Tucson Citizen.com
Pima College Stories -

AND HOPE CONTINUES TO DIMINISH AT PIMA COLLEGE

by on Jun. 22, 2012, under Education

 

SIX FIGURE EARNERS AT PCC GETTING MENTORS – STAR ARTICLE

 

It is never ending…..

 

From the recent newspaper article about the College acquiring mentors for newly hired/promoted administrators because these people are not adequately qualified, this echoes the discouragement of many years for qualified employees who have suffered under this practice with many leaving the College because of it.   Their suffering is, therefore, doubled, for not only were they not hired, but additionally someone less than qualified than they were.

Examples of this including the hiring/promoting of people with no teaching experience over employees with more than 10 years of excellent teaching experience; people with bachelor degrees hired/promoted over employees with masters and doctorates; and people with less than one year’s college experience hired over employees with more than 10 years experience – to the employees this has clearly and repeatedly reinforced that a job well done is not appreciated at Pima College.

And amongst all of the rhetoric said about this, it has been demonstrated by those who were promoted over more highly qualified employees that a lack of sympathy is easy for them because they have reaped the benefits from the misfortunes of more highly qualified employees.

The saddest part to this story is that people, students in particular, are being hurt because the best qualified people are not being hired/promoted as evidenced in the failings of programs and services, high employee turnover, and declining enrollment.

It is told that administrators and the Board have expressed that they knew about the bad behavior of Flores’ towards employees, yet did nothing because they too were mistreated — that is unacceptable — because their first and foremost responsibility was to ensure the well-being of their employees and students — not Flores’.

 

 

Dr. Lyn Olsen has been an employee of Pima College for more than 15 years teaching and managing a wide variety of programs. She earned her Ph.D. in Higher Education, her Masters in Public Administration, her bachelors in psychology, her associates in health administration and has earned five national certifications in healthcare administration. She is the author of several textbooks in addition to hundreds of presentations and articles. She recently was presented the highly prestigious Regional Toastmaster's Communication and Leadership Award. She also won the Unsung Hero Award from the National Association of Women Business Owners for her development of the Women Empowering Employment Workshop which has helped serve many disadvantaged people in the community. She also won Instructor of the Year from Pima College and the Metropolitan Education Commission's Crystal Apple Award for her community service projects with local businesses and social service agencies. She has a long history of working closely with hundreds of local businesses and social service agencies including the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, Tucson Urban League, Job Path, and Fred Acosta Job Corp.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 22nd, 2012 at 1:26 am and is filed under Education. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

RSS feed for this post (comments)
  • http://www.facebook.com/bret.linden FoMo Bret Linden

    I was employed at PCC for a little over four years. At the risk of sounding immodest, I was one of the good employees who left because I couldn’t stand the way things were. I was miserable. I was one year away from being fully vested in my retirement plan. I was so miserable that I walked away from over $9k in employer-matching funds because I couldn’t hang on for one more year. My rationale was that $9k wouldn’t have done me any good if I ended up putting a gun in my mouth.

    The biggest problem with PCC is, hands down, the lack of consequences. Anyone can do anything they want at PCC with no consequences whatsoever. Or, if they wanted to do nothing, that was OK too. Nothing would happen. Once in a while people would be “written up”, but what does that mean? It just means they turn over the write-up sheet and they have extra scratch paper. PCC had a lot of good people there when I was there who believed in PCC’s mission and took pride in their work, but unfortunately many of the good people were victimized by the bad people, most of which seemed to gain power, promotions, and influence.

    The newspaper story Dr. Olson mentions also gave me a little hope, and took some away, too. The part that gave me hope was reading that Keith MacIntosh was getting promoted to either VC or AVC of IT (I don’t remember which one it was). Mac is a great guy who knows how to lead people and knows his stuff in the IT business. If I worked for someone as qualified as Mac I’d probably still be at PCC. He deserves the promotion. What gave me more hope was that acting AVC of IT, Cindy Dooling, didn’t get the promotion. She is grossly unqualified for the AVC spot, and she is also grossly unqualified for the spot of head of Client Services (or whatever they’re calling it now).

    Dooling is part of one of the problems Dr. Olson cites in this story. I can personally attest to that because I was personally victimized by her. I was an IT Specialist at East Campus. There was an IT Specialist position open at District, where Dooling was the supervisor. Identical…meaning exactly the same. Same pay, same qualifications, same duties. The HR monkeys even copied-and-pasted the qualifications from the previous IT Specialist job postings. It was the exact same thing as I was doing.

    For those who don’t know, PCC positions are open to internal transfer before they are open to the public, so that PCC employees who have an identical position at another campus have the opportunity to “lateral” into that position. If only one person is interested in the lateral, it is supposed to be a done deal firmed up with a phone call and a starting date. A “rubber stamp”, if you will…

    Well, it wasn’t for me.

    Dooling, before the job was even posted, decided she wanted to hire in a 21-year-old kid. I knew the kid. Nice guy, I have nothing against him. However, he didn’t have my qualifications, certifications, or years of experience. Plus, he wasn’t already employed as an IT Specialist at PCC like I was. But, Cindy wanted him anyway, so she was going to just do whatever she wanted to do and break the rules to make sure he got the job. As long as Cindy had been in PCC, I’m certain she knew she could do whatever she wanted without any sort of accountability. turns out she was right.

