County Community College
Michael J. Grant Campus
Michael J. Grant Campus
As for why I want to be elected chair of the Assembly, I was actually elected once before, in May 2016. After a year as chair-elect learning the position from Marc, I had to resign before taking office, because the administration at the time violated the contractual rights of a colleague in revoking her release time and docking her pay. Marc and I resigned our governance positions in protest, and as a result of several individuals standing up for the rights of all faculty, the pending FA Contract has a clause guaranteeing release time for governance leaders. This provision ensures the independence of the faculty's voice. I consider this clause in the FA Contract to be the most consequential accomplishment we have achieved in governance in my time at the College.
I also have experience working with leaders in the administration. As campus Honors Coordinator, I reported directly to our current VPAA Paul Beaudin at the College level, and to our former Campus Dean, James Keane, on the campus level. I considered Paul and Jim to be mentors and friends, and they demonstrated the value of rigorous debate and intellectual challenges. As long as everyone has their hearts in the right place, determined to advance the mission of the College for the benefit of students, faculty, staff, and community, then disagreement can be constructive, and debate ultimately makes us stronger. My vision for the Assembly and for a system of governance that unites the College is for intellectual rigor based on a foundation of common trust.
I am grateful that the Assembly elected me chair four years ago, and I hope to have your support again.
The Assembly is representative of the Campus community. It is the agency of the faculty in the exercise of that group's academic voice and responsibilities. The Assembly shall make recommendations regarding academic policies and faculty and student welfare subject to the stipulations and actions of the Board of Trustees of the College, the County Legislature, and the State University of New York.
The Assembly serves the following purposes:
The Chair of the Assembly receives 3 hours of non-contractual release time. (The release time will be contractual if and when the new FA contract is approved by the Suffolk County Legislature.) The person elected to serve in this position shall be tenured.
For one year prior to assuming the position, the Chair-elect shall:
The Chair of the Assembly shall:
The Chair of the Assembly is also a member of:
The Chair of the Assembly is expected to coordinate attendance of the College Board of Trustees meetings with the other two Governance leaders, and to participate in the annual New Employees Orientation in the beginning of each academic year.
At the conclusion of their term in office, the outgoing Chair shall serve for one year on the Executive Committee as the Immediate Past Chair.
Thank you, Alex Kasiukov, for nominating me for the position of the Secretary of the Assembly. I accept your nomination and am honored and humbled by it.
I have served as Secretary of the Assembly since 2018. During this time, I have learned so much about the position and our governance system as well. I have also served on the Technology Committee since 2015 and have been elected to serve as one of the co-chairs since 2016. I believe that this experience as well as my organizational strengths are assets for my candidacy for this position. I also understand the commitment and workload that comes with the position of Secretary of the Assembly and I am dedicated to rising to the challenge.
I hope to have your support for my nomination of Secretary of the Assembly. Thank you.
The Assembly is representative of the Campus community. It is the agency of the faculty in the exercise of that group's academic voice and responsibilities. The Assembly shall make recommendations regarding academic policies and faculty and student welfare subject to the stipulations and actions of the Board of Trustees of the College, the County Legislature, and the State University of New York.
The Assembly serves the following purposes:
The Secretary of the Assembly shall serve a two-year term. The Secretary of the Assembly shall be elected at the final Assembly session of every other academic year. S/he shall assume office at the end of the session.
The Secretary of the Assembly shall:
The Secretary also serves as a member of the Executive Committee
It is with great pleasure, passion, and privilege that I accept the nomination for the At-large member of the Executive Committee.
I have been serving as the lead Instructor and Program Coordinator of the Health Information Technology Program. In this position, I have had the privilege of spearheading the immense effort of revising and re-developing the curriculum for the Health Information Technology Program to prepare for the on-site visit of the Commission on Accreditation for Health Informatics and Information Management (CAHIIM) accrediting body; advised, mentored, and served as a relatable role-model for current and prospective students interested in the field; and graciously accepted a nomination to join the Board of Directors in a leadership capacity of the Long Island Chapter of the Health Information Management Association.
I am an accomplished and motivated professional who is recognized for leading, developing, and implementing projects and evaluating outcomes across healthcare settings throughout Suffolk County. Over the years, I have developed a solid understanding of the intricacies of healthcare delivery systems, population health, and experienced firsthand the advantages and disadvantages technology has in healthcare. As a technology savvy, highly organized, results and outcomes passionate driven individual, with an established ability to analyze, evaluate, and advise on operations, I am confident that my demonstrated experiences and successes will prove to be great assets to the Assembly.
