Bronx Cheers

Shared governance is worth celebrating at Bronx Community College.

By Frederick De Naples

At a time when, nationally, community colleges are increasing their reliance on contingent faculty, and nonacademics are increasingly attacking the tenure system, some community colleges—like Bronx Community College, City University of New York, where I teach—continue to follow the traditions of shared governance. The collective bargaining unit at CUNY that represents faculty and staff, the Professional Staff Congress, is both strong and involved in governance throughout the CUNY system. BCC, celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year, provides a working model that demonstrates the value of faculty participation in institutional governance.

 Since its founding in 1957, BCC has included fulltime faculty throughout the governance structure. Over the years, college presidents have selected many deans and other administrators from longtime BCC faculty (as well as others from outside the institution). This practice has continued even in times of upheaval within the CUNY system, such as the start of open admissions in 1970, the fiscal crisis in the mid1970s, and the contentious chancellorship of Anne Reynolds in the mid 1990s.

At BCC, the major governing committees—the senate and the Personnel and Budget Committee (which makes recommendations for tenure and promotion, among other functions)—work as advisory bodies to the president of the college. Nothing in the governance structure of BCC prevents the president from acting autocratically; in almost no circumstances, however, has any BCC president done so.

Faculty are involved in almost all aspects of college governance. The tenure and promotion process passes through two faculty-only subcommittees of the Personnel and Budget Committee at the departmental and divisional levels before members of the administration are involved, and faculty remain as majority voters at two more committee levels before a final recommendation is made to the president. All curricular changes, new courses, or new degree programs must be approved by the Curriculum Committee (a subcommittee of the senate), which is made up of a faculty representative from each academic department as well as student representatives, a dean of academic affairs, and a representative from student development. As with the tenure and promotion committees, the majority of the votes are held by the faculty. The Curriculum Committee makes its recommendations to the senate, which is composed of departmental representatives (faculty), students, administrators, and fifteen at-large faculty members; the majority of votes, again, is in the hands of the fulltime faculty.

Governance Structure

The senate and the Personnel and Budget Committee structures were established shortly after BCC was founded, and these bodies have helped maintain a mutually supportive working relationship between the faculty and the administration. The governance structure ensures extensive fulltime faculty participation in the college’s major functions, providing the administration with a strong sense of the faculty’s views on curricular and personnel matters. The direction or motivation of many of the processes begins at the departmental level and, with increasingly broad input from faculty, moves toward the president. There are, of course, some top-down directives, but for the most part, the actions of the president are informed by and reflect the will of the majority of the full-time faculty.

Another important factor in the relationship between the faculty and the administration is the very low turnover in the administration: the college has had four presidents, each of whom has served for at least ten years, as well as long-serving vice presidents and deans. The college has also been steadily replacing retirees with new full-time, tenure-track faculty. This commitment to maintaining, and in some departments increasing, the numbers of tenure-track faculty helps ensure that the faculty has a long-term interest in the college’s well-being.

What sets BCC apart from many other community colleges is the faculty participation—and leadership—at many levels throughout the college. The faculty role extends beyond matters of curriculum, tenure, and promotion. Faculty lead the major initiatives, such as the college’s general education and assessment projects, with minimal intrusions from deans. In addition to these academic projects, faculty members are involved in budget oversight for the college. The college’s senior vice president for administration and finance makes a monthly budget report to the college senate; members of the faculty also meet with the senior vice president and representatives from the budget office to discuss the college’s operating budget and short and long-term spending plans in more detail.

A different group of faculty members meets with the senior vice president for administration and finance and the senior vice president for academic affairs to allocate the discretionary budgets for the individual academic departments. These budgets, as most community college chairpersons can attest, are minuscule, but the participation of faculty in overseeing the allocation process provides transparency and minimizes (though it does not entirely erase) suspicions that the administration is hiding funds.