    I was forced to interview for the transfer, despite the fact that it was still internal at this point and I was the only person who had expressed interest in transferring in to the position. Up to this point, I had never heard of anyone having to interview for a transfer when there was no competition for the spot. So, I dealt with the interview…then I was told no. No, not by Cindy, but by a letter from HR. I tried to contact cindy to discuss the situation, but she didn’t even have the stones to return a phone call or an email. That’s the kind of person she is, apparently.

    Then the position opened to external candidates, and the kid that I knew all along would get hired, did get hired. When hiring externally, PCC always has three finalists. I don’t know who the other two were, but I have to believe at least one of them had to be more qualified then a 21-year-old kid just starting out. The kid should have had to pay his dues just like I did and like so many others had to.

    Not only were ethics breached and best practices were not observed in my situation, but PCC policies were violated. I went to HR about it, and had the misfortune of dealing with Brenda Keane. She listened, told me she’d look into it, and investigate. She said we’d have another meeting. Just as I knew would happen…nothing was done to make it right. Brenda met with me again and gave me some lame excuses that were so far from making any sort of sense that I legitimately believe she was making them up as she went along. I didn’t get my transfer, and Cindy was given no consequences whatsoever for her wrongdoing. No accountability at all; the PCC way. In fact, Dooling was given the temporary promotion of AVC shortly after I left PCC. I shouldn’t have been surprised by that, I guess.

    Anyway, to the part of the story where I lose hope is the hiring of these mentors or whatever they are. Mac doesn’t need a mentor, but it does show that Pima has no interest in changing their no-fire policy. Despite how much someone demonstrates they’re in over their head, PCC will just leave said employee in their position until they leave it voluntarily somehow, usually either by retirement or by being again promoted to another position they can’t possibly handle competently. PCC will continue indefinitely to figuratively try to beat a square peg into a round hole, refusing to ever accept the fact that it will never fit. How many other places, in either the public or private sector, would ever engage in such idiocy?

    The right thing to do is not waste more money on these so-called mentors, but to take under-performing employees and either fire them, or transfer them to positions more suited to their talents. But how often does PCC do the right thing?

    I am glad I found this blog. I am going to watch it closely, and contribute to it as I have many more stories to share about my experiences at PCC.

  • flipper12

    Should reasons for hiring only be based on seniority? What level of degree?

    Seniority alone does not indicate that a person is qualified. It just means that one has been at the institution longer than someone else. A Master’s Degree also alone does not indicate that a person is qualified. It just means they took some more classes than the person who just has a Bachelor’s.

    Making sweeping statements like this diminishes the point you are trying to make.

    I am saddened what happened to FoMo Bret Linden – and HR should have made it right. That’s the true point and I believe FoMo expressed that very clearly.

    • Bret Linden

      Sorry for posting under a different name, but Facebook wouldn’t let me sign in for some reason. Using my Google account here. Anyway… 

      Thanks for the sympathies flipper12. If you want to talk about “should”, Cindy Dooling should have followed procedure and allowed me to transfer in. And, yes, as you correctly stated, HR should have made the situation right by giving me a transfer to District (or some other campus, I just needed to get the hell away from East Campus), and Cindy Dooling should have been disciplined, or even fired, for what she did. She does not even come close to having the level of technical knowledge an IT supervisor should have. But, the PCC way…they don’t care if you’re unqualified. If you’re in a position there it’s yours for as long as you want it.

      Believe it or not, this is not the worst thing that happened to me at PCC. Not even close. I have many more stories to tell. I’m hoping Dr. Olsen provides me more openings to tell these stories.

      I am very pleased PCC has been receiving much bad press as of late. Their administration deserves it, and a whole lot more. They’re like cockroaches…shine light on them and they go scurrying toward the corner.

      Keep doin’ what you’re doin’ Dr. Olsen. I’ll support you all the way.

  • DrDoooLittle

    Everything Dr. Lynn Olsen says is true (as well as the reader comments concerning promotion).
    Given that, this type of thing exists everywhere, albeit to a greater extent in government/public institutions such as Pima CC (PCC) (There’s no need to show a profit and thus little need to be efficient).  It’s also likely it existed to a greater extent at PCC over the last 10 years due to the ruling class (supported by the governing board) at PCC (which they’ve recently unloaded some of, but at a cost).

    Realize, though, that despite hiring/promoting highly paid administrators (not necessarily properly skilled at their position) on a buddy system (or a “physical attributes” system) and developing a we (administrators) versus them (staff & faculty) approach to running a college, PCC still provides critical training to its community, and deserves commendations for this.

    Realize also, that some administrators at PCC are highly qualified and it’s sad they cannot escape the generalized criticism.

    In the end, PCC needs to attend to the “community” component of PCC and strive to serve the community (not provide large salaries for the few).  A recent decision to move away from “open” enrollment was based upon the premise that many at the low end are not successful and the college was wasting their tuition money.  This short-sighted decision neglects those that would be successful and the basic premise that much is learned from failure.

«
»