Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

CCSN hiring freeze thaws with complex, new policy

CCSN's four-monthlong hiring freeze came to a halt Monday with the college instituting a new hiring policy, President Richard Carpenter said.

Carpenter froze hiring at the Community College of Southern Nevada in early September to give college administrators a chance to overhaul the college's human resources department.

Carpenter said he wanted to re-establish the community's trust in the integrity of the college's hiring process after data he requested showed that rumors of rampant cronyism and nepotism at the college were true.

The result, after months of study, consultant work and faculty focus groups, is a 104-page manual that includes detailed hiring procedures, search committee training requirements, multiple signature mandates and other checks against improper hiring and favoritism, Carpenter said.

"We built it from the ground up," Carpenter said. "We didn't tweak the old system, we threw it away."

The one drawback to the mammoth new policy, Carpenter said, is that it is going to take a few months to finish training the human resources staff to follow it.

Only about one-fourth of the 24 vacancies left open by the freeze will be filled using the new regulation as a sort of pilot program to make sure there aren't any problems with the policy, Carpenter said. The rest will be filled using the temporary system put in place during the freeze for any hirings that couldn't wait.

Tom Peacock, associate vice president of human resources, said it will take until the end of March to fill all of those positions.

The open positions include three vice president spots in academic affairs, student services and administration that will undergo full searches starting this month, Rand Key, special assistant to the president, said.

In addition to putting several new checks in place, the new policy targets the frequent use of emergency hires that were overriding the system's requirement to do a proper job search and background checks, Carpenter said. Many of those emergency hires would stay on at the college for years.

Now, when department heads need to add classes and professors at the last minute, they will have to hire from a pre-approved pool of candidates who have already gone through all of the system's required background checks, Carpenter said.

"Even if it's a last-minute hire, we will know that they are qualified," Carpenter said.

The policy details the process each application must go through and the turnaround time for each portion, as well as how each application will be monitored, Carpenter said. There's also details for how each search committee will be set up for faculty positions as well as required training to serve on a committee.

The biggest complaint from faculty and staff about the policy is that it is cumbersome, Carpenter said, but he believes that is necessary to ensure thoroughness in selecting candidates for hire.

Faculty and staff at the college who could be reached on Monday said they were generally satisfied with the policy. Most said they believed there were problems in human resources before and that changes were needed.

The college's previous president, Ron Remington, had been working on revising the human resources department before he was removed from the office in November 2003, faculty members said.

"It seems like it's a long process, but it's not insurmountable," said Jesus Barela, a computer operations supervisor at the college who served on the Board of Regents search committee that recommended Carpenter for the presidency.

"What I like about it is that it seems like it's going to be a lot more equitable, and will cut down on favoritism."

One minor irritation expressed by some faculty members, such as political science professor Alan Balboni, was the the need for faculty members to undergo training to serve on a search committee.

"I know that's happening (search committee training) more and more across the country, but I feel its demeaning to senior professors and administrators," said Balboni, who is in his 23rd year at CCSN.

College officials hope to ease the transition to the new policy by putting the application process online before the end of the spring semester, Carpenter said. The electronic form will streamline the process and will make sure that individuals are following the many steps and safeguards mandated by the new personnel policy.

Administrators were working to put a finalized version of the actual policy online Monday, Key said.

As part of the new hiring policy, all personnel files will be updated and new performance evaluations will be instituted, Carpenter said. The entire human resources department will also be relocated to the floor above Carpenter's office.

"It's really a brand new day," Carpenter said. "There will be new policies, new offices and new location, new everything."

The next step on Carpenter's list is to restructure the administration and bring some consistency to the titles used and the salaries that go with them, he said.

Two vice presidents were issued letters of non-reappointment prior to Carpenter's arrival as president and three administrators in the college's extended programs department were removed from their positions last month.

Carpenter said those shake-ups are the first of many to be slowly instituted throughout the year in an attempt to streamline the college.

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