A Word from Luke Lara, FA's Incoming Ombudsperson

Mar 2
2 min read

By Luke Lara, FA Ombudsperson

It is my honor to continue serving the Faculty Assembly (FA) as an Executive Board member and Ombudsperson. I have served in this capacity for the past four years. I am a trained counselor by profession and have a doctorate in educational leadership. I have had over fourteen years of progressive faculty leadership development with the many roles I have held at MiraCosta, in addition to varied professional experiences in higher education over the last 26 years.

I am committed to quality education and student success at MiraCosta by supporting full-time faculty in matters relating to working conditions and employer-employee relations. I have supported over a hundred faculty in the past four years in matters ranging from educating faculty on understanding the contract to helping faculty in interpersonal situations to supporting faculty with due process rights in investigations.

Since I was hired in 2009 in a tenure track counseling position, I have held several academic senate and union leadership roles on campus and statewide as listed below:

ASCCC South Representative (2024 - Present)
FA Ombudsperson / FA Executive Member (2022 - Present)
Academic Senate President (2020-2022)
Academic Senate President-Elect/Vice President (2018-2020)

These leadership positions have provided me a well-rounded understanding of what is the scope of the FA (working conditions) and the purview of the academic senate (academic and professional matters), the overlapping interests, and how to strategically advocate for faculty through collegial consultation and through the negotiation process. While the FA and academic senate have fundamentally different goals and perspectives, we both support and represent the faculty. Having a collaborative working relationship makes for a stronger union and academic senate.

The FA recently successfully negotiated the 2025-2028 collective bargaining agreement where we gained benefits in many areas in addition to an improved and robust salary schedule. The FA has been in existence for about ten years and in those years the FA has been solidifying strong gains while sustaining a collaborative working relationship with the district, the academic senate, and other employee groups.

The issues that we face now are relational and political. For example, we will be hiring a new college president/superintendent. The FA is invested in the process to hire the college president. As chair of the professional relations committee, I work closely with the leadership of other interest holders to collaborate where we have shared interests and stay ahead of issues.

Another pressing issue is deciding what the next ten years will look like for faculty. The next negotiation period will be an opportunity to imagine what we need in the future rather than shoring up and clarifying what is currently in the contract.

Lastly, the specific quality I admire in others is resiliency. There will be ups and downs in life. We all have our challenges at work and beyond. Resilience is the ability to endure and persevere, to recover and withstand difficulties. Resilience does not happen in a vacuum. Resilience happens in community and with support and empathy of others. As the Ombudsperson, I hope that I can provide that support and empathy so that faculty can continue to be resilient.

I look forward to the next two years.

Luke Lara, Ed.D.