Johnson County Community College–Adjunct Council Meeting
February 24, 2022
Attendees
- Kim Fuller Co-Chair
- Rebecca Kastendick Co-Chair
- Sally Bennett
- Shari Blank
- Stephen Dickey
- Ann Fielder
- Tom Heapes
- Chris Holdman
- Jeff Oden
- Jennifer Tripe
Minutes
- Topic: College Council Report
Discussion: Kim reported on the topics discussed at the meeting, including holding/not holding classes on days JCCC closes for inclement weather, changes in the enrollment process on the JCCC website, Covid resources for students, a calming room available for students on campus, tuition increases, and academic misconduct and cheating. The inclement weather policy was sent out by Tai Edwards to all faculty. Kim brought up a possibility of maybe having all three groups—ABC, College Council, and Adjunct Council—meet sometime.
Action: none planned
- Topic: ABC Report
Discussion: Jeff reported that some of the same topics were discussed at the ABC. ABC also discussed their bylaws regarding who can be chair persons, Covid case numbers and their effect on delivery of classes in the fall, the 30% rule for Full-Time Faculty to teach F2F classes, DEI’s interviewing of a High Impact Practices Specialist, and Classic Canvas Quizzes continuing to be available for two years. Ed Affairs will provide policy verbiage for syllabi regarding inclement weather closures and reporting students for academic misconduct. He stressed that the policy regarding reporting cheating students would be flexible enough to give professors individual implementation, similar to the Faculty-Initiated Withdrawal statement.
Action: none planned
- Topic: Adjunct Pay
Discussion: Both Kim and Jeff brought this up in their respective council meetings. At the ABC meeting, Dr. McCloud said that he would have a decision by the end of February. Ann brought up the point that there seems to be a bigger issue behind the delay. There was discussion about how people are paid for Staff Council meetings, which was that their attendance and work on the committee is paid as part of their regular work time pay. They are not paid extra nor given any release time. Stephen asked about Full-Time Temporary Faculty pay and why it is less than Adjunct Faculty pay. Jeff said that HR sets the pay table for FT Temp Faculty, which includes some other benefits that Adjunct Faculty do not get. Three questions that arose are 1) What are those benefits? 2) What happens if FT Temp Faculty choose not to take the benefits? Could they receive monetary compensation instead (like FT Faculty members do)? 3) How does FT Temp pay factor into pension payments?
Action: Jeff will email Dr. McCloud on Monday, Feb 28. Jeff will also be looking into the answers for the questions regarding FT Temp Faculty.
- Topic: Adjunct PLD Ideas
Discussion: Rebecca brought up the possibility of Adjunct PLD sessions overlapping the Professional Learning Series sessions offered through Faculty Development. Jeff brought up the idea of an “Ed Camp” as a way to kick off professional development for Adjunct Faculty. This video gives an overview of what an Ed Camp is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7DwCI7j0Bg&t=3s. He suggested that Adjunct Council members could facilitate 3 or 4 concurrent sessions about topics that came up in the survey we sent out last November. The Ed Camp could be a one-hour format: Opening Session (10 minutes), Concurrent Discussion Groups (45 minutes), and Wrap-up (5 minutes). Ed Camps could be offered two times a semester. There was discussion that maybe the first one could be the week before Spring Break. Currently, PLD sessions are on Zoom, so this would also be on Zoom. In the future, it would be good to have Ed Camps in-person with food.
Action: Adjunct Council members interested in being facilitators will email Jeff. Adjuncts who want to facilitate a PLD for all faculty members should contact Farrell.
- Topic: Adjunct Handbook
Discussion: Rebecca bought up that it is a little daunting to take on updating the Adjunct Handbook, so maybe we could all take a few pages to work on. Jeff said that the current handbook, which is available in the Adjunct Faculty Resource Community Canvas site, was intended to be “living,” where links were to remain unchanged but if content were changed, the links would still work. That hasn’t always happened.
Action: This topic will be brought up again next time when pay for time working on this project would be clarified.
- The next meeting will be March 24th @ 3:30 pm via Zoom.