MEMBER FEEDBACK

Responses from our members on “Equal pay for labs”

The following messages are in response to the article, “Equal pay for labs: SMT faculty members share their thoughts,” in our last issue.

Thoughts on equal pay for lab hours

I apologize for the short email, but I just wanted to voice my support for this important issue.  I completely agree that lab hours should be awarded the same pay as lecture hours.  There are several reasons for this. As you have already pointed out, for me lab often takes the same or more prep as lecture.  Additionally to provide a quality and safe educational experience for my students, I find lab hours to require more focus and attention than my lecture hours.  I 100% support this cause and hope that the district agrees!
Thank you for advocating on our behalf!

Jose A. Gutierrez
College of San Mateo, Engineering

Lab load credits

Auto has a balancing act. We feel that the work by faculty members to plan and execute a successful and productive lab takes as much if not sometimes more work than lecture.  Changing our load factor would reduce our contact hours with our students. Auto is a highly technical field that requires extensive in-depth labs that take a lot of time. Changing our load credit from .7 to 1.0 would severely impact our contact hours and the depth of education we provide to our students. We support our colleagues whose lab courses could be taught with less hours or at a higher FTEF by implementing a 1.0 load credit.

One thing I would love to see changed is the inequality of hourly pay between lab and lecture classes for adjunct and overload classes. Why is the lab hourly rate less than the lecture hourly rate?  That should be negotiated and changed.

Tom Broxholm
Skyline College, Automotive Program