One of a series
[Editor’s Note: A further sampling of letters of protest against the tenure of Pasadena City College President Dr. Mark Rocha, written by faculty members, presented at last week’s Board of Trustees meeting.]
[img]1769|left|Dr. Mark Rocha||no_popup[/img]I have been an active participant in the ad-hoc committee that conducted the fulltime faculty’s vote of no-confidence of President Rocha.
I have struggled greatly over how to express my thoughts and feelings regarding the state of the college and more specifically in response to the board’s “Official Statement” dated March 5, 2013, in which the faculty vote was not even acknowledged, leading me to address the current crisis as a taxpaying faculty member and constituent of Dr. Mann.
PCC has had a proud history of prudent planning and collaborative decision-making among various constituencies in the community. This practice is being dismantled to the detriment of the college, intensifying in the last two years with the full participation of the Board.
The extension of Dr. Rocha’s contract, with an increase in salary, without any input from the broader campus community, is but one shocking instance of the board’s abandonment of fiscal prudence.
During this time of great financial crisis in the state, the Board created four new vice president positions and numerous other managerial positions, costing significant sums of tax dollars. We have had three Human Resources people, lost our Information Technology person, hired an in-house attorney “to save legal expenses” while continuing to retain an outside law firm, read mortifying headlines in the papers regarding our former Facilities VP and his assistant. And this is just at the highest levels of management.
While some heads have rolled, my own is spinning from the pace at which other decisions have been made and unraveled. Buildings were going to be shuttered, then not; retirees could continue as adjuncts, then not; class sizes decreased, then not; the calendar called for winter, then it didn’t. Such chaotic planning wastes time, energy, and, ultimately, public resources. It seriously detracts from the education of students, which is what would all rather be attending to.
As a concerned longtime resident of the district, and as a constituent, I urge you to consider the true motivations of 92 percent of the voting faculty in voting no-confidence: our deep-seated concern over the chaos and mismanagement at PCC. The entire PCC community will benefit from your thoughtful consideration of the reasons precipitating this crisis, which were detailed in the no-confidence document.
Should Dr. Mann or any Trustee have an interest in further discussion, my contact information is included.
This letter is from Lauren Arenson, Ph.D., Social Sciences Division:
Many of my colleagues are hurt and astounded by your lack of understanding about what we do for this campus each day. Your faculty is responsible for the education of our students. That includes classroom lectures, grading assignments, hours of preparation and the modeling of positive behavior.
Each time a student acts in an inappropriate manner, I immediately reflect upon the horrific examples that have been played before them by campus administrators. Students have been exposed to inappropriate examples of lies, deceit and false claims from the administrators. Students have been asked to believe that their classes have been cut due to faculty salaries. The community has been led to believe that the faculty is greedy and selfish, out for nothing more than personal gain. These smoke-and- mirror tactics are forms of propaganda to hide the lack of performance on the part of your administrators.
Rather than dwelling on these negative facts, I want to thank each member of the Board personally for this growth opportunity. I have learned that my students and myself can persevere in an environment that promotes divisiveness rather than student success. My colleagues and myself have formed lasting relationships that your administrators will not be able to break, regardless of the amount of power you award to the few. I feel a sense of solidarity toward members of other unions and a lasting commitment to support each of their causes. Lastly, I am now working with faculty members from the colleges that were previously victimized by Rocha’s poor leadership.
As I teach my students, strive to find the positive in all of your educational endeavors. As members of the Board of Trustees for Pasadena City College, by supporting the current direction of the administration, you have chosen to support dishonesty. Yet, in a similar manner to my students, I will continue to model behavior that demonstrates solidarity and success. The more that you promote an environment that fosters harassment, the more bonding you will see between faculty, students, staff and the community.
Thank you Rocha, Cooper, Bell and Miller for consistently exhibiting poor behavior and a lack of commitment to our college. You only make us stronger in our commitment to each other. I am proud of embracing the task of educating our students to tackle all of the types of challenges before them. It saddens me to think that the administration does not share the same vision.
Hoping each of you will join faculty and staff in the promotion of student success…
[This person chose not to identify himself.]
I submitted my vote of no-confidence in PCC’s administration and President Rocha for none of the reasons the Board supposes.
I have never taught winter or summer courses, and your open letter to all of us was naïve at best.
