Maricopa Community Colleges Faculty Association

The Maricopa County Community College District has an unusual problem. It has money it legally can't spend, based on a four-decades-old Arizona law. District leaders hope they can sway voters to change that.

Happy Indigenous Peoples’ Day! Learn more from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian at https://lnkd.in/eJfu9Bxz #IndigenousPeoplesDay

Thank you to everyone who came out to get your car windshield painted at our last two events! Learn more about the Expenditure Limit at https://lnkd.in/gAqYTnAa #VoteDownBallot #SupportOurStudents #VoteYes #Prop486

Maricopa Community Colleges are facing a major funding crisis. If the expenditure limit formula isn't adjusted, they'll have to cut $100 million in necessary expenses, which will directly impact our students. This means fewer resources, less support, and potentially higher tuition costs. Adjusting the formula does NOT increase taxes but lets the Colleges spend money they already have. The Colleges’ impact for students goes beyond the classroom. They transform lives by addressing students’ basic needs, from nutrition to mental health, and empowering high school students to transition seamlessly into higher education. Let's show our students we care by voting YES on the ballot measure in November 2024. Every vote counts! Learn more at: https://lnkd.in/gAqYTnAa

ICYMI | Ava Wherley likes to read—especially thrillers. She rarely reads nonfiction, but when she does, she prefers suspenseful tales of true crime. Reading for school is another matter. Wherley, a sophomore biology major at the University of Florida, is assigned about 100 pages of reading a week for three classes—most of which she skips in favor of gleaning the information from YouTube videos. “I’m someone that learns really well from videos and things being visually explained to me, which is something the textbook isn’t usually really good at,” she said, adding that academic texts tend to use overly complex language, which makes them harder to read. Wherley is hardly the only student to shirk reading; in interviews with current college students, only one—a freshman who said he is assigned only about five pages each week—told Inside Higher Ed that they typically complete their reading assignments. Some skim, some use artificial intelligence to create summaries and some rely on old-fashioned human-written summaries, such as SparkNotes, to stay on top of the material. Read more ?? https://bit.ly/4dfON6Z

Did you know that the Maricopa Community Colleges produce the second-largest number of college graduates in Arizona and create 1 out of every 28 jobs in Maricopa County? Please support your community colleges by voting YES on PROP 486. To learn more, please visit https://lnkd.in/gAqYTnAa. (Please note that all the video content is on the linked webpage.)

Professors want to support student well-being but need appropriate and sustainable ways to do so. A new pilot program offers five ways for instructors in large-enrollment courses to demonstrate care and build social connections: 1. Use a syllabus statement that conveys care. 2. Run a slide show before class highlighting campus events and resources. 3. Ahead of an exam or assignment, stress that how students perform isn't a reflection of their intelligence or value. 4. Put students into small groups that meet outside of class to talk about something related to the course — not to complete a project, but to build social connections. 5. Provide a mid-quarter check in survey. Read more about the program in this week's #Teaching newsletter:

Welcome back, faculty! We hope you had a wonderful summer and hope you have a successful semester! Let us know if you need anything.