Assembly
Concurrent Resolution No. 73 and Task Force
Report
Prepared by Kathleen Cohn, Associate
Vice President, Academic Affairs Academic
Personnel and Assessment
There
is growing concern in California and across
the country that shrinking higher education
budgets have led to an increase in the reliance
on the services of temporary faculty as
opposed to permanent tenured and tenure-track
faculty. The trend is important because
tenured and tenure track faculty bear the
primary responsibility for student advising,
program development and participation in
shared governance. The contributions of
temporary faculty are recognized and valued
here at CSULB, but the need to increase
the ration of tenured and tenure track faculty
is certainly a priority.
In the Fall 2001, Assembly Concurrent Resolution
No. 73 was passed calling for the CSU Trustees,
the CSU Academic Senate and the California
Faculty Association to jointly develop a
plan to raise the percentage of tenured
and tenure track faculty and submit the
plan by May 2002. A joint task force
was formed and the plan was developed and
released in August. Members of the
task force are making joint presentations
of the plan to campuses across the CSU System
this fall. The plan contains the following
points:
1.
A ratio of 75 percent ten- ured/tenure
track faculty to 25 percent
lecturer faculty can be achieved
incremen- tally within eight years;
2.
Achieving the goal is the joint
responsibility for the CSU administration,
CSU faculty and the state.
3.
To achieve this goal, the CSU
must conduct between 1,200 and
2,000 annual searches.
4.
To ensure these searches yield
new hires from a static national
hiring pool, the state must
provide expanded funding for
recruitment and hiring. The
CSU must broaden its success
at the top of the pool, not
deepen its pen- etration into the
hiring pool if it is to maintain
educational quality.
5.
To attract and retain the best
faculty, the state must provide
compensation funding for new
positions at least equivalent
to the average of current CSU
employment offers.
6.
These new hires need to be made
without jeopardizing the employment
status of current lecturers.
7.
Annual funding require- ments for
this plan range from $4.5M to
$35.6M.
Members
of the task force made a joint presentation
of the plan to the CSULB Academic Senate
in September. This campus is in strong
support of the features of the plan, and
President Robert Maxson and Provost Gary
Reichard have taken steps to respond. The
campus had authorized 65 tenure track faculty
searches and based on the consultation,
that number has been increased to 85. All
other CSU campuses have been asked by the
Chancellor Reed to make similar commitments.
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