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A Newsletter for Montgomery College Part-Time Faculty
Produced by the Rockville Campus Evening-Weekend Office
Gail Youth, Editor May 2014, Volume 4, Issue 17 Katie Torkashvan, Layout
The Evening Weekend News
1
The Rockville Campus held its 9th Annual Part-time Faculty Appreciation
Reception in the lobby of the Robert E. Parilla Performing Arts Center on April
29th. The event, at which nearly 100 faculty, staff and administrators gathered to
celebrate the campus part-time faculty, was presented by the Evening Weekend
Office. The Vice President and Provost of the Rockville campus, Dr. Judy
Ackerman, welcomed attendees to the celebration where milestone length of
service achievements were noted. Departments recognized the exceptional
service and accomplishments of individual part-time faculty members.
Reception attendees were entertained throughout the event by a faculty jazz trio
-- Rockville music professors Alvin Trask, Jake Sheffer, and Oliver Albertini.
Rockville Part-time Faculty Appreciation Reception
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Rockville Part-time Faculty Appreciation Reception
3
I’ve had a fantastic response to the reissue of the newsletter and want to thank all of you for your words of
encouragement, and for the WONDERFUL submissions for this latest issue – our last of the spring 2014
semester. Readers, I hope you enjoy the interesting information we’ve got on tap this issue. I hope, too, that
this encourages many more of you to send me items that are of interest and importance to the College’s
Adjunct community. The first newsletter of the fall 2014 semester will be produced in September. Send
anything you would like considered for publication to me at: [email protected]. Have a
GREAT remainder of the semester, and a rejuvenating summer! Best regards, Gail
We’ve had a few suggestions, but are looking for some additional possibilities. Please send any serious
contenders to [email protected]. We will choose and use something for the
September newsletter, first of the fall semester.
Submissions thus far include:
“The Adjunct Express”
"Part-Time Raptors' Roost"
"The Talon: a Newsletter for Part-Time Faculty"
SAVE THESE DATES:
Monday – Sunday May 12-18 Final Exam Week
Friday May 23 Commencement
Monday May 26 Official beginning of summer session
Monday May 26 Memorial Day; College closed
Tuesday May 27 Summer I session classes begin
Friday July 4 Independence Day; College closed
Monday August 18 Faculty return for professional days/meetings
Monday August 25 fall semester classes begin
Monday September 1 Labor Day ; College closed
Name that Newsletter
Lifelong Learning Institute,
[http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/wdce/ce/lifelonglearning.html]a non-credit program under the
Workforce Development and Continuing Education, offers intellectually stimulating classes to individuals
ages 50+. Seeking instructors to teach short-term courses (daytime/evening) in History, Literature,
Politics, Arts, Popular Science for Spring 2015 Semester. Hourly compensation rate. If interested, please
send your resume to Natasha Sacks, [email protected].
Lifelong Learning Institute Seeks Instructors
From the Editor
4
Currently, Matthew is the Vocational Training Coordinator for Community Services for Autistic Adults and
Children (CSAAC) in Montgomery Village, MD. In this role, Matthew is responsible for all design stages—from in-
ception to execution—for the program of vocational training for over 130 adults with autism as they learn and master
work-place skills. CSAAC serves over 300 children and adults with autism through a variety of programs including
early intervention, educational, and adult-vocational and residential supports. The individuals served by CSAAC all
share a diagnosis of autism, but the similarities end there. In his role at CSAAC, Matthew has observed, interacted
with, and instructed many individuals across a spectrum of abilities, and he has devised programs to meet the needs
of a broad swath of learners.
From this experience, Matthew brings an individualized, student-centered approach to his classroom teaching at
Montgomery College. Like the programs he designs to teach job skills to individuals with autism at CSAAC, Matthew
works to leverage students’ individual strengths within his classrooms at the College, beginning by teaching stu-
dents “where they are” and helping to scaffold instruction and assessments to meet their varying levels of need and
independence.
In addition to teaching, Matthew also facilitates a variety of professional development workshops through the
College’s Center for Teaching and Learning. He has instructed faculty on developing differentiated instructional
practices, and he has lectured on the unique psyche of the Millennial generation. His next project is to inform faculty
and staff of the unique needs of the autism community; look out for these sessions offered through CTL some time in
the fall semester.
Matthew holds his Bachelor’s degree in English Literature, and his Master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction, both from the University of Maryland. He contributes articles regularly to the Autism Spectrum News and
is often quoted in web-based and print-based publications.
