College committed to fair outcome for all

At the College of DuPage, we are currently negotiating a new contract with our full-time faculty, CODFA, and had hoped to reach an agreement by now, but we are continuing to work through some of our differences and will hopefully reach a fair agreement for all stakeholders. We all just need to get together, work to understand good outcomes and get it done for the faculty, staff, students and taxpayers.

After some tough times, we all worked cooperatively to "right the ship" and become the amazing institution we are. Contract negotiations by nature carry the risk of being adversarial. The structure of community colleges provides that the faculty and staff are accountable to the administration, the administration is accountable to the Board, and the Board are accountable to the taxpayers of the district.

We're fully aware of the responsibilities the representatives of each side of these negotiations have to their respective constituencies. The board takes our responsibility to the people with the utmost seriousness.

A big part of our competitiveness in higher education is our excellent faculty. As we face an enrollment challenge, we are counting on that level of excellence to continue. We believe that the education you receive at COD is as golden an opportunity in undergrad studies as any other college. Our competitive edge, and frankly our responsibility as a publicly funded community college, is to ensure that there is "value" to go along with that excellence. We have been doing that and we want to continue doing it.

We are committed to a fair outcome in this negotiation process because every stakeholder deserves a fair outcome. That goes for faculty and staff, students and the taxpayers.

Frank Napolitano, Chairman of the Board

College of DuPage