In Memoriam: Robert Marion Curtis (Dec. 30, 1939 – Dec. 1, 2020)

Remembering long-time Cañada College theater instructor and director Bob Curtis

Bob Curtis was born in Quitaque, Texas. The Curtis family, including his sister, Linda, moved to Bakersfield when Bob was about six years old. He graduated from high school in Bakersfield in 1958 and made the short journey to enter Biola University in Los Angeles, He later transferred to San Francisco State University, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree and thereafter, a Masters degree. He married Nancy Whittaker in 1962 and had one son, Brent.

Bob started his teaching career at the College of San Mateo in the 1960’s before beginning his storied teaching and directing career at Cañada College. He taught English Literature and Theater Arts and directed an amazing eighty plays at Cañada alone, during the four decades and well over thirty years of his tenure.

When not in the classroom or directing, Bob was an avid writer and among his publications are two original plays with music, Frank and West, which were produced in the Cañada Theater.

West earned a Western Regional Finalist position in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, a competition that is open to all colleges and universities nationwide. The accomplishment could be equated to making it into the ”Sweet Sixteen” for the NCAA Division 1 Basketball Championships, a huge and prestigious accomplishment.

As a teacher and director, Bob invested himself in not only the development of his students as actors, but also in the life lessons of theatre discipline. Excellence was his standard.

A colleague, Mike Walsh, wrote:

Bob always had a great work ethic. We may not have agreed on everything, but we always agreed on maintaining the highest possible production values. Bob really cared about his shows and demanded the most from his actors. I’m sure the students and the community actors learned a great deal from him about how theatre is supposed to be done. Many of those students have gone on to good careers as a result of that experience. I imagine they would credit him for modeling respect for the art and craft of theatre. It’s a good legacy, I think.

Bob was able to forge long lasting friendships with his College peers, students and many others and had an extraordinary skill of creating a net that encompassed all. Some of the friendships made while he attended Biola University continued and flourished for their entire lives, including multi-day road trips together. The friends maintained and grew their love and camaraderie for over sixty years. Bob would tell stories of his experiences with his multitude of friends, binding all together, even though many had never met each other.

His sense of humor, sometimes irreverent, but excusable for its spontaneous creativity, added an energetic dynamic to most conversations.

His intelligence was palpable and when left to himself he most often was reading books of various subjects that he would later discuss with his friends and students.

Bill Ontiveros, a former Cañada Student, wrote the following memory of spending time with Bob:

“I couldn’t remember meeting teachers socially before, so this was all new. I became a fly on the wall listening to Bob and Kurt (another teacher- Kurtwood Smith) talk about everything from Shakespeare to John Ford. Introducing us to books, plays and movies I had never heard of.”

Bob retired from teaching in 2001, moved to Santa Rosa and continued to direct plays in the San Francisco Bay Area involving students and professional theater. In 2007, he moved to Nevada City and rented a home from his long-time friend and fellow retired Cañada professor, Kent Crockett, as they shared a very special and close relationship.

Bob spent much of his time writing poetry and short stories and published a book, Sweet Approximation and Other Stories. His fulfilling retirement involved annual trips to the Ashland Shakespeare Festival and the Monterey Jazz Festival.

Bob was an avid baseball fan and strongly supported the baseball program at Cañada. After retirement he and his good friend, Kurtwood Smith, would be guests at the Phoenix, Arizona training camp of the Los Angeles Dodgers watching their team start a new season as part of an annual Spring renewal of friendship and fun.

Bob loved to be on the road and he frequently traveled to visit friends and relatives in Oregon, Colorado and Texas to maintain those relationships. He never embraced the technology of smart phones, email or the internet, so all of the trips were planned with friends via paper communication. The road trips became spontaneous adventures as Bob would often “command” the driver to “stop” so he could investigate a roadside historical marker or follow a sign to a small town.

Bob was a unique person and a very special educator as he had a profound effect on many of his associates and especially his students. In lieu of an in-person memorial, a collection of memories and stories written by a few of his close friends and former students was created. “The Book of Bob” is a tribute and testimony to a fine man whose life enhanced and inspired so many, as we celebrate his life that has left a void in so many people’s lives.

An excerpt of a story written by a long-time friend, Virginia “Ginger” Hamilton, encapsulates who Bob was:

He had so many talents, so many edges, so much terrain to cover. He was both piercing and poetic, organized and creative, playful and intense, loving and blunt, humorous and compassionate, fearless and protective, reliable and unpredictable, principled and irreverent, classy and down-to-earth, finicky and flexible, devoted to friends and fiercely independent. He praised all that was truly creative and aggressively called out all that was foolish and corrupt… An unwavering one-of-a-kind individual who relentlessly did life “his way.”

Class Size

Academic Senate and AFT work to give faculty more input on setting class caps

by Evan Kaiser, AFT 1493 CSM Executive Committee Co-Rep.

