A faculty group at Pima Community College is surveying its members to see if they still have confidence in the school’s CEO.
And the head of PCC’s Governing Board is incensed.
“It sounds like you are trying to incite the faculty against the chancellor,” board chair Sylvia Lee said Monday, publicly lambasting a faculty leader at a session the board held to dispute the need for the survey question.
The Pima Community College Education Association, a union-like group that represents about half of PCC’s 300 or so full-time faculty, is asking faculty members whether they support holding a confidence vote on the performance of Chancellor Lee Lambert.
The question is one of many included this year in an annual survey the group conducts to solicit feedback and concerns from the academic workforce.
People are also reading…
Ana Jimenez, a vice president of the faculty association, defended the decision to ask about support for Lambert’s leadership.
The question was included because some faculty members are asking it among themselves and in talks with faculty leaders, she told the board. The survey will determine whether the view is widespread, she added.
In an Oct. 6 email to faculty that previewed the annual survey, Jimenez said faculty leadership has tried to protect PCC’s image in recent years by keeping quiet while the college adopted “one poorly implemented change (after) another.”
Criticisms include faulty internal communication and faculty being left out of key decisions, such as changes made this past summer to PCC’s mission statement and faculty evaluation system while the faculty was away.
“I believe it is time to band together to turn this ship around,” Jimenez wrote.
“We must stand together and unite against the type of unilateral decisions that have plagued this administration and caused so much damage.”
The board chair’s angst over the survey question didn’t sit well with the board’s newest member, Tucson deputy city manager Martha Durkin.
Durkin said the board has no business telling a faculty group what to include in its survey.
“It feels like we don’t want to ask the question because we won’t like the answer,” she said.
Lee wanted the board to send a page-long statement to faculty that protested the survey question. At Durkin’s urging, the board only approved sending three non-accusatory paragraphs. (Documents related to this story are online at tucson.com.)
Lambert kept quiet at Monday’s board meeting as the conflict unfolded.
In an email Friday sent through his spokesperson, the chancellor said he was hired to “move the college forward in the face of unprecedented change.
“Progress can be difficult and sometimes painful, but in the end, the college will be better for our efforts,” Lambert said.
The faculty survey closes Nov. 30. Results typically are presented to the board at a public meeting.
