Final
Report of the Spring Term Renewal Committee
May 28,
2002
MEMBERSHIP: SPRING
TERM RENEWAL COMMITTEE
Art
Goldsmith (Department of Economics)
Chairperson
George
Bent (Department of Art)
Marc
Conner (Department of English)
Marcia
France (Department of Chemistry)
Suzanne
Keen (Department of English)
Ellen
Mayock (Department of Romance Languages)
Rob
Straughan (Department of Management)
David
Peterson (Department of History)
Mark
Rush (Department of Politics)
Scott
Dittman (University Registrar)
Jim
Stagnitta (Physical Education--left mid-year)
Jan
Hathorn (Physical Education--replaced Jim Stagnitta)
OVERVIEW
1. The Academic Calendar Review Committee
The Academic Calendar Review Committee chaired by Barbara Brown, University Librarian, spent the 2001-2002 academic year analyzing the implications of adopting a two semester academic calendar. Their committee report was turned over to the administration in the Spring of 2001 and it was made available to the faculty. A faculty wide conversation about the strengths and weaknesses of a conventional 2-semester academic calendar and the current academic calendar in use at Washington and Lee followed, during the regularly scheduled meeting of the faculty on March 5th 2001 and at a special meeting of the faculty dedicated to the calendar on March 26th.
The faculty was asked to select between two different options distinguished by structure of the academic calendar and the extent of a faculty members teaching responsibility. One option was an academic calendar composed of two separate 14-week long semesters with a faculty member required to teach six courses over the academic year. Alternatively, the current academic calendar of two 12-week long terms followed by a six week Spring Term would be retained, with the proviso that a faculty member would teach 13 course over two years rather than the current arrangement in which they teach 14 courses. At the April 2, 2001 meeting of the faculty, the process of voting on the Calendar options was initiated and lasted for a period of days. With 191 of 199 eligible voters casting a ballot, the faculty voted 127 (66.5%) to 64 (33.5%) in favor of retaining the 12-12-6 academic year.
2.
Formation of the Spring Term Renewal Committee
During the calendar debate, concerns about the
quality of the 6-week Spring Term were aired.
The Spring Term Renewal Committee, composed of faculty and the
University Registrar, was formed by the administration on May 15, 2001. This ad hoc committee, chaired by Art
Goldsmith, was assigned the task of providing the administration with a set of
recommendations to strengthen the Spring Term by the end of the 2001-2002
academic year
a. The
Charge
The charge given the Spring Term Renewal
Committee is presented as Appendix A.
In the charge the committee was asked to address:
1.
the
establishment of clear goals and objectives for the spring term
2.
the
chronic shortage of courses available to freshmen
3.
the
range of appropriate teaching models for the six-weeks term
4.
mechanisms
to ensure academic rigor during the spring term and to facilitate planning on
the part of students and faculty
5.
upper
and lower bounds on student course loads during the spring term
6.
models
of the allocation of faculty teaching over a two-year cycle to meet the
teaching and scholarly goals of the faculty
7.
the
resources needed to implement the recommendations of the Committee
The Chairperson of the Spring Term Renewal
Committee (STRC) met with senior administrators on two occasions, to
discuss the charge and to ascertain the parameters under which the committee
was to operate, prior to the first meeting of the STRC. The senior administration made clear that it
wanted the STRC to “think creatively and boldly,” as it attempted
to identify ways to improve the Spring Term experience for all students,
especially freshmen. The Committee was
asked to think of solutions that could be quickly implemented that might have
immediate payoffs as well as solutions that might take longer to implement. Moreover, committee members were asked to
appreciate that not all solutions would need to entail additional
expenditures.
The STRC was asked not to think of the course
reduction as a “mini sabbatical” or as a “leave”--simply as a
course reduction. The STRC was
assured that some funds existed to implement those recommendations (especially
if the need for additional faculty resources to service students in the Spring
Term was established) and that each academic department would work out when
course reductions for members of its faculty were to occur during the academic
year--subject to the proviso that the department serves its share of students
during the Spring Term.
b. The STRC
Schedule
The Spring Term Renewal Committee began its
work in early June of 2001. The
Committee met on 16 occasions during the 2001-2002 academic year: June 4;
September 20, 21, and 28; October 19, and 25; November 1, and 29; December 6;
January 18, and 25; February 1, 8, 14, and 28; and March 7, 2002.
