Green River students, faculty upset with program rankings

Hundreds of students and faculty members marched around Green River College’s main campus in Auburn on Friday morning and took part in a silent protest in front of the Administration Building to express concerns about a controversial program prioritization process and school leadership.

The show of discontent comes after the college released its program rankings earlier in the week. The rankings, part of the college’s prioritization process, placed 27 of 51 instructional programs in quintile 5, the bottom category. Nineteen of those are programs that chose not to participate in the process and were automatically placed in the lowest category.

College officials began the prioritization practice in the fall to help analyze and improve college programs, as well as find ways to save money as the school contends with a potential $4 million budget deficit.

The functions of the college were divided into three pillars for evaluation — instructional services, student services and institutional support. Using rubrics with responses from each department, pillar committees put the programs into quintiles.

“It’s not right,” said Amanda Bentz, a criminal justice student at Green River who helped organize Friday’s rally. “It is awful our teachers are in fear for their jobs.”

College officials said no decisions on possible cuts have been made, and programs in quintile 5 won’t necessarily be eliminated.

“No decisions are going to be made on the PPP (program prioritization process),” said Allison Friedly, executive of college relations. “It is just one tool.”

During the next several weeks, programs in the bottom quintile for the instructional pillar will give a presentation to instructional deans and Derek Brandes, the vice president of instruction, while those ranked lowest in student services and institutional support will provide the budget committee with more information.

Students planned to attend the presentations to support their instructors if faculty wanted. Some students sat outside the Administration Building, where the presentations took place on Friday.

“We want to get as many people informed,” Bentz said. “We want to show the administration that we love our faculty. We love our teachers. … If they (faculty members) are willing to go through all of these cuts and be afraid for their jobs to be there for us, we should be able to come and out support them and be here for them.”

The College Council will be presented the findings of the program prioritization process on May 24 and make recommendations to administration by May 31.

Last fall, some faculty members announced they would not participate in the process because they thought it was outside their contract.

“This stuff is already in place where we do have a process,” said Jamie Fitzgerald, chair of the English department, which opted out of the process. “The faculty have had zero input, staff have had zero input to decide whether or not this a good, viable process, whether it is effective, whether it is ethical. Nobody asked us. It has been imposed on us. It is a work around the contract. All faculty wants and — staff — is to be included in the discussions that decide what types of assessment that we use.

“We want the administration to stop this right away because we want them to either work within the contract … or negotiate with us for something new.”

Fitzgerald also oversees the writing center, which is in the fifth quintile for student services.

The program prioritization process has caused a disruption on campus, Fitzgerald said.

“What I think is patently unfair of the administration is putting faculty, staff and students in this position to have to be worrying about program cuts and elimination and reduction when they are here to do a much different job,” he said. “We are here to learn, to teach, to serve the community, and this process, right now, is not allowing us to do that.”

At the rally, students and faculty signed a petition asking the college to stop the program prioritization process. Many students waved signs and wore buttons or stickers that said, “I am Q5,” referring to the fifth quintile.

Bentz of Covington said students have been kept in the dark during the process.

Friedly said while most students were not directly involved in the program prioritization, some faculty used student input to complete the rubrics.

“Faulty could have used students to fill out rubrics but some chose not to,” she said.

The college hosted several forums on campus in the fall, which were open to anyone, before the process began. The college also set up a website — grprioritization.org — dedicated to program prioritization.

“We’ve been really transparent about what’s been going on this whole time,” Friedly said.

Bentz said she hopes the students’ efforts will bring change to the college.

“I hope if somebody needs to be removed … higher up in our administration, that happens,” Bentz said. “We need to have some sort of change. It’s been over a year now and we’ve seen nothing.”

Last spring, students and faculty spoke out against proposed cuts to four college programs. Two of the programs were saved, while two — auto body and geographic information systems – were eliminated.