Practical Matters: Overload and The Word

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Program

You may have noticed a few of the emails coming from Dean Gherardi's office over the past couple of weeks concerning the NORA form -- and you may have wondered, what the heck is a NORA form?

October rose (w/ site of new Eastern Health and Wellness Center)

Good question! And an important one. The NORA is a Notice of Reasonable Assurance. This form is most important for our contingent faculty, who need to let the college know if and when they'll be available to teach classes in the upcoming term. All full-time faculty need to fill out this form too, however, if we'd like to request an overload assignment in the upcoming semesters, including Wintersession (classes held in January), Spring, and Summer I (the first five weeks of classes following the spring semester for traditional, face-to-face classes, and the first eight weeks for fully online classes), Summer II (the second five weeks), and Summer III (you get the picture).

Now that you know what the form is, you may need a reminder about deadlines -- because deadlines are very important. If you want to request a class for Wintersession 2016, you need to submit your NORA form by tomorrow, October 7. As Dean Gherardi pointed out in his emails, assignments will be made by October 15, and you will have until November 6 to accept or decline your assignments.

The deadline to submit an overload request for the spring semester is ALSO October 7.  Assignments for the spring, however, will be made by October 22, and you will have until November 9 to accept or decline your assignments through Banner.

It's important that full-time faculty make their decisions about spring overload as soon as possible because it helps our academic chairs find adjunct faculty who can teach the remaining classes in the spring schedule.

But let's say you're already teaching an overload class this semester. You may be wondering, when am I going to get paid for all of this prep and teaching? Well, if you haven't been accessing your online pay stubs (available through MYSCCC, under the Employees tab), and if you haven't been keeping track of your automatic deposits to your bank account, you may not have noticed that we were just paid for overload courses last week, on October 1. The schedule for the rest of the adjunct/overload payments is as follows:

• October 15
• October 29
• November 12
• November 25
• December 10
• December 23

Additionally, this is what you'll be paid per credit this year for any overload assignments you take on:

• $1,178 - instructor
• $1,277 - assistant professor
• $1,370 - associate professor
• $1,501 - professor 

You can see more about negotiated overload/adjunct pay for the next few years in our Memorandum of Agreement for 2015-2019, available on the FA web site under Documents >> Contracts.

 

ADDITIONALLY, do you know where else you can find this information? And in particular, the information about overload pay dates? In The Word, the FA's official newsletter. If you're new to the college and/or working in a union shop, one of the best ways to familiarize yourself with the college, its history, and its long, sustainable, beneficial, and most importantly -- positive -- relationship with the union is to read through back issues of The Word (archived on the FA web site) and all of the subsequent MOAs following the 2001 contract (also archived on the web site next to the one I cited above). Both provide a broad perspective, and evidence, of how the union, college, and county work together to provide excellent working conditions and benefits for its classroom and non-classroom faculty, specialists, counselors, librarians, and professional assistants. 

Practical Matters: Intercampus Travel Reimbursement

by Sarah Kain Gutowski, Chair, New Member Mentoring Program

By next week you'll have completed your first thirty days as full time faculty at SCCC. Congratulations! I hope the transition has been a smooth one. Most of you have been focused on the tasks and duties associated with your particular job title, and many of you have been teaching, but few of you have begun to travel between campuses for committee work.

My afternoon commute. Pretty, huh?

But soon, as the semester picks up, you may have to do just that.

For instance, this Thursday (which is a Wednesday, according to the academic calendar), I will hold office hours and go to an on-campus meeting in the morning, teach a class at 12:30 p.m., and then travel to the Ammerman campus to a meeting of the college-wide distance education committee.

Because my job duties that day begin with work at the Eastern campus, but then also require me to attend a meeting from 3-5 p.m. on the Ammerman campus, as per our contract I can be reimbursed for the mileage between the two campuses. Our contract states: "If a faculty member's full-time duties require travel assignments at more than one (1) campus (i.e., location) per day, the faculty member shall be reimbursed for the mileage between assigned locations."

Cool, right? 

There are a couple of ways to begin this process. One is to visit the SCCC Governance page (I know -- were you even aware that we had a governance page? Did I just blow your mind or what?  . . . Or are you asking yourself, "Governance? What's Governance?" Oh, my friend... This is a story for a whole other post...) and download the PDF titled " Instructions for Intercampus Mileage Reimbursement." This gives you instructions for logging on to your MYSCCC account and downloading the appropriate forms, as well as a run-down of the process for submitting those forms. The caveat here is that the PDF is a little outdated. Banner tabs have changed since this document was created, and so instead of going to the "Finance" tab, you have to go to the "Employee" tab, and then click "Reimbursement Forms" under "Employee Forms and Procedures." So some of the navigation information needs updating, but for the most part it's pretty straightforward.

You may also visit the college's web page about mileage reimbursement, which is thorough and helpful but doesn't include links to the actual forms (again, you have to log on to MYSCCC for these).

All of the information you'll find in these places is important, but here's what I think you should be particularly mindful of:

1. Our contract covers required travel between 2 or more sites (campuses) in a single day. If  you travel voluntarily to a campus other than your home campus (say, for a professional development workshop!) you still aren't eligible for mileage reimbursement. And even if you're traveling to another campus for a required event (like Commencement in the Spring), you can't be reimbursed for mileage if you're going to be at only one campus that day. Basically, you're reimbursed only when it's absolutely necessary, which makes sense, right?
2. You should attempt to submit mileage reimbursement vouchers monthly. And the Business Office will accept nothing over three months (90 days) old. So if you're interested in reimbursement, you should perhaps make it a habit -- set aside time at the end of the month -- to go over your calendar and note all of the times you traveled to another campus from your "home" campus (where your everyday duties take place).
3. There are standard mileage amounts between campuses: Selden to Brentwood is 15 miles; Riverhead to Selden is 23 miles; Riverhead to Brentwood is 34 miles. If you were to travel to a different campus directly from your personal residence (I'm avoiding the use of "home" again because, you know, CLARITY), you have to subtract the mileage you normally travel to get to the office everyday from the standard mileage amounts above.
1. For example: I live 9.75 miles from the Riverhead campus, where I teach. When I travel to the Ammerman campus on Friday for the New Member Discussion Series event, I'll leave from my house, not from the Riverhead campus. So I should subtract 9.75 from 23 and claim 13.75 miles for that morning trip. Of course, I would only claim this amount if I ALSO had a meeting scheduled at Eastern or at Grant that day, since Friday is usually my non-duty day (I don't teach classes or hold office hours on Friday).
4. We aren't reimbursed the entire amount, but it's still a pretty nice feature of our contract that we get back 57.5¢ for every mile we travel between a campuses. It's especially nice if you end up on a committee that, for whatever reason, requires you to travel between campuses more than once a month. Those trips can add up!

Mileage reimbursement is just one good example of how the Faculty Association contract ensures that while we're asked to do many different kinds of service and various tasks in the course of performing our jobs, we're compensated and reimbursed accordingly for our trouble and/or efforts. I think we should appreciate that fact, and also take advantage of it! Paperwork is a pain in the arse, sure, nothing's going to change that fact, but it's necessary and perhaps a small price to pay for the benefit it brings.  

Put more bank in your bank, people! Submit those reimbursement vouchers!