In addition, a sub-committee (Bent, Goldsmith, Keen,
and Rush) of the STRC met with President Boetsch, Dean Peppers and Dean
Session on two occasions (October 26, 2001 and February 27, 2002) to provide an
update on the accomplishments of the STRC and to receive feedback and
guidance on the future course of the STRC’s activities.
Another subcommittee of the STRC (Goldsmith,
Bent, and Keen) also met with The Committee on Courses and Degrees on
February 12th to inform this committee of some of the likely
recommendations of the STRC and to discuss with the Committee what role
it might play if these recommendations were adopted by the administration.
c. The STRC
Working Procedures
The Spring Term Renewal Committee addressed
its charge with a three-part operating procedure. First, the STRC spent considerable time identifying and acquiring
the information it would need to properly evaluate the relevant issues. The Registrar worked diligently to provide
the STRC with the data it desired.
Second, the STRC analyzed the information collected with an eye
toward understanding the facts regarding the Spring Term experience for faculty
and students. The Committee discussed
each aspect of the charges, and during its deliberations the data provided by
the Registrar proved helpful.
Finally, the STRC constructed a set of documents--that it voted upon--which contain its recommendations on how the administration should proceed in addressing some of the key charges placed before the Committee. In addressing some charges, the Committee opted to generate a menu of options that the administration might adopt. This approach was taken when the resolution of issues depended in large part on major decisions that only senior administrators and trustees could make. In addition, the STRC constructed some documents that contain thoughts about complex issues that would most likely need to be explored by a committee assigned to that issue or that would need to be handled through an administrative initiative. The purpose of these documents is to merely share ideas generated by the STRC with the administration, in the hope that this information would provide a richer understanding of the interrelationship of existing problems, possible solutions, and projected consequences and costs.
UNDERSTANDING THE
SPRING TERM EXPERIENCE: THE FACTS
1.
Why Do Underclass Students Want More Spring Term Options?
There is substantial anecdotal evidence, from the University Registrar and from students, that freshmen and sophomore students find it difficult to enroll in the Spring Term courses they would choose if they selected courses before senior and junior level students. There is a widespread perception that this situation is the result of too few Spring Term course slots for freshmen and sophomore students. What might account for the prevalence of this view? The STRC explored a number of possible developments that could lead to a shortage of course slots for freshmen and sophomore students in the Spring Term.
a. There is
a General Shortage of Spring Term Courses
A prominent perception among faculty and students is that if a shortage of class seats exists for underclass students, it is because relative to the 12-week terms, faculty-teaching responsibilities for Spring Term decline by more than the decline in student demand for courses in the spring. In theory, student demand should fall from 4 courses to 2 (a 50% decline) while faculty teaching falls from 3 courses to 1 course or by 66%. Therefore, a shortage of class slots for students would be likely to emerge and it would be felt by those students who sign up for classes later in registration week--freshmen and sophomores. The first question the STRC examined is whether this is an accurate depiction of what occurs during Spring Term.
Enrollment figures for Spring Term 2001, presented in Appendix B, reveal that many students enroll for fewer than six credit hours, with many students coupling an academic course worth 3-credit hours with a 1-credit physical education course. The STRC found that; 56% of seniors, 27% of juniors, 18% of sophomores, and 17% of freshmen, enrolled for 4 or fewer credit hours during the Spring of 2001.
Thus, student demand is falling by far
more than 50%--much closer to the 66% reduction on the faculty side than the STRC
had anticipated. Nevertheless,
complaints from freshmen and sophomores about course availability Spring Term
are common. This led the STRC to
examine other possible explanations for the difficulties these students report.
b. Faculty Teaching Preferences Produce a Shortage of Spring Term
Courses for Underclass Students
It is possible that faculty-teaching practices have fostered the difficulties that freshmen and sophomores face when attempting to sign up for Spring Term courses. There are two views on how this could occur.
1.
