Merritt College: Request for Full Time Faculty Position
Department of Landscape Horticulture
Submitted by Chris Grampp
Chair, Landscape Horticulture
November 3, 2010
CRITERIA FOR FILLING CURRENT VACANCIES OR REQUESTING NEW FACULTY
POSITIONS (Includes clarification of what is needed from these criteria)
Criteria 1.
Percent of full-time faculty in department.
(Please show clearly the percent of full-time to part time faculty in the department)
1. Prior to Tom Branca retirement
Full-time instructors
2009-10
Adjunct instructors
2009-10
3
11%
FTEF: 44%
24
89%
FTEF: 56%
2
8%
FTEF 29%
24
92%
FTEF 71%
2. After Tom Branca retirement
Full-time instructors
2010-11
Adjunct instructors 201011
Criteria 2.
Semester-end departmental enrollment pattern for last three years. (This is a retention
measure; we want to know how many students enrolled and how many received grades, by semester, over the last three-year
period. For Counselors and Librarians, answer this question by providing the semester-end College enrollment pattern for
the last three years.)
Enrollment stats
enrollments
success
success rate
fall 2007
882
710
80.50%
spring
2008
909
709
78%
fall 2008
770
585
76%
spring
2009
801
627
78.30%
fall
2009
873
638
73.10%
spring
2010
780
579
74.20%
Criteria 3.
Meets established class size. (This is the productivity of this department and the classes currently
being offered. At the very least, please provide the average number of students in this department or, in a similar class, over
three years. For a counseling position, list the average number of student contacts for counselors at your College. For
Librarians, you’ll need to put N/A under Criteria 3, because there is not a comparable measure here. However, it could be
noted if the librarian will be “teaching” as part of his/her assignment. You could also note the number of hours the library is
open and any other information, which the College believes to be pertinent for this criteria.)
Below are productivity statistics for the Landscape Horticulture Department from Fall 2007 to the
present. Please note that the productivity numbers (column 5) may appear low when compared to
academic classes, but in fact are held down only because so many of our classes have labs. We must
Merritt College: Request for Full Time Faculty Position
restrict enrollment in labs to keep the classes manageable for the instructors, to maximize student
success, and teach job-related skills in an effective manner.
Productivity stats
fall 2007
spring 2008
fall 2008
spring 2009
fall 2009
spring 2010
# of
sections
32
32
29
33
31
29
enrollment
882
909
770
801
873
780
average
class size
28.4
24.1
27.6
26.5
25.2
26.9
productivity
14.9
15.72
15.07
14.08
19.11
18.53
FTEF
6.96
6.94
6.45
7.23
6.77
6.37
Criteria 4.
Percentage of full-time faculty in comparable departments at other colleges
compared to part-time faculty. (Please show what the percentage of full-time faculty is in the other Colleges in our
District; this could be full-time to part-time faculty at other colleges)
0%. There are no comparable departments at other Peralta colleges.
Criteria 5.
Position is authorized and in the budget. (Please show where this position is coming from, i.e.
general fund. [If so, is it replacing an incumbent or someone who retired, and, if so, name the person.] If it is categorical,
clearly state the budget area.)
The college will fund this position out of the General Fund. The position will replace Tom Branca, who
left the Landscape Horticulture Department in June, 2010 for interim dean of Math/Science.
Criteria 6.
Upon justification to the District, a College may be granted a faculty position to start
a new program or to enhance an existing one. (This information should be in the College’s Educational Plan
and/or in Program Review. Please attach the reference from these two documents to this justification.)
A new FT hire will be instrumental in supporting our proposed AA in Landscape Architecture degree
(start date, Fall, 2011; will be entered into Curricunet in Fall, 2010, and submitted to the State in January,
2011). Please see the Landscape Horticulture Department Updated Unit Plan for reference to this
program.
Criteria 7.
Additional Justification. (This is an opportunity for faculty, the department, or the College to add any
additional points or reasons why the position should be approved.)
I am requesting a new full-time Landscape Horticulture instructor for four closely related reasons: 1) To
provide support for our department’s diverse educational needs and objectives; 2) To help place our
program on the cutting edge of the current green revolution; 3) To reach out to under-represented
populations in order to better diversify our student population and afford employment opportunities;
4) To provide support for the uniquely complex operations of our 7.5 acre facility.
