Flex Obligation FAQ

Flex days are special days in the academic calendar designed exclusively for professional development activities. Normally, flex days are at the beginning of each semester. They include one or more days of optional workshops and one day of mandatory convocation and division/department gatherings. These days are part of the academic calendar, but no classes are taught.

All full-time and some adjunct faculty have a flex obligation. Your flex obligation is the total number of hours you must spend participating in professional development activities. For adjunct and overload faculty, your Tentative Contract Schedule (TCS) states your flex obligation.

Full-Time Faculty

Full-time faculty members are obligated for 12 hours each semester, plus the number of minutes identified on your overload Tentative Contract Schedule (TCS). If a faculty member teaches an overload class held on the same day as a flex day (that is, you teach a Tuesday/Thursday class and the flex day is on a Thursday), you have an additional flex obligation equaling the total number of hours you would have taught. Your flex obligation must be completed within the given semester.

Adjunct Faculty

Adjunct faculty members are obligated for the total number of hours they would have taught classes on flex days. For example, you teach one three-unit course from 5:30 to 6:45 pm on Tuesday/Thursday, and your college's flex day is scheduled for Thursday. Your flex obligation would be 75 minutes (the 75 minutes you would have been teaching Thursday evening). You must complete your flex obligation within the semester of your contract.

Attendance at convocation and subsequent division/department gatherings (campus priority days) is mandatory for full-time faculty only. For adjunct faculty and all other staff, attendance is encouraged but not mandatory, and the rest of the flex days program is optional. Full-time and adjunct faculty can use other activities to complete their flex obligations if they wish.

Flex obligations can also be fulfilled by attending workshops coordinated or sponsored by the Flex Subcommittee during the semester and/or by participation in an Individual Professional Development Activity. These must be attended outside of regular working hours.

Student services faculty must be in attendance on flex days either attending convocation or interacting with students. If a counselor has a full day working with students then he/she can use an alternative day for their flex obligation activities.

An Individual Professional Development Activity is an activity that addresses an instructional improvement need and cannot be accomplished within normal working times. It should be above and beyond normal duties and responsibilities as outlined in board policy and collective bargaining agreements. Faculty may not receive credit for activities taking place during their regularly scheduled work hours.

An appropriate Individual Professional Development Activity should meet the following criteria:

• Occur during weekends or holidays, or otherwise outside normal working times.
• Be something that is normally not done because it is too difficult to find the time, or the equipment, or to get people together.
• Address a critical assignment-related need, such as: update subject matter, new teaching methods, major revision of classroom materials, major curriculum review, new matriculation or retention strategies development, articulation with other departments on campus or with transfer institutions, or organizational development needs.
• Foster professional growth through participation in conferences, seminars, workshops, research, publishing, or advising students or faculty.

An appropriate Individual Professional Development Activity should not:

• Require being excused from class, office hours, and so on.
• Be a repeat of an activity regularly scheduled during the normal work week, such as department meetings.
• Include any part of routine day-to-day activities, such as paper grading, term paper reading, test construction, interview or standing committees, textbook examination, or preparation of lecture notes.
• Be anything for which remuneration could be received.

Flex forms are distributed at the beginning of each semester at convocation. complete the form indicating how you fulfilled or plan to fulfill your flex obligation for the semester and return the form using the instructions provided.

Your absence will be calculated by multiplying the total number of hours missed for the day by .67. The .67 multiplier represents the four hours of a “regular” faculty day used for attendance purposes, divided by the six-hour flex day obligation. As a result, a full-time faculty member missing the entire day would report four hours on their absence report.

As you have the semester to complete this obligation, failure to complete will result in a loss of pay.

Faculty members who have "reassigned time" (such as, President's reassign time) are still obligated to the same number of mandatory flex hours for that semester that they would be without the reassigned time. Only faculty members on Type A or Type C leav,e or participating in the pre-retirement workload reduction program, are relieved of their flex obligation. If the Type A or Type C leave is less than 100%, the flex obligation is a proportional number of hours based on their instructional load. A regular faculty member with 20% release time and teaching 80% of a regular instructional load would be obligated to 80% of the mandatory hours for that semester, or 9.60 hours for the semester (12 hours multiplied by .8).