Matthew Ratz has been an adjunct professor of English Composition at
Montgomery College for eight consecutive semesters. He began teaching EN 101 in
the fall of 2010, and has taught all the courses within the College’s composition
sequence—from EN001 to EN102—since then. Outside of MC, Matthew has held a
variety of roles, including some that are rather unique.
Many part-time faculty members come to Montgomery College after some class-
room teaching experience in the secondary setting. Matthew had his fair share of that as a middle and high school English teacher for over five years; for two years at
Poolesville High School, for one year at Truesdell Educational Campus in DC, and
for two years at the Yeshiva of Greater Washington, Boys’ Division. But Matthew has
also had additional professional experiences that inform his practice at MC. Matthew Ratz
Faculty Spotlight on Matthew Ratz, M.Ed.
Adjunct Professor of English Composition
The Evening-Weekend Office Relocation
The Evening-Weekend Office /Part-time Faculty Office on the Rockville campus has moved to a
new location - - HU 008 . It is still on the ground floor of the Humanities building, but is now
located just across the hall from its previous location. Please stop in and visit!
5
Despite some good intentions, colleges and universities are full of seemingly intractable systemic problems, which
are too severe and under-reported today. For example, about 80% of enrolled students in 2-year public colleges nev-
er graduate their current college. The many problems not only have powerful cumulative adverse effects on students
but also on faculty. What is the primary cause of such problems?
As with other institutions, university and college weaknesses and problems are primarily caused by the misguided
actions or inaction of top management. It should be noted from the start that there are exceptions to this thesis, and it
appears that Dr. Pollard is one of those positive exceptions.
Today’s “Crisis in Management” and Leadership in Organizations
Let’s look at a broad, historic business model first. While the scholarship on workplace leadership and management
theory continues to foster the critical importance of “empowering” workers for improved productivity, top managers
rarely seem to follow that advice! Gary Hamel writes in Harvard Business Review: “Finally, there’s the cost of tyranny.
The problem isn’t the occasional control freak; it’s the hierarchical structure that systematically disempowers
lower-level employees.”[1] Similarly, Warren Bennis gets to the heart of the matter when he writes “Successful
leadership is not about being tough or soft, sensitive or assertive, but about a set of attributes. First and foremost is
character.”[2] Clearly, today’s typical managers need much more character.
When top management enables a toxic human relations’ environment in an organization, that dysfunctional culture
flows downward through all levels of management. The result: without their necessarily even being aware of it, many
managers often treat employees deplorably.
Descriptions of management and leadership shortcomings, wrongdoing, and best practices are the subjects of
thousands of books written by the greatest experts on “team building,” “participative management,” “corporate
democracy,” and the like. Authors Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman write in their book, First Break All the Rules:
What the Worlds’ Greatest Managers Do Differently:
People don’t leave jobs, they leave managers. If employees don’t get along with their managers, don’t like
them, or don’t respect them, they will leave a company despite a high salary or great benefits. A bad
manager is a big factor in employee performance. A good manager, no matter the salary, will inspire loyalty.
[3]
Many managers seem to believe that “managing” people means being tough, critical, and punitive to their subordi-
nates. This, of course, has been empirically proven to be untrue. In Forbes On-Line, Eric Jackson writes that weak
managers “ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn’t completely behind them... Hesitant managers have a choice: Get
with the plan or leave.”[4] What can employees (e.g., faculty) do to survive such managers in the workplace?
Unionism has made a powerful difference in the lives of working men and women, including college and university
professors. Labor-management conflict has been at the heart of the unionization movement for more than 100 years.
The history of the organized labor movement is characterized by the slow, painful emergence of consolidated
workers from the stranglehold of management degradation, abuse, and violence. (Of course, here, MC already has
negotiated with SEIU local 500 some improvements in adjunct faculty working conditions.)
School Managers Must Truly Lead to Avoid Marginalizing Adjunct Faculty
Written by Daniel Hirschhorn
6
Corporatization of Higher Education and Adjunct Faculty Alienation
One of the major problems resulting from weak management and leadership in higher education is the insignificant way school admin-
istrators treat and compensate instructors. Administrators at colleges and universities focus too little on their stakeholders' (i.e., students
and faculty) needs and too greatly on their own personal needs, career goals, and on revenue generation. This approach has been
called the “corporatization” of higher education, and it is part and parcel to America’s ongoing crisis in management. Fair Employment
Week says
The threat to quality higher education and academic freedom created by the growth of for-profit colleges, the “corporatization”
of private and public non-profit colleges and universities, and the corresponding increased use and abuse of contingent aca-
demic labor (i.e., adjuncts) continues to be a growing worldwide problem.[5]
Jennifer Washburn posits "truly new and dangerous is the degree to which market forces have penetrated into the heart of academia
itself, causing American universities to look and behave more and more like for-profit commercial enterprises."[6] School administra-
tions at the highest levels are aware of all this. After all, they created the system, and they plan and
implement programs. Management would simply argue that adjunct compensation is a function of labor supply and demand. This may
be true, but it is not right. And it does not cost more to treat adjuncts with respect and fairness and afford them due process.