Faculty Prefer to Teach Advanced Students
It is possible that faculty members prefer to teach
more advanced student during the Spring Term, so they design classes for these
students. Hence, there are simply not a
sufficient number of slots in the classes offered that are set aside or
available for these students--and this appears to be particularly acute for
freshmen. The STRC did not
conduct a formal empirical investigation of this hypothesis; rather it relied
on years of anecdotal evidence accumulated by the Registrar to assume that
there is some truth to this proposition.
The committee moved quickly, during the Fall of
2001, to offer the administration two recommendations to address this
situation. The STRC recommended
that:
·
the
Deans ask each Department to structure its course offerings for the spring of
2002 so that approximately 25% of the seats in their classes are allotted to
freshmen and another 25% to sophomores.
·
and
that the order in which students register for Spring Term be adjusted so that
freshmen are able to select a course before sophomores select their second
course.
These
recommendations were adopted and implemented for the Spring Term 2002.
2.
Faculty Prefer to Teach Small Seminars
Another way in which faculty preferences might
contribute to the difficulties the institution is experiencing in serving
freshmen and sophomore students during the Spring Term that can be
imagined. Suppose that faculty have a
penchant for offering seminar courses in the Spring Term and these courses are
planned for smaller class sizes--say 15 or fewer. If virtually all faculty taught a relatively small number of
students, some students, especially those signing up late in registration week,
would find the available course offerings slim.
The STRC collected and analyzed data for the
Spring Term of 2001 to determine if there were evidence consistent with this
hypothesis about course offerings. The
evidence, presented in Appendix C is not favorable to this explanation for why
underclass students believe the course slots available to them are less than
satisfactory.
During the Spring Term of 2001, 64% of the
departments (16 of the 25 departments) had average class enrollments that
exceeded 15 students. Thus, if classes
are smaller during spring term, they are not below the standard most faculty hold
for the size of a seminar course at a Liberal Arts college of Washington and
Lee’s stature. In addition, 28% of the
departments on campus (7 of the 24) have average class enrollments during the
Spring Term of at least 19. The
findings we report in Appendix C imply that staffing shortfalls are an issue
during Spring Term.
2.
Are More Faculty Resources Readily Available for the Spring Term?
The evidence suggests that faculty resources in the Spring Term may be insufficient to accommodate all of the students readily. Assuming this is the case, can the University solve this problem by shifting existing faculty teaching resources from the Fall Term and from the Winter Term to the Spring Term? The STRC believed it was important to determine whether shifting teaching resources into the Spring Term from other terms were a viable option (however the STRC recognized that in situations where a single professor has the expertise needed to lead a sequence of two courses shifting is impossible). Therefore, the STRC conducted a formal analysis of this question. Our investigation reveled that, given the size of average enrollments during the Fall Term and the Winter Term, few departments would be in a position to engage in such a resource shift.
The Spring Term Renewal Committee assumed that departments in which average enrollments are at least 17 students per section are “strained,” and would face difficulty shifting resources to the Spring Term. During the 2001-2002 academic year, 40% of the departments were “strained” Fall Term, and 20% of the departments were “strained” Winter Term (Appendix C). Moreover, 12.5% of the departments were “stressed” Fall Term and an equivalent number were “stressed” Winter Term, by facing average class enrollments of more than 19 students per section. Thus, shifting faculty resources may not be a sufficient means of responding to the Spring Term staffing needs of the institution.
The data in Appendix C do not present a complete picture of the factors leading to academic stress. A department could have average enrollments that are below the “strained” or “stressed” level because it has few majors, but at the same time face large enrollments in service courses. In these departments there is an undercurrent of enrollment stress that is not captured by the data in Appendix C.
The number of additional faculty
resources needed Spring Term depends on what the institution is attempting to
accomplish during the Spring Term, which in turn governs class size. Therefore, the STRC turned its
attention to establishing the intent of the Spring Term and an associated set
of guidelines that describe how the University could meet its philosophical
aims during the Spring Term.
GOALS AND
OBJECTIVES
OF THE SPRING TERM: ADRESSING THE
CHARGES
1.
