Mendocino College is gearing up to provide e-mail access to all part-time faculty members sometime this fall. On-site e-mail will be available when school begins, according to Director of Computing Services Karen Christopherson, with home dial-up access scheduled for later in the semester.
The access, says Christopherson, will include the installation of recycled computer equipment of a more recent vintage (Mac 6100's and better) in all part-time resource offices and the part-time office so faculty without personal computers or anyone who is on campus can tune in to the e-mail that announces staff meetings, flex activities, minutes of important meetings and other campus news. Each faculty member will be given his or her own electronic mailbox, and will also have the ability to send out information to other college personnel.
Eudora, a popular e-mail program, will be used for all part-time faculty. Full-time faculty will shift over from Quick Mail, which they currently use, as time allows. However, both programs can communicate with each other. Also, since e-mail access by definition means Internet access, any part-time faculty member with the proper software, like Netscape or Internet Explorer, will immediately gain access to the world of information available on the Internet.
Over three years ago, part-time representatives to the Academic Senate began a campaign to convince college administrators to make e-mail access for part-time faculty a priority. All full time faculty and classified employees at the college have had e-mail access for many years, and much of the communication at the college is carried on via computer-generated messages. Leaving part-time faculty out of this communication loop, it was argued, did the entire college a great disservice. It also isolated part-time faculty from a wide world of information and resources available through the Internet which would enhance their ability to provide cutting edge information to their students.
The administration, responding to a resolution by the Academic Senate which was based upon these arguments, decided to seek grant funding which would allow expasion of e-mail to part-timers. That funding was received last year.
Even with the grant funding, part-timers are not guaranteed dial-up e-mail access at any particular time this fall. Christopherson said she intends to "outsource" the e-mail accounts, contracting with a local Internet provider to provide the service rather than creating the infrastructure within the college. She points out that technology is advancing at such a rapid rate that any system purchased today would quickly become obsolete; whereas commercial providers can afford to keep up with expensive changes, the college cannot. Finding and contracting with an outside provider may take some time. Christopherson claims it is one of her top priorities, and that she would like to see e-mail access for part-timers available as soon as possible.
Once e-mail access appears, the good news is that part-time faculty will be allowed to keep their new mailboxes even through the winter and summer breaks. Whereas our regular, snail-mail boxes disappear inconveniently, we will be able to continue to send and receive e-mail, maintain our membership on listservs and otherwise conduct business throughout the year.
Currently, the college provides woefully inadequate computer access to the 180 people who make up the part-time faculty and who teach over 60 percent of the classes at the college. Part-time faculty offices often lack any computer equipment at all, and that which is provided is so antiquated that 800K disks are required rather than the standard 1.44MB used on computers developed after 1992.
Student access to e-mail will lag even further behind. Some additional terminals will be placed in the library this fall for student use, but personal e-mail accounts will not be coming any time soon. This means the college will still lack the capacity to offer on-line classes, which are becoming more and more popular in better financed and more technologically advanced colleges around the state and the nation.
Copyright MPFA 1998
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited
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