On August 16, members of the District Academic Senate (DAS) and AFT held a Flex Day workshop titled “Workload, Pedagogy and Class Caps” to discuss how class caps affect faculty workload and teaching effectiveness and how to establish a reasonable district-wide policy for class caps. More than 100 faculty attended the workshop.

Last May, 188 faculty across the district and across disciplines responded to a DAS-AFT survey asking about the process for determining class caps in their Divisions. Notably, 60% said their current class cap did not meet their pedagogical needs, and about 75% said the process for determining the cap was not sufficient. Only 12% reported an official procedure for determining class sizes as a department each semester, and the vast majority — 92% — felt that more faculty input was needed.

To understand what a more consistent, principled approach might look like, we sat down to discuss the following two questions during the Flex Day session.

What is the current process for determining class caps in your division?

The majority did not know how class caps were determined or hadn’t had any conversations about them. One attendee wrote, “When faculty ask why the cap is what it is, the answer is ‘it’s always been that number.’” Another said, “We have no idea. The process is not transparent.” And one Career and Technical Education (CTE) instructor wrote that the caps “often change from semester to semester,” seemingly without rationale.

However, a significant number of faculty did collaborate with their Deans in determining class caps. In one case, a Dean and administrators, with input from instructors, worked together to lower class caps in their department by 2 seats. In another, instructor advocacy led to lower enrollment caps for honors courses. It’s clear that collaboration and ongoing input from instructors were key elements in their process.

Staffing levels, facilities, and equipment were also found to determine class caps. One instructor cited the inverse relationship between class size and the number of full-time faculty — the more faculty in the department, the lower the class size, and vice versa. Room size and the availability of equipment, such as computers in a lab, also played a role.

In rare cases, an external professional association mandated a maximum enrollment (e.g. respiratory therapy.) More commonly, as with English composition courses, a professional association’s recommendation for smaller classes did not influence SMCCCD to reduce class sizes.

What do you think the most effective process for determining class caps would be?

Overall, faculty called for more consideration of discipline expertise in consistent discussions with Deans and administrators about class caps, drawing from the pedagogy, curriculum, SLOs, modality of instruction, and the needs of students (their ability to succeed independently, the extent to which embedded or external learning support is needed, extent of individual accommodations typically needed through the DRC, etc). If administrators consider enrollment trends and finances in their decision making process, those should be shared with faculty.

It was also proposed to develop contract language around class caps and to potentially mention caps in the Course Outlines of Record (CORs), subject to evaluation in each Program Review cycle. Since class caps vary by discipline, one group proposed a District-wide rubric which might incorporate factors such as (1) the comfort of students with material, including the “hands-on” nature of a subject; (2) the availability of facilities and equipment; (3) what level of wraparound student support is needed; (4) the number of sections regularly offered; (5) the course type and modality; (6) safety protocols; and (7) constraints imposed by accreditation standards.

Get Involved!

If you are interested in helping to develop a class size policy, please sign up to join the DAS/AFT Class Size Task Force! The group will convene soon and work during Fall 2021 to develop a proposal in time for contract negotiations.

Organizing for equity

New AFT 1493 group working to challenge gender oppression in our colleges

by Rika Yonemura-Fabian, AFT 1493 Skyline College Chapter Co-Chair

A new subgroup of AFT 1493’s Anti-Oppression Committee has been organized since last spring to specifically focus on challenging gender oppression among faculty, staff and students in our college workplaces. We have been meeting regularly through the summer and gained new student members through personal outreach. Students and faculty are connecting through their gendered experiences and finding a common ground for joint organizing. One of the newest student members who is a STEM major, described her motivation to join the group: “I wanted to share my experiences of oppression and help where I can. I also joined to learn and to have a community where I feel safe to speak and be heard.”  Another student member also majoring in STEM who has been organizing with AOC for a semester as one of the leads sees AOC as a “way to connect with mentors who understand why equity is important in a learning environment.” We are thankful that we have some classified staff who organize with us too.

As a group, the gender oppression branch of AOC has identified two areas of focus for the coming academic year:

1. Creating robust networks of female-identifying and non-binary faculty, students, and staff who we can work with for support and mentorship. We feel the need to create a wide-spread system of mutual support and safe space to share and discuss gendered experiences and our struggles against patriarchy.
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2. Exposing the problem of gendered distribution of work and seeking remedies to it. The group has identified a couple of areas of our professional life where gender and work(load) intersect. One of them is emotional labor that female faculty, particularly female faculty of color, may be more tasked with. Struggling students of color may find more connections with these faculty members and may seek out more support outside of the classroom, but these female faculty are not necessarily recognized or compensated for this labor. The second area we are focusing on is the gendered distribution of professional work, such as committee work. One faculty participant at an event AOC organized in the past pointed out that the responsibility of chair-ship is disproportionately placed on female colleagues. Is it indeed true that female-identifying faculty are really doing more “work?” The group wants to find out the answer to this question. The third problem is the traditional question of the (im)balance between family responsibilities and professional obligations that female faculty who are parents may particularly struggle with. What kinds of support are necessary and how can we advocate for it?

