COFO Faculty Equity Statement

We, the members of the Council of Faculty Organizations (COFO), recognize that the part-time and full-time faculty members of the California Community College System share common professional interests. The core of this common interest is our responsibility to provide educational opportunities of the highest quality to our students. To accomplish that purpose full- and part-time faculty must communicate effectively with each other, share institutional responsibilities and rewards, and create an academic community that is based on mutual respect.

Part-time faculty must be recognized as competent, responsible and productive members of a distinguished and honorable profession. At the present time these conditions do not uniformly exist in the community colleges of California.

Providing students an excellent education and instituting fair working conditions for part- time faculty are complementary objectives. To this end, COFO supports the right of part-time faculty to participate in organizations and activities that shape the direction of the individual community college. All faculty should participate in departmental functions, assume organizational responsibilities, and contribute to the general well-being of the institution.

Full- and part-time faculty are required to meet the same minimum qualifications for employment and should be hired and evaluated using comparable processes. Students should have reasonable access to all faculty members - both full- and part-time. Since full- and part- time faculty have the same responsibilities to students, part-time faculty members should have the same support services, office space, choice of educational materials, and opportunities for professional development as their full-time colleagues.

Part-time faculty should be accorded fair compensation, professional respect and due process. It is the role of the legislature, first and foremost, to protect part-time faculty from discriminatory treatment. It is further the recognized role and responsibility of individual bargaining agents to make the contractual gains that will benefit part-time faculty which in turn will improve the educational quality of the institutions that employ them. However, we, the representatives to COFO, urge support of the following rights for part-time faculty; pro-rate pay, contractual consideration for full-time positions, health benefits, seniority or re-hire rights, paid office hours, legitimate STRS pension opportunities and true professional status relating to teaching and learning issues.

We view the need for improving these conditions as self-evident, and we are confident that better communication and mutual respect between full- and part-time faculty, as well as frank discussions of these labor and educational issues, will lead to changes that will benefit community colleges and full-time faculty as well as the part-time faculty who are directly affected.

Comments, questions, or any other input on this equity statement? E-mail the FACCC Board of Governors and Staff

Faculty Association of California Community Colleges, 1023 11th Street, Sacramento, CA 95814  (916) 447-8555  Fax (916) 447-0726   faccc@aol.com  www.faccc.org