Mesa Legend - ARCHIVES - Vol. 39, Issue 10


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Volume 39, Issue 10
February 12, 2002

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Hiring process under scrutiny

By Jason Corbett
For the Mesa Legend

The Faculty Senate for the Maricopa Community College District (MCCD) wants to provide their students with the most diverse and qualified faculty possible. However, the full realization of this goal is being hindered by the current academic hiring cycle for MCCD, according to the faculty senate and administration.

Presently, the academic hiring cycle begins in the spring of every academic year. Although the completion of this cycle is contingent on a number of tasks within the faculty and administration, the cycle is essentially made up of three major components.

The first component is the advertisement of the faculty positions available for the year. Then through a series of interviews and a teaching demonstration, called a "micro-teach," the staffing committees narrow their pool of candidates to three.

Those three candidates are then sent to the president of the college for final approval.

Once the presidentís decision has been made, contracts are offered, and all new candidates have to then be voted on by the governing board.

This process takes six to eight months.

The "discontinuity," as explained by Dr. Barry Vaughan, a full time Philosophy and Religious Studies professor and president-elect of the faculty senate, lies in the comparison of MCCD’s hiring calendar with that of the more standard hiring cycle.

Gail Mee, Dean of Instruction at MCC, contends, "There really is no standard academic hiring cycle. However, in the past, the MCCD colleges have been later than most others in our hiring process."

Most colleges and universities in the country have adopted an academic hiring calendar that begins in September, four months prior to that of the current academic hiring calendar for MCCD colleges.

The hiring of new faculty members for other institutions across the nation is completed long before MCCD.

"Fortunately," said Dean Mee, "we have been able to hire very qualified faculty in spite of that, because people want to teach here."

The task, as outlined by Vaughan, is to hire those candidates who are maximally qualified as opposed to minimally qualified, and changing the timing of the academic hiring calendar allows for a larger pool of candidates who are fully qualified.

Arizona has established criteria that all potential faculty members must adhere to, in order to be hired into a community college system. MCCD has strictly followed the criteria laid out by the state, Vaughan said.

Changing the academic hiring calendar for MCCD allows for a larger pool of candidates, not only in qualifications, but also in diversity.

According to Vaughan, MCCD is not as diverse as it should be.

The diversity of a faculty does not refer to its ethnicity or gender, as much as it pertains to the educational institution. A school not only wants a faculty that is diversified in ethnicity and gender, but also a faculty that is diversified intellectually.

"We are not achieving what I think ought to be our goal."

A great deal of the hiring pool at MCCD is drawn from ASU. Having an intellectually diverse faculty means recruiting new candidates from graduate institutions from around the country and even from around the world.

"One of the things that you want in an academic institution is a highly trained, highly diverse faculty," Vaughan said. "We want to provide the best academic, for students, possible."

Changing the MCCD academic hiring calendar, to coincide with other colleges and universities nationwide, requires the participation of every college in the Maricopa County College District.

When asked how long this goal could take, Janice Reilly, District Faculty Association President, replied, "If we get the commitment of everyone involved, hopefully next year."

Vaughan’s answer to the same question was, "I decided to make this my priority. My goal is to see this happen by the end of this fiscal year. This is not only a professional obligation, but perhaps a moral obligation. If itís not done, I will be sorely disappointed. In fact, I will be down right angry."