Merritt College: Request for Full Time Faculty Position

Merritt College: Request for Full Time Faculty Position

Department of Landscape Horticulture

Submitted by Chris Grampp

Chair, Landscape Horticulture

November 3, 2010

CRITERIA FOR FILLING CURRENT VACANCIES ORREQUESTING NEW FACULTY POSITIONS(Includes clarification of what is needed from these criteria)

Criteria 1.Percent of full-time faculty in department.

(Please show clearly the percent of full-time to part time faculty in the department)

1. Prior to Tom Branca retirement

Full-time instructors 2009-10 / 3 / 11% / FTEF: 44%
Adjunct instructors
2009-10 / 24 / 89% / FTEF: 56%

2. After Tom Branca retirement

Full-time instructors 2010-11 / 2 / 8% / FTEF 29%
Adjunct instructors 2010-11 / 24 / 92% / FTEF 71%

Criteria 2.Semester-end departmental enrollment pattern for last three years.(This is a retention measure; we want to know how many students enrolled and how many received grades, by semester, over the last three-year period. For Counselors and Librarians, answer this question by providing the semester-end College enrollment pattern for the last three years.)

Enrollment stats / fall 2007 / spring 2008 / fall 2008 / spring 2009 / fall 2009 / spring 2010
enrollments / 882 / 909 / 770 / 801 / 873 / 780
success / 710 / 709 / 585 / 627 / 638 / 579
success rate / 80.50% / 78% / 76% / 78.30% / 73.10% / 74.20%

Criteria 3.Meets established class size.(This is the productivity of this department and the classes currently being offered. At the very least, please provide the average number of students in this department or, in a similar class, over three years. For a counseling position, list the average number of student contacts for counselors at your College. For Librarians, you’ll need to put N/A under Criteria 3, because there is not a comparable measure here. However, it could be noted if the librarian will be “teaching” as part of his/her assignment. You could also note the number of hours the library is open and any other information, which the College believes to be pertinent for this criteria.)

Below are productivity statistics for the Landscape Horticulture Department from Fall 2007 to the present. Please note that the productivity numbers (column 5) may appear low when compared to academic classes, but in fact are held down only because so many of our classes have labs. We must restrict enrollment in labs to keep the classes manageable for the instructors, to maximize student success, and teach job-related skills in an effective manner.

Productivity stats / # of sections / enrollment / average class size / productivity / FTEF
fall 2007 / 32 / 882 / 28.4 / 14.9 / 6.96
spring 2008 / 32 / 909 / 24.1 / 15.72 / 6.94
fall 2008 / 29 / 770 / 27.6 / 15.07 / 6.45
spring 2009 / 33 / 801 / 26.5 / 14.08 / 7.23
fall 2009 / 31 / 873 / 25.2 / 19.11 / 6.77
spring 2010 / 29 / 780 / 26.9 / 18.53 / 6.37

Criteria 4.Percentage of full-time faculty in comparable departments at other colleges compared to part-time faculty. (Please show what the percentage of full-time faculty is in the other Colleges in our District; this could be full-time to part-time faculty at other colleges)

0%. There are no comparable departments at other Peralta colleges.

Criteria 5.Position is authorized and in the budget.(Please show where this position is coming from, i.e. general fund. [If so, is it replacing an incumbent or someone who retired, and, if so, name the person.] If it is categorical, clearly state the budget area.)

The college will fund this position out of the General Fund. The position will replace Tom Branca, who left the Landscape Horticulture Department in June, 2010 for interim dean of Math/Science.

Criteria 6.Upon justification to the District, a College may be granted a faculty position to start a new program or to enhance an existing one.(This information should be in the College’s Educational Plan and/or in Program Review. Please attach the reference from these two documents to this justification.)

A new FT hire will be instrumental in supporting our proposed AA in Landscape Architecture degree (start date, Fall, 2011; will be entered into Curricunet in Fall, 2010, and submitted to the State in January, 2011). Please see the Landscape Horticulture Department Updated Unit Plan for reference to this program.

Criteria 7.Additional Justification.(This is an opportunity for faculty, the department, or the College to add any additional points or reasons why the position should be approved.)

I am requesting a new full-time Landscape Horticulture instructor for four closely related reasons: 1)To provide support for our department’s diverse educational needs and objectives; 2) To help place our program on the cutting edge of the current green revolution; 3)To reach out to under-represented populations in order to better diversify our student population and afford employment opportunities;

4)To provide support for the uniquely complex operations of our 7.5 acre facility.

