Declining College...Adminstrative Incompetance - Anonymous employee Rock Valley College Employee Review

The college has been declining due to an incompetent Board of Trustees, only one of whom has ever been associated with academia. The climate is particularly hostile toward faculty, who are treated poorly. For example, I attended one public Board of Trustees meeting in which one Trustee raised his voice and pontificated for nearly 20 minutes about how the faculty was wasting paper and therefore raising tuition by being negligent with supplies....only to have the Trustee subsequently gently corrected by an officer who noted that the ;paper' in question was listed under Maintenance supplies and referred to toilet paper being used on campus. The Trustee then responded, "Well the faculty is out of line anyway." (Spring 2016). This type of toxicity is perhaps why half of the 'Faculty of the Year" winners at RVC have left the institution for other institutions. Admin also cancels classes even in defiance of the contractual percentages. In summer of 2018, the faculty won an arbitration that proved that admin was cutting certain classes in violation of contracts. Students suffer since many classes are listed as TBA and are subsequently not offered. It is hard in such a toxic climate, to ensure that a student's quality of pathway through a degree will be maintained, despite good teachers. Notably, many admin move to regional positions in government, noting that they 'kept costs' contained during their time at RVC--it is hard to escape the impression that the members of the current board (since 2010) are simply using the position as a stepping stone. The college consistently has difficulty achieving Higher Learning Commission Standards for accreditation and does a quick 'shuffle' of initiatives in the previous 6 months before HLC visits to give the impression that HLC issues are 'being addressed' aggressively.