PRESIDENTIAL SCREENING COMMITTEE

Over the summer, I have been serving on the PJC Presidential Search Process Committee. This committee had 5 charges from the Board of Trustees: to recommend (1) the job description for the new PJC President, (2) the required and preferred qualities of the new president, (3) a tentative schedule for the search process, (4) a proposed screening committee list and (5) a list of search firm consultants.

At the June Board of Trustee's meeting, the Board accepted the recommendations. Now the real work begins!

PJCFA has been asked to nominate 3 full-time faculty to serve on the Presidential Screening Committee. This will be a very serious undertaking which will demand a great deal of time and attention from each committee member.

The schedule calls for the first meeting of the screening committee to be held September 14th. There will be three or four public hearings in September to get input from PJC faculty and staff as well as the Pensacola area community. Committee members are expected to attend these.

The first viewing of the applications will be at mid-November. The expectation based on previous searches is that there will be from 30-50 applicants who will make it through the initial screening process and will be considered by the committee. Each committee member will have to review and score each application. There will be committee meetings to discuss the application reviews as well as committee assignments.

On December 3rd, the committee will recommend 4-8 applicants to the Board of Trustees.

That's a lot of work to be done in a short time, but very important work.

If you are interested in serving on this committee or would like to nominate a faculty member (with his or her permission), please let me know by July 16th. My email is csweeney@pjc.edu. The PJCFA Executive Board will be meeting on July 18th to discuss the nominations.

MORE COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

We are still very close to having changes ready to be brought to the faculty for ratification. Salaries didn't go the way we had hoped - the administration's latest offer was 4.5% increase to the base for initial hires; 5% increase to the base for returning faculty; and $3 added to the overload. The team accepted the offer because it does provide for a differential between new hires and returning faculty. It's our hope to continue to address the issue of salary compression when the entire contract is open next year.

While most discussion surrounding Article 18 (Distance Learning) has gone well, section 18.05 has proven to be difficult. It continues to be PJCFA's position that class size cannot be increased by more than 10% and that any increase in class size must be done in consultation with the faculty member. The Administration's position is that class size can be set before an instructor is assigned a section. Once the faculty member agrees to teach that section, then class size can only be increased by 10%.

PJCFA's position is that if you taught a class last term and the class size was 20 and if you are teaching the same class this term, class size should only be increased by 10%. So the discussion continues.......

One agreed upon change in Article 18 is that class size consultations will be done on a section by section basis rather than the current wording of "course by course."

Bargaining will be held next on Monday, June 25th at 1pm in Room 416 and is open to all.

Collective Bargaining

This year's bargaining team has been negotiating two main issues - distance learning and salaries. We'll be negotiating again tomorrow (June 20th) in Room 416 at 1:00 and the sessions are open. Just a reminder....the chief negotiator does the talking :->

It seems that we are close to agreement on both Article 15 and Article 18. Of course, the article of greatest interest to most faculty is salaries. The administration has offered a 5% increase to the base and a $3 increase to the overload. PJCFA has asked that the administration look at increasing the initial hire salary by 5% and increasing the salary of all returning faculty by a higher amount to keep salary compression from taking place.

Patricia Reppenhagen and Pete Falzone have both presented position pieces addressing salary issues to the team and Dr. Samuels.

Members of this year's team are Chief Negotiator Tom Grow, Paige Anderson, Cynthia App, Rich Cacace, Pete Falzone, and Patricia Reppenhagen. If you are interested in serving on next year's team, please let me know. There will be training opportunities coming up throughout the year and PJCFA would like for those interested in serving as negotiators to be able to attend.

What's new? This blog!

In an effort to keep the PJC faculty aware of news that affects or may be of interest to them, I'm going to try blogging. You will be able to read the blog by going to it directly or by linking from the PJCFA website at www.pjcfa.org. If you have a question or a topic for discussion, please post it and we'll see what happens.