Goals and Objectives Spring Term:
Faculty Impact
What is the faculty trying
to accomplish during the Spring Term, and how does that differ, if at all, from
its work with students during the 12-week terms? How might Spring Term courses help the institution meet its
strategic academic goals? The STRC
believed it was essential to answer these questions before addressing the issue
of how many additional faculty resources would be needed for the Spring
Term.
Spring Term Renewal Committee constructed a document
entitled “Goals and Objectives of the Spring Term,” that
articulates the academic aims of the Spring Term (charge #1). This document also contains the Committee’s
thinking on appropriate pedagogical models for the Spring Term (charge #3), and
how to promote academic rigor (charge #4).
The most important recommendations to the senior
administration from the Spring Term Renewal Committee are contained in
the Goals and Objectives of the Spring Term document (Appendix
D). The recommendations offered in this
document are intended to strengthen the Spring Term and to promote the
University’s Strategic Plan. The key
features of the Goals and Objectives of the Spring Term document
are that:
·
spring
Term course should be distinct from those offered in the other terms.
·
departments
should be encouraged to schedule small classes that are conceived as
seminars or as other forms of intimate learning experiences.
·
departments
should continue to encourage their faculty to offer unique courses, especially
interdisciplinary courses, study abroad, and community service oriented
classes.
·
the Deans should establish a standard that faculty
are expected to meet with students at least 2 hours per week per credit.
·
the
administration should charge a committee--it could be a new standing committee
or it could be the Committee on Courses and Degrees--with:
o examination of all courses
proposed for Spring Term to discern whether a course is consistent with the Goals
and Objectives for Spring Term and
o to hear petitions for
variances from the guidelines associated with Spring Term courses.
Appendix E suggests the type of information a
committee might want to solicit from faculty, but is not a recommendation of
the STRC.
2.
Goals and Objectives Spring Term:
Student Impact
There is a widespread perception among students that
the Spring Term is not a serious academic exercise--it’s the Goshen Term. The STRC was asked to offer
recommendations that would promote rigor on the part of students (charge #4),
and recommendations on the setting of upper and lower bounds on student course
load during the Spring Term (charge #5).
Recommendations from the Spring Term Renewal Committee to address
these issues are contained in a document, voted upon by the STRC,
entitled “Student Rigor and the Spring Term.” The key element of this document, Appendix F, is that students
enrolled Spring Term:
·
should
be required to enroll for at least 6 credits and no more than 9 credits.
The enrollment impact of implementing this recommendation is substantial. Recall that; 56% of seniors, 27% of juniors, 18% of sophomores, and 17% of freshmen, were enrolled in only 1 academic course during the Spring Term of 2001. If these students were required to take a second academic course then 484 additional spaces in 3 credit courses would be needed (75 for freshmen; 76 for sophomores, 114 for juniors, and 219 for seniors). Some of these students could find classes with low enrollment. In addition, requiring a student to take two academic courses might reduce the attractiveness of spending Spring Term in Lexington, leading to more students studying abroad. Suppose this reduced by 20% the number of additional spaces needed in 3 credit courses. Spring Terms student spaces would need to expand by 387. If these students were accommodated in classes with enrollments of 15, then the University would need to offer 26 additional sections.
The Committee fully recognizes that this will
exacerbate the pressures to increase Spring Term class size (to accommodate the
additional student demand without hiring additional faculty to offer more
sections), or the pressures to acquire more faculty resources for the spring
term. Nevertheless, the committee is
steadfast in its belief that allowing students to enroll for fewer than six
credits leads to an impulse to behave as part-time students.
QUALITY OF THE FRESHMEN EXPERIENCE SPRING TERM
Are freshmen enrolled in courses that will help them establish a level of intellectual curiosity and critical thinking skills needed to enrich their college experience and to succeed after graduation from Washington and Lee? In the Committee’s view, the freshmen year is more than a fourth of a student’s college education--it is a special year. It is a year in which important habits and perspectives about the educational process develop, influencing in critical ways the remainder of a student’s educational experience.
