SF Part time employees and Adjunct Faculty:

May 16, 2013

Santa Fe College greatly values our part time employees and the service they provide to the college.  We know that part time employees have been anxiously awaiting confirmation of how the Health Care Reform Act may impact their future employment with the college.  As you may be aware, this has been an active topic of conversation since the end of 2012 and the college's ability to formalize plans has been dependent upon the adoption of IRS guidelines specifically as they relate to adjunct faculty workload. 

At this point it appears that the college has the ability to define, based on existing practice, a formula that equates full time faculty work load in hours to adjunct faculty work load.  This formula should incorporate instruction, availability to students, preparation for delivery of instruction and assessment of student learning.  Therefore we have broken down the full time faculty 40 hour work week based on hours that are reflective of the average full time work week as follows:

1. 15 hours of instruction
2. 10 hours of availability to students/office hours
3. 10 hours of preparation associated with instruction and assessment of student learning
4. 5   hours for professional obligations beyond instruction including service to the college, meetings, and professional development

This breakdown of workload is consistent with the salary schedule and serves as the basis for our rational to determine the work load for adjunct faculty.  Based on this formula adjunct faculty work load requires a proportionate amount of items 1-3; instruction, availability to students, preparation and assessment.  Therefore using our basic full time faculty two term contract of 15 hours, each credit hour or its equivalent of instructional load represents 2.34 hours of weekly work.  Based on this formula we are able to retain our current approved maximum work load for adjunct faculty of no more than 12 credit hours or its equivalent of instructional/non-instructional load per major term which encompasses the three major terms of Fall (September-December), Spring (January-April) and Summer (May-August).

We recognize that although this has been the maximize load there have been some approved exceptions in the past that can no longer be authorized.  Additionally, all part time work including hourly part time professional work cannot exceed 27.5 hours on a weekly basis per six month window of appointment (July – December and January – June).  Any combination of adjunct and part time appointments must also not exceed the 27.5 weekly maximum.

Again please know that we do recognize the outstanding service provided by our part time employees and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause those of you who have been working beyond these maximums.  The college is pleased to be able to provide as many benefits as financially feasible to our part time employees including a competitive adjunct salary rate that is in the top 5 of our college system peers.

Thank you again for your service and please feel free to address questions or concerns as appropriate to Lela Frye, Director of Human Resources.