Joint Meeting with PFF - ASU
by Jimmy Mopecha

The meeting started at 2:00pm in the Nursing Building room 004 with a brief introduction of the panel speakers by Deborah N. Losse. They were:

1. Alberto Pulido, Associate Vice-Provost, ASU West (Comprehensive University).
2. James Helfers, Dean, Liberal Arts, Grand Canyon University (Liberal Arts College).
3. James Cervantes, Professor, Department of English, Mesa Community College.
4. Gail Hackett, Associate Dean, College of Education, ASU Main (Research I), newly appointed Vice Provost for personnel.

The topic for discussion was," Faculty roles at the Research I and the Comprehensive University, at the Liberal Arts College, and at the Community College." Starting with the Vice-Provost of ASU West, the speakers took turns to give us an overview of faculty roles in their various institutions. In addition to their presentations, a former PFF participant, now a tenure-track faculty at Mesa Community College also spoke to us about her personal experiences at the College. She said that she did her PFF project at Mesa Community College, and that helped her to know the place and get her current job there.

After the presentations was a question and answer session. The speakers started by answering questions that were posed by the PFF participants during their last session's discussion groups. These questions were the following:

• What are the expectations for discovery within your institution?

• What is the role of engagement within your institution? What does engagement means to you?
• What impact does the diverse university population have on the understanding and practice of learning, discovery and engagement within your institution?
• At the institutions where you have received academic training, what was the balance between learning, discovery and engagement? Is this congruent with your ideal of balance?

From the responses to these questions and others that were posed we learned that

1. A Research I institute

• Offers the highest beginning salaries, although this was also college dependent. For example, College of Business begins in the low 100s while some begin in the 50s.
• Has standard workload of four courses per semester.
• Considers the number of years of experience in rank, although mostly scholarship when awarding tenure. Again this is also college dependent.
• Part-time is not the best way to get tenure in a Research I institution.

The Vice Provost for Personnel at ASU Main advised us that sometimes it is good to just be a good university person through informal relationships such as going an extra mile by getting involved in many voluntary committees.

1. The Community College:

• Offers higher salaries.
• Has standard workload of five courses per semester.
• Awards tenure basing mostly on instruction and service.

We learned that Mesa Community College has a current population of about 24000 students with 82% of them whites.

1. The Grand Canyon University

• Is a private Christian university.
• Offers relatively the lowest salaries amongst higher institutions of learning.
• Has the smallest classroom sizes, and least semester workloads.
• Award of tenure depends on

1. Instruction
2. Service
3. Structural reflection on your own teaching
4. Scholarship.

1. A Comprehensive University is very similar to a Research I institution. That which does not offer lower division courses generally will have lower workload than a Research I.

We were told that ASU West would be offering lower division courses starting in the spring of 2001.

The meeting ended at 4:30pm.