The committee recommends that a Freshmen Seminar
Program be instituted at Washington and Lee--an idea recommended, without
offering a structure or form, in the Institutional Long Range Plan adopted in
1989. The STRC has in mind small
seminars for freshmen on topics selected by the faculty. One model would be to offer all of these
classes during Spring Term--generating a common experience--and to have this
course substitute for a course in the General Education Requirements. These seminars would provide an ideal
environment for students to become active partners in their education and to
further develop their ability to read critically, develop complex arguments,
and make a case for their perspective on paper and during discussions. These are the very skills that a liberal
arts education should instill in an individual. Freshmen Seminars have the capacity to substantially
enhance the quality of the freshmen experience at Washington and Lee,
especially during the Spring Term, promoting retention and setting the stage
for superior academic performance in subsequent years.
The STRC envisions an arrangement where each department participates in the Freshmen Seminar Program by offering one or more of the 32-35 sections needed to accommodate the freshmen class. Many departments are already teaching courses heavily subscribed by freshmen, so for them, it would be a matter of asking some faculty to modify their course to fit the objectives and structure of the Freshmen Seminar Program. Other departments serve few, if any, freshmen. These departments would have to shift resources from existing courses to design and offer a course or two that met the needs of the Freshmen Seminar Program.
If during the spring term freshmen are “crowded”
into courses with average enrollments of 20-25 students, due to the fact that
many courses are closed to them, then moving them into seminars with
enrollments capped at 15 students would create a need to offer an additional
250 spaces. Hence, to implement a Freshmen
Seminar Program the institution would need to make available another 17
sections during the Spring Term.
PRESSURES TO EXPAND THE SIZE OF THE FACULTY
The size of the Washington and Lee faculty is
currently insufficient to either enforce “full time status” for students
during the spring term--without allowing class size to rise markedly--or to
initiate a Freshmen Seminar Program.
Faculty teaching responsibilities will fall from 14 courses over two years to 13 courses, beginning in the 2002-2003 academic year. This means that faculty-teaching resources will decline by 7% over a two-year cycle. This development will place additional pressures on the institution to serve its students without acquiring additional faculty resources.
1.
13/2 and the Timing of the Course Release
The impact of the long academic year at Washington and Lee on both the quality of the academic experience for students during the Spring Term and on the scholarly activity of the faculty were prominent themes during the faculty discussion of the virtues of maintaining the 12-12-6 calendar. During the discussion a significant minority of the faculty characterized themselves as tired by the beginning of the Spring Term. For these faculty, it appears that they become progressively more tired as the term advances and they have an impulse to turn their attention to some mental and physical replenishment and to conducting research to advance their contribution to their disciplines.
The reduction in the teaching load conjured up in
the minds of many faculty a release from Spring Term teaching responsibilities
every second or third year (of course, some faculty members would want to teach
every spring term due to the nature of the course they offer). An academic year in which a faculty member
is released from Spring Term classroom duties means a relatively short academic
year (i.e., teach 6 courses during two 12-week terms) followed by a relatively
long academic year (seven courses taught over 3 terms running from September
through late May). Over a two-year
period this would result in a teaching calendar that is somewhat comparable--in
terms of total weeks with teaching responsibilities--with what faculty face at
our peer institutions. Of course, if a
third or a half of the faculty were relieved of Spring Term teaching, without
an influx of new faculty, there would not be sufficient recources to meet the
classroom needs of the student body.
Therefore, following the February meeting of the Board of Trustees
President Boetsch informed Department Heads that:
·
faculty
may not take a Spring Term course release during the 2002-2003 academic
year.
·
there
will be “limited resources” available to enhance faculty resources for the
2002-2003 academic year.
This unanticipated
development of “limited resources” has raised concern amongst members of the STRC
and the faculty at large that class size will grow during the 2002-2003
academic year, enlarging the teaching work load for faculty who do not have a
course release and mitigating some of the expected advantages for faculty with
a one course reduction in teaching.
2. 13/2 and the Size of the Faculty
Confining course releases to the Fall Term and to
the Winter Term will prevent further deterioration of faculty resources in the
Spring Term, but will create additional staffing challenges, especially for
departments with large faculties that already face large enrollments during the
12-week terms. Consider a department
with 10 faculty. Moving to 13/2 from
14/2 means that in any given year they will lose 5 course sections--practically
an entire faculty member. If class
enrollments are large, then they will need to hire an additional faculty
member, let each class grow in size or begin to move away from “small”
classes to offering some university style large lecture courses.
