Amidst reports and text messages received by the Office of the Executive Dean from concerned parents and students regarding the absences of faculty members from their classes, the office intensified the monitoring of faculty members in their classes. The main strategy being used by the Dean’s office is having faculty members sign on the monitoring sheet as evidence that they are in their classrooms having classes.

 

     The Dean’s Office has always been conscious of its role in monitoring the classroom attendance of faculty members. In fact, Dr. Christie Lynne C. Codod, Executive Dean of MPSPC Bontoc Campus always reiterates this mandate during Executive Council meetings, and seeks the support of the different department chairpersons to help in the monitoring of their faculty members. She emphasized that this undertaking is a shared responsibility between the office and the various departments. 

     During the past Executive Council Meetings, the Dean distributed the list of faculty members with absences to the different department chairpersons concerned to confer with them about their absences. As agreed, faculty members with absences have to justify their absences in writing which should be submitted to the Dean’s Office. If faculty members are not able to justify their absences, their DTRs will not be signed by the Dean. In addition, the names of faculty members who failed to submit their justification letters will be submitted to the Office of the Human Resources Development Office for proper action.

       In an interview conducted with the assigned checkers, they reported that they often directly earn the ire of faculty members who were marked absent. Some even go to the Dean’s Office to have their names be marked present in the monitoring sheet since accordingly, they required their students to go to the library, while the others had their classes on the field. To address this matter, the Dean repeatedly reminded the chairpersons to tell their faculty members that in such cases, concerned the faculty members should inform the office ahead of time of their plans to enable the checkers to be guided about their monitoring functions. The Dean further said that all should be held accountable for the whereabouts of their faculty members.

     This mandate is based on the provisions of Book V of Executive Order 292 and Omnibus Rules, CSC MC No. 40, s. 1998, CSC MC No. 15, s. 1999 which states that Heads of Office shall be responsible for the attendance of their personnel and RA 6713, on the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards Section 4 (a): Commitment to Public Interest states that public officers and employees shall always uphold the public interest over and above personal interest.

     It is hoped that the with the implementation of the biometrics system, the problem on the unjustified absences of faculty members is already being addressed.//Karyl A. Po-or

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