Historical updatery

What follows is the latest UPDATE in Dissent's Very Short History of the District's Troubles:

.....Saddleback College has been oddly quiet re its accreditation problem (its report to the Accreds is due in October). I'm told that their Accreditation task force, which includes trustee Dave Lang, doesn't even have faculty representation. Good grief.
.....Meanwhile, IVC has approached its parallel accreditation challenge with great seriousness and industry. Its focus group, which includes a cooperative Don Wagner (President of the Board), meets every two weeks or so. It has wide representation (faculty participate in a manner that honors the existing "work to contract"). The group even gave a fine and well-attended presentation of its work at an all-college meeting at the end of April.
.....It appears that the ACCJC has brought it about that someone will visit our colleges/district to scope things out. Mathur is insisting on calling this person a "consultant," but that's just obfuscation. The visitor is liable to finally arrive (the original guy was delayed by an emergency) some time this summer, which is unfortunate, since, during summer, the colleges are ghost towns.

.....Re our looming and inevitable violation of the 50% Law: we've heard almost nothing about it for some time. I'm told that a delegation went up to the state to plead for leniency and whatnot, but that profited them nothing.

.....Late in the Spring, the Faculty Association, unhappy with the district's failure to bargain the contract in good faith, called for a "work to contract," which ended up affecting the massive (and absurd) effort to hire 35 to 40 new full-time faculty (a ploy to bring instructional costs up to the 50% mark). But, owing to the usual union SNAFU, the WTC affected IVC much more than Saddleback and thus caused tensions among faculty. We seem to be getting past that now though. (Essentially, owing to fortuities and adjustments, the hires turned out OK, even at IVC.)
.....No contract yet. There is no way, of course, to approve a contract during summer anyway, owing to the usual faculty diaspora. Our 50% situation clearly calls for serious salary increases (our salaries do not compare well with those of faculty at contiguous districts), but this board just will not go there.
.....Contempt for faculty is the norm as far as the policies of this board are concerned.

.....There's been quite an administrative exodus of late, adding no doubt to "administrative instability"—one of the Accreds' worries. VC Andreea Serban bolted for the President job back in Santa Barbara (she'd only been on the job for two years). ATEP Provost Bob Kopecky was essentially canned—no doubt made a scapegoat by the wily Mathur. (Bob will return as faculty in the Fall.) VC Bob King left for greener pastures. Several IVC deans left in the course of the Fall and Spring (Feldhus, Cooper, Corum, et al.).
.....Essentially, IVC is experiencing deanlessness. It's like an experiment or something.
.....No doubt I've left somebody out. Whatever.

.....Board President Don Wagner really stepped in it at the recent Saddleback College "scholarship" event, where, in the minds of many observers (including some doners), he "politicized" the occasion by lecturing in defense of prayer. Evidently, he had just received a missive from a "church/state separation" organization suggesting that prayer at college/district events is inappropriate, and so he felt the need to rebut.
.....Don seems to lack self-control.
.....Someone posted Don's scholarship remarks on YouTube, and then the shit hit the fan. At the May board meeting, Nancy Padberg opined that Don should apologize; she challenged him to make up the loss in moola after the exodus of doners. (Don't know how many, if any, doners are actually bolting.) Lots of community members came to carp at 'im. He responded with defiance. Wrong move, Don.
.....Don doesn't apologize. He doesn't recognize his mistakes. Still, I like 'im. He's like a smart but recalcitrant little bro. Let's call 'im "Donny."

.....Trustee Tom Fuentes, who has liver cancer, received a liver transplant—which surprised everyone, since he was quite obviously a poor candidate (owing to his age, diabetes, etc.). People have muttered their suspicions in the hallway, but that's all. But I don't buy it. My theory: the Lord intervened on Tom's behalf, owing to the fellow's manifest goodness.

.....The Faculty Association (union) is gearing up for the November election, at which time they hope to unseat Lang and Fuentes (Bill Jay is a friend, and John Williams has supported faculty with regard to the contract). Late in Spring, the FA held a lunch at the Spectrum at which time its candidates spoke and spoke well.

.....Amazingly, the board continues to support Mathur, despite the ample reasons to can him. Mathur, of course, committed the massive "50%" blunder and is heavily implicated in our accreditation woes (which are grave). It is by no means obvious that both colleges will have their accreditation renewed in early 2009. If you suppose otherwise, you're just not paying attention.

.....Leaving aside IVC's Wendy Gabriella and her crew, faculty leadership seems to be disintegrating—no big deal: faculty effectiveness historically waxes and wanes. It seems that, at Saddleback College, faculty have collapsed into consternation and despair. Am I wrong?

.....On the up side: the weather's been nice, and some of us our flourishing. I sense no despair at IVC—shared governance-wise, we're doing fine—though it may exist in buckets at the administrative level. I wouldn't know.

.....Dissent the Blog is flourishing and growing in stature. Trivia, I know, but true nonetheless.

