Guidelines on Teaching Assignments are necessary to ensure priority of considerations are well defined. They include
- first and foremost, what is in the best interest of the students
- viability of degree programs offered by the department
- equitable teaching load among faculty of various ranks, lecturers, and teaching associates
- considerations for departmental budget
In the Best Interest of the Students
An educational institution should always do what is best for the students as its highest priority. Students are entitled to
- up-to-date, relevant topics
- high academic standards
- coherent sequence of courses
Viability of Degree Programs
The department offers several degree programs. The viability of all degree programs is the responsibility of all faculty members in the department. When the viability of a degree program is jeopardized, the whole department should adjust the teaching assignment to help make it viable.
Equitable Teaching Load
Some courses may be considered more or less desirable to a given faculty member. While it is in general a good idea to maximize the number of desirable courses for all faculty, a key overriding consideration is equitable contribution by faculty to the curricula in the department. Contributions include
- service courses: those required by one or more degree programs.
- electives: those with a real course number and can count towards the degree requirements of one or more degree programs
- special-topics: those without their own course number (221, 298)
A teaching plan should ensure faculty can make contributions to courses in all three categories over a number of years.
- No faculty should be scheduled only courses in a category
- Teaching assignment should prioritize covering service courses first, followed by electives, and finally special-topic courses. That is, if a course in a higher-priority category needs to be covered, then it should be covered first, even if it means offering fewer courses in the lower-priority category.
- In the extreme case, all faculty should be able to teach any lower-division course in EECS, given materials from other faculty who have taught it.
- Teaching assignment should not be pre-partitioned between faculty labeled for different degree programs, especially for service courses required by multiple degree programs.
- Classes with under 10 students (or potentially a higher threshold) should be canceled, especially in the increasing pressure to offer multiple sessions of several courses, since they benefit very few students at the expense of depriving hundreds of students of their right to take real courses.
Coverage of Different Levels
In addition to the classification by class size and role, an important consideration is the coverage of classes at different levels:
- lower-division
- upper-division
- graduate
An appropriate mix should be 1 lower division, 1 upper division, and 1 graduate course. This mix allows the faculty to get to know more representative samples of the current student population.
Rotation
The simplest mechanism to ensure updating the course, ensuring equitable teaching load, and many other desired properties is to enforce rotation of instructors. That is,
- No one should teach the same course for over X years in a row (where X is between 3 and 5). By rotating an instructor out, the next instructor can have a fresh look at the materials and will most likely update it with a more balanced perspective. This is good for the students.
- By passing the material on to the next instructor, it ensures that the material and grading standards are re-examined by the new instructor, who will adjust them to be more fair.
- Everyone should get rotated into some service courses on a regular basis. Service courses have the extra burden of having to do assessment for accreditation (e.g., ABET), which electives and special-topic courses are not required to do. All faculty should get exposure to the continuous improvement process.
- Rotation will allow instructors to have a fresh view on how a sequence of courses can be made more coherent.
- Rotation should not happen too frequently, as preparation for a new course can be very time consuming, even if it is based on existing materials. Faculty should be allowed to keep a course for a reasonable number of years (3-5).
Considerations for Junior Faculty
Junior faculty should be "protected" in the following sense that
- They should be given a chance to develop a new course in their area, but they are not required to; they can also choose to improve and modernize existing courses.
- Junior faculty should also get assigned some service courses (1 per year is adequate), as does everyone else in the department. Junior, untenured people should get their first pick.
- The instructor rotation cycle for junior faculty can be somewhat longer than that for tenured faculty, to reduce unnecessary preparation burden.
Lecturers, LSOE, and Teaching Associates
These are people who fill in for faculty in case there are not enough faculty to cover all the courses.
- Lecturers are outside members hired as instructors to teach on an ad hoc or contractual basis
- Lecturers with (potential) Security of Employment (LSOE) are senate faculty members whose primary job is to teach with little or no expectation of research
- Teaching Associates are graduate students (Ph.D. candidates) working as the primary instructors of courses
These types of lecturers provide valuable temporary relief to fill in the temporary absence of faculty, but their use should not be abused. Not only should the interest of the students still hold highest priority, these lecturers should also be protected.
- No single course should be taught indefinitely only by lecturer. Rules of rotation should apply, too.
- Lecturers should not be left on their own to teach the course however they want. Instead, they should work with a senate faculty member to make sure the courses are covered in a way that meets the expectation of the faculty.
- LSOEs should do more than just covering a course, but they can help upgrade a sequence of courses, and they should be given teaching releases for such efforts. For example, it can be a good idea for a sequence of courses to use the same circuit board. An LSOE would be a perfect person to work with faculty involved in the sequence of courses and bring in those elements. Such preparation can be very time consuming but will go a long way towards making courses more coherent and be very good for the students. Therefore, LSOEs should be given course releases for such tasks.
Considerations for Departmental Budget
All departments operate under limited budgets. Faculty must not just demand allocation of more lecturers, more TAs, while at the same time avoid contributing to the real teaching needs of the department.
- Adequate TA allocation should always be given the highest priority, as it directly impacts the students' learning experience. Without adequate TA allocation, instructors are forced to cut back on the assignments or projects.
- The number of lecturers must not be pre-determined until a sufficient number of TAs have been allocated.
- Lecturers should be used only when (1) they are on a contractual basis, (2) there is a separate budget for sabbatical or service release cases, (3) additional sections must be offered due to surge in enrollment.
Senior Projects
- All faculty are expected to contribute to mentoring of senior projects. The load should be as evenly distributed as possible among faculty.
Best Practices
Defining Limits
- There should be an upper limit on the percentage of faculty who can be on sabbatical or leave at any given moment; not all requests will be approved automatically. This will have the effect of getting applications for sabbaticals and leaves as early as possible, as the requests can be approved first-come first-serve or with other considerations.
- There should be a budget on the lecturers to be hired to cover sabbaticals. A lecturer position is not automatically allocated to cover sabbatical or leave slot.
Faculty responsibility
- A faculty going on a sabbatical or leave should talk to their colleagues in advance to see who can cover their courses during their absence.
- If nobody else can cover the course during their absence and there is no lecturer budget, then the course will not be scheduled or the sabbatical request will not be approved.
Poor Practices
Inertia-based:
- Inertia-based teaching assignment means "it was done this way, so let's do it the same way again," by just copying the teaching plan from the previous year while making minimal adjustments for those on sabbatical, leave, etc.
- it may be "easiest," but it only optimizes for the minimal objections without considering what's best for the students, viability of the degree programs, or equitable load.
Pre-partitioned:
- Pre-partitioned teaching assignment means "let's the two associate chairs divide the courses between EE and CpE, go talk to their faculty, and come back and merge."
- This is a bad practice because it pre-supposes certain courses are the responsibility of faculty in one degree program or another. However, many service courses are taken by several degree programs and can easily be taught by faculty on both sides (especially lower division ones). The pre-partitioning can further strain the subset of faculty struggling to support their degree program,
Dumping Undesirable Courses to Lecturers:
- Teaching assignments should never treat lecturers like garbage cans by assigning them courses that are considered undesirable by most faculty, especially if it is a core course or an introductory-level service course. Lecturers, especially LSOEs, should be treated like regular faculty and be subject to the same kind of considerations such as equitable load and rotation as all other faculty for exactly the same reasons stated above.
- No course should be considered unworthy for faculty to teach. If a course is routinely assigned to lecturers, it gives students the impression that they are being treated like students at a community college or technical institute, rather than a top university.