In March 2014, PBS Newshour broadcast a story about the horrific plight of adjunct professors.[7] One main theme: many
adjuncts live off welfare today! The administrative response: “Well, then they should get a different job.” As one professor put it in the
Commentary to “Letters to Editor” of a Chronicle of Higher Education article, “The school policies that control
adjunct hiring, maintenance, and firing are turn of the century. Their labor policies are unfair, disrespectful, immoral and
unethical. Academic freedom and planning creativity are mostly gone now.”[8] The repression and alienation of professors can only
make us less effective in teaching and achieving our educational mission.
Management often has no commitment to, or compassion for its workforce. Those low in the “pecking order” are treated the worst.
Managers must lead not just manage. Real leadership requires the supportive, ethical, and fair treatment of workers, including faculty
members. Simply put, this is the right thing to do—and it’s good for business.
[1] Hamel, Gary. “First, Let's Fire All the Managers.” Harvard Business Review at http://hbr.org/2011/12/first-lets-fire-all-the-managers/
ar/pr
[2] Bennis, Warren. (2004) “The Character of Leadership.” The Power of Character. Eds. Michael S. Josephson and Wes Hanson. Joseph-
son Institute: Center of Business Ethics.
[3] Buckingham, Marcus and Curt Coffman. First Break All the Rules: What The Worlds’ Greatest Managers Do Differently. From “Why
Your Employees are Leaving.” Forbes on line at http://www.forbes.com/sites/reneesylvestrewilliams/2012/01/30/why-your-employees
-are-leaving/
[4] Jackson, Eric. (01/02/2012) Forbes, Investing. Downloaded 3/18/2014 from www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/01/02/the-
seven-habits-of-spectacularly-unsuccessful-executives/
[5] Storer, Chris. (2013) “A Brief History of Campus Equity.” Fair Employment Week. CEW/FEW 2005 Central Coordinatory at
www.campusequityweek.org/CampusEquityWeek/history.htm
[6] Washburn, Jennifer. (2006) University, Inc.: The Corporate Corruption of Higher Education. Basic Books (p. 140)
[7] PBS Newshour. (March 2014) “Is Academia Suffering from ‘Adjunctivitis’? Low-Paid Adjunct Professors Struggle to Make Ends Meet,”
at http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/is-academia-suffering-adjunctivitis.
[8] Rogers, Donald. (2010) “Salary Surveys Should Include Adjunct Faculty Members.” Chronicle of Higher Education at
http://chronicle.com/article/article-content/65564/%E2%80%8E
This is the second year that faculty evaluations have been totally electronic. In an effort to help students fill out their online evalua-
tions, please provide them time in class, if your class is computer-equipped, or at a minimum provide them with the following infor-
mation to assist them with navigating the site where they are to complete the evaluations:
“You can submit your course evaluations via the Simply Voting website. Even though some of the language on the site refers to
ballots and voting, don’t worry. Evaluations are just a type of voting.
1. Link to https://mc.simplyvoting.com in your browser to get the Online Voting home page. Link to https://mc.simplyvoting.com
in your browser to get the Online Voting home page.
2. Click the green Login button in the Welcome section.
A My MC log in page will display.
3. Log in with your usual My MC username and password, and the Online Voting page will display.
Note that your log in information will never be saved or attached to your evaluation responses. Evaluations are 100% anonymous. The
log in is necessary to restrict the evaluations to students who registered for a credit course during this semester.
4. In the “Current Ballots” section, click the desired Faculty Evaluations link. (The link will indicate the month and term year that
the course ends).
A ballots page will display showing the list of course evaluation links that have been set up for your credit courses this semester.
5. Click on a link to open the evaluation page for whichever course you want to evaluate.
6. Complete the evaluation.
7. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Select another section or submit your responses” link at the very top or very
bottom of the evaluation form.
You’ll be returned to the ballot page that lists all of your course evaluations. If you have more course to evaluate, you can select them as
desired and complete them in the same way. Otherwise, you can submit your evaluation(s) as follows…
8. At the bottom ballots page, click in the Submit Ballot section.
You’ll see a confirmation page showing you all the answers you selected in all of the evaluations you’ve completed.
