Faculty Council Recommends Improving Student to Counselor Ratio

Feb. 19 - SSC faculty have voted overwhelmingly to approve the Faculty Council (FC) Recommendation to improve the student to counselor ratio at SSC. The FC urges the SSC Senate and College Council to join us in asking the SSC administration to hire more counseling faculty members.

Faculty Council Recommendation:

The Faculty Council recognizes that South Seattle College has a long history of Counseling Faculty providing comprehensive services to our diverse student population. With the retirement of Don Howard at the beginning of the 2020-21 academic year, we want to ensure that his position is replaced and an additional position added in order to move towards an appropriate ratio of counselors to students and to provide equitable services. The Faculty Council endorses the hiring of these FT Counselor positions to continue this strong institutional mission of supporting students.

64 faculty members participated in the vote, 94% of which approved the recommendation. This represents 50% of full-time faculty and 24 part time faculty from all divisions and all campuses at SSC.

Here are a few faculty comments collected in support of the recommendation:
•    "We need student counselors more than ever right now. Two counselors is not enough to handle only the emergency counseling services needed during a pandemic. We need highly trained and qualified staff to help with career counseling and student support. 1250 to 1 student to counselor ratio is frankly despicable. Invest in our student's mental health!"
•    "This is fundamental to our anti-racist mission and our goal of retaining students."
•    "Two counselors seems way too little for all South Students!  It is one thing to claim "we're here to support you" and then not have enough counselors to do the job."

Welcome to the South Seattle College Faculty Council Website

South Faculty Council’s core value and purpose is to serve as an information conduit: we are committed to amplifying the voices of all faculty and sharing “on the ground” perspectives from every division, with SSC administration, shared governance bodies, and those occupying positions of authority. See the linked pages for information on Council members, more on the Council’s roles, proposed bylaws and actions.

Future Meetings

2021 Meetings: The Faculty Council will meet in week 3 and 7 of each quarter and hold an all-faculty meeting in week 5 of each quarter. Please reach out to us if you would like us to facilitate sharing information or collecting faculty input on an issue. We can be reached at SouthFC@seattlecolleges.edu and look forward to working with you in the future.