Having served on the committee for two years now, I really got a sense of how governance works not only here at Grant but college wide. I am really interested in governance and would like to continue my work on the committee. I think it's imperative we all get involved in faculty governance at some level as it gives us faculty a chance to voice our concerns to the administration. Thank you all!
In this time of changes in our operations due to the pandemic and in our administration, I find it important to ensure that we have faculty on our Executive Committee that are not afraid to voice their and other faculty's concerns. Commitment to academic integrity, concern for the best interests of our students while maintaining standards as an institution of higher education have never been more important. I also believe that development of better lines of communication regarding governance with the other campuses governance bodies is something that we should be attempting and exploring.
It has been my privilege to serve on the Executive Committee for the past year. Under Alex's leadership the EC has played a key role in resolving several contentious issues including the role of academic departments in the hiring practices of full-time faculty. I look forward to possibility of earning your support to serve another term and continue contributing to the important work of this committee.
The Executive Committee shall have general supervision of the affairs of the Assembly between its sessions, fix the hour and place of sessions, appoint advisory committees, make recommendations to the Assembly, and shall perform other such duties as are specified in this Constitution. The Executive Committee shall be subject to the orders of the Assembly, and none of its acts shall conflict with action taken by the Assembly. The Executive Committee shall:
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
The College-Wide Academic Integrity Committee (AIC) is a standing committee of the College-Wide Academic Standards Committee (CASC). The committee's mission is to promote academic integrity in concert with faculty, students and administrators. The AIC strives to develop effective policies, procedures and resources to help instill best practices in faculty and students.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
The Banner Users Group was established in 2009 to provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to the College's implementation of the Banner system. The group brings together the Banner implementation team, IT staff, end-users in various roles, administrators and faculty governance representatives to review problems with the system and explore new ways in which it can be used. The group is charged with prioritizing these items and making recommendations to the administration concerning the allocation of resources to address them.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
To be an effective member of the group, the Assembly representative should have working knowledge of both Self-Service Banner and Internet-Native Banner. The representative must be willing to make him/herself available to receive concerns about the system and ideas for improving it from members of the campus community, and to communicate these to the rest of the group. The representative must also be able to work collaboratively with representatives from diverse areas of the College including student services, finance, continuing education, human resources, IT and enrollment management.
The Bookstore Committee will meet and collaborate with the managers of the bookstore to set hours of operation and customer service policy, resolve student and faculty complaints and book order issues, as well as represent the needs of the faculty.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
The Class Size Committee shall be charged with the responsibility of reviewing and recommending proposed modifications (if and when necessary) to the class size maximums (as posted on the College Governance web site) to determine the maximum class size for all credit courses (or courses which are prerequisites for credit courses). Its recommendations shall be forwarded to the President and Vice President for Academic Affairs as described in the Faculty Association Contract.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
Dear Colleagues,
First, I'd like to introduce myself, as most of you do not yet know me. I am a new faculty member in the Department of English and Humanities and started the position in January. I am honored to have been nominated for this post by my colleague Tat Sang So.
Given our recent shift to emergency remote instruction, and the likelihood of distance education continuing to be a necessity for all of us in the near term, we need a thoughtful and agile Distance Education Committee, with faculty representatives who can draw on their experience and expertise to adapt to the changing needs of the college. I have been teaching fully online courses since 2014, both synchronously and asynchronously. At my previous institution (County College of Morris), I completed a Distance Education training series, which included Blackboard training for distance education courses and a four-week online course in distance education pedagogy and best practices. I have also recently begun working with Kate O'Donoghue on developing a student guide to online learning for distribution in the fall.
Despite this experience and the successes I've had with online learning, I'll admit to always being a somewhat reluctant online educator. My true home is still in the classroom. But I believe this makes me well positioned to consider the often-competing needs and expectations of students, administration, and faculty in the virtual classroom. I am well attuned to both the benefits and the limitations of distance education. If elected, I won't just bring tech savvy—I will bring flexibility and compassion for the real hurdles many of us face when we try to move teaching, learning, and community online.
The Distance Education Committee (DEC) is an advisory and recommending body concerned with Distance Education (DE) policies, procedures, and guidelines at Suffolk County Community College. The DEC operates under a provision in the Faculty Association contract in Appendix J and more recently Items 54 and 55 in the 2005-2011 MOU. The role of the DEC is primarily one of managing requests to develop new courses to be taught at the College in one of the four DE modalities: Fully online, blended/hybrid, distance learning classroom, or telecourse and also to manage requests for assignment to existing courses.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
Colleagues,
I hope everyone is as safe and healthy as possible.
