More than 600 adjunct faculty members at Columbia College Chicago plan to walk off the job Monday morning, potentially disrupting the class schedules of many of the school's 6,500 undergraduates.
Leaders of CFAC, the union representing Columbia College's part-time professors, say members make up about two-thirds of the teaching staff at the arts-focused South Loop school. They estimate about 1,000 classes will be impacted.
Columbia College spokesperson Lambrini Lukidis said the administration is targeting under-enrolled classes. Lukidis said school leaders have already made $40 million's worth of spending cuts, including eliminating 124 positions, to bridge a budget shortfall that she said began after the start of the pandemic.
"They went after the most marginalized of faculty, right after a pandemic," said Vallera, who has taught photography at the school since late 2006. "And they went after our students right after a pandemic, after everything that we've been through." In a statement last week, Columbia College officials said they "are disappointed that the union's leadership has called a strike. We remain committed to good-faith bargaining with the union, and hope union leadership will remain at the table with concrete proposals."
Columbia College has a long history of hiring working professionals to teach students because they "bring the most contemporary, innovative thinking to the structure and delivery of our curriculum," according to the school's website.College leaders argue that the course section cuts are necessary to make a $2 million dent in a $20 million budget deficit.
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