BLINN FACULTY EXPRESS DISSATISFACTION WITH REORGANIZATION EFFORTS
Blinn College President Harold Nolte’s re-organization plan for the college was met with a wave of dissatisfaction at last (Tuesday) night’s meeting of the Board of Trustees.
A packed house, consisting mostly of faculty from the Brenham and Bryan campus gathered at the Administration Building to express displeasure in President Nolte’s reorganization plans. Nolte in his tenure has been replacing department division chairs with deans who serve all of the college’s campuses, allowing the faculty more time in the classroom. Friday classes were also re-instituted. Some of the speakers were concerned about using deans to administrater classroom instruction when the division chairs have more hands on experience with working with students. They also receive a stipend for being a division chair.
Several faculty members spoke out saying these plans are not working and that administration is not listening.
Leslie McGinnis, a math instructor on the Bryan campus, said it was time for the administration to listen to their views.
Nolte began the reorganization plan two years ago after getting a survey from then consultant Sylvia McMullen to survey of the faculty, the staff and administration to see how the college would ‘better achieve its mission’. McMullen has since been named president of the Bryan campus. Nolte believed the new plans would end reduction of teaching efforts, and streamline the campuses. Six deans now administer the courses of study.
The Blinn Board of Trustees could not take any action because the comments came in the public comment section.
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As an elected group, the Blinn Board of Trustees needs to take action and remove Nolte and his lackeys — unceremoniously. There’s no saving this situation with current administrators. Since the Tuesday night meeting, our dean has made it clear that the dean is the “boss” and doesn’t have to listen to suggestions regarding scheduling and other matters from faculty or our division head. So it seems to me that at least one of the interlopers has “dug in” instead of taking faculty comments at the meeting into consideration. Would love to know if other deans are being as rude and authoritarian as ours. If so, I’d be willing to bet that the directive to “dig in” came from Nolte.
Yes, it may be inadvisable to stack administration and coach positions with old friends. Nor is it wise to use Blinn jobs to create retirement benefits for a large group of Brenham’s self employed. But changing Division chairs to Deans will stop the overpayment of stipends to teachers who are already loaded up with classroom and internet classes to the point where they have no time to supervise faculty in their departments. But they have very fat wallets and good benefits, while keeping ordinary instructors on part time.
I don’t know where you got your information, Knowledgeable, but the stipend that division chairs receive is very small. I won’t claim to know specifically, but I think it’s about $3000 a year. That won’t make anybody’s wallet fat, especially with the low salaries paid to Blinn faculty already. (Check what we make compared to other community college faculty.) Believe me, the hefty salary deans receive will be costly to Blinn in the long run with regard to reputation and effectiveness. Also, my division chair does an outstanding job of supervising faculty, supporting faculty, and teaching classes. I can’t speak to how effective the other division chairs are.
(By the way, yes divisions chairs also receive a one-class reduction in addition to the stipend. But they’re still underpaid if anything.)
Blinn has not had a good president since Don Voelter. The Board of Trustees need to go back to promoting from within instead of hiring people like the last two presidents. Since they stopped hiring from within, Blinn has had trouble with their accreditation, had gang bangers on campus, and now report that Blinn in Brenham is going broke (creative accounting at it’s best). If the Board knew everything that was happening on the Brenham campus, they would know that there is a deliberate effort going on to move administration to Bryan, destroy the summer school program in Brenham, allow Brenham buildings to deteriorate, etc. In the next few years, we should see new board members if they don’t do something to stop the madness in Brenham soon.
Why don’t we try to give the faculty and staff RAISES instead of hiring experts and consultants who don’t know anything about Blinn College…Blinn College has plenty of funding for all these administrative positions but can’t even give their front line staff a living wage. It’s a crying shame!
let’s see, Nolte hire a consultant, McMullen, ( probably at several hundred thousand dollars) , and now McMullen is the president of the Bryan campus. Something about this just doesn’t smell right! And Nolte is taking the advice of 1 consultant, who is now a president, over the concerns of the instructors. Uh huh.