1) With respect to educational needs, the makeup of our faculty is not optimal for supporting student
needs. We have 24 adjunct instructors (92%) and 2 full-time instructors (8%). While our adjunct faculty
consists of outstanding instructors, these individuals have (by definition) limited availability to develop
curriculum, revise and upgrade teaching materials, counsel students, coordinate class content with other
Landscape Horticulture teachers, and make broader departmental and college contributions above and
Merritt College: Request for Full Time Faculty Position
beyond teaching their classes. This extreme PT-FT ratio – 92% to 8% - breeds a level of fragmentation
that is not conducive to student success. A third full time instructor would be able to approach his or her
job from a far more comprehensive base than would several part-timers teaching the equivalent classes. A
permanent instructor would have more time to revise readers and update course outlines, more
opportunities to connect common themes running through our courses, more time to contribute to college
affairs, and importantly, more time to counsel and advise students on their class work, their broader
educational needs, and their career goals.
2) The field of Landscape Horticulture is in numerous ways right at the forefront of the green revolution.
I have been in this field since the mid-1970s, and have seen nothing approaching the speed and
enthusiasm with which new environmentally friendly technologies and outlooks are emerging. After
languishing for years as marginalized endeavors, water conservation, low-flow irrigation, regional and
recycled materials, green roofs, food production, and related sustainable practices are all at the forefront
of our industry. To keep our department not just current, but at the leading edge of this huge and vital
change, we need to upgrade curriculum, perform community outreach, facilitate career and employment
opportunities, bring in speakers, host colloquiums, form liaisons with industry and professional groups,
and more. To stay on the leading edge we need a faculty that has time, in addition to teaching, to develop
and sustain professional connections, revise curriculum, perform community outreach, provide career
counseling, and in general make a long-term commitment to our department. It is very hard to
accomplish this task when over 90% of our faculty is part-time, is only paid for contact hours, and is
otherwise employed.
3) The ethnic make-up of the Landscape Horticulture Department does not mirror that of the college, or
the surrounding community. Statistics from 2004 – 2008 (from our 2009 Unit Plan) show that
approximately 60% of our student body was white, 6% Asian, 4% African American, 5% Hispanic, and
1% Native American (with the remainder not identified). We are committed to reaching out to the
community to attract a more diversified student body. Our charge here includes working to change public
perceptions regarding scope of our profession, disseminating information in public schools about our
program and field, reaching out to contractor to send their crews – the great majority of whom are
Hispanic – to our department to learn job skills, introducing an English-Spanish language class for
landscape professionals, hosting career days, building coalitions with community non-profits working on
community gardens and food justice, and more. We will be much more successful at this outreach with
the help of an additional full-time faculty member, since the position will provide time, resources, and a
sustained commitment that is not available to our part-time instructors.
4) The Landscape Horticulture facility includes 7.5 acres of usable grounds, the purpose of which is to
provide a living, breathing educational laboratory for our students. Though we have one full time and one
part time grounds keeper, these two individuals cannot keep up with all the responsibilities required to
meet our educational mission. A full time faculty member would be invaluable in bringing our facility up
to its full potential, in developing plant community study areas (for example the native hill and Australian
hill), in helping stage demonstration areas for irrigation, construction, and natural building projects, in
developing outdoor classroom opportunities, in developing long-term resources for lab classes, in
growing food for under-privileged citizens, and many more projects. Our facility can potentially become
not just a learning lab, but a “best practices” demonstration grounds for the public, a place the Bay Area
can look to for leadership in green technologies.
Merritt College: Request for Full Time Faculty Position
Conclusion: Based on our enrollments, our program has very high potential for growth. We continue to
attract more and more students into our four certificate programs, and will likely attract a new group
when we launch our AA Degree in Landscape Architecture this coming fall (2011). Our Permaculture
program has grown by leaps and bounds, attracting a new, younger, and ethnically diverse student
population. When favorable economic conditions allow us to offer all of our courses, we can barely find
classrooms for every instructor. Until this past June (2010) we had three full-time instructors, but without
a replacement for Tom Branca we will continue to suffer from the fragmentation inherent in such a high
part-time instruction rate. We cannot afford to slide backwards during this time of energetic and widereaching change in our discipline. Our goal is to nest all the aspects of our department – education,
community outreach, cutting edge technology, and the potential for a vital living laboratory – under one
common umbrella. A third full time faculty member is indispensible to this goal, and the addition of such
a person will be an important step in serving our students, the local landscape profession, and the Bay
Area community for years to come.
Respectfully submitted,
Chris Grampp
Chair, Landscape Horticulture Department
Merritt College