Webmeister: King Collins
Communications Committee Report March 6, 2003 Compiling the MPFA membership list, and why we do it
We frequently update the MPFA membership list. Currently our list includes individuals, over half of whom are not currently teaching.
We maintain the larger list because:
- Every indiviudal who has ever taught at the college is a resource of the college and our association
- These indivuals are not just a poll of potential instructors, but also sources of knowledge, experience and innovation in whatever work, profession or craft they pursue.
- our association is the only organization at the college that has the interest and connections to acomplish the task of keeping a useful database of all part-time faculty
- the database of part-time instructors, combined with other instrumests of communications---phone surveys, email correspondence, newsletters, participation in committees, etc---is a major source of strenght and inspiration for our association.
- many part-timers work for the college infrequently and do not have classes continually from one semester to the next, and are forgotten by those regularly employed by the college
- part-time workers, including part-time faculty, spend more time in the community than full-timeres and are, therefore, significant representatives of the community
Recently, we have added the list of Fall, 2002 instructors. We will be inputing information for Spring and Fall, 2001 in the near future and also the information from this semester, Spring 2003, when we get it .
Web work:
The web site is being revised. We have ome newly desinged pages and so far the feedback has been favorable. Hoverver we haven't received many new ideas for what to add or change.
We have been aware for some time that many part-time faculty who have e-mail are not registered with us. We are dealing with that by doing a survey (below). We also sent out voting recommendations(written by concerned citizens before the election), to the MPFA member list, thus drawing rebuttals and comments which we posted on the MPFA web site and to the college "public" email list.
Phone Survey
Larry Sheehy (works at Green Mac) will be helping King make phone calls for our new 2003 survey
Here is what was achieved when we did a phone survey in 1999:
A Green Mac worker spent 25 hours, and King spent approximately 7 hours to achieve the following results:
To date we have attempted to contact 266, or 88% of the full list. Of those 266:
82% (218) Had phones and were called (48 members, 18%, had no phone listed)
9% (23) No answer
52% (139) Left message
21% (57) Reached and had conversation.
Of the 57 members contacted,
66% (37) Have email addresses
36% (20) Do not have email access
13% (7) Had email addresses already reported
54% (30) Provided new email addresses
11% (6) Were removed from the list (no longer teaching part-time)
55% (31) Had comments to pass on
It is noteworthy that over half (54%) of the contacted members provided new email addresses. These have been added to our email list and will greatly improve our ability to communicate with our membership. A report of the phone survey, including comments, will be put on our website.
MPFA ReviewWe are looking over the archives and the earlier "MPFA Review" with an eye to finding some way of providing a history of the issues we have discussed and dealt with in recent years.
The latest review of our activity was put on line in 1999. A printed/abridged version (one or two copies) of the Review was provided (check minutes for when this happened) and it was supposed to have been put in a spiral bound notebook so that it could be viewed by part-timers. (As I recall, a copy of the review---constituted 50 pages or so---was presented by me, King Collins, at one of our MPFA meetings. Does anyone know what happened to the paper version?)
Respectfully submitted,
King Collins
Copyright MPFA 1999
Permission granted to excerpt or use this article if source is cited
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