Professional Standards

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges stands on the principle that full-time faculty are essential to and an unequaled component of any effort to increase student success;

Whereas, The draft recommendations (as of September 30, 2011) of the California Community Colleges Task Force on Student Success (established in response to Senate Bill 1143, Liu, 2010) suggest that statute or regulations should be amended to allow the California Community College Chancellor’s Office or Board of Governors to mandate specific purposes for flex day activities presented by individual colleges or districts;

This eighth edition of Minimum Qualifications for Faculty and Administrators in California Community Colleges is an update of the disciplines lists including those adopted by the Board of Governors of the California Community Colleges at their regularly scheduled meeting on November 2, 2009.

The Minimum Qualifications Handbook lists those disciplines taught in the California Community College System and the minimum qualifications related to each discipline. There are three types of minimum qualifications associated with the various disciplines:

Whereas, The Academic Senate for California Community Colleges has a longstanding policy of promoting reliance on a core of full-time faculty as one of the most important methods of providing quality instruction and institutional excellence, yet the full- to part-time faculty ratio in noncredit instruction continues to be particularly abysmal with a statewide ratio of less than 5:95, with some noncredit programs still having no full-time faculty at all;

Whereas both English and counseling faculty often are responsible for placement of students in the appropriate English writing and composition courses, and

Whereas the use of multiple measures has created on some community college campuses conflict over practices of student placement in writing and composition courses, and

Whereas the appropriate placement of students in writing and composition courses is very important for the success of students,

Whereas, The California Education Code 87360(b) explicitly specifies that local academic senates, working with representatives of the governing board, develop and agree to hiring criteria, policies, and procedures for new faculty members;

Whereas, Some community college districts have hiring policies or collective bargaining agreements that are designed to ensure that part-time faculty are given due consideration when full-time faculty hiring occurs;

Whereas, Over 70% of first time college students place into pre-transfer level reading, writing, English as a Second Language (ESL) or mathematics courses;

Whereas, Data from the System Office indicate most of our pre-transfer level reading, writing, ESL and mathematics courses are taught by adjunct faculty; and

Whereas, Adjunct faculty generally do not have the same access to professional development activities that full-time faculty have;

Whereas, The Academic Senate's paper, "Sabbatical Rights", was written to respond to a specific resolution (19.01 F06 Support for Sabbatical Leave), and to specific survey data generated in response to that resolution;

Whereas, Faculty have been given the authority in California Education Code to determine the final grade for a student in a course in a community college (see Education Code 76224(a)); and

Whereas, The authority to determine final grades for students remains with the instructor even in cases of academic dishonesty;

Whereas, Sabbatical rights are academically and professionally valuable to higher education faculty and relate directly to professional growth and currency within vocational and general education areas;

Whereas, Resolution F06 19.01 expressed concern that some of California's community colleges had temporarily suspended sabbatical rights during recent budgetary problems, and asked that the Academic Senate conduct research to assist local faculty efforts to ensure that sabbatical rights are retained and supported; and