Course scheduling: sustaining the major
From MWCSWiki
When scheduling, what is the minimum set of courses we need to offer in order to sustain the major?
| # | sections | credits |
|---|---|---|
| 110 | 2 | 6 |
| 220 | 2 | 8 |
| 230 | 2 (or 1?) | 8 (4?) |
| 330 | 1 | 3 |
| 326 (f) / 350 (s) | 1 | 3 |
| 405 (f) / 401 (s) | 1 | 3 |
| 430 (f) / 305 (s) | 1 | 4 |
| 310 (s) | 1 | 4 |
| 300-level elective | 1 | 3 |
| 400-level elective | 1 | 3 |
| Total: | 13 (12?) | 45 (41?) |
In some sense, anything we offer above this is icing on the cake. This is all we need to support our current majors.
We currently have six full-time staff, one of whom is the chair and gets an automatic 3-credit course release. 6*12-3 yields a total of 69 credit hours per semester to "spend." After assigning faculty to the above 45-hour "core," we get 24 hours (8 whole courses) left over.
These 8 courses can be "spent" in any of the following ways:
- Offering courses for non-majors like 103, 104, MIS, etc.
- Offering FSEMs
- Offering additional electives / special topics
- Non-teaching duties for the long-term betterment of the department (e.g., Jepson fellowship)
- Individual studies
- Splitting courses into 2 sections to reduce the number of preps
To me, eight courses seems like a lot to play with. If we "spent" all eight, then we would need to think about requesting an adjunct for that semester.
To illustrate, imagine some hypothetical future semester. Suppose we have the following things going on in addition to the core:
- Marsha is teaching 103. (1)
- Stephen is teaching an FSEM. (1)
- Karen is on the Jepson. (2)
- Ernie splits his 401 into two sections to reduce his preps to 3 and still have 12 credits. (1)
- Ron splits his 300-level elective into two sections to reduce his preps to 3 and still have 12 credits. (1)
- Jennifer is working with students on individual studies, and the department gives her a course release. (1)
- Stephen is working with students on individual studies, and the department gives him a course release. (1)
That adds up to eight. So we could handle all this activity, plus fully sustain the core, without any adjuncts. If, for some reason, we decided to exceed the eight (say in addition to all this we also wanted to teach a couple of sections of BUAD 152), we would then apply for adjuncts that semester, and be fully justified in doing so.
I think this approach makes us a tighter, leaner department that serves the students better and leaves no questions in the administration's mind about our productivity, overextension, or anything else.
--Stephen 12:01, 13 July 2007 (EDT)
