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Metro seek immediate increase in full-time faculty
Proposed guidelines for qualification could squeeze part-time pool
By Josie Klemaier
jklemaie@mscd.edu

Metro is reviewing its qualifications for hiring faculty members in an effort to build up the college’s pre-eminence and accreditation by increasing its full-time faculty population.

A proposal brought to the Board of Trustees on Nov. 1 by provost Rodolfo Rocha asked that faculty qualifications be clarified and adjusted to better meet guidelines set by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools.

“Something needs to be done to establish a standard for each given department,” said John Schmidt, a faculty trustee and chair of industrial design, at the November meeting.

Revision of Appendix A, the section of the handbook of professional personnel that lists the qualifications for part-time, full-time and tenure-track faculty, began in 2004 when an unlawful discrimination grievance was filed with Metro’s Office of Equal Opportunity regarding hiring practices.

Under guidelines in Appendix A, many departments require faculty at the instructor level to have at least a master’s degree.

Some departments, however, such as music, hospitality and industrial design, hire faculty with a bachelor’s degree and a specified amount of real world experience.

According to the handbook, departments are allowed to ask for qualification exceptions because the availability of qualified individuals in the Denver metro area is sometimes low or nonexistent.

“It’s an issue of supply and demand,” Schmidt said at the meeting.

Metro’s president, Stephen Jordan, said that because of budget cuts, the full-time faculty population has been depleted, creating a reliance on part-time instructors.

“There is not a pool of people locally to sign on an immediate basis that meet the qualifications of full-time faculty,” he said.

By hiring full-time tenure-track faculty, and by broadening the base for part-time faculty instead of relying on adjunct faculty, departments become less reliant on part-time instructors, Jordan said.
Adjunct faculty members are part-time instructors who often have careers outside of teaching and are not available for advising.

In a memo from Hal Nees, president of the Faculty Senate, it was recommended that each department consist of no more than 40 percent part-time or temporary full-time faculty. Temporary full-time faculty members are on contracts of one, three or five years.

The ultimate question was how to make each of the departments as successful as they can be, Nees said.

Chairs of many of Metro’s departments attended the meeting to voice their opinion concerning qualifications for faculty in their departments who only have a bachelor’s degree, rather than the often-required master’s degree.

Parris Neal, department chair of electrical engineering technology, described to the board examples of needs for exemptions in his department. He contrasted an experienced individual with a bachelor’s degree with an individual with a master’s degree and very little experience and said that under stricter qualification requirements he would not be able to hire the more experienced person with the bachelor’s degree.

“If you ask the students who they prefer, they would prefer the person who works in (the field) every day,” Neal said.

The chair of Metro’s health professions department, Nancy Shanks, said she had trouble hiring a lawyer to teach a health care law course because of the requirements in Appendix A.

Music is also a department in great need of faculty with bachelor’s degrees, especially in composition, conducting and music performance, said Walter Barr, chair of Metro’s music department. Many professional musicians do not pursue higher degrees beyond their careers, Barr said.

“These people have their training and then pursue their careers.”

As of the current semester, 33 faculty members in 11 departments are exempted from handbook requirements in order to teach courses, according to an attachment on the board’s Nov. 1 agenda. Many of them have master’s degrees in related fields or have experience that makes them qualified, but nearly all of them are exempted because “the advertising for faculty with the handbook requirements does not yield a qualified pool of qualified candidates.”

“How we look at Appendix A matters,” Nees said.