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Negotiating the Distance: Bargaining Contract and Policy Language for Community College Distance Education Programs

• Note: The New York State United Teachers (NYSUT) Community College Distance Education Committee (CCDEC) published a bargaining document titled Negotiating the Distance in Fall 2003. We are sharing those materials, plus updates and new recommendations, on this website. Click here to view a pdf of the original Negotiating the Distance.

The NYSUT CCDEC  is comprised of representatives from State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges across the state, explores issues and concerns related to distance education. Our members range from novices to veterans, from cyberprofessors to skeptics. We teach fully asynchronous, hybrid, and web-enhanced courses and work at institutions that offer just a few online courses as well as at institutions that offer entire degrees online.

We are educators who care deeply about how distance education affects teaching, learning, and research and who seek collegial methods to ensure that—above all else—a concern for high standards and quality education, not financial profit, drives distance education policies and practices in our locals.

The NYSUT Community Colleges play a significant role in distance education in New York State. Community colleges, by their nature, are integral to the communities they serve and indispensable in providing access to higher education for a student population of great diversity. This especially holds true when national and state economic policies prompt substantial budget cuts to education.

Distance education in New York is unique due to the presence of the SUNY Learning Network (SLN), an asynchronous learning network that connects online courses from the 64 SUNY campuses. While not all online courses in New York are offered through SLN, it is a major means of delivering online courses.

Because of the uniqueness and continued growth of distance education in New York State, we offer the following recommendations for faculty interested in negotiating contract and policy language for distance education courses.

• Note: The DE Provisions Chart is accessible only to registered DE faculty. If you'd like to be registered as a DE faculty member on this website, contact me with your name, title, and institutional affiliation.