I am greatly saddened that I even have to write this letter because it means the Board is sorely out of touch with PCC, and when its constituents voice an opinion, it resorts to disbelief or tries to shrug it off. It also pains me to admit I’m a coward.
I struggled with the issue of signing this letter, and decided against it. Why? Because I need to keep my job. And I need not to find myself in the snakepit that PCC’s governance has become.
I fear you, dear Board, and the moat Dr. Rocha has been allowed to build.
I believe that all divisions, departments, and individuals have their own concerns and problems.
Here are mine:
1. The lack of transparency and communication.
2. The complete lack of faculty input on pedagogical matters.
A few examples of the transparency and communication problem:
a) Who from the faculty and students participated in the President’s performance review? Perhaps if the Board had asked these constituents, Dr. Rocha wouldn’t have received such high marks, and the Board wouldn’t be so shocked at the vote of no confidence…?
b) Where is my new laptop promised to me by last November? Where is Dwayne Cable? Where is the communication and transparency about personnel and promises made to us? If the administration promises something and then it doesn’t deliver, how am I supposed to keep a high level of confidence in its expertise? When it doesn’t communicate, I’m left with two choices: either the administration is lying or it’s incompetent.
c) We are falsely advertising PCC on KPCC with slogans like “A global community college for the 21st century,” and “Committed to sustainability.” My office computer was considered old at the end of the 20th century (not to mention what our classrooms look like), and I don’t see any blue recycling bins anywhere in classrooms or offices. Shame on PCC’s PR! We’re not even “coloring” the truth. We’re lying on public radio.
d) Strategic decisions are arrived at dictatorially. I am not so upset about canceling winter as I am about how it was canceled. I do feel PCC was not smart when it was the only community college to have done so. Take College of the Canyons, for instance. They offered online classes in winter, and began spring in early February. So much heartache could have been avoided if we sat down and communicated at PCC. Also, look at how many community colleges do have winter sessions. They must have come to very different conclusions about student success than we have…I
agree that students who don’t take the 6-week winter session will forget things…how much do you think they’ll forget during the 4-month summer break?
e) How about block scheduling? I still have no notion about what this will mean for me. What about realignment? If I don’t know who in my department will get how much release time to be chairs, how am I supposed to plan for fall? I am very suspicious that the administration is either incompetent or it is deliberately waiting for the long summer to be able to make decisions without faculty input.
Communicate! Be a manager, not a dictator.
Most of all, learn from your constituents. We are supposed to be a school, after all.
Quick examples of pedagogical matters that have spiraled out of control:
I was hired to teach and to remain on the cutting edge of my field and the pedagogy of it. The administration’s job is to facilitate it. At PCC, the administration is overstepping its boundaries and has blatant disregard for my expertise. As a result, I have resigned from all committee work since Dr. Rocha took the helm.
Some examples: NCNs…Why was I forced to re-examine NCNs last year if it doesn’t matter what I said? I was eight years old in 1982, which I believe is the year the administration wants to revert NCNs to. Where can I find these NCNs? (Communicate!) Nowhere have I seen any pedagogical research that states 1982 is a benchmark year for how many millenials we should have in the classroom. If anything, what I do know, is that students are overwhelmingly not prepared to succeed in college-level classes. I also don’t think that by giving me more money, I will be able to magically create more time and help more students succeed in overcrowded classes.
For me, it’s not about extra money for high-enrolled classes. I am not a prostitute. I am an expert in teaching. Respect me and my expertise. And by the way, in 1982 distance education was where exactly? What about the national benchmark of 30 per online course? May I also ask that Dr. Rocha stop teaching at PCC? We hired him to preside, not to teach. If he wants to teach, he should find a part-time gig on his own in the open marketplace. Otherwise, I demand that I be allowed to work as president of PCC part-time!
“Strategic enrollment management” :Again, my pedagogical expertise of what and when should be taught have been thrown to the wind. Instead, administrators ram down my throat what I should teach. Respect me and my expertise.
To make matters worse, my department has one of the worst fulltime to part-time instructor ratios. This results in the fulltime faculty taking on a disproportionate amount of administrative work. We have been asking for vacant positions to be filled—to no avail. Now that every decision under realignment is politicized, how are we supposed to have our voices heard?
Let me end on a positive note…my favorite thing at PCC: Canvas. Why? It’s a communication tool that tells the truth, and functions as it should. It also allows and respects input from all its constituents. In other words, it learns.
