation.

5. No full-time faculty member may be bumped from more than two sections in his/her schedule.

NOTE: Obviously, when a shortage of courses in any one discipline on a campus occurs, the administration will try to work with the affected faculty members to allow for light loading, split loading between the day and evening programs and between campus, etc. so that the basic load requirements of a full-time faculty member can be met in a reasonable manner, given both individual and institutional constraints.

6. A faculty member whose overload course is cancelled may bump an overload course from the least senior adjunct in the discipline. In the event that the only course available is an overload assignment of the least senior full-time faculty member in the discipline, bumping may occur only if the more senior faculty member does not have an overload assignment or if the least senior faculty member has only one assignment but had requested two.

7. For adjuncts, the ‘bottom bumping’ process is also followed. A more senior adjunct may bump the least senior adjunct in the discipline with the stipulation that no adjunct gets two courses before another adjunct gets one. One complicating factor to the adjunct bumping scenario is that bumping assignments will be allowed only on those campuses the adjunct designated in his/her preference sheet.

Bumping Process For Cancelled Classes

Please note: This Bumping Process is located in the FAQ section on the FA’s web site:www.fascc.org

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New FA Web Page

If you have not already done so, check out the FA’s newly redesigned web site. Special thanks to Kevin McCoy and Gayle Sheridan for their creativity and expertise.

As Dr. Pippins indicated during the Town Meeting on January 25, the Faculty Association has been, and will continue, working with her and the rest of the College Administration to help address the issues of increasing student enrollment and retention. What is important for all of us to do as a follow-up to the issues raised at the Town Meeting is to continue the conversation within our departments and disciplines and, especially, at department meetings. Obviously, the academic quality of our programs and the academic integrity of our courses are paramount in attracting and retaining students but, as professionals in the field, we know how to implement strategies to attract and retain students better than anyone else. What we faculty need to communicate/brainstorm about are those ideas and suggestions that will enable us to do our jobs better and that also will assist in the retention of students. In essence, we need to communicate in a more formal way those ideas that we already informally discuss with each other in our offices and in other faculty congregating areas about:

• what techniques work to engage our students in our disciplines,

• what information/resources we need to help us communicate with our students or our advisees in more effective ways,

• what great ideas we have about reaching out to other populations that are not necessarily part of our regular student body, and

• what techniques and strategies we have used or can use in our classrooms and work areas to retain students.

Faculty Association members have a strong tradition of having great ideas—and making them heard. I encourage all of you to use your creativity and your professional voices so that SCCC can be more proactive in addressing the enrollment and retention issues.

- Ellen Schuler Mauk -

Enrollment Issues: How We Can Help

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