The English departments at two Queens community colleges are fighting CUNY’s efforts to reduce their four-hour introductory writing classes to three hours.
The English Department at LaGuardia Community College, in Long Island City, passed a resolution on Wednesday rejecting CUNY’s plan to cut the hours of the school’s composition classes.
The resolution also supported the embattled English Department at Queensborough Community College, in Bayside, which voted a week earlier to reject the City University of New York plan, part of an initiative known as Pathways.
In a Sept. 13 email, a day after the Queensborough Community College vote, Karen Steele, a vice president at Queensborough, threatened to axe the composition classes altogether. And in a move that faculty saw as intimidation, Steele also threatened to get rid of all of the English Department’s adjunct professors and possibly some full-time professors.
Queensborough officials later called the email “a worst case scenario.”
“The school is working with the faculty … so the classes will be offered at three hours and three credits with possible additional time for students who need it,” Queensborough spokesman Alex Burnett said.
But Queensborough English professors said cutting class time would hurt struggling students chances of being competitive at four-year schools.
“It’s unfair to our students,” said English professor Joel Kuszai. “Our students need extra attention, more support.”
CUNY is attempting to streamline its curriculum, making it easier for students to transfer between the 24 schools in its system. The changes wouldn’t go into effect until the fall of 2013.
But shorter classes could mean full-time professors may have to take on additional classes and part-time faculty would get a pay cut.
CUNY spokesman Michael Arena said Pathways will help students.
“Students will now know which courses transfer before they sign up,” Arena said.
Queensborough sophomore Elizabeth Reeger, 18, of Flushing, said she students shouldn’t have to travel to other schools to take the composition classes if the faculty doesn’t agree to the shortened classes.
“They should just make it three hours,” said Reeger, who stressed four-hour classes were too long. “We have extra help tutoring.”
But a Queensborough English professor, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, predicted a long fight ahead.
“We’re willing to negotiate but we want what’s best for our students,” the professor said.