Role of Chairs

BCC department chairpersons are faculty members elected to three year terms by the fulltime members of their department (with ultimate approval by the college president). Chairs oversee faculty hiring, tenure, and promotion within their departments and provide an influential link between the administration and the instructional staff. The chairs make up the majority of votes on the college’s Personnel and Budget Committee and participate directly in all tenure and promotion decisions. The CUNY administration seems to recognize the chairs’ vital position: administrators have made persistent demands during contract negations to remove chairs from the bargaining unit and make them a part of the administration. So far, the Professional Staff Congress has successfully resisted this demand, and the chairs remain members of both the faculty and the union.

Chairs at BCC—and throughout CUNY—serve as conduits: they communicate directly with the administration and deliver administrative policies and practices to the faculty. It is a unique position, with many obligations to the faculty and the administration alike. In their relationship with the administration, chairs represent the concerns of their faculty and disciplines as well as the academic profession. At BCC, the chairs have years of teaching experience—they understand firsthand the difficulty of teaching in crowded classrooms, working in cramped or shared offices, and juggling teaching loads and research time. At the same time, as departmental administrators, chairs develop understanding of the larger workings of the college, gaining perspectives more familiar to deans, provosts, and presidents. Straddling the line between faculty and administration, chairs can effectively influence both academic and administrative functions.

Were chairs to be excluded from the union and no longer recognized as faculty, the shift in the power structure would not be advantageous to either the administration or the faculty. Neither the union nor the administration has explained (or imagined) what the process for establishing a new chairperson would be, but there are some likely scenarios. Chairs who lose their faculty status would probably be expected to work for twelve months (faculty are on leave during June, July, and August), and their salaries and benefits would be determined and reviewed by the college president (by contract, faculty receive annual salary increases).

Though some faculty members might still wish to be chairs despite such conditions, chairs would more likely be drawn from outside academic departments and faculty ranks. Thus, if chairs were excluded from the bargaining unit, most departments would be run by non-teaching educators, some of whom would have little understanding of faculty members’ disciplines and less concern for faculty issues. The change in status would create in the administration a new layer of managers, reporting mainly to deans. The faculty would probably be isolated or insulated from the administration by the chair, who in turn would be a spokesperson for the administration, not an advocate for faculty. At a college like BCC, and most likely throughout the CUNY system, such a change would curtail the efficacy of the governance structure.

While chairs, whether members of the union and faculty or not, will make the needs of their departments a top priority, those who are a part of the administration may be less effective than unionized faculty chairs in securing more tenure-track lines. Chairs who are faculty members are less susceptible to pressure from the administration to cut personnel costs by hiring part-time faculty and are more likely to focus their efforts on hiring full-time faculty who will make important contributions to the department. Faculty chairs are more likely to run their departments autonomously, rather than as extensions of the administration.

Contingent Faculty

 The hiring of contingent rather than tenure-track faculty is a threat to faculty governance throughout higher education but is acutely felt at community colleges. Full-time faculty who have the security of tenure are likely to have a vested interest in the governance of their colleges. A tenure-track position represents a commitment on the part of the college to support the professional development of the faculty member, and faculty members who achieve tenure (and promotion) have successfully become a part of the institutional culture. It is in the faculty member’s interest to participate in the life of the college.

Part- or full-time non-tenure-track faculty, on the other hand, do not experience the same level of institutional commitment and support; though they may wish to play a larger role, they have very little incentive to do so. When the majority of the faculty are contingent, the kind of shared governance that invigorates colleges like BCC would be very difficult to achieve. Community colleges do not have to be administration-driven, contingent-heavy institutions. At Bronx Community College, shared governance is a key value, and faculty, including chairs who are autonomous from the administration and who see themselves as part of the faculty, work hard to keep it that way.

Frederick De Naples is professor of English at Bronx Community College, City University of New York, where he has taught since 1996. He has chaired the English department since 2001. His e-mail address is frederick .denaples@bcc.cuny.edu.

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