Description
Proposal based on faculty meeting discussions and input from the Undergraduate Program Committee and Executive Committee (For vote on 6/1/2021 faculty meeting - passes)
A goal of the Biology Department is to support learning of students in a large undergraduate major, with responsibilities that are shared equitably and transparently among faculty. These faculty include individuals at different ranks and in both teaching and tenure tracks. At a broader UW level, resource allocation accrues to units in (partial) relation to their undergraduate teaching contribution, and teaching by temporary instructors is intentionally limited to short time periods.
Purpose
This teaching policy lays out a set of guidelines for the department chair to follow in discussions with each faculty member about their teaching plan. All faculty are expected and encouraged to discuss teaching plans with the department chair in annual conversations. It will be helpful for each faculty member to consider their teaching in two-year increments, with a teaching schedule that could alternate between years. Longer-term planning is also encouraged through incorporation of teaching plans in spreadsheets managed by the Instructional Services Manager. In combination with this teaching policy, department-wide teaching plans will be shared annually to increase transparency regarding teaching loads, term-by-term scheduling, and SCH offered.
Procedure
Abbreviations: SCH = student credit hours. Total SCH comes from the product of the number of (filled) seats and credits per class. FTE = full time equivalent. Faculty with joint appointments serve at <1 FTE in Biology. TT = tenure track. TP = teaching professor.
Assumptions: The policy sets a baseline teaching expectation that differs by faculty category. Teaching expected from teaching professors remains consistent through ranks, but for TT faculty increases as they progress through ranks and have more stability in the research component of their professional work.
An equation for faculty teaching expectation that meets demand for student credit hours of Biology majors is not the main purpose of this teaching policy. Nevertheless, as of 2021, the department works with College support to offer full access to gateway introductory courses, and non-majors classes are typically offered for large enrollment. In contrast, upper-level elective credits were short by about 20% relative to those needed by our majors IF they did not use classes outside Biology. Increasing SCH in upper-level elective courses is desirable, and a target of 20,000 SCH is used here for shaping expectations. Overall, the department could offer 100 classes at the 300/400 level during the academic year, averaging 200 SCH (i.e. 5 credit class with 40 seats, or 3 credit class with 70 seats). This average will not be met by senior seminars or every lab course.
Discussions about teaching between faculty and chair have particular considerations. Yet these general criteria can help guide those discussions:
1. On an annual academic year basis, per FTE, a minimum Biology teaching expectation is:
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Teaching track: 5 classes and 875 SCH
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Tenure track assistant: 2 classes and 150 SCH
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Tenure track associate: 2 classes and 250 SCH
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Tenure track full or 8 years post-tenure, whichever comes first: 3 classes and 350 SCH, OR exceed 500 undergraduate SCH in 300/400 level electives across 2 classes.
2. Any faculty member (at any rank or track) may negotiate their teaching expectation down by up to one class per year through buyout of time or due to exceptional research or service contributions. “Exceptional” is considered to apply in few cases, as service is expected from all faculty, and tenure-track faculty are expected to contribute to both teaching and research. One course release is expected for a chair of a major departmental committee.
For parental leave, explore how leave may be arranged (https://hr.uw.edu/ops/leaves/parental-leave/), including temporary pregnancy and childbirth disability leave (for birth parent only), and, for all parents (including adoptive), Paid Family and Medical Leave (PFML; Washington state law that provides leave and partial salary continuation for up to 16 weeks as long as it is taken within the first 12), and Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA; Federal leave allows up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave for the birth or adoption of a child as long as it is taken within the first 12 months).
UW also provides other guidance on time off for family emergencies and bereavement (https://hr.uw.edu/ops/leaves/).
3. A faculty member who is solely responsible for teaching a term of Biology 118/119, 180, 200, or 220 receives credit for two courses for this effort, or 2.5 class credits in terms when one of these classes is so large that it requires double lectures per day.
4. SCH/FTE minimum values apply to undergraduate teaching and also include credits accruing from BIOL 499 undergraduate research and from BIOL 396 peer facilitation. Classes per year include both graduate and undergraduate offerings. Senior seminars count as a class but typically contribute low numbers of SCH.
5. Co-teaching counts as one class for each faculty member in cases where an established faculty member is mentoring an early-stage faculty member to teach in a larger (>300 SCH) undergraduate class or for their first teaching experience. Co-developing integrative classes by later-stage faculty members also counts as 1 class each, both during development and on-going teaching. Tag-team teaching is not encouraged, as it challenges student learning to have multiple expectations and styles in a short term, so would count as the inverse of the number of instructors. In all of these cases of co-teaching, faculty divide SCH.
6. SCH from lab classes are weighted more heavily in cases where the instructor attends all labs, specifically 1.5x SCH. Electives with a lab will also have a higher ratio of TAs per student (1 per 24 to 48) than in non-lab electives (1 per 70).