The Deans recognized that 13/2 would result in
faculty resource pressures. During the
fall of 2001 each department was asked to conduct a hypothetical experiment and
determine how they expected to respond to 13/2. If they needed additional faculty resources, they were asked to
argue why and how much. The Chairperson
of the Spring Term Renewal Committee attended a meeting of Department
Heads in the College on November 11, 2001 to discuss the likely impact of 13/2
on faculty resources. At this meeting
it was apparent that approximately 17 additional faculty would be needed in the
College. A similar meeting of Williams
School Department Heads revealed that they would need 3 additional
faculty. Thus, the move to 13/2 given
current staffing has elicited a large request for additional faculty--20 new
faculty positions--from the Department Heads who are responsible for
staffing courses.
If a large number of new faculty members were to be
hired to meet the needs of students during the Fall Term and the Winter Term,
(to off set faculty losses during these terms, since course releases are
confined to the two 12-week terms), many additional resources would be
available during the Spring Term.
However, this configuration may be less than ideal for some
departments. For departments with heavy
demand in the 12-week terms--departments that teach large numbers of students
survey courses that are not offered Spring Term (such as English and
Economics)--they will have excess resources in the Spring Term and a shortage
of resources during the 12-week terms.
3. Faculty Resource Pressures: The Bottom Line
The movement to 13/2, along with a need to reduce
class size during the 12-week terms (which is unlikely to be met by simply
reallocating students to less subscribed courses given existing enrollment
levels), and the desirability of implementing a Freshmen Seminar Program
at Washington and Lee mean that 20-30 additional faculty members will be
needed. This raises a number of
questions about other ways to avoid pressures on faculty resources, such as
reducing student demand for faculty resources.
ADRESSING THE FACULTY-STUDENT IMBALANCE
The Spring Term Renewal Committee spent
considerable time discussing how Washington and Lee might address the imbalance
between faculty resources and student needs.
The STRC explored this issue by attempting to identify reasonable
ways to reduce student demand and by seeking to discover sensible approaches to
expand the size of the faculty. The STRC
opted to present the administration with a menu of alternative ways to redress
the issue of faculty-student imbalance.
For each item on the menu we note the implications on the academic
experience for students, both positive and negative, as well as the potential
costs and the likely time frame for adoption.
At the end of the day, the administration will face some tough choices.
1. How might student
demand be reduced while maintaining the Spring Term?
The number of credits needed for graduation could be
reduced from 40 to 36. Note that there
might be room to consider doing this without severely damaging the quality of a
W&L degree, since we currently require students to take 40 courses lasting
12 weeks--a total of 480 weeks--while student who complete 32 courses lasting
14 weeks receive 448 weeks of education (at those institutions that require
students to complete 40 courses each lasting 14 weeks--5 courses per
term--students accumulate 560 weeks of education by graduation). If students at Washington and Lee were asked
to complete 36 courses lasting 12 weeks, they would complete 432 weeks of education
prior to graduation--they would only receive 3.5% fewer weeks of education than
their peers educated in a traditional two-semester calendar who are required to
complete 32 courses.
If Washington and Lee were to require only 36
courses for graduation, how students go about collecting their 36 courses might
have a significant impact on the educational environment at Washington and Lee
during the Spring Term. For instance, a
standard arrangement for students could be to take 4 courses during each of the
12-week terms and a single class during spring term--the Spring Term
Renewal Committee is not excited about this arrangement. This layout has the potential to produce a
social situation that adversely impacts the educational goals of the
institution by maintaining the perception that student rigor is lacking Spring
Term. Alternatively, students could be
required to spend only two spring terms in Lexington (presumably the
freshman and one other spring term) over the course of their
education--exceptions could be made for athletes in season.
This is an inexpensive way to address the imbalance--in terms of dollars and cents--and it could be implemented within a reasonable period of time. However, this approach leads to students receiving fewer weeks of education, unless they make educational use of the spring terms they spend away from Lexington. Moreover, if the courses students take during Spring Term are more international, more interdisciplinary, and smaller than the courses they ordinarily take during the 12-week terms, then the educational loss might be substantial.
