Last Friday, I successfully defended my public policy doctoral dissertation proposal, “Organizational Justice and Fire-Based Paramedic Behavioral Health Outcomes,” at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. My adventure as a student and academic has been messy, long, and chaotic. Part of this journey includes studying and teaching at a large state community college.
Original Brickers
I was a fire cadet1 when the community college celebrated its 10th anniversary. Staff, administrators, and faculty who opened the college – using industrial park warehouses for classrooms and construction trailers for administration offices – were recognized as “Original Brickers.”
Some of the most dedicated and enthusiastic teachers I met at the college were Original Brickers. They were happy to focus on teaching five classes each semester, the focus of a community college, instead of the research, publishing, and service work expected at a university.
Community college faculty land in the sweet spot where the focus is on teaching and assistance to students, and have the responsibility to develop and propose solutions for curriculum, degree requirements, and other aspects of student learning rather than have those solutions come down from top administrators.
Smith, B. (2013 September) In the Beginning: The Role of Community College Faculty. Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
An Unexpected Assignment
Around the 20th anniversary, I started as an adjunct (part-time) faculty member with a freshly earned Bachelor’s degree. The full-time Fire Science faculty had shrunk from two to one. Just before the semester began, the Fire Science program director unexpectedly left for an industrial loss management job in a different time zone.
I was a shift-work Fire Lieutenant. The assistant dean asked the fire chief to let me cover the program director position until the college could hire a replacement.
I sought advice from Original Brickers. Like senior firefighters, they had institutional knowledge that mattered but was never written down. They shared their frustrations and disappointments as they watched resources shrink while enrollment skyrocketed.
Almost all of them complained about the new health sciences building. It took “forever” for the committee to complete the specifications. Then it took two years for the state to authorize funding. A recession after construction started required the building to shrink by 20%. This disappointed the paramedic program, which had advocated so hard for their new space.
I met my first wife while teaching a summer EMT refresher course in the construction trailer that was used as the paramedic classroom during the Fall and Spring semesters. Dating started after the last night of the course.
A Planned But Chilly Assignment
When the 40th anniversary came around, I was retired from the fire department, divorced, had a master’s degree, and was in a four year run as the full-time Fire Science program head. One of my office mates was an Original Bricker. Professor H (Social Sciences) and I taught one online class and four face-to-face classes, including Tuesday and Thursday nights, so we could take Fridays off.
We worked in one of the original campus buildings. It was a 1965 two-story, unsprinklered cinder block building with an overloaded electrical system and worn-out HVAC. In the first year using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) telephone service, our phones stopped working during registration week. We didn’t have enough bandwidth to support both activities.
I bought a personal Blackboard learning management system license because the community college learning management system could not handle the audiovisual and document-heavy online courses I developed for a fire officer career development initiative.
Late 1960s construction view (NVCC archives)
We worked in a cluster of five faculty offices that opened into the program administrative assistant’s workspace, across the hallway from the classrooms. Professor H’s approach to work reminded me of firefighters who have “retired on duty.” His online introduction/overview class met the college requirements but was poorly constructed and glitchy. Professor H was “one-and-done” and did not address any issues with the online course, stating, “the Information Technology staff should handle these issues.” Smoking was prohibited in the building, but after the assistant dean left for the day, the Marlboros came out.
Power To The … Administrators
I could see my breath in the faculty office in the mornings and late evenings when the outside temperature was below 40 degrees. Portable space heaters overloaded the already strained electrical service and tripped the breaker immediately.
Only the maintenance crew had the key to the electrical room. Much shame followed if you plugged in a portable heater and shut the office down. It could be a while before the electricity returned, since the short-handed maintenance crew covered seven buildings on campus. Shutting down our offices also shut off power to the buildings’ only industrial-grade copier. I learned that during my rookie semester as full-time faculty … shame on me.
Every year I submitted a budget item for a temporary heating solution. Every year I was denied. I was told that the building had been identified for renovation. My research found that while state inmates must be in buildings within a specified temperature range, state employees are not.
A Sad Original Bricker Retirement
Professor H, who was in his 70’s, took an old school approach to staying warm on winter nights. He went over to the steak restaurant and drank enough alcohol to get a warm buzz before his 7 pm lecture. It was 9:55 pm, and I was getting the end-of-week paperwork done after a Thursday night lecture. I noticed the distinct odor of Class A smoke.
It was coming from Professor H’s office. I opened his office door and encountered a cloud of smoke. Professor H was slumped in his chair, and flames were coming from the trash can. I wheeled him out to the hallway, dumped my Diet Coke into the burning trash can, closed his office door, and called 9-1-1.
It was a small fire contained to the trash can. Some smoke damage in the office. Professor H was now wide awake and refusing to let the firefighter/paramedics touch him.
The next Tuesday night, I could hear the assistant dean shouting at Professor H through my closed office door. Professor H retired at the end of the Spring semester.
Original Building Scheduled for Replacement By 2032
This spring, the state announced federal funding to replace the existing underground utility and HVAC system on campus. The new utility/HVAC system will be in the basement of the building that will replace the two story 1965 classroom and science labs facility I spent so much time in. The assistant dean was right in 2004, the building was scheduled for renovation.
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1Fire cadets were part-time student firefighters who worked 21 hours a week on day work, rotating through fire stations and the 911 dispatch center. The rest of the time took fire science classes at the community college. I worked at Dunn Loring 13, Great Falls 12, 911 center, and Fairfax City 3. Because I already had an EMT card, I often was riding the ambulance.
Elements, identifiers, and sequence of events may be altered in “war stories” to protect the innocent or work better as an example.
Featured image: Students on campus in 1978; the building I worked in is at the top of the picture. NVCC archives.