1)With respect to educational needs, the makeup of our faculty is not optimal for supporting student needs. We have 24 adjunct instructors (92%) and 2 full-time instructors (8%). While our adjunct faculty consists of outstanding instructors, these individualshave(by definition) limited availability to develop curriculum, revise and upgrade teaching materials, counsel students, coordinate class content with other Landscape Horticulture teachers, and make broader departmental and college contributions above and beyond teaching their classes. This extreme PT-FT ratio – 92% to 8% - breeds a level of fragmentation that is not conducive to student success. A third full time instructor would be able to approach his or her job from a far more comprehensive base than would several part-timers teaching the equivalent classes. A permanent instructor would have more time to revise readers and update course outlines, more opportunities to connect common themes running through our courses, more time to contribute to college affairs, and importantly, more time to counsel and advise students on their class work, their broader educational needs, and their career goals.

2)The field of Landscape Horticulture is in numerous ways right at the forefront of the green revolution. I have been in this field since the mid-1970s, and have seen nothing approaching the speed and enthusiasm with which new environmentally friendly technologies and outlooks are emerging. After languishing for years as marginalized endeavors, water conservation, low-flow irrigation, regional and recycled materials, green roofs, food production, and related sustainable practices are all at the forefront of our industry. To keep our department not just current, but at the leading edge of this huge and vital change, we need to upgrade curriculum, perform community outreach, facilitate career and employment opportunities, bring in speakers, host colloquiums, form liaisons with industry and professional groups, and more. To stay on the leading edge we need a faculty that has time, in addition to teaching, to develop and sustain professional connections, revise curriculum, perform community outreach, provide career counseling, and in general make a long-term commitment to our department. It is very hard to accomplish this task when over 90% of our faculty is part-time, is only paid for contact hours, and is otherwise employed.

3)The ethnic make-up of the Landscape Horticulture Department does not mirror that of the college, or the surrounding community. Statistics from 2004 – 2008 (from our 2009 Unit Plan) show that approximately 60% of our student body was white, 6% Asian, 4% African American, 5% Hispanic, and 1% Native American (with the remainder not identified). We are committed to reaching out to the community to attract a more diversified student body. Our charge here includes working to change public perceptions regarding scope of our profession, disseminating information in public schools about our program and field, reaching out to contractor to send their crews – the great majority of whom are Hispanic – to our department to learn job skills, introducing an English-Spanish language class for landscape professionals, hosting career days, building coalitions with community non-profits working on community gardens and food justice, and more. We will be much more successful at this outreach with the help of an additional full-time faculty member, since the position will provide time, resources, and a sustained commitment that is not available to our part-time instructors.

4) The Landscape Horticulture facility includes 7.5 acres of usable grounds, the purpose of which is to provide a living, breathing educational laboratory for our students. Though we have one full time and one part time grounds keeper, these two individuals cannot keep up with all the responsibilities required to meet our educational mission. A full time faculty member would be invaluable in bringing our facility up to its full potential, in developing plant community study areas (for example the native hill and Australian hill), in helping stage demonstration areas for irrigation, construction, and natural building projects, in developing outdoor classroom opportunities, in developing long-term resources for lab classes, in growing food for under-privileged citizens, and many more projects. Our facility can potentially become not just a learning lab, but a “best practices” demonstration grounds for the public, a place the Bay Area can look to for leadership in green technologies.

Conclusion: Based on our enrollments, our program has very high potential for growth. We continue to attract more and more students into our four certificate programs, and will likely attract a new group when we launch our AA Degree in Landscape Architecture this coming fall (2011). Our Permaculture program has grown by leaps and bounds, attracting a new, younger, and ethnically diverse student population. When favorable economic conditions allow us to offer all of our courses, we can barely find classrooms for every instructor. Until this past June (2010) we had three full-time instructors, but without a replacement for Tom Brancawe will continue to suffer from the fragmentation inherent in such a high part-time instruction rate. We cannot afford to slide backwards during this time of energetic and wide-reaching change in our discipline. Our goal is to nest all the aspects of our department – education, community outreach, cutting edge technology, and the potential for a vital living laboratory – under one common umbrella. A third full time faculty member is indispensible to this goal, and the addition of such a person will be an important step in serving our students, the local landscape profession, and the Bay Area community for years to come.

Respectfully submitted,

Chris Grampp

Chair, Landscape Horticulture Department

Merritt College