A variant of this model is to reduce graduation
requirements to 38 courses by graduating seniors earlier in the academic
year, possibly during the first or second week of the Spring Term. Relative to reducing graduation requirements
to 36 courses, this approach would close less of the gap between the demand for
course seats emanating from students and the number of seats in classes that
are provided, but at the same time the educational costs to students in terms
of education forgone would be smaller.
Graduating seniors early and reducing graduation
requirements to 36 courses along with requiring that a student spend only two
spring terms at Washington and Lee has a number of advantages while keeping low
the opportunity cost of education foregone.
The primary benefits of this approach is that Spring Term demands on the
faculty would be substantially reduced, allowing a large share of the faculty
to regularly have a course release during Spring Term.
The STRC also discussed the possibility of
students receiving credit for internships off campus, which would reduce the
number of students seeking to enroll in classes offered on campus. Rules and procedures would have to be
established by the Committee on Courses and Degrees, and it is unclear whether
enough students would take advantage of this opportunity to have a significant
impact on enrollment pressures.
The Spring Term Renewal Committee also
explored how the student faculty imbalance could be addressed by increasing the
availability of faculty resources.
2.
How might faculty-teaching
resources be expanded?
The Spring Term Renewal Committee
discussed three ways to increase faculty resources that the administration
might find attractive:
·
hire
enough additional tenure track faculty--20-30--to meet a desired average
enrollments targets for each term.
·
hire
adjunct faculty, as Visiting Professors, on an “as needed” basis--our
current practice so long as sufficient resources are available.
·
develop
and implement an extensive Postdoctoral Program at Washington and Lee.
a. Hire
significantly more tenure track faculty
Hiring significantly more tenure track faculty is
the ideal way to expand seats in courses available to students, for most
departments. This approach facilitates
a stronger academic program, in each of the terms, and promotes international
and interdisciplinary education.
Moreover, this development promises to strengthen the academic
reputation of Washington and Lee. In
the view of the Committee other methods of eliminating the faculty-student
imbalance should be compared with the solution offered by hiring a sufficient
number of additional tenure track faculty, or combined with this approach. Other solutions will be less expensive and
take less time to implement, but they will also contribute less to the ideals
espoused by Washington and Lee that drew to its campus the existing
faculty.
b. Hire more
visiting faculty
Expanding the practice of hiring adjunct faculty on
an as-needed basis is a viable alternative.
This model provides flexibility, can be implemented immediately, and is
relatively low in direct cost. In
addition, it provides an opportunity to hire faculty who can contribute, at
least temporarily, to international and interdisciplinary mission of Washington
and Lee. Unfortunately, the costs to
the existing faculty of locating and recruiting visitors each year are a
distraction that may compromise the educational and research activities of the
permanent faculty. Visiting faculty
need to be schooled up on the academic traditions of Washington and Lee, and it
may take them a while to become comfortable with the Socratic method of
teaching that is popular on campus.
Thus, the “full cost” of the adjunct model may be close to the
full costs of the tenure track model.
c. Establish
a Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
Another approach, heretofore unconsidered by institutions such as Washington and Lee, would be to establish an extensive postdoctoral program. The STRC has in mind a situation where the Postdoctoral Fellows would be expected to join the Washington and Lee faculty for 2 years and might teach 4 courses per year. This program would have the potential to attract qualified candidates, especially newly minted Ph.D.s who seek careers as faculty in a liberal arts setting. The combination of flexibility and low cost suggest this option warrants serious attention, especially if it could serve as a channel to a smaller teaching load which may be on the horizon for Washington and Lee.
A postdoctoral program could be set up to solicit
applications from candidates from throughout the United States, even outside of
the U.S. An alternative would be to
establish a partnership with one or more regional research institutions--such
as the University of Virginia and the University of North Carolina--and give
candidates from these institutions preferential treatment. The advantage of this latter arrangement is
that it has the potential to secure funding from foundations. Appendix G contains a detailed discussion of
the costs and benefits associated with initiating a Postdoctoral Fellows
Program in partnership with a
highly regarded research institution.
