June 2019 – Stacy Kim

CUNY professors hit with major reduction in teaching hours

CUNY and the Professional Staff Congress have come to an agreement to implement a reduction in the current faculty teaching load of 21 credit hours.

PSC has announced that the change is intended to “enable professors to devote more time to individual work with students, to advising, holding office hours, conducting academic research, and engaging in other activities that contribute to student success.” This change is scheduled to be implemented over three academic years beginning in 2018-2019 and will reduce the mandated credit hours assigned to faculty members from 21 to 18.

Workload reduction has long been proposed by faculty members and will apply to all community colleges, senior colleges and full-time classroom teaching faculty of CUNY. By fall of 2020, faculty at 11 senior colleges will be teaching 18 credit hours per year. At seven community colleges, the teaching load for instructors will be 24 credit hours.

The change is intended to help both instructors and students, and to ensure that students gain more opportunities to connect with professors. PSC also hopes that the change will enable professors to focus on their research while developing a closer bond with students.

“This agreement recognizes that faculty work encompasses critical elements in addition to classroom teaching, better positioning our faculty to address critical responsibilities such as student advising and mentoring,” PSC President Barbara Bowen stated. “Multiple studies show that the single most important academic factor in student success is time spent individually with faculty.”

One study is a report from The American Council on Education, which claims that student success is largely attributed to the effectiveness of the faculty members instructing them.

In June 2016, CUNY and PSC settled the last collective bargaining agreement and convened a joint labor management committee designed to address faculty’s teaching workload. Both parties are working toward creating a new contract.

Dr. David Jones, a political science professor at Baruch College, has joined a task force comprising other faculty members with the goal of maintaining research-driven faculty, spending more time with students and preserving the reassigned time for research.

Prior to the new workload agreement, Baruch had its own system to help promote faculty research called research reassigned time. Research reassigned time allowed faculty members to teach three fewer credit hours and dedicate an equivalent amount of time to research for the same pay.

Therefore at Baruch, the workload agreement will benefit some faculty members who have not done as much research and have not been receiving research reassigned time.

Nonetheless, faculty members who had gained from research reassigned time will not reap any benefits from this incentive as the agreement will not change or improve their current arrangement, which may be a demotivating factor. The decision by Baruch’s administration will have the effect of aligning all faculty’s teaching credit hours across the board. So most faculty will be teaching the same amount of credit hours per year.

Jones believes that the key to creating a productive classroom environment is to motivate faculty members to do more research that they can bring into the classroom. He feels that it is imperative to set a plan that preserves the principle of reassigned research hours and allocates them in a fair way.

Additionally, Jones has pointed out how full-time faculty members in other schools, such as Rutgers University, teach four courses per year, whereas CUNY professors are obliged to teach seven courses a year with nearly the same compensation.

Another challenge is identifying a source of funding. With fewer people teaching and PSC unwilling to pay the cost associated with the new policy, the school has the responsibility to hire faculty members and potentially cover significant costs.

Bowen insists that CUNY faculty need “a better contract.” “The members of the PSC have been told for decades that there is not enough money to fund CUNY adequately or to fund fair contracts for the faculty and staff,” she said.

Compared with other institutions, CUNY’s faculty members are underpaid, which reduces the chances of attracting the best professors and staff to the various campuses. She believes that offering higher wages is the key way to improve the university’s educational system.

A task force, established after the May Faculty Senate meeting, is working to provide the fairest way to distribute faculty research time. The first task force committee meeting is scheduled for Sept. 24. In the meeting, Baruch’s president, Mitchel B. Wallerstein, will present his goal for faculty workload reduction.

Stacy Kim September 20, 2018

Hearing investigates whether CUNY hires enough minorities

Faculty members and students at Baruch College are raising concerns about the dwindling number of black and Latino faculty members.

An oversight hearing chaired by New York City Council Member Inez Barron was held on Sept. 27, with the purpose of ending the long-fought battle and coming up with a solid initiative.

Barron lamented that the percentage of black hires of the CUNY colleges remains nearly flat despite the fact that CUNY schools are located in culturally diverse areas.

“Since 1997, the lack of black hires was a constant struggle,” Dr. Arthur Lewin, a professor at Baruch College, said. A document — the Master Plan — that promised to enrich the culture of CUNY schools has been changing every four years.

Interim Chancellor Vita C. Rabinowitz testified at the hearing, saying that the main focus of CUNY Central is to bring in more diversity and hire more underrepresented minorities.

However, the Quarterly Report on Faculty Diversity conducted by CUNY’s Office of Human Resources Management proves how empty those promises are.

