BRYN MAWR COLLEGE
Office of the Provost
Curriculum, Staffing and Budget Planning for the 2008-09 Academic Year and Beyond
Documents to Prepare
Curriculum Plan for 2008-09
Curriculum planning is a complicated process. As I piece together staffing needs across the College, in the context of a tight budget, I may need to come back to you for a further discussion of your plans. I will do my best to work with you to develop workable solutions.
This year I am asking you to propose a one-year curriculum plan. Please submit your information using the Curriculum Plan Template, or--if you prefer--the web-based curriculum management tool. Please be advised that you will have to submit your curriculum plan electronically during semester II. Instructions for the use of this tool are available at the Registrar's website. Faculty secretaries have been trained to use it; further training can be arranged.
For each of the two semesters, include all undergraduate courses and graduate courses, providing for each course the following information:
Course number, section number (if applicable) and name of course,
Name of instructor(s),
Anticipated enrollment,
Hours per week of class meetings,
Additional hours of drill, lab and/or other required of students,
Instructional support (i.e., staffing for item 5 on a separate sheet): Indicate whether the support is that of a graduate Teaching Assistant, an undergraduate instructional assistant (hourly), or a drill instructor (hourly). Describe all responsibilities, and estimate hours per week for each type of support.
Additional Staffing Information
Please submit the information requested on the staffing template. This sheet is designed to elicit further information about your staffing request, about Haverford College resources, about your longer term needs, and about how your offerings relate to other curricular initiatives at the College.
Three-Year Staffing Plan
This three -year staffing plan template is optional. It is useful in helping departments think ahead about who will present and who might be on leave, and what extra intermediate term needs might be.
If you have questions about preparing these materials, please call or e-mail me.
Guidelines for Staffing and Curriculum Planning
In planning departmental or program curriculum and the faculty course load, please note the following as general principles:
- The Provosts of Bryn Mawr and Haverford College are committed to fulfilling the terms of the 1988 Guidelines for Cooperation between Counterpart Departments. Staffing and curricular proposals need to be based on bi-college conversations.
- In discussing and planning the bi-college curriculum, seek to avoid the duplication of upper level courses.
- Courses which generally have very low enrollments cannot be sustained on an annual basis.
- Counterpart departments should be aware of each other's leave schedules.
- "Normal" enrollments vary within and between departments and programs.
The College's current course load expectations are:
- Full-time tenure track and tenured faculty and faculty in CNTT positions are expected to teach the equivalent of five courses each year.
- Full-time faculty members on interim appointments (which for the most part are one-year appointments) are expected to teach the equivalent of six courses a year.
- Faculty members on a one-semester sabbatical leave are expected to teach the equivalent of three courses in the non-sabbatical semester.
See, too, the principles for faculty course load recommended by the Committee on Academic Priorities in its 2003 study. Departments are encouraged to review the original CAP document in its entirety and draw up staffing plans that follow the spirit of those guidelines. This document was written by CAP to improve transparency in staffing decisions. It is meant to inform conversations between department and program chairs and the Provost. It may be summarized as follows:
- Course reductions are confirmed by the Provost for the chairs of the larger departments and certain programs. In addition, the chairs of the General Faculty, CAP, the Committee on Appointments and the Institutional Review Board have been granted a course release in view of the extraordinary effort on the part of chairs, far more demanding than other forms of service.
- Small courses: Departments are encouraged to plan well and ahead of time about how courses that generally have very small enrollments may best be dealt with in the context of their particular curriculum and staffing. Often courses taught by interim members of the faculty (i.e., those hired as leave replacements) generate low enrollments. Therefore departments are urged to begin the process of hiring those faculty members and determining their courses as early as possible--and well before the pre-registration period--to insure dissemination of information about such course(s) to the students.
- Large courses
: In certain circumstances, courses with large enrollments (in the range of 40-80) may be counted as more than a normal course if the instructor is responsible for all aspects of the course, including discussion sections, office hours, and grading. If the instructor is supported in such activities by a graduate teaching assistant, extra teaching credit does not accrue.
- Laboratory teaching: Only those laboratory sections in which the faculty member must be present in the laboratory for the entire period and in which substantive student writing is required count as a course. Partial credit (1/4) is given for laboratory sections in which a graduate Teaching Assistant supervises the lab and grades student work.
- Senior experience: Departments are advised to dedicate one course equivalent for each seven majors or 15% of the total departmental teaching FTE to the senior experience. Thus a department with approximately 35 majors and 5 faculty members (5 faculty members times 5 courses each = 25 courses) would dedicate 4-5 course equivalents. If this approach to assigning teaching credit for the supervision of senior research is not possible, the department should review with the Provost alternative forms of support for the faculty.
Operating Budget
The Treasurer's budget instructions will be available soon; they will be sent to you by email and linked from this page.
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Last updated November 2007