Three instructors were granted tenure Tuesday when the Barton Community College Board of Trustees renewed faculty contracts for 2022-2023.
Philip Jacobson, art instructor; Jeff Meyer, plumbing instructor; and Heather Panning, instructor of HPER (health, physical education and recreation) were granted tenure when their contracts were renewed, along with 37 faculty members who already have tenure and 14 faculty members who are on the tenure track.
College trustees reviewed the contract renewal list at a study session earlier this month but Barton President Dr. Carl Heilman reminded them then that the final list could change. At that time, Dr. Luis Palacios, director of Instrumental Activities, was on the list of faculty who could be granted tenure or could be non-renewed based on administrative recommendation. Palacios’s contract was not renewed.
Eight additional faculty contracts were not renewed. Carol Murphy and part-time instructor Karole Erikson are retiring; James Miller has already left the college and his contract will not be renewed; and Brian Forshee, Kristen Hathcock, Shannon Schreiner and Lacy Swain are resigning. Kristin Steele’s faculty contract as a nursing instructor won’t be renewed because of a position change. She is now the Simulation Coordinator for the nursing program, which is a staff position.
In other personnel business, the board approved hiring Jacqualyn Powell as a custodian on the Barton County campus and Heidi McKennon as an instructor and coordinator of the nursing program on the Pratt campus. McKennon is a Registered Nurse who currently works at Skyline Schools in Pratt.
Canvas contract
In other business, the board approved a five-year renewal of its contract with Canvas, as recommended by Michelle Kaiser, chief information officer at Barton.
Canvas is a web-based learning management system hosted in its own proprietary cloud that is used by Barton’s students and faculty for quizzes, exams, discussions, assignments and other educational purposes. It is used for both online students as well as students on campus.
“We’ve been using Canvas for about eight years now,” Kaiser told the board. In the past, contracts were renewed for two years at a time. With a five-year contract, years 3, 4 and 5 will each costs $107,554, with no escalating costs in the last two years. The last renewal was a two-year contract for $184,558 and this year a two-year contract would cost $210,318. However, the grand total of the first two years on a five-year contract is $201,637, for a savings of $8,681 in the first two years.
