Did we get more 1A and 1AS classes? Yes, but…

Hi Community,

As an English faculty member and AFT enrollment coordinator, I want to share an update on our department’s ongoing efforts to add sections for the sake of our students. I also want to encourage faculty in other departments to work with me and the rest of the AFT enrollment team to advocate for enrollment growth in your own departments.

Following our action at the May 30 Board meeting, English faculty, students, and AFT staff met over the summer with Interim Chancellor Bailey as well as Board of Trustee members and candidates to continue asking for more English 1A and 1AS classes, given that, for three semesters in a row, too few of these classes were scheduled to meet student need. By early summer, the waitlists were filling, and the writing was on the wall.

But by the beginning of the semester, our efforts paid off! The administration added a total of five late start 1A and 1AS classes to serve 155 of the students piling onto waitlists and add-request lists, and into our classrooms. Last week, these five new classes filled up quickly, but still, many more students were trying to add than we could seat. Add requests and walk-ins continued, and counselors were dismayed to have to tell students they might not get the 1A they had advised them to take. A student in the Statistics coming in after my 1A said, “Hey are you an English teacher? I need 1A!”

The English Department is currently calculating how many students were locked out, but I have seen many pages worth of names on the department secretary’s screen and 50 alone from one late start class.

As this fall marks the third in a three-semester trend of scheduling far too few English 1A and 1AS classes to meet student demand, you would think someone higher up would have seen it coming. Why weren’t these five late-start classes (and more) scheduled in May? Why haven’t laid off tenured faculty been reinstated to teach them? (Why were so many English faculty laid off in the first place?)

To make matters worse, the college had not informed laid off faculty that they needed to seek certification equivalency in order to teach these online courses. (Why not?) So, at the last minute, the tough decision was made that current faculty would take overload assignments while our tenured and part time colleagues were kept out. So, while it’s good news that students were served, the result was a last-minute band-aid solution that fell short of a strategic, student-centered or labor-respecting plan.

We did not get everything our students need, but the progress we made is a testament to the work we can do as faculty in leading AFT’s enrollment campaign. What will happen in spring? We have a role to play in determining the answer. If English’s story sounds like what you are facing in your department, get in touch! Working together to advocate for more sections where students need them, we can achieve results that are better for students, faculty, and the college.

Lizzie Brock, English faculty (brocklizzie@gmail.com)