This policy addresses the oversight and management of the distribution of instructional duties. The University’s mission as an effective teaching and research institution requires several categories of classroom teacher, including tenured and tenure-track faculty, non-tenure-track faculty, and graduate students.
Within the first two months of the start of the fall term, the Executive Dean’s Office should present to the College Policy Committee a summary of all courses and credit hours taught in the College, broken down by title of instructor in order to clarify for the faculty the current state of the teaching landscape in the College. The report should show the trends of TT, NTT, and SAA over 5 years in the Schools and Divisions.
- The ranks of tenured and tenure-track faculty should constitute at least 80% of the total number of instructional faculty FTEs in the College, averaged over 2 years. For this calculation, instructional faculty is defined as tenured and tenure track faculty, lecturers, senior lecturers, clinical faculty, and professors of practice with instructional duties.
The role of tenured and tenure-track faculty as teachers is vital to a research university since the incorporation of current research and creative activities into the curriculum is an important component of effective instruction.
Lecturers, senior lecturers, clinical faculty, and professors of practice contribute to the university’s mission either by teaching alone or by some combination of teaching and service. As specified in the CPC Policy on Non-Tenure Track Faculty, the reappointment of lecturers and senior lecturers is contingent upon the continued existence of the expedient need that created the demand for the position and upon the continued consonance of the position with the academic mission of the department or unit.
Instructional opportunities for graduate students constitute an important aspect of professionalization. The use of Student Academic Appointees should remain at a level appropriate to each discipline.
Short-term appointments of non-tenure-track faculty, such as visiting assistant professors, postdoctoral teaching fellows, visiting lecturers, and part-time adjuncts, enable flexible responses to instructional demands and can be a stepping stone as our recent graduates begin their professional careers. However, the use of multiple short-term appointments of non-tenure track faculty to cover chronic teaching needs should not be seen as a long-term solution to financial and instructional imperatives faced by departments and the College.