One thing is certain, Southwestern College will be a very different place on Feb. 1, 2016.
With 54 employees retiring this semester, a mad rush is under way to replenish the ranks. Southwestern College President Dr. Melinda Nish has pushed through a college-wide reorganization following the retirement of four deans. Social Science will be partnered with Arts and Communications, the Business programs that had been split up in 2012 will be reunited and teamed with applied Technology and Economics. Language and Literature will absorb Humanities. Health will be updated to Wellness and Exercise Science. Math and Science will remain the same.
“As it stands right now with our current enrollment and our programs, we think this is a stable structure,” Nish said. “We did it with the intention that it was not a contingency plan and that it is a stable structure and that is a big difference from what we did in 2012.”
Nish said all retiring faculty will be replaced, albeit with younger, less expensive personnel. A raise in the California Faculty Obligation Number (FON) will lead to hiring more full-time faculty, she said.
Nish said she is confident that this reorganization will be successful.
“We have got a line of ongoing money that can only be used to hire full-time tenure track faculty,” she said. “I must hire a minimum of seven full time faculty with that money plus I have 16 retirements. That is 23 faculty. We may even want to go a little further than 23, we may go up to 30.”
A Faculty Hiring Prioritization Committee recently ranked 52 requests for new and replacement faculty positions. Depending on available funding, the college will go down the list and advertise for tenure-track faculty positions. Top ranked positions are administration of justice, architecture, biology, English, communication, chemistry, sociology, art history, theatre arts and telemedia.
A total of seven full-time faculty will be hired using $824,000 allotted from the state and will partly be used to pay for adjunct instructors until the new faculty replace them.
“I don’t know if SWC has ever gotten an allotment like this,” said Nish.
Of the 54 employees leaving SWC, four of them are deans. Nish said it was priority to fill those spots in January.
Three deans have been reassigned.
Dr. Mink Stavenga will move from Instructional Support Services to the position of dean of the new School of Business and Technology. Dr. Mark Meadows asked to move from dean of the School of Social Science, Business and Humanities to the position of Director of Continuing Education. Mia McClellan was transferred from Dean of Student Services to Dean of Instructional Support Services.
“We have had to do research with reorganization because our practice is not consistent,” Nish said. “All of the management reassignments are voluntary. We do have right of assignment and we could force somebody to go into a certain position, but we were very clear that we wanted any reassignments to be voluntary and people who did not want to be reassigned were not going to be forced.”
Nish said Stavenga has a degree that relates to his choice of reassignment, and Meadows and McClellan volunteered for their new positions. Nish said McClellan went through training in Sacramento as part of her new assignment.
“Mia McClellan has a lot of experience in the student affairs side, so we aren’t moving her because she is doing a poor job, but we asked her ‘are you are interested’ and she decided it would be a new challenge and she wanted to do it,” Nish said. “None of this was because of poor job performance or discipline or anything like that.”
Deans for Student Services, the School of Math, Science and Engineering, the School of Wellness and Exercise Science, and the School of Arts, Communication and Social Science have yet to be filled. Interim deans are serving Arts and Communication and Student Services.
“Reorganizations are not going to make 100 percent (of the) people happy 100 percent of the time,” said Nish.
Eileen Zwierski, administrative assistant for the School of Arts and Communication, said she was concerned about the timing of the reorganization.
“I feel at this time we do not have the resources to accomplish this reorganization in a smooth way,” she said. “I feel services to faculty and students will be delayed, time lines will not be met and a lot of frustration will come from students and staff.”
Zwierski suggested the transitions be made during the summer.
“It takes time for the whole campus to go through a major transition like this,” she said.
Nish said these issues had been addressed.
“We are planning on making this transition for the start of the spring semester, that is our goal, and we are not changing it now,” she said.
In January hiring committees will begin to fill the 16 spots lost to retirees, said Nish. She said she would like the new deans to participate in the faculty hiring process.
“I want to get as many deans here as soon as possible so they go out there when we do the faculty hiring and they can sit in on those committees,” she said.