I tend to enjoy trying new things, so my life has quite a few “firsts” in it. For example, I ran my first 10K last month. (I wasn’t particularly fast, but still…). What I haven’t contemplated nearly as much until recently are my “lasts.” For example, this is my last Advocate article, in my last year as CCA President, which is likely my last leadership position. It is perhaps fitting then, that I devote this last column to look back on the past six years in CCA.

The CCA conferences are doing quite well. Last October, our Fall conference hit a record 130 delegates!  Six years prior we hardly ever had 100 delegates at our Northern California events. While this past winter was slightly smaller at 123 delegates, this increase has occurred despite an unfortunate shrinking of our membership. In February 2020, CCA’s membership peaked at 12,129 members, and at the start of 2025 it had 11,060. This reduction is due almost entirely to retirements. While practically none of our members drop their membership, it has become more difficult to sign up new members. We have also expanded our council time from two sessions a year to three and have hired a parliamentarian to make the meetings flow more smoothly. We have implemented a lot of the feedback from our post-conference surveys, and we have so many good breakout session ideas that we are scouting out hotels with additional breakout rooms!

The COVID-19 pandemic was quite sobering, with over a million Americans dying and with everyday life dramatically altered for several years. During this time, we canceled the Spring 2020 CCA conference, and then ran five virtual conferences between October 2020 and February 2022. Although we hated to lose the networking and social aspects of our events, a full two years without hotels and travel costs, combined with a booming stock market, have allowed us to take on some additional costs for a limited time. CCA currently covers our delegates’ full hotel expenses rather than just half. We provide many meals during our conferences to our delegates’ guests for free instead of charging for them. We now allow our delegates to drive in even if a flight would be less expensive. To top it off, we’ve done this without raising our dues in over 20 years!

CCA also instituted several additional grants. While we’ve long had a membership development grant, during my time as president CCA has added part-time membership tracking grants to help locals keep track of the turnover with their part-time members, reassigned time grants, for when a local needs a short burst of extra time away from the classroom, and innovative proposal grants for…well, anything innovative. That’s hundreds of thousands of dollars put to targeted use so that our union is better organized and more robust.

Our committee structure within CCA is also more robust. When I took over the presidency, CCA had six council committees: Elections and Credentials, Faculty Equity and Diversity, Legislation and Advocacy, Membership Development, Part-Time Faculty Issues, and Policy. We now have eight, having recently added a Campus Safety Committee and an Organizing Committee, and a ninth one, Advocacy, is being planned. In addition to our standing committees, CCA has considerably increased its use of ad hoc task forces, and we sometimes have more task forces than standing committees! This year, CCA had task forces on Advocacy, AI, DEIA, the June Planning Meeting, One-Tier, Part-Time Faculty Drops (by CTA), and Summer Institute. That’s 15 groups of dedicated CCA members doing the work of our union this year!

While this article glosses over my many mistakes, there’s nonetheless quite a bit at CCA that’s going well. I am most pleased with our improved advocacy work. Back in 2019, advocacy was something that CTA Government Relations staff did, with a modest amount of follow-up by the CCA President and Vice-president.  Now, we have an identified group of member lobbyists, multiple annual visits to legislators and a task force that is making plans on how to further improve our influence in Sacramento and beyond!

However, the implementation of anything new now will fall to the next CCA President. Our elections for the new president and vice president will take place at our Spring Conference, since CCA Board members are elected by our conference’s delegates. The new leadership will then take over on June 1. As for me, although I will no longer be on the CCA Board, you’re likely to still hear about me from time to time. This spring will be my 55^th CCA conference, and I’m not tired of them yet.