9. Scroll to the Submit Ballot section at the bottom of the page and click . You’ll get the following success note.
10. Optional. Just under the success note, you’ll also see a Current ballots section. It will contain a link that reads “Send Confirma-
tion To Professors” link at the far right. You can e-mail a confirmation page to your instructor to indicate that you’ve submitted an
evaluation. The confirmation e-mail will only contain your name and the course title and course number. It will not contain your
evaluation responses.
But, again, you are never required to e-mail a confirmation. Typically you do this if your instructor is giving extra credit for submit-
ting evaluations, and further, only if you feel comfortable doing so. Click the “Send Confirmation To Professors” link to get a
checklist of your courses. Then select the course/instructor to which you want to send a confirmation. Then click the green Send
button.
11. To log out, click the Logout button at the top of the page.”
7
Info to Help Students Complete Online Faculty Evaluations
Many faculty members ask where the starting point is for teaching online. Montgomery College adjunct faculty members who want to learn how to teach online and receive a certificate have two training opportunities that can start the process: the Certificate for
Online Adjunct Teaching (COAT) course, or Online Teaching, MC’s own course for preparing faculty to teach online. Although the
end results of these training classes are similar, each is different.
The Certificate for Online Adjunct Teaching (COAT) is a professional development course offered by MarylandOnline for instructors
who wish to learn how to teach online. MC is a member of the MarylandOnline (MOL) consortium. COAT is open to any faculty
members in higher education and counts among its alumni hundreds of students from all over the country. COAT has been growing
steadily since 2010 and its certificate is widely considered a valuable credential among adjunct and full time faculty alike. COAT is
fully online and costs $300 for all Montgomery College faculty members, and $600 for students outside of Maryland. COAT terms are
9 weeks in length and are scheduled throughout the year. For more on COAT please contact Buddy Muse at
[email protected] or see http://www.marylandonline.org/coat/ . MC faculty who want to teach online outside of
Montgomery College might want to consider COAT.
Online Teaching is Montgomery College’s training course that instructs how to design and deliver online courses at MC. Hundreds
of MC faculty members have completed Online Teaching. Those who want to teach online at Montgomery College must take Online
Teaching and have 1) the approval of the dean for their discipline and 2) a course to develop and deliver that is not already online.
Online Teaching is seven weeks in length and is delivered mostly online but there are some face-to-face meetings. Previous
experience with using Blackboard as a supplement to a traditional face-to-face course is a requirement of Online Teaching. NOTE 1:
an instructor with prior experience in building and delivering online courses can “test out” of Online Teaching. NOTE 2: faculty who are scheduled to teach a “Common Course”, a master course that many faculty use, can take Common Course training instead of
Online Teaching.
Online Teaching is free to faculty and staff of Montgomery College. For more on Online Teaching (or Common Course training)
please contact Tom Cantu at [email protected].
Faculty at Montgomery College are using Blackboard in greater numbers to enhance the face-to-face course experience, but there
are still some questions regarding the process. As a reminder, faculty at the College who are not currently teaching either online or
blended course sections need to have completed Blackboard Essentials prior to requesting a supplemental course site. We know
more and more new faculty come to MC with Blackboard experience already under their belts. However, the prerequisite of Black-
board Essentials does apply to everyone, experienced or not. Fortunately, there is a wonderful online version of Essentials that has
been widely used, well-received, and takes very little time to complete. You can sign up for the training through MC Learns and be
using Blackboard to supplement in no time at all. One note: Blackboard and MyMC Course Tools cannot be used for the same course,
so keep that in mind if you are already using Course Tools in conjunction with one of your courses! This is one of the reasons why
Blackboard sites are not automatically provided to MC faculty.
If you are already using Blackboard to supplement, here are a few reminders:
1. You will need to request new supplemental sites each semester.
2. You do not need to request a supplemental site for a course you are teaching in the blended format. A Blackboard site will be pro-
vided automatically, just as occurs for fully-online sections.
3.You should request sites only for sections assigned to you in Banner. Please should not request supplemental sites on behalf of an-
other faculty member.
4.You may wish to bookmark the location of the supplemental site request form. Here’s the link to use:
http://cms.montgomerycollege.edu/distancefaculty/supplementreq.
Still have questions? Please call Jeana Beaulieu at 240-567-6002.
8
I Want to Teach Online – Where Do I Start?
Using Blackboard to Supplement a Face-to-Face Course
