City College: Backing Away From Vibrant Diversity in Its Workforce

By Patricia Baldwin

According to its own vision statement, City College is “rooted in San Francisco’s vibrant diversity”. For Academic Senate Vice President Alexis Litzky, vibrant diversity would include a “visual expression of difference” that celebrates diversity. Vibrant diversity would be “exciting,” according to Jill Evans, Physics Department Chairperson.

City College’s workforce ethnicity percentages generally match those of San Francisco’s population, according to demographic data.

The percentage of City College’s workforce who identify as Latine does match San Francisco’s population, 16%, according to the American Community Survey (ACS) collected from 2018-2022. Malaika Finkelstein, labor studies instructor, said that City College “tries to include the breadth of the diversity in the SF Bay Area,” which is consistent with their vision statement.

Renata Da Silva Araujo, president of Mission Campus Associated Students, said that “the staff at the Mission campus is diverse with multilingual representation.”

However, City College’s Human Resources’ Hiring Report 2023-24, the Employee Report Fall 2023, and interviews reveal two areas of concern: Latine representation in the workforce fails to reflect the student body, and layoffs have rolled back gains in faculty diversity.

Gaps in Latine Representation in the Workforce

The data shows that the district is lagging in Latine representation: 29% of City College’s students identify as Latine, while the workforce is at 16%.

“There is more ethnic diversity among classified staff than among the faculty,” said Finkelstein.

Thirteen new classified hires identified as Latine, 18 classified professional and 96 classified support positions are filled with individuals who identify as Latine.

However, disaggregating the data by job subcategory reveals further gaps. Human Resources data indicate that Latine classified staff are overrepresented in clerical/secretarial jobs, representing 22% of the classified district workforce in this job subcategory.

Hiring data also suggests that City College is not attracting Latine talent in the higher-paid, prestige positions. The hiring data for administrators reflects zero Latine applicants, while four out of 45, or 9% of current administrators, identified as Latine in fall 2023.

Faculty hiring data suggests that the institution prioritized hiring part-time faculty, adding 81 part-timers to the faculty for 2023-24. In contrast, just four full-time, tenure-track faculty were hired during the same period.

And yet, for part-time faculty postings, there were zero Latine applicants out of 545 total applicants.

While it is possible for some Latine applicants to have chosen alternative classifications such as other, not disclosed, or of two or more races (multi-ethnicity), zero out of 545 is a vivid data point.

Full-time faculty postings also drew zero Latine applicants.

Araujo wonders if potential applicants face the same pressures as the Latine students at the Mission Campus. Just as “many Latinas taking classes at the Mission Campus need to postpone education to feed their family,” she said, “it may be that the level of higher education needed for faculty and administrative positions is not accessible to large segments of the Latine population, leading to a reduced applicant pool.”

More Part-time, Fewer Full-time Faculty

According to the data, a majority of City College’s full-time faculty identify as white. In addition, there is a “lack of visible diversity” on Ocean Campus, according to Litzky, who also teaches in communication studies.

Part-time faculty hires are more ethnically diverse and less white than the overall faculty. Evans said that the “faculty in physics is comprised predominantly of older white men, but there’s more diversity now that some previously laid-off part-time faculty have been rehired.”

In Fall 2023, across all disciplines, 55 full-time faculty (13%) and 60 part-time faculty (11%) identified as Latine. These percentages lag behind both the identified Latine population in San Francisco, 16%, and City College’s reported Latine student population, 29%.

“Students need to see representations of themselves in the faculty, especially gender and ethnic identity, to believe ‘I can do it,’” Evans said.

Layoffs Siphon Off Diversity

In 2022, the Board of Trustees voted to lay off approximately 150 part-time and tenured faculty. Only approximate numbers are available because the chancellor’s office failed to grant the Office of Research and Planning (ORP) approval to provide the data.

“City College has worked hard to improve equity in faculty hiring, but with layoffs, we’re going backwards,” said Finkelstein. “Downsizing impacted faculty diversity; we lost part-time faculty and newer faculty.” These were the groups that had been contributing to increased diversity at City College.

Coincidentally, three people interviewed for this pair of articles were pink-slipped and/or laid off in 2022. Danny Halford, who has been teaching English as a Second Language for 46 years, was laid off for the second time since 2006. Professor Jill Evans, the current chair, was the tenured faculty member laid off from the Physics Department.

Olga Galvez, chair of Disabled Students Programs and Services (DSPS) at the time and currently, received a pink slip warning that she might lose her job. In a video she made at the time for the faculty union, the American Federation of Teachers Local 2121, shared on social media, Galvez expressed, “I framed my whole career around ending up at City College.”

During her interview, Evans, who described vibrant diversity as “exciting,” had been enthusiastic when talking about students, but she lost her spark when the conversation turned to faculty layoffs. “Loss of diversity is not vibrant,” said Evans.

In 2022, eight part-time faculty and one tenured professor, Evans, were laid off. Of those, five part-timers identified as women, as did the tenured professor, leaving only one woman on the Physics Department faculty.

The layoffs tend to follow a last-hired, first-fired framework. The data below is based on the faculty union’s data about employees who received pink slips in 2022.

At the direction of the Chancellor’s office, data on the impacts of faculty layoffs could not be accessed through ORP.

Notices of layoffs disproportionately went to Filipino faculty, 15%; African American faculty, 17%; and Southeast Asian faculty, 25%. The eventual cuts impacted African American faculty, according to Kym Morrison, professor of history, who also noted that the loss of faculty through retirements or layoffs saps a department's vibrancy.

Faculty layoffs are about diversity lost. For example, during the 2022 layoffs, City College lost queer faculty. “Newer faculty, who made up the bulk of those laid off, offer creative approaches to teaching, as well as their varied lived experience,” said Heather Brandt, Student Chancellor.

Litzky noted that “because of tenure, higher education faculty tend to skew older.”

“It is just the nature of the organization,” she said.

“City College needs new blood; new faculty—part-time and tenured—bring different training, new teaching methods, different approaches to teaching, and varied reading material, possibly even new research into cultural changes,” said Finkelstein. “This variety can help students find what works for them. Students can find something to excite them about the subject matter,” she added.

Cuts to the faculty also show up as cuts to classes. In fall 2021, every class could be offered every semester in the Physics Department, according to Evans. Now, several classes are offered only once a year.

Alejandra Cardenas, a journalism major, has noticed a similar pattern in other disciplines, where “some classes are not offered every semester.” Evans notes that these changes in course availability “impact completion.”

Students Want Connected Counselors

Although counselors were not a separate category in Human Resources hiring data, students had thoughts about their role.

Araujo spoke to their ethnic and linguistic diversity, “two of the three counselors at Mission are Latine and Spanish speakers,” she said.

“Students, especially international students, need focused counseling and advising, so they know where to start and what to do in their major, otherwise they feel stressed,” said journalism student Ahmad Aimaq.

Cardenas said that students “need their own counselor who is familiar with them and can help with specific issues, rather than meeting with whichever counselor is available.”