Only 65? Hell, We Can Top That In Amarillo

We went through a similar accreditation review at Amarillo College in 2001. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS) found Amarillo College with a significant number of unqualified teachers, too. SACS allowed Amarillo College to weasel out by claiming life experience in lieu of academic work in a discipline. How and why? No self-respecting person would want to know. Sleazy? Yes! Hell, I had a colleague — now retired — who taught U. S. government nigh on to 30 years without the requisite graduate hours in political science. Hell, he was teaching part time for the College on the eve of the SACS visit. On top of that, this character was a flunk out from a doctoral program. And he received the award for distinguished teaching at Amarillo College. How does this happen? When you have an anti-intellectual Board of Regents, an anti-intellectual president, and an anti-intellectual chief academic officer. Hell, one course is the same as another. We are El Paso Community College without the Rio Grande.

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August 8, 2003


El Paso Community College Tells 65 Instructors They Lack the Credentials to Teach
By ELIZABETH CRAWFORD

El Paso Community College officials have notified an estimated 65 part-time faculty members that they will no longer be allowed to teach at the college until they meet requirements set by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools, the college's accreditor.

The decision follows a site visit by an accrediting team from the association that is part of a once-a-decade reaffirmation of El Paso's accreditation. Colleges lacking accreditation cannot receive federal student-aid funds.

College officials had already completed an internal evaluation of their instructors' teaching credentials to prepare for the visit. Based on the college's findings, the accrediting team recommended to El Paso that faculty members who teach courses with credits that are transferable to other institutions should have at least a master's degree in the subject they teach. Alternatively, the instructors could have a master's degree in another field and 18 hours of course work in the subject.

'Confident and Optimistic'

Many of the instructors fell just shy of meeting those requirements. The college had made exceptions in hiring them because administrators felt that the instructors' work experience qualified them for their posts, said Dennis E. Brown, El Paso's vice president for instruction. He noted that in order to teach at the college, the instructors had to guarantee that they were working to satisfy the course-work requirements.

College officials are not worried that their accreditation is in danger.

"I am very confident and optimistic that we will be fully accredited in October, when they come back to look at us again," Mr. Brown said. "We are complying fully with them, and we have every intention of meeting their requests. We would never jeopardize the institution or the students in that respect because our institution is too important to this community."

Jim Kimsey, El Paso's director of personnel services, said that college officials had made a "monumental effort" to hire new faculty members for the fall who meet the requirements. The hiring process, Mr. Kimsey said, is still under way.

At the same time, the college has told the instructors that they are welcome to return once they complete their degrees or the necessary course work.

"Everyone is concerned because these folks were good people," said Mr. Kimsey. "I would not be surprised if a lot of these people are back teaching with us very shortly, if not the fall then the spring, because a lot of them are just missing a small part. But if they return, they will meet the full requirements, guaranteed."

Jack Allen, an associate executive director of the accreditation agency, said that it was not uncommon for an institution to have to follow up on recommendations made during a 10-year reaffirmation. "Maybe one in 20 institutions won't have to adjust or do anything following the reaffirmation visit from our teams, but that is very rare."

He did not comment on whether the high number of unqualified instructors would threaten the college's accreditation, but did say that the institution was placed on probation from December 2000 to December 2001.

Copyright © 2003 by The Chronicle of Higher Education