PROFILE
CCA staff consultants bring a combination of skill, experience, creativity, humor — and good driving ability to their work with chapters. In fact, with an entire state to serve, consultants spend a good deal of time in their cars, also known as their mobile offices.
For the benefit of CCA members, we thought we would give you brief profiles of your field staff.
CCA staff consultant Robin Devitt hit the ground running this fall. With negotiations about to go to impasse at Rio Hondo College, for example, she and the faculty bargaining team were able to nudge the administration back into responsive bargaining.
Since then, with Devitt’s support, the chapter has formed a bargaining support team to turn out faculty at all Board of Trustee meetings and has put together a solid political action team that plans to run an aggressive campaign to unseat anti-faculty board members.
“I love the community college environment. Community college faculty are ready, willing and able to think outside of the box, try new things and reach for the parity they deserve,” Devitt says.
For a CTA staff member with 18 years of experience, community colleges present an exciting new challenge for Devitt – but certainly one for which she is well-prepared. Her experience in negotiations, contract enforcement and building parity with management are all part of the expertise she brings in serving 14 chapters in an area that stretches from Bakersfield to the Los Angeles area.
Diehard union activist
Then again, Devitt is a diehard union activist. Raised in a union family, Devitt walked the picket line as a child with her parents when United Teachers Los Angeles conducted its strike in 1970. She worked at California State University Long Beach before joining the CTA staff 18 years ago.
CCA staff consultant Marianne Reynolds has worked with the Community College Association since 2005, after completing an extensive CTA staff intern program.
She represents CCA chapters in Region 4, south of Los Angeles and over to the east, from Southwestern College near San Diego to College of the Desert in Palm Springs.
Prior to becoming a CCA staff member, Reynolds taught 8th grade US History for 11 years, nine of which she was involved in her local union. Reynolds was a half-time release president for four years, and decided to make the transition into CTA staff at the end of her second term.
Building united locals
“I am a firm believer in unionism, and hope to assist all of my locals in becoming as strong and united as possible,” Reynolds said. “I particularly enjoy negotiations, and also enjoy assisting locals by offering trainings they feel they could use to increase the power and knowledge of leaders and members.”
CCA staff consultant Diana Lisi work is rooted in community colleges. After all, she was an instructor at Long Beach City College in English as a Second Language when she became a member of the CCA Executive Board there and the Academic Senate. She has been a staff consultant for CCA for about 10 years and spent an additional 10 years working with CTA in K-12 local chapters.
Lisi works in northern California in Region 1, an area that includes Napa and Solano colleges in the north to Monterey and Hartnell in the south. Last year, she was the staff consultant working with the Hartnell College during a successful strike that garnered them a 23 percent increase. She also wrote the NEA grant to establish the “Academy for Strong Locals” that concentrates on training members for leadership roles. Lisi also wrote and received a grant to establish a Distance Education group that is expected to come up with recommendations about how colleges implement these programs. Lisi has also developed numerous NEA trainings as part of her work with the NEA Higher Education cadre.
Committed to community colleges
“My commitment is to the community college system. Everyone, no matter who they are, has access to our community colleges, and we need to preserve that. This goes hand in hand with my commitment to the faculty,” Lisi said.
CCA staff consultant Alan Frey came to California from Connecticut in 1977 as an expert in collective bargaining – something California had just approved with the Rodda Act. Prior to joining CTA’s staff, Frey had been leader of his local chapter in Greenwich, Conn., where he led members on two successful two-day strikes. That effort earned him front-page coverage in the New York Times.
His first few years were spent toiling in the Fresno and Visalia areas where he worked with multiple K-12 chapters. As CCA rose to prominence within CTA, Frey became a staff consultant to faculty chapters and has been doing that ever since, for some 18 years. His current territory includes most of Northern California.
“I feel a little like ‘Paladin, sometimes, roaming far from home, but I’ve always enjoyed the challenge – especially when the good guys win,” Frey said.
Frey is well-known to CCA members in his own chapters and through CCA’s statewide conferences, where he provides details of the state budget, and how chapters can acquire more funding from it. He is also a regular columnist in the CCA Advocate, where he expounds on numerous topics of interest to members. Frey’s expertise is also recognized by other faculty organizations, including the state Academic Senate, where he has held forth as a speaker on several occasions.
