Dear Colleagues,

I hope you are enjoying the summer so far. I am writing to share an update about some changes to our chairs program and I want to share the plans with all of you, now that the deans and I have had a chance to speak with chair colleagues directly.

About three years ago, I embarked on a process of evaluating our faculty teaching and leadership lines, to ensure that CCA remains competitive—both as an employer and to potential students. That resulted in a few changes, including a compensation study supporting a 40% increase to starting salaries for ranked faculty, and a series of adjustments and raises for ranked faculty in FY22 and FY23.

It also pointed the way to the next task: evaluating our chair structure. This work started in fall 2023, paused for several months earlier this year, and resumed in April. In conducting this analysis and thinking about potential changes, the goals are the same: CCA needs to ensure it is providing the best opportunity to teach students and support student retention, and doing so in a way that best supports our faculty, in both financial and administrative terms.

What the review made clear is that CCA has a disproportionate number of individual chair positions relative to our overall size and relative to the student population we serve. In my research in preparation for this process, I learned that we currently have more chair positions than any other AICAD school, including those with student enrollment two to three times our enrollment size. This confirmed our direction and therefore, here is what will be changing:

• First, to be clear: under this plan, we are not reducing our ranked faculty at all and we are increasing the number of ranked faculty who are eligible to join the union.
• In total, we will move from having 34 lead chairs and 7 assistant chairs to 23 lead chairs and 4 assistant chairs. 
• Some of the chairs will have expanded portfolios, with responsibility and oversight for additional programs, while a majority of the chairs will experience no change to the program(s) they oversee.
• Some of the faculty who had been serving as chairs will now return to more teaching lines, providing an important boost to our overall ranked faculty involvement in our classrooms and contributions to college-wide service. 
• As a result of these changes, we have created a compensation structure that increases the per line release salary for all lead chairs creating an equitable salary band system across all the chairships.

This change will also clarify the responsibility and roles of our program chairs, and make support, collaboration and coordination easier for CCA’s staff, given that we will have a smaller and more focused group of chairs.

I want to thank everyone who participated in this process, including our academic deans and all the program chairs who provided important feedback and insights as the structure was taking shape. I want to thank especially both our incoming and outgoing chairs for their partnership, leadership, flexibility, and openness to working with us to achieve these changes and all the important work they do. 

I will be meeting with the CCARFU, including CTF representatives, on Monday June 10 to specifically review the impact of this reorganization on the ranked faculty bargaining unit. Similarly, I am also working to schedule a meeting for next week with the unranked faculty union and SEIU Local 1021 representatives. I will share recap emails following these meetings with appropriate faculty groups. 

If anyone has any questions about the implementation of this adjustment or how it might affect you feel free to contact an academic dean or me. More details are being confirmed that we will share in a follow-up communication as well as post on the Academic Affairs Portal page, including a list of all lead chairs and their contact information, job descriptions, and FAQs.

Best,

Tammy Rae Carland

Provost