Miami-Dade Community College (Florida)

Academe, May/Jun 2000

This report concerns the action taken by the administration of Miami-Dade Community College to abolish the existing system of academic government at the institution following a faculty vote in favor of collective bargaining and to replace it with a wholly new system of governance.

I. The Institution

Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) is a multicampus, two-year, state-supported institution in the Miami area. Originally named Dade County Junior College, MDCC was established in 1959 and began offering classes in September 1960 on what is now North Campus and was then part of a naval air station used during World War II. The college has grown dramatically over the years and currently consists of six distinct campuses as well as numerous "outreach centers" throughout Miami-Dade County. North Campus is located twelve miles north of downtown Miami. Kendall Campus (originally South Campus), which opened in 1965, is located in the county's southern suburbs and is the college's largest campus. Wolfson Campus, which is also the site of the central (or district) administration, opened in 1970; it is located in downtown Miami and houses the New World School of the Arts, established in 1984. The Medical Center Campus, opened in 1977, is located in the heart of Miami-Dade County's medical community. The Homestead Campus, which opened in 1990, is near the air force base of that name, in the southernmost part of the county. The InterAmerican Campus, located in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, was established in 1973 as part of the Wolfson Campus; it became a separate, full-fledged campus, the sixth, in 1997. The campus president is the highestranking administrative officer on each of the campuses. Each campus also has its own academic dean and other administrative officers.

In the course of its nearly forty-year history, Miami-Dade Community College has developed a complex institutional structure. Over and above the individual, semiautonomous campuses, with their own academic divisions and departments, their own academic programs and class schedules, and their own administrative arrangements, stands a district administration, which supports and oversees the financial, personnel, and facilities management functions of the entire college. A centralized District Office of Education coordinates the college's courses and programs.

Miami-Dade describes itself as "the largest multi-campus, single-district community college in America and the second largest college or university in all of [American] higher education." The college, which is open to all high school graduates and offers classes seven days a week, enrolls each term about 50,000 credit students and an even greater number of noncredit students; 65 percent of the students are part time. Serving this diverse student body are approximately 775 full-time and 1,350 part-time faculty. The college offers Associate in Arts and Associate in Science degrees and a broad range of technical, vocational, and professional certificate programs along with specialized training. Miami-Dade has been accredited since 1964 by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS).

Dr. Eduardo J. Padron took office as MDCC's district president in October 1995, succeeding Dr. Robert McCabe, who had served since 1980. A student at Miami-Dade in the early 1960s, Dr. Padron received his B.A. degree from Florida Atlantic University and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Florida. He joined the Miami-Dade faculty in 1970 as an assistant professor of economics at the college's Wolfson Campus, where he was successively department chair, academic dean, and campus president. The district provost of Miami-Dade is Dr. Jeffrey D. Lukenbill, who has been at the college, in either a faculty or an administrative capacity, since 1972. Prior to his appointment as provost in July 1997, he was dean of academic of fairs at MDCC's North Campus.

The college is governed by a seven-member district board of trustees, appointed by the governor of Florida. The board's chair at the time of the events described in this report was Martin Fine, a Miami attorney, who had held that position since 1988, and who left the board at the end of the 1998-99 academic year. He was succeeded by Roberto Martinez, also a Miami attorney.

From 1969 until March 1998, the principal governance document of Miami-Dade Community College was Policy I-80 (the Governance Constitution of the Faculty Senates), which is discussed below.

II. Factual Background

The faculty and administration of Miami-Dade Community College have been at loggerheads almost from the beginning of Eduardo Padron's presidency. Soon after Dr. Padron took office in fall 1995, he announced that the college, largely as a result of steadily declining state funding allocations, was faced with an unprecedented financial crisis, to which he responded by embarking on a significant "reengineering" program. He imposed hiring and spending freezes, placed a moratorium on new construction projects, delayed the opening of new campus facilities, and cut back on maintenance and repairs. At the Medical Center Campus, general education and English as a Second Language courses were eliminated and the honors and developmental studies programs were closed.