A working Saturday...

We're going out to breakfast, then to the movie store. The plan is to rent a bunch of 80s movies to watch while Hubby grades and I write.

Before I start writing, I'll have to clean off my desk -- as it is full of other crap and I can't think when it is like that...

This makes me think about our schedule rules at BNCC - We used to be two institutions -- one was a technical school and the other a traditional community college. Sometime in the 90s (i.e. well before we moved back, but after I left in 1990) they merged the two schools into BNCC. This made sense, because the two campuses are across the street from one another...

The complaint from the technical faculty was that the CC faculty 'worked less' than they did. They saw our class schedules and office hours adding up to 20 hours per week and concluded that was the only work we do. I know this was the attitude, and probably still is in some ways, because I've had technical faculty tell me how easy my job is. Those of you who teach elsewhere know that a 5/5 load of 15 teaching hours per week isn't easy -- and that having 5 office hours is fairly generous, but not outrageous.

The AVP at the time put in a set of schedule rules. These rules prohibit back to back classes, mandate a 5-day per week presence on campus and mandate 1 class starting after 4:00 every other year. If you teach TWO evening classes or a weekend class, you are allowed a 4-day per week schedule.

The rules, to me, smack of not trusting folks to be professional and come to campus for a meeting if they don't have a class... they also assume the truth of the technical faculty's complaint.

When the AVP retired, the rules seemed to go away -- until recently. My dean has decided to enforce them -- sort of.

My question is how many technical faculty are spending all weekend doing professional stuff? How many of them were on campus during fall break grading? How many have taken grading to a professional conference, in the summer? Ironically, that was when the technical faculty told me that we only work 20 hours a week. I asked her if she wanted to grade my logic quizzes, because I'd already done my work for the week... she kind of got the picture. I know that others have the picture over there -- because I've talked to them about it. I don't think the rules are justified any more... We'll see what my dean has to say about it.