FLI Audio TRAP 10A Instruction
3. If you make the cut then you'll receive a "Flight Selection Notification" including instructions to "Check-in" and make a bee line for the terminal (needless to say you should already be "travel ready" (bags packed and a plan to get to the terminal in time)). If you don't make the cut then you won't receive this email!
FLI Audio TRAP 10A Instruction
Aside from the above, FTCC (in violation of SACS) has no true faculty council or senate. All decisions are made by the president and AVP and then passed down with no faculty input. This applies to everything from how the Blackboard template will be arranged to class size to faculty time spent on campus. Almost none of the administrators have any academic experience--several come straight from the military, some have MBAs, some taught briefly as adjuncts before moving into administration. There is therefore little regard for the needs of faculty. An example of this--FTCC has no final exam week. The last week of school is a regular teaching week. Grades are due by noon the day following the last class period. Instructors carry a 6 class per semester load with each class containing about 35 students. If an instructor has 6 full semester classes, he/she must either give the final exam early or try to grade a phenomenal amount of exams in an 18 hour period. Likewise, many faculty are put in offices that are shared between 2-3 people or in cubicles. None of this is conducive to working--the preparation of class materials or grading--and yet the expectation is that you will spend a great deal of time in these crowded spaces. On 11/24, the Dean of Arts and Humanities emailed faculty the following: "Some things are best left alone. There are times when the benefits of an arrangement outweigh the cost. Notice that there is no such thing as an off campus day. I realize that some faculty are able to schedule classes, office hours, and division hours over four days and benefit from an off campus day. It is my understanding that day is still part of the 40 hour workweek. Please read the quotes from the policy and consider the implications. Faculty Handbook Pg. 43 "The "normal" workweek including instruction, preparation, and administration shall be 40 clock hours per week." "An instructional non-teaching work day is 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m." "A minimum of one hour per day must be scheduled on at least four separate days of the week. Exceptions to this requirement may be approved by the appropriate Dean." "Divisional Hours: In addition to five (5) office hours, full-time faculty is required to complete five (5) divisional hours per week. Divisional hours are to be agreed upon by the appropriate Division Chair/Department Chair/Program Coordinator and forwarded to the appropriate academic dean by the fifth day of each term. These hours should be conducted on campus unless approved otherwise by the appropriate academic dean. Divisional hours can be modified as required and communicated as described above." FTCC is also greatly expanding its "High School Connections" program. FTCC instructors are being sent out to the high schools throughout the entire county to teach dual credit classes. Some of these schools are nearly an hour away from the college, but unless one travels to the college then to the HS then to the college, no compensation for mileage will be given. Additionally, since adjuncts often cannot to go the high schools during the day, adjuncts are given preference for all online classes and classes on campus when full time instructors are farmed out. The high schools, not the college, determine what days and times classes will be held. An average schedule for many instructors Fall 2016 will include 2-3 college classes every morning and 90 minute high school classes every afternoon 4 days a week. The instructors who do best at FTCC are those who give only multiple choice exams and completion grades for all writing assignments and who show videos in class rather than actually teaching. As far as pay, FTCC is competitive, but once you are hired you cannot expect to get much by way of raises. And, you also cannot expect much by way of breaks during the semester. Faculty often are required to hold work days 8-4 when students are off. It leaves little time for getting caught up or for taking care of any personal business. There are some nice things about FTCC--the grounds are lovely and the buildings are clean. But, faculty have no voice--they can't weigh in on strategies to deal with retention issues or even on whether or not high school classes will be increased at the loss of our regular curriculum students. If you work here, you will be nothing more than a wage slave. Your degrees, the professional honors you have achieved, none of these matter. You are a cog in the machine and the view of the upper levels of the administration is that you are easily replacable--because it doesn't matter how shoddy the product we are putting out; it only matters that we increase enrollment and that, having admitted people who have no business being in a college classroom, we retain them at all costs to avoid federal penalties. The leadership of the college is broken but given the circumstances there is no way to fix it.
I taught there during 2009-2010 academic year with a great team of administrators and faculty and wonderful students. The academic leadership completely turned over while I was there. The new provost, who was fired from her previous job, laid off a number of the original faculty and instructional staff, mostly while they were on vacation abroad. Several of them had to go through rounds of communication with the board that oversees the AUW Support Foundation in order to get their belongings returned to them, and not all of them were returned. The provost and founder/Acting VC declared there would be no Academic Senate. The students live in crowded conditions with no mental health professionals, despite the fact that many of them come from conflict zones and one of the programs their publicity materials boast of - a conflict resolution program between SInhalese and Tamil students from Sri Lanka - was carried out by the counselor they have since let go. The campus has suffered from two outbreaks of dengue fever. The closest quality medical care is at an American hospital several hours from the city, and that facility has limited resources for handling emergencies. The location in Chittagong is difficult to get to and requires adding an extra day coming and going for international travel. If you are considering working here, be sure to search blogs and Facebook for more information, and ask about the retirement plan.
An old guy, supposedly the former department chair, who smelled of flatulence picked me up from the airport. He proceeded to give me a tour of the two-horse town, which included instructions on how to drive ("slow, slow, slow, like a snail"). The faculty were nice enough, though they kept asking me whether I skiied, snowboarded or bicycled. I humored them and said hat I did all of them, even though I didn't (and still don't). All they could talk about was how wonderful the area was for these recreational activities. It's like they didn't want a quality scholar or teacher but instead they wanted a workout partner. When I met with the students in private all they did was complain about how the department chair was trying to brainwash them with his "liberal nonsense" and how he took no prisoners when it came to embarrassing students who came to class late, even when they had a bonafide excuse. They ended up hiring the inside candidate, which was a relief to me. I got a PFO letter about 6 months later. When I told a fellow panelist at a conference that I had interviewed there, he shared this atrocious story about someone he knew who had taught on a temp contract in the same department, was eventually fired and harassed on the way out. I'm glad that I dodged that bullet!