Adult Education and BCTC

Report on Adult Education for BCTC Faculty Council

Mary Davis, 4/12/07

Adult Education and BCTC

In 1998, the former CKTC petitioned Kentucky Adult Education (KYAE) for and was awarded the contract to provide adult education services in FayetteCounty which, until that time, had been administered for over thirty years by Fayette County Public Schools. One pivotal selling point that brought this now 1.2 million dollar yearly grant to the college was KYAE’s desire to fund a program that would provide students with a seamless transition into post-secondary education. The BCTC Adult Education Program does not see obtaining a GED as the final goal, but rather a springboard for further educational training.

Adult Educators as Faculty

The first Adult Education instructors at CKTC were hired as continuing status faculty. In 2001 our status was changed to contract faculty since our employment was/is contingent upon annual renewal of the grant from KYAE.

In spring of 2005, Dr. Kerley met with the Adult Education faculty and announced his intention to reclassify our faculty including instructors, assistant professors, and associate professors as staff. The AE faculty, many of whom began working for the college from our program’s inception in 1998, protested and we drafted a position paper to Dr. Kerley detailing why we should retain our faculty status. He reconsidered, and allowed the AE faculty to keep our faculty status with the caveat that any future Adult Education instructors would be hired as staff. Today, Adult Education has eleven full-time faculty and one full-time professional teaching staff person as well as numerous regular part-time faculty and staff. We are supervised by the Director of Adult Education who oversees the adult education grant and its budget and is responsible for working with KYAE to make sure our program meets our enrollment goal of 5,559 students as well as our performance indicators.

Non-Divisional

Because each of our faculty members teach classes on the variety of disciplines ie: math, science, reading, writing, social studies, English as a Second Language, placing any of us in one particular division is not practical. We are therefore categorized as “non-divisional teaching faculty”.

Committee Representation

Of particular concern to the members of the Adult Education Faculty is our lack of representation on the Advisory Committee on Promotions. Most of our Faculty have been through or are going through the promotion process. Because we are non-division and most of the BCTC faculty members aren’t familiar with our responsibilities, questions often arise during review of our promotion portfolios.

We would like for Faculty Council to support AE being allowed a seat on the ACP as a “Non-Divisional/Teaching Faculty” representative, in addition to rather than in lieu of, any representatives from the LRC Faculty. We feel that a representative from Adult Education could lend some expertise and offer clarification as needed during this process. One of our current faculty members has achieved the rank of Full Professor and did so by going through the appeals process with KCTCS. Her experiences would make her an extremely capable asset to the committee.

In regards to the KCTCS Policies and Procedures, Nancy Ray of KCTCS e-mailed the following clarification regarding the language of who will be given a seat on the ACP (CACP):

From: Ray, Nancy (KCTCS)
Sent: Tuesday, May 23, 2006 9:33 AM
To: Tiedeman, Kristin L (Bluegrass); Lucas, Joan C (KCTCS)
Cc: McFarlin, Monica M (KCTCS); DeAtley, Terri E (KCTCS)
Subject: RE: policies and procedures for promotion committees

Kristin—I’m glad you reminded me of this question. Joan and I have talked about the issue and agree that the parenthetical (librarians/counselors) in 2.6.2.5 is intended for illustration of non-teaching and probably more properly termed non-division faculty. Thus any faculty similarly situated would be eligible to participate in the selection of the non-teaching/non-divisional member—or to be the non-divisional rep on the College promotion committee.

Nancy

Chad Mueller also discussed the issue with several other KCTCS Staff and was told the following (excerpt of full e-mail):

From:Mueller, Chad E (Bluegrass)
Sent: Wed 3/28/2007 3:57 PM
To: Binzer, Michael A (Bluegrass); Saunier, Peggy (Bluegrass); Carey, Sandra M (Bluegrass)
Cc: James, Charles R (Bluegrass); Freyman, Marcia (Bluegrass); Davis, Mary (Bluegrass); Tiedeman, Kristin L (Bluegrass)
Subject: RE: KCTCS Interpretation on KCTCS AP&P 2.6.2.5 and AE on Faculty Committees

….The staff folks who work with Senate Council and Rules (Jennifer Geouge and Jan Muto, who thendeferred to Joan Lucas)seemed to feel that the intent of the KCTCSpolicies(relevant sections found at ) was that there would be a minimum representation of those kinds of groups. They expressed that differences in language, like "non-divisional" instead of "non-teaching", and additional representation would be appropriate to address an individual College'scircumstances. I specifically brought up the representation on the BCTC Faculty Council and Rules Committee (rep from each division, from the LRC, and from any non-div group of ten or more);again, they felt that our College should be able to use that kind of representation on our Advisory Committee on Promotion, if we so desired.

AE Report 4/12/07; Page 1/3