8/17 email
Dear Faculty,
From those of us on the University Faculty Senate, we wanted to let you know the following:
On the University Faculty Senate, we are told that some CUNY campus administrations are essentially overfilling their colleges’ online courses (well past the normal course limits on those campuses), to save money it seems. We wanted to share this with the rest of the College of Staten Island faculty. We at CSI should all keep an eye on our own course size limits, and remember that the CUNY colleges are left to make their own decisions on current course caps. Indeed, one member of the UFS wrote the UFS listserv, “In light of [UFS] concerns regarding the determination of class size, I took the liberty of reaching out to the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) for clarification on this matter. They indicated that the University [overall] has no official position on this issue; the colleges are making local decisions.”
Am I (Jean Halley) correct in thinking that so far I think our course caps have not been changed at the College of Staten Island? At any rate, we should all keep in mind that, if our administration acts like those on some other CUNY campuses, they might inflate class sizes without even letting us know. And we should remember that pushing back has had some success on other campuses. For example at MEC, a faculty person wrote, “They increased the class size to 50 and after some pushback, the deans of each school decreased it to 42 and some to 40. I am in the process of sending them the governance document that capped class sizes at 30.”
And at John Jay, it seems that this issue has been resolved for now, “as a result of a concerted effort at shared governance on the part of Department Chairs and the administration. A previous agreement (2013) regarding a maximum enrollment of 28 for online instruction will be honored; adjustments will be made to address sections that have already been allowed to exceed that limit. Those sections will be capped at current enrollment for fall 2020 to avoid penalizing already enrolled students.”
Further, I believe, faculty at QCC are working on a statement requiring the college limit online class sizes to 28. And at Kingsborough, the limit is 29 for all courses.
Also, this is helpful:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereknewton/2020/06/28/online-college-classes-should-have-no-more-than-12-students/#1310d0e23179
Thank you so much.