We, the unionized full-time faculty of Monmouth University, also known as the Faculty Association of Monmouth University or FAMCO, wish to reach out to our students to acknowledge that we have carefully reviewed the requests of the Student Government Association (SGA) as presented to us in their recent resolution that calls for mechanisms to ensure timeliness and transparency in grading. We have heard these concerns. We also want to let you know that we have met with SGA leadership prior to spring break to learn more about their concerns, and we look forward to our subsequent meeting later this week to continue exploring possible ways to address the issues the SGA has raised.
We want to take the time here to reiterate to all students that we fully support grade transparency in our classes. We love teaching our students and their success is our priority. It’s why we do what we do. It’s also why we negotiated a union contract that enshrines grade transparency in our classes as an important value and a requirement of all full-time faculty. We are unsure how much students, in general, know about our union contract or faculty handbook policies, and this is the perfect opportunity to share more about it and how it connects to the complaints the SGA has raised. Per our union contract and faculty handbook, all full-time faculty have committed to:
*post our syllabi on eCampus;
*submit midterm and final grades according to the schedule posted by the Registrar;
*be trained to use eCampus if we are teaching an online course;
*use eCampus to post course materials, assignments and grading information if we are choosing to use an online learning management system;
*include our rubric for final grading in our syllabi so that students know, from the start, how their final grades will be determined.
Equally important for students to know, if faculty are not providing this information above, or meeting the deadlines for submitting midterm or final grades, there are a number of formal mechanisms for students to seek help in rectifying these breaches, including outreach to department chairs, deans or the Office of the Provost. Here again, we support students who are seeking to get help with a faculty member who is not living up to the commitments of our union contract. We also encourage students to take the opportunity each semester to complete course evaluations to document their feedback on areas where a particular faculty member can improve on instruction.
We acknowledge that the SGA is also requesting a mandate that faculty upload course materials online, regardless of the course modality, and a mandate that all faculty make use of an electronic gradebook, as opposed to retaining the freedom to return graded material in-
person or use a hard copy gradebook. We can understand that some students may find it surprising or unexpected that all faculty are not required to upload course content online, or to use an eCampus gradebook on top of hard copy grading. This surprise makes sense to us as so many of our students come out of high schools where k-12 teachers nowadays often have no choice over their teaching tools, nor any freedom as professional educators to decide whether they find it helpful to use an electronic gradebook. Likewise, many of those k-12 teachers often have to follow a predetermined curriculum. While this may be commonplace now, many of us in higher education find it problematic that k-12 teachers do not have the same kind of academic freedom and rights to shared governance that are the long-standing cornerstones of what it means to deliver a high-quality college or university education for students. One of the awesome things about a college and university setting is that the faculty are actually expected to use their specific professional expertise, which is necessarily diverse, in order to meet the diverse learning needs of students across a range of disciplines. FAMCO places great value on protecting this kind of teaching and learning environment that doesn’t require a one-size fits all approach to the university classroom experience, or one that is bound by a single educational tool.
For example, many university faculty have the academic freedom and shared governance rights as primary decision-makers over curriculum and instruction to decide that the learning outcomes for their students are best met by providing assignments in person during class time. Sometimes this practice is to encourage engagement in class and discussion, other times it is to discourage the misuse of technology. Other times, posting assignments online risks compromising faculty’s intellectual property rights, meaning their own intellectual work that they produced to make those assignments for students (“intellectual property” which belongs to them), can get plagiarized, or harvested, by third party entities, just as students’ data can be harvested as well. This deeply concerns us.
Regardless, we want to be sure that professors are not forced to move all of our courses, materials, and mechanisms for feedback online as that is the opposite of the close, interactive, small class, and quality instruction that Monmouth cherishes. We admit, that does mean students must come to class to receive their assignments or graded materials if the class is not online; sometimes it means having 1-1 meetings with professors in their office hours, which faculty are also required to reserve specifically for our students. We hold steady on the freedom to choose these in-person or offline options because we believe this flexibility and diversity enhances, not impedes, students’ academic and personal growth. And while we welcome the opportunities we have to work with our students in online courses and programs, we also want to preserve our freedom to develop and sustain our in-person teaching and learning practices as, again, this close contact with faculty and our commitment to the personalized educational experiences that happen in may important face-to-face and offline venues, whether classrooms, labs, on field trips, or in office hours, is the hallmark of our institution.
We look forward to continuing to be in conversation with students, the Faculty Council, department chairs, and the administration about ways to support students and uphold quality higher education at Monmouth.
Signed,
The FAMCO Executive Committee
