Lane Community College offers high-quality, affordable education to a diverse student population. Appropriate class sizes, which allow students to receive mentorship and feedback from instructors, are especially important in the first-year Writing sequence.

A few weeks ago, the administration at Lane Community College decided to increase the“enrollment capacity” in writing/composition courses across the board, effectively raising the maximum class sizes from 24 to 28 students in all Writing 121, 122, 123, and 227 classes, and from 18 to 22 students in Writing 115. As Writing programs at universities decrease class sizes to meet the national standard for composition and rhetoric of 15 or fewer students with a maximum of 20, the administration at Lane is raising enrollment by as much as 20%. Such changes will make it difficult for faculty to provide students the education they deserve and will negatively affect student success.

Appropriate class-sizes in first year-writing contribute to student success in crucial ways:

*Increasing student performance in Writing and in other college course by contributing to student learning, engagement and motivation

*Increasing student completion of a degree or the ability to transfer to a 4-year institution

*Increasing student satisfaction with their education and overall college experience

*Students' improvement as writers, readers, and critical thinkers/problem-solvers

*Ensuring teaching effectiveness: instructors' must provide ongoing, detailed, individualized responses to student writing in composition courses where individual interaction is crucial.

In addition, the increases will be detrimental to all English department faculty, whose workloads will rise by 20% or more without additional pay. Since fewer course sections will be offered, many part-time instructors, who are hired on a term-to-term basis, will no longer be able to adequately support themselves and their families. Many part-time faculty members have already lost course assignments due to these increases and some have no assurance of continuing employment at Lane.

Please sign the petition and help us tell the administration to reverse their decision and maintain appropriate class sizes in writing/composition courses at Lane Community College so that we can continue to offer our students the quality education that they deserve.