BILL O'REILLY CONTINUES TO O'REILLYize the airwaves:

The last professors

• Saddleback College president bids farewell (OC Reg)

.....Saddleback College President Richard D. McCullough, Ph.D., is retiring June 30 following a 45-year career in academia. Thirty-eight of those years were spent at Saddleback College in several capacities – during his tenure, McCullough was a professor of biological sciences, a department chair, a dean, and a vice-president – all before becoming president in 2004. McCullough will resume teaching biology and physiology in 2009 after enjoying a year off.
.....McCullough's contributions to Saddleback College are many. He led a team to build a solar observatory on the roof of the college's Math, Science, and Engineering Division building. The college's electron microscopy laboratory was designed by McCullough and was used as a model for similar programs at other colleges. He was the first chair of the college's honors program, and he served two terms as president of the Academic Senate. The college's Associated Student Government twice named McCullough the Administrator of the Year, the only time a president at Saddleback College earned this distinction.
.....As president, McCullough oversaw the major remodel of the Business and General Studies Building, causing the temporary move of thousands of students to the newly-built Village. Additionally, McCullough spearheaded the idea and construction of the Saddleback College Veterans Memorial to honor service men and women who have served the United States in times of war.
.....Throughout his years at Saddleback College, McCullough worked with thousands of colleagues and students who admired his knowledge and valued his friendship. Dr. James Wright, dean of the Division of Math, Science, and Engineering, said, "Dr. Rich McCullough has been an amazing instructor in the biological sciences, a valued colleague, a wonderful boss and trusted friend. No one cares more or has done more to make Saddleback the quality college it is than he has."….

• Fountain Valley school district to consider 'In God We Trust' (OC Reg):

.....Just a week after the city of Fountain Valley nixed a proposal to display the national motto in Council Chambers, the local school board will discuss whether to display "In God We Trust" in its meeting room.
.....The Fountain Valley School District trustees will discuss Thursday whether to put a resolution on a future agenda to display the national motto in the boardroom.
.....The resolution proposed by Ocean View School District Trustee John Briscoe states that the words "In God We Trust" be placed behind the dais in letters 6 inches or taller.
.....The motto will "have people think about our country and our governance," Briscoe said. It "belongs up there. It reminds them the basis of governance is our creator."
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.....Briscoe said that he wants to eventually bring the resolution to the elected leaders of the Huntington Beach City School District, Huntington Beach Union High School District and the Coast Community College District.
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.....The motto "should be on all places of governance," Briscoe said….

• ‘The Last Professors’ (Inside Higher Ed):

.....Two much-discussed trends in academe — the adoption of corporate values and the decline in the percentage of faculty jobs that are on the tenure track — are closely linked and require joint examination. That is the thesis of a new book, The Last Professors: The Corporate University and the Fate of the Humanities, just published by Fordham University Press. Frank Donoghue, the author, is associate professor of English at Ohio State University. Donoghue recently responded to e-mail questions about the themes of his book.
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Q: What are the main reasons for the erosion of the tenure-track career?

A: I believe that tenure and the kind of career it makes possible are disappearing largely for financial reasons. Opponents of tenure are less likely to make political arguments against it — except in very inflammatory cases like Ward Churchill’s — but instead are now inclined to argue that professors’ labor costs too much. The casualization of labor is the global norm, practiced by employers everywhere. Academia is one of the last workplaces to come almost completely under this management philosophy, where payment by the job replaces the traditional salary, benefits and, in the case of professors, job security. Medicine and the law are currently engaged in less acute versions of this transition from one management system to another. Among the professions, only the clergy and the officer ranks of the military seem to be immune to the erosion of tenure or its equivalent.

Q: Many advocates for adjuncts say that tenure-track (and especially tenured) professors did nothing or far too little as academe was restructured. Is this true? Why do you think this happened?

A: Certainly most tenure-track professors were oblivious as the teaching workforce was restructured, and very few predicted how dire a problem it would become. Had we identified the casualization of the teaching workforce as a problem when it began to take hold in the 1980s, we might have been able to correct it. Paul Lauter referred to the misuse of adjuncts as a “scandal” in 1991 in Canons and Contexts, and he may have been the first to use language that strong. That we could have done much about it over the past twenty years presupposes that professors set hiring policies. At most institutions, professors have a lot of input in the hiring of other professors, but not in the hiring of adjuncts, either the people themselves or the terms of their contracts. Decisions about adjunct labor have, by and large, never been made by faculty, but have instead been part of larger administrative policies.

Q: How have humanities professors fared, compared to those in other fields?

A: The liberal arts, and the humanities in particular, suffer the most because they lack any connection to sources of funding outside the university. Humanists typically don’t do consulting work, they don’t compete for large corporate or government grants, they don’t have the option of working in the private sector (and thus insisting that universities pay a competitive wage). These factors conspire to put humanists in a bad bargaining position: We depend entirely on our home institutions not only to pay us a fair salary but to determine both the kinds of work and the amount of work we have to do (publishing, teaching, service, outreach) in order to earn that salary.
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Q: What are key steps that could be taken to restore the tenure-track professoriate?

A: The tenure-track professoriate will never be restored. Two factors seal its fate. First, the hiring of adjuncts continues to outpace the hiring of tenure-track professors by a rate of three to one. It’s silly to think we can reverse the trend toward casualization when, despite a great deal of attention and effort, we can’t even slow it down. Second, the demographics of American higher education don’t help us either. For 40 years, students have been moving away from the humanities toward vocationalism. This trend has been accompanied by an equally pronounced shift in enrollments from four-year schools (with English and History majors) to community colleges, where the humanities have never had a strong presence. Tenure-track professors don’t have a place in this new higher education universe. Much as it pains me to say it, I never considered putting a question mark at the end of my title, The Last Professors.