During the August 19, 2024, meeting of the TMCC Planning Council, President Karin Hilgersom made passing comments about the importance of her chosen “theme” for this academic year, “pride and belonging,” as it related to onboarding new hires. According to the president, the Human Resources Department does not have the bandwidth to help new hires feel this “belonging.” She mentioned that she'd like to see a program where the department chairs take on these duties. The irony is probably lost on her that earlier in the meeting she announced a great new relationship with Great Basin College where TMCC provides several back-office functions for GBC, such as accounting, budgeting, and wait for it, human resources.
Previously, GBC entered into a similar partnership with the University of Nevada, Reno. It’s probably safe to say that the partnership did not work out. Why else would GBC look to TMCC for, essentially, the same services? It seems reasonable that TMCC can support the much smaller Elko-based institution, especially in HR where we are the only college in Nevada that employs two upper-level HR administrators; a chief human resources officer and a director of operations. As the middle child of NSHE, one wonders why it’s necessary to have such top-heavy staffing in HR, especially when the department operated successfully for decades with only one director. Perhaps the bandwidth could be widened if one of the administrators was replaced with two staff members.
HR staffing notwithstanding, the president’s desire to unilaterally change the duties assigned to department chairs is not an option. Chair duties are defined in Article 10 of the TMCC-NFA collective bargaining agreement, otherwise known as “the contract.” Modifying these duties is only permissible through negotiations with TMCC-NFA that result in either a new collective bargaining agreement, or an interim memorandum of understanding (MOU).
The likelihood of the chairs acquiescing to the president’s wishes are unknown at this time, but may be slim-to-none. , I just used lower case
That prediction is based on the reaction of the president to a request from TMCC-NFA. As the negotiations for the current agreement were nearing their conclusion in Fall 2022, NFA negotiators submitted a proposal to update the formula used to calculate release time for the chairs. The administrative negotiators demurred, claiming there was insufficient time to consider the ramifications of the proposal before the deadline for submitting the agreement to the Board of Regents. At the time, they implied that the issue could be considered for an interim MOU. Regents approved the new agreement on November 30, 2022.
Upon returning to campus for the Spring 2023 Semester, TMCC-NFA officers made the request to start discussions about the formula in a meeting with the president and VPAA Jeff Alexander. President Hilgersom told us that she would only agree to the discussion if TMCC-NFA agreed to put the entire contract back on the table for additional revisions, especially for Article 10. She insinuated at that time that the department chair compensation was not justified by the negotiated workload. TMCC-NFA refused, leaving the existing formula in place.
It’s no surprise, therefore, that the president would single out department chairs to absorb responsibilities traditionally assigned to HR. To the best of our knowledge, there has been no similar proposal for non-instructional managers to take on the responsibility of on-boarding new administrative faculty or classified staff. The suggestion, quite frankly, is mission creep, shifting administrative functions onto instructional professionals.
Additional mission creep was evident in that same Planning Council meeting. Kylie Rowe, TMCC’s new Executive Director of Research, Marketing and Web Services, indicated that she hopes to recruit faculty members to assist with content creation, institutional branding, and PR campaigns. While it’s not unreasonable for willing faculty members to lend their skills to campus functions beyond their primary responsibilities, it is unreasonable to expect them to do it without added compensation. The contract provides for additional assignments where qualified faculty members can sign up for extra work related to their field of expertise and receive fair compensation, either in the form of release time, a stipend, or a combination of both. Even so, shifting more administrative responsibilities to the faculty is more mission creep that unavoidably dilutes their impact in the classroom.
Mission creep is very real at TMCC. It’s even reflected in the mission statement that was developed in the shadows of the pandemic and has removed references to the College’s core functions of instruction and student success.
Read more >> The hollowing of TMCC’s mission
