Katrina Keating

Q: What year did you join the E-board and what made you join?

A: I joined the UF E-Board my second semester as a full-time professor at DVC: Spring 2007. I was hired at DVC on the heels of a contentious period between the DVC leadership and faculty. The UF and the Academic Senate had just lost a legal battle regarding division chairs (now deans). It was a stressful time for faculty, which was quite awkward for new hires.

The year I was hired, there were heated discussions about whether to stay independent orjoin a larger union like AFT or CTA.  I was very overwhelmed by the fury of all the reply-all emails, but I saw one email in which a faculty member spoke about the college I had come from, and what they said was wrong. I replied to correct the narrative, and an onslaught of (reply-all) emails ensued. My replies prompted the newly elected UF president, Jeffrey Michels, to invite me to join the Executive Board. So here I am.

A few semesters later, I coerced my fellow Nexus member Jason Mayfield to join the Board, and a few semesters after that, we coerced fellow Nexus member Marina Crouse to join. The rest is history. 

I can’t leave without saying that my mom was bursting with pride when I told her I joined the E-Board. That night I learned that unions are in my blood: my great-grandfather was one of the original union organizers of the New York City subway workers and my grandfather organized engineers wherever he worked. (My mom was thrilled to finally join a labor union last year.)

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Q: What is your role on the E-Board (board member, VP, treasure, etc.)?

A: I have been an active member of the UF E-Board since spring 2007, representing DVC faculty. Over the years, I have held many additional roles. I served as UF Treasurer from 2009-2013 and 2017-2020. I have served as the UF representative on multiple committees, including the DVC Budget Committee, the 4CD Sabbatical Committee, and multiple 4CD Vice- Chancellor hiring committees. I have also served as a grievance liaison officer on occasion. I have attended a myriad of conferences as a UF representative, including Academic Senatefor California Community Colleges (ASCCC) plenary sessions, the California Community College Independents (CCCI), along with the Sacramento events of the FACCC Advocacy and Policy Institutes and the "March in March". I joined numerous UF groups to lobby state representatives, both at the Capitol and at their local Bay Area offices (including a crab feed where I learned there is such a thing as "too much crab"), and have campaigned for governing board representative, legislative representatives, and statewide propositions. 

Of late, I have advocated for the mathematics faculty, who have been struggling to keep up with, and often push back against, the ever-changing mandates from the state legislature and the state Chancellor’s office (CCCCO).

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Q: Can you share something about your experience serving on the E-Board?

A: What keeps me on this board every year is the work we do. From the little details to the broad-reaching policies, it all makes an impact. 

 I also spent a number of years on the DVC Academic Senate Council as both a division representative and a rep-at-large. I greatly appreciate how well our Academic Senate and UF work together. There’s alot of overlap between the two, and our colleges work best when these grey areas are celebrated and collaborative.  We’ve done a great job in that respect.

But I think the best part of this role is being able to advocate for my colleagues who don’t know their rights. It’s a platitude, but it’s accurate: “You don’t know what you don’t know”. I find that many colleagues don’t know all their rights. Every year I find myself in a situation in which a colleague mentions something and I say, “Wait a sec—that’s not right!" I do what I can to dig deeper and try to get it fixed or let them know what to do. Often, it’s a situation where people don’t realize there was a mistake or there was a missed opportunity. Either way, folks should get in touch.

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