If you are interested in joining us, or want to find out more about this subgroup of the Anti-Oppression Committee, please contact Rika (AFT Skyline Chapter Co-Chair) at fabian@aft1493.org. Also please connect us with your students who are interested in joining this work!

Faculty Focus

Meet Mandy Lucas, Promise Scholars Counselor at Skyline College

Interview by Katharine Harer, AFT 1493 Co-Vice President & Outreach Organizer

Mandy Lucas has worked as a Promise Scholars Program Counselor at Skyline College for three years. We decided to interview her and share her profile with our readers to draw attention to our hard-working counseling faculty across the district and, in particular, to the important work of  Promise Scholars Counselors.

Mandy Lucas

What made you want to become a college counselor?

I became a college counselor because I believe that education can be a place of liberation and social change. I believe an education can provide opportunities to students and can create opportunities for their families and their communities. I can relate to this as a first-generation, low-income college student, a daughter of an immigrant, and a daughter of migrant farm workers. Education was the door to opening opportunities for me and my family. My family was impacted by mental health issues, addictions, incarceration and poverty, so I also understand the difficulty of pursuing an education while facing systemic ills in this country. The reason I was able to get through these challenges was because I had the support of professors, counselors, and mentors in educational spaces. It was these people that helped me realize my potential and helped me better understand the circumstances in which I was living. Although I know not every student will have the same experience, I recognize that my experiences and my role as a Pinay and Chicana counselor can serve as a source of inspiration for my students, their families, and communities.

Can you share some anecdotes about your students?

Some of my favorite stories about students are when they finally realize their full potential. I had one student who always thought of herself as average, had a lot of self-esteem issues, and never thought she was really smart. Through many tough conversations, she began to realize her potential as both a student and a professional. She was initially only interested in attending a CSU campus because she felt she wasn’t “UC material,” but after many conversations, she finally decided she’d apply to both UC and CSU campuses. As she began to realize her potential, she applied for an internship and obtained it, working for one of the big four accounting firms in the nation. And although she didn’t initially see herself as “UC material,” she ended up attending UC Irvine!

Our role as counselors is not always easy. Many of our students have been impacted by Covid and mental health issues. Most people think that our role as academic counselors is solely to talk about courses and student ed plans, but our students come to us when they need us for support and guidance. I had one student who kept failing his courses and often felt defeated. His family struggled through the pandemic financially. After many difficult conversations, he finally considered seeking a therapist and began to work through many of his challenges, and he came to find out his battle wasn’t school, but that there were underlying mental health issues he was battling without even knowing. Although he had an extremely difficult time academically, the work he was doing personally was exactly what he needed to do. He is still working through coping and managing his mental health, but he’s now empowered to use his experiences to bring awareness and education to the community.

Students in a Career Panel workshop Mandy organized for her class and other Promise Scholars.  There was a great student turnout and 7 professionals were on the panel.

Before you came to Skyline, what kind of work were you doing?

Prior to getting hired in the district, I worked as an adjunct EOPS Counselor at Los Medanos College in Pittsburg, CA and as adjunct IMPACT AAPI Counselor at De Anza College in Cupertino, CA. Prior to that I was a Coordinator/Counselor at UC San Diego for the Summer Bridge Program in the Office of Academic Support and Instructional Services (OASIS), which is UCSD’s EOP Office.

What do you like best about working at Skyline?  Worst?

Our faculty, staff, and students are the best! As an educator, collaboration is always key, and our faculty and staff are great at collaborating and being mindful of supporting each other’s needs and capacities. The worst part about Skyline isn’t really about Skyline. The worst part is that I live in the East Bay so my commutes to work are really long. I wish there were more affordable options for faculty/staff to live closer to campus.

The District has recently hired a number of new Promise Scholars Counselors. What advice would you give them?

Promise moves fast and can demand a lot from you, so be ready! Although it can be fast-paced, don’t forget you have the opportunity to be a mentor for your students and create lasting bonds with them. Additionally, don’t be afraid to speak up when something in the program is not working for your students. Although our programs are well intended, sometimes they are not always student-friendly, so don’t be afraid to advocate for your students so our program can be more student-centered. It’s also easy to stay isolated in our PSP bubbles due to the nature of our work, but get involved on campus and in our union!

Speaking of AFT 1493, what kinds of things have you done with our faculty union?

I am a rank-and-file member and try my best to support all efforts of the union. I have participated in the Contract Action Team (CAT) meetings and attend union meetings and events when my schedule permits.

When you have free time, how do you like to spend it?

I love to be outdoors and often spend my free time hiking or camping. I also love playing volleyball and softball when the weather is nice outside. I love to cook and spend time with my partner, family, and friends!

If you would like to suggest a faculty member for us to interview and feature in the next issue of The Advocate, please write to Eric Brenner, Advocate Editor, (brenner@aft1493.org) or to Katharine (harer@aft1493.org.)