According to the report, the percentage of black hires was only 2.5 percent and the percentage of Latino faculty was 5.9 percent.

“As a student who takes liberal arts and social science courses exclusively and who is a senior completing the last year of a bachelor’s degree, I can count on one hand, the number of ethnic minority professors that have instructed me,” said Liam Giordano, a senior who spoke about his experience.

“I find this incredibly disappointing and unrepresentative of our diverse city and its pool of qualified, educated individuals looking to teach for our school.”

“In the black and Latino Studies Department, it is currently down to just three [full-time] professors without hiring replacements for those that leave, which brings the slow, deliberate destruction of the Black and Latino Studies Department,” Lewin claimed.

According to Giordano’s research, “Of ten courses under the subject ‘Black Studies,’ six were the basic, introductory course into ‘Black Studies’ that fulfills a CUNY core requirement for undergraduate students, and there are no graduate-level courses pertained to black or Latino studies this semester.” A decrease in the number of courses in African-American Studies is unlikely to attract students interested in the field to Baruch College.

In addition, the administration had promised a Strategic Diversity Plan in 2013 in which it will have periodic meetings with black and Latino faculty to resolve the issue and promote diversity. Five years have passed since administration pledged to this. Still, faculty members are complaining of seeing no progress in this long-standing issue.

Throughout the hearing, Barron shed light on the failures of recruiting and supporting faculty diversity. Although no clear-cut initiative was proposed, the efforts to increase faculty diversity will continue, she said.

Robert Holden, a professor at New York City College of Technology, said in the hearing, “If the university is serious about hiring black faculty, there will be an improvement.”

Giordano, taking an active role for making changes, explained his future actions. He “intends on addressing this issue to the University Student Senate and will propose a taskforce to investigate the shortcomings of the promises made by CUNY regarding staff and curriculum diversity, and following that, leadership within the Senate can put forward a recommendation,” adding that we still need to do more research.
Giordano, representing more than 500,000 students at CUNY, is hoping for having a well-rounded education.

The core value of the administration taking actions lies in providing students with the best education that ultimately cultivates future CUNY leaders.

Although Rabinowitz admits that CUNY administration is working to recruit black and Latino faculty members, there have been no notable developments.

After 40 years of protesting and waiting, faculty members and students are standing up for change.

Giordano ended his speech with saying, “I recommend a more revamped hiring system that is more inclusive than ever before to offer our students the education they deserve.”

Father follows digital footprints in Chaganty’s thriller Searching

A wildly unconventional film recently lured moviegoers back to theaters. Searching, the feature debut for writer-director Aneesh Chaganty, is told entirely through a computer screen — FaceTime calls, news stories, old home videos and YouTube videos. In an interview with Screen Rant, Chaganty expressed that the filmmaking approach used in the film was afresh structure.

Chaganty said, “If we were to execute that, maybe it would feel like the first time this has ever been accomplished.”

The film centers around widower David Kim portrayed by John Cho. David realizes that his 16-year-old daughter, Margot, has gone missing. Thirty-seven hours after an investigation is opened, a panicked David decides to track her social media and even check her bank account, only to find the secrets she kept from him for a long time.

After being introduced to Margot’s secrets, David is completely overwhelmed and devastated — he tears up when he sees his teenage daughter grieving about the loss of her mom and creating her own world online to cope with her issue.

Each discovery leads to a different route for the investigation and eventually unravels the secrets that Margot has hidden away.

Finally, this thought-provoking movie throws a question at the audience: in the digital world, should people relearn how to communicate?

In Searching, failure to properly communicate leads to negative consequences. David repeatedly says in the film that he knows his daughter “better than anyone else.” However, when it turns out that he knows nothing about her, the film puts a spotlight on the importance of communicating with others in person.

David calls Margot’s piano instructor before calling the police, who tells him that his daughter stopped coming to her classes a few months ago.
He then reaches out to Margot’s friends, who tell him that they are not that close to Margot. Consequently, David gets to know his daughter without really speaking to her — an expression of how people living in the digital world have different online and offline personalities.

Another theme that echoes throughout the film is that it’s easier for people to rely on the internet for emotional fulfillment.

In an interview with CNET, Chaganty said, “This movie isn’t a indictment on technology. It’s just, in a weird way, showing that we live our lives on screens.”

Rather than confiding in her father, Margot resorts to sharing her problems with a stranger online — something that happens all too often in real life. People are mostly staring at their digital devices and lose their ties with loved ones, eventually forgetting how to build a true relationship without using their phones.

