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For Immediate Release
August 12, 1998
Contact: Margaret Quan
Phone: (925) 820-0499
Email: mquan9197@aol.com
California Community College Part-time Faculty Create a Statewide Organization to Address Professional Equity Issues
SAN LUIS OBISPO--A historic event took place on the California Central Coast this month.
Leaders of part-time faculty from community colleges across the state gathered in El Chorro Regional Park August 7-9 to discuss the formation of a new statewide organization that would address part-time faculty issues in the California Community College system. This will be the first statewide faculty organization created by and for part-time instructors, who outnumber three to one their full-time colleagues on community college campuses .
The three-day meeting, dubbed the "El Chorro Summit", was well attended. Faculty from over thirty community colleges participated in planning and staging this event. A steering committee and media committee were established, and representatives were elected to attend statewide faculty leadership councils. Plans were also laid to establish a statewide newspaper, web-page, internet listserv, speakers bureau, and system for rating community colleges based on comparisons of part-time faculty hiring, training, retention, promotion, working conditions, benefits, and wages.
The mission of the newly formed organization is to promote professional equity within the California Community College system. Both part-time and full-time faculty are required to meet the same minimum qualifications for employment and share the same professional responsibility for providing students with the highest quality instruction. Therefore, all faculty should participate in departmental functions, share organizational responsibilities and rewards,and have the same support services, office space, choice of educational materials, and opportunities for professional development and promotion. At the present time, these conditions do not uniformly exist in the community colleges of California. The slow progress in achieving such goals has been partly responsible for forming this organization to uniquely address these issues of professional equity.
If you would like more information about this organization, please contact Margaret Quan
at
(925) 820-0499 or MQuan9197@aol.com
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