As a daily visitor to our Captree Commons Cafe, I must say that I am heartily concerned with the choices, pricing, and safety of our students and community. I am particularly concerned with the options for vegan and vegetarian students and the inequitable pricing of their options in relation to non-vegan, and vegetarian items. In addition, the concerns related to the health and safety of cafe workers and their exposure to our students through sanitary preparation and common practices for food item transmission needs to be addressed in the immediate moment.
In accordance with my concerns, I would be honored if you would vote for my inclusion on the Food Committee.
I guarantee that I will keep the Assembly informed of discussions with the rest of the committee as well as requesting meetings with Grant Campus food services (since the current Food Committee meets on the Ammerman campus to discuss local issues for the Grant Campus).
Respectfully, Jason
The College-wide Food Service Committee exchanges in dialogue and discourse with the food service contractor to address concerns and develop solutions.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
In 2017 I completed a Masters of Science in Bioethics/Research Ethics and IRB management through Mt. Sinai/Icahn School of Medicine and Clarkson University. Our program trained/educated us in the ethics surrounding research protocols, project management of research protocols; grant writing for NIH and NSF, and the function and management of Institutional Review Boards (IRB). This is the first opportunity that has come available to put that training to use for SCCC and I would like to be the Grant Campus rep to our IRB.
I have been nominated for the IRB position and accept because I am familiar with the approval process since I had to go through it in 2014 for my research with human subjects at both SCCC and Stony Brook University. But, when I did, there was no committee at SCCC. The examination procedure and approval through SBU was quite rigorous and time consuming for the protection of human subjects.
Through my qualitative and quantitative research at the Grant Campus I was enabled to write my dissertation, achieved my Ph.D. in Science Education and recently had some of my qualitative research published in a peer reviewed journal: Community College Journal of Research and Practice. Having a Master of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology I wrote a thesis through my novel laboratory research study. Having achieved my graduate degrees through doing both scientific benchwork and research with human subjects, as well as attending NIH seminars on grant writing and appropriate research, I possess a wide variety of knowledge and experience.
As we are the largest community college in the state, with a campus that is extremely diverse, our campus is a unique and untapped goldmine of data regarding community colleges. We should be promoting this resource to the faculty to get more involved in research for the benefit of our stakeholders, especially our students.
Suffolk County Community College supports faculty, staff, students, and administrators in conducting research and engaging in educational projects. Additionally, where appropriate, the College allows external constituents to conduct appropriate and beneficial research at one of the three campuses or two off-campus centers. While these efforts are supported, the College is concerned with and dedicated to the protection of its faculty, staff, and students.
To ensure institutional accountability, responsibility and oversight over research efforts, the Institutional Review Board was established. The IRB operates as the institutional board charged with assurance of human subjects' protection. The Board is responsible for ensuring that all research projects protect the rights and well-being of individuals involved in the studies, that informed consent is provided, that risks have been minimized, and that participants understand the voluntary nature of the activities. The body ensures these protections through a thorough review of protocols to determine if they meet the criteria for research, are eligible for exemption or expedited review, or whether a full review is necessary. At its core, the IRB exists to ensure that individuals are treated ethically, with respect, and in accordance with the mission and vision of the College.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
To serve on the Institutional Review Board, the Assembly representative should be from either a physical or social science and, where possible, should have human subjects research experience and a terminal degree.
Now that the College is working on its Strategic Plan, it is important that the Plan meet the needs of all parties involved: students, faculty and administration. I would like to be part of the Council to get a feel for what goes into the Strategic Plan and give my voice to help guide the College in the right direction, so that us faculty are represented fairly. I believe with my mathematical/statistical background I could add a critical lens to the process and ensure that the data collected is valid and interpreted correctly. This way we make good decisions and policies based on facts rather than opinions. I would be very humbled and honored if I were selected as the candidate and do everything in my power to make sure I represent our campus to the best of my abilities.
The Strategic Planning Council (SPC) involves every constituency associated with the College. Its primary purpose is to review and to make recommendations to the President regarding planning and action priorities at the campus and college-wide levels.
The SPC:
A representative of the Assembly is expected to:
With all of the decisions that face the College in this unprecedented pandemic, I applaud the FA for establishing the Health & Safety Committee. In this time, it is imperative that the College faculty speak with one voice regarding the concerns, considerations, and best practices in establishing the safest way to reopen the College. As someone who works in a very active campus building and teaches in the classroom setting, I believe I am qualified to serve the Assembly well on this committee and bring a fresh perspective, as well as your concerns, to the committee.
I hope to have your support for my nomination as Assembly Representative on the FA Health and Safety Committee. Thank you.
The main mission of the Committee is to ensure that all faculty is working in a safe environment.
A representative of the Assembly is expected to: