GPD Roundtable on Faculty Life at Various Academic Institutions

December 3, 2001


 
Name

Institution

Location

# years on the job
normal teaching load/# of students per semester
weekly hours teaching
weekly hours teaching prep/grading
weekly hours meeting with students
weekly hours for own research
weekly hours of committee, service work
Weekly 

total

hours

Tony O’Keefe

Bellarmine University

Louisville, KY

12

(since 1988)

4

80-100

12
24-30
4-6
0
2-3
42-51

(avg. 46.5)

Katie

Vandebrake

King College

Bristol, TN

20

(full- time since 1982)

(3 preps)

80+

12
25+
1-5
8
1-3 depending on the month
47-53

(avg. 50)

Debra Journet

U of Louisville

Louisville, KY

14 
2

25-70

6
Heidi Bostic

Concordia College

Moorhead, MN

1

(1999-2000)

3

50

14

(70 min classes met 4 times/wk)

20
5
10
5
54

Tony notes:There was actually a time, a few years back, during one of Bellarmine's regular financial ‘crises’ [...] when I was Chair of English and Director of Composition, while teaching four courses.Now that was fun . . .”

Katie explains: “school has gone to a new system while I've been away whereby no one has more than 3 courses at any one time and all courses are either 4 credits (meeting for an entire semester) or 2 credits (meeting for a quad or 1/2 of a semester). This new

system seems to be working well.

Debra comments:this is an estimated schedule for an Assistant Prof.She is currently Chair of the English Dept., thus her schedule is different.At Louisville, they have a “Flexible Workload Agreement”, which normally works out for an Assistant Prof. as follows:

50% Teaching (4 courses per year); 15% Service (1 dept. + 1 univ. committee); 35% Research

Heidi adds:my hours at Concordia are perhaps less representative than the others, because they are based on a smaller sample; Concordia seems like a more useful summary than Michigan Tech, because you have plenty of folks around here to ask about their own MTU experiences.

Questions I posed to all participants to prepare for the roundtable:

1.Is there a tenure/promotion system at your school?If not, what kind of system is there?If so, briefly describe the expectations for tenure and for promotion.

2.What is the "climate" in your dept, college?Day to day, what is it like to work at your school? Overall, how would you describe the quality of life at your institution?

3.What do you see as the principle advantages/disadvantages of teaching at your *type* of school (not necessarily at your specific school)?

4.What kinds of resources are available to you to help your teaching, research, other activities?

5.When you discuss with grad students various types of institutions of higher ed where they may want to teach, what are the most important points of discussion?

6.What is something at your university that leads you to say "if only I had known"?

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For statistics on faculty salaries at a variety of institutions of higher education, check out:

http://chronicle.com/free/v47/i32/2001index.php3