Adjuncts consider surveying morale

Media communications Adjunct Jerry Townsend explains the leadership positions up for election during the Adjunct Faculty Council meeting Tuesday. Marina Garcia

Council elects new officers.

By Emily Rodriguez

erodriguez734@student.alamo.edu

Members of Adjunct Faculty Council discussed conducting a survey to measure morale among adjuncts in a meeting Tuesday.

“What is our morale like really? Is it just the few people that we’re around that make it look like it’s really dropped tremendously in the last year,” media communications Adjunct Jerry Townsend asked the council.

He suggested a comparison to a survey conducted in the last two years.

In a Wednesday interview Townsend said he has composed a draft of a survey to email to council members.

The survey will be discussed in the October meeting and distributed sometime that month.

Townsend said lower morale is because of lack of support for adjuncts on the board of trustees.

“I believe in the last two years the adjunct faculty has lost a vast amount of administrative support,” he said.

Townsend said there are two causes for the decrease in support: the retirement of Ruben Flores as dean of evening and extended services and the departure of Jessica Howard, vice president of academic affairs, in 2012.

“Dean Flores was our standard bearer among the administrators for 15 years. In the meetings of those who lead this college, he was speaking up for adjunct faculty in ways that we will never even know about,” he said. “While Jessica Howard was in that chair, she was an asset. I could go to her and things would happen.”

Townsend said the council needs to find a way to overcome the lack of support for adjuncts or find a new administrator who will act in their best interests.

“We have been shown in dramatic fashion that we are expendable, exposable and not important to those who lead this college,” he said. “You are disheartening us, discouraging us and making us not want to teach here anymore.”

Also, the council elected a new chair, vice chair, recording secretary and parliamentarian to three-year, renewable terms.

English Adjunct Amanda Martin was nominated for chair by Randi Wayland of kinesiology and Jeanette Bunch of student development. Martin was elected without opposition.

Student development Adjunct Karen Tanguma nominated herself for vice chair; ESL Adjunct Jim Yates seconded the nomination.

According to the council’s bylaws, vice chairs are responsible for presiding over meetings when the chair is absent and provides information to The Ranger, KSYM-FM 90.1 and the public relations office about council activities.

Tanguma said she has experience with public relations and working with journalists and was elected without opposition.

Wayland self-nominated for recording secretary and was unopposed.

The job is to keep the minutes of council meetings and executive sessions, provide and post the minutes online for adjuncts, maintain a current council membership list and preserve records and a chronological file of all minutes.

Martin nominated for parliamentarian absent math Adjunct Nancy Roell.

Townsend said, “That is what she likes to do. If she’s not excited or doesn’t want to do it, she can always turn us down. Then we can elect someone else. If she will do it, she’ll do a good job of it.”

Roell told The Ranger Thursday that she will accept.

To elect officers, the council must have a quorum of at least five members. Six of the 12 members attended.

Yates is not an official member, but his attendance was not needed to vote.

The next council meeting is 5:30 p.m. Oct. 22 in Room 209 of Loftin.