By Stephen Cook
The hours for the technology division chairs will be reduced this fall in an effort to save money. The 60 hour reduction is estimated to save the college $50,000 to $60,000 a year.
Andy Anderson, Interim Executive Vice President, Academic Affairs, said he decided to do this, seeing how the technology department still had two assistant deans in addition to chairs. There will be a remaining 75 hours of chair time divided amongst the 19 programs in the technology division, according to Anderson.
The number of hours from division to division vary based on factors such as the number of faculty and adjunct faculty, Anderson said.
“As we were looking at the budget and trying to assess how much time, how much money in fact was being spent on release time to assign chair duties,” Anderson said. “We had to look at those numbers more carefully and see if [we could] be more efficient and economize in a way.”
Anderson said the allocation of the remaining hours is up to the dean of the division.
Concern has been raised amongst those who are a part of the vocational training and technology programs.
Before the current reduction, hours were previously cut from six to four. Automotive technologies professor Steve Carr resigned from the position of chair shortly thereafter.
“I frequently worked evenings and weekends to get everything done,” Carr said. “After I resigned, my blood pressure dropped 25 points, my blood sugar returned to normal levels – I am diabetic – and I was able to sleep through the night. I felt human again.”
In addition to whether or not people will continue to step up and become chairs, Carr is concerned why the technology division received cuts, especially during a time when vocational training is being promoted elsewhere.
“Why not level the playing field and cut all other chairs across campus to four hours of release time and leave the technology chairs with four hours?” Carr said. “The savings would be greater than just cutting technology chairs.”
Richard Fort, assistant dean of Industrial Technology programs, said it becomes a difficult situation because not all chair duties can be easily given to the assistant deans. For example, ordering parts and supplies is something the chairs are most familiar with and know everything that is needed in a specific classroom.
“The problem that you’ve got with that is there’s a number of those things that just can’t be put onto me,” Fort said. “The instructors know more about their program than I know.”
Carr believes that it is unfair to compare the technology division chairs to other divisions, such as English, because there is a unique list of duties that have to be done for labs and career planning.
“Do they have inventory to manage?” Carr said. “Do they counsel students? Do they visit local high schools to recruit? Do they visit local businesses to promote their students? Do their students do supervised work for other faculty and staff? Do they have safety concerns that must be addressed? Do they ensure that labs are run where safety and quality work are demanded? […] I doubt they do any of these.”
In addition to the reduction in the technology division, Anderson said eight hours have been removed from the business division.
Although there will be less hours, Anderson believes that there is still enough time to complete the necessary work.
“The formula would suggest that they have enough time to get the job done,” Anderson said. “They will be getting less time than they were getting before and then it becomes a judgment call. But the formula, if you consider the assistant deans in the mix, then they had 60 hours on top of what the formula said they should have.”
However, the challenge of trying to work within reduced hours creates a roadblock, according to Fort.
“It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Fort said. “We’re not going to try and increase classes, that’s for sure.”
If students don’t enroll in technology courses, then they won’t enroll in the general classes either, according to Carr.
“When we cut our classes it’s also going to impact classes on campus because every one of our students has to take [general classes],” Carr said.
Additionally, Fort believes this will affect what the division will be able to do in the future.
“Basically, what’s going to end up happening is that we’re just going to start saying no to a lot of things,” Fort said.
Contact Stephen Cook, editor-in-chief, at scook35@jccc.edu