At the beginning of the film, David is not able to send Margot a text that says, “Your mother would be proud of you.” Toward the end of the film, after learning that he failed to know his daughter fully, he is able to send her the message.

Searching immediately grabs the attention of viewers by diving right into the disappearance of Margot and the investigation. On the surface level, the film might seem like a typical story about a missing child. Nonetheless, Searching, using a nontraditional approach in filmmaking, shows how modern technology has been affecting every single facet of people’s lives.
First and foremost, the story unfolds on the computer screen. A similar technique is used in the screen-based Unfriended series, shedding light on negative online culture. Otherwise, Searching is about how useful the internet can be for people who want to figure things out for themselves. David solves the case of his daughter’s disappearance using the internet alone.

Despite the fact that the movie lacks many other components that most thriller films have, Searching’s advantage lies in the fact that viewers can see action and reaction at the same time.

Cho’s face is framed in an extreme close-up, which makes it easy to see his unsettled feelings as he goes through his daughter’s laptop. Every scene in the film captures Cho’s face, which is filled with worry and distress.
Cho is the first Asian-American person to lead a Hollywood thriller, notable when paired with the film’s $6 million gross from its wide release opening weekend. Along with Crazy Rich Asians — which has an all-Asian cast — Searching proves that Asian-American representation can succeed in Hollywood.

While speaking to CNET, Cho mentioned, “This is an example of the end game which is to get to a place where the character is written on the page Asian, but it’s also not a point in the plot.”

For obvious reasons, such as great actors and storyline, Searching is a must-see, perfect summer movie. Deviating from the tradition of any thriller film, Searching does a great job in making a satisfying screen-based thriller.
Stacy Kim
September 13, 2018

Shale drillers in Texas need to stop “flaring” gas into the atmosphere

In order to remove excess gas from oil drilling, shale drillers have been resorting to burning natural gas in wells, also known as “flaring.”
Natural gas — a byproduct of oil extraction — is less valuable than oil, hence the reason oil companies burn natural gas.

Venetta Seals, the mayor of Pecos, Texas, said, “Without the infrastructure being here, the only other solution is what, they stop drilling? That would certainly turn things upside down out here if that were to stop happening.”
To stop burning natural gas would require adding more pipelines or decreasing oil production, which would adversely impact the short-term profits of these oil companies.

Oil production is a lucrative business and a vital source of revenue to energy companies and local economies. Failing to see the big picture of wasting natural gas by flaring may bring forth unexpected consequences.
In some respects, Seals is operating rationally in the interest of her community; oil sells for $69 a barrel whereas natural gas is worth $3 per million British thermal units. Nonetheless, Seals’ projections may be shortsighted.

To understand why, it is important to ask two questions. The first is, how would people feel knowing that energy companies are adding greenhouse gases that impact global temperatures?

Furthermore, how would people living near a flaring zone cope with headaches, dizziness and loss of coordination caused by the release of methane?

Rather than striving for maximum profit margins, the government should start looking into the several long-term consequences flaring gas will have on the public’s health, well-being and the economy.

With more flaring, the environment has been deteriorating. Flaring emits greenhouse gases equivalent to 2 million cars, which exacerbates the effects of global warming.

Aaron Bernstein, a doctor at Boston Children’s Hospital, said that even a small global temperature increase could lead to troubling consequences, like rising sea levels, population displacement, disruption to the food supply, flooding and an increase of infectious diseases.

Rising sea levels, as salt water seeps in, contaminates the drinking water supply and adversely impacts human health.

The significance is that the government should look out for the health and well-being of its citizens in order to produce efficient workers and build a better community — this cannot be done without creating a healthy climate.

First of all, the problem is that the state government gives these companies permission to flare. Most oil production businesses resort to burning gas due to the fact that flaring is much more convenient than planning and manufacturing brand new natural gas pipelines.

The simplest way to limit flaring is to heavily tax companies that choose to do so because more companies will most likely decrease the amount of gas they burn. Another solution is to utilize this excess natural gas as an energy source.

Natural gas is used to generate electricity, fuel automobiles, heat water and bake food. It is also used frequently in the manufacturing process to produce glass, steel, cement and many other commodities.

Natural gas vehicles not only emit less pollutants — or greenhouse gases — but they also cost less than vehicles that run on gasoline. Despite the potentially devastating consequences of burning natural gases, there is still room for change.

Governments and individuals should recognize what will benefit them the most in the long run and cooperate to tear down the old tradition of flaring, which leads to nothing but ruin and devastation.

Stacy Kim
September 13, 2018