13/2, SPRING TERM, AND THE INSTITUTION’S STRATEGIC GOALS
The link between the health of the Spring Term and
the strategic Goals of Washington and Lee influenced many of the conversations
held by the Spring Term Renewal Committee. The members of the STRC care deeply about the importance
of finding ways for the institution to address the challenges posed by the
Spring Term while simultaneously promoting progress toward realization of the
three components of the University’s Strategic Plan: greater
internationalization of the curriculum, greater interdisciplinary education,
and enhancing the academic reputation of Washington and Lee.
1. Fall Term and Winter
Term Course Reductions: Impact on Internationalization and Interdisciplinary
Education
The STRC is gravely concerned that if the
imbalance between faculty resources and student demand is not resolved, the
transition to a smaller teaching load will adversely effect the
institution--this is especially true if course reductions are taken exclusively
in the Fall and Winter Terms. The logic
of the committee is as follows:
·
departments
will have an impulse to teach core courses in the Spring Term--which will
undermine the distinctiveness of the Spring Term and lead to the Spring
Term becoming a poor version of the Fall and Winter Terms.
·
class
size will grow in whatever term faculty resources have declined, and class
sizes are already larger than desired.
This will place pressure on faculty to reduce time intensive teaching
exercises such as mentored writing and problem solving exercises, which are effective
learning devices.
·
departments
will circle the wagons and protect their majors--which means they will
offer fewer interdisciplinary courses.
·
there
will be greater awareness of the opportunity cost of running supervised study
abroad--in that fewer students are taught on campus during spring term--leading
to pressures to reduce one of the most enriching educational opportunities
available to students and to the faculty at W&L.
Thus, there is a sense of
urgency or anxiety in the Spring Term Renewal Committee that as an
educational community we take action to resolve the student-faculty imbalance
in a timely fashion.
2. Fall Term and Winter
Term Course Reductions: Impact on
Research
Faculty research is the primary vehicle behind
growth of the institution’s academic reputation. Reducing the number of courses a faculty member is assigned to
teach can free up additional time to engage in research. However, if the classes faculty are teaching
become substantially larger, due to the course reduction, additional time will
be needed to grade assignments and much of the anticipated benefits of the
course reduction on research productivity will be lost.
A Spring Term course reduction is likely to have a
bigger effect on the scholarly output of a faculty member than an equivalent
course reduction during the Fall Term or the Winter Term. In a 6-course teaching year a Spring Term
course release will give a faculty member a 4-month block of time to allocate
toward research with few distractions.
If a Spring Term course reduction were coupled with a term-long
sabbatical leave, the faculty member would have a period of 9 months during
which to focus on research. Therefore,
the members of the STRC believe that each faculty member should have an
opportunity to take a course reduction during the Spring Term at least once
over two cycle of 13/2--once every 4 years.
CONCLUSION
The Spring Term Renewal Committee
was charged with offering recommendations on how the institution might improve
the quality of the Spring Term experience.
The STRC was asked to offer ideas on how to promote faculty and
student rigor, and enhance curricular options for freshmen. The Committee was also asked to provide
guidance on “appropriate teaching models” for the Spring Term. The Spring Term Renewal Committee was
assigned the task of identifying the resources needed to strengthen the Spring
Term and to offer ideas on how the movement to an arrangement where faculty
teach thirteen courses over two years rather than fourteen course can be
sequenced to facilitate the teaching and research objectives of the
faculty. The STRC has carried
out its charge since ways to address each of the obstacles to promoting a
stronger Spring Term are offered in this report.
Appendix A
May 15, 2001
To: .
From: Larry Boetsch
Larry Peppers
Dear xxx:
You will recall that the recent faculty vote to retain the current academic calendar as that which most adequately ensures our curricular objectives also resulted in the expression of the faculty’s desire to better exploit the advantages of spring term and correct its weaknesses. We write to invite you to participate in that important process by serving on the ad hoc faculty Spring Term Renewal Committee under the leadership of Professor Art Goldsmith. The term of the appointment is the 2001-02 academic year, but you will be called to a preliminary meeting later this spring term.
The Committee will develop strategies and recommendations to strengthen the spring term consistent with the implementation of our current strategic academic goals and objectives. It will address:
1) the establishment of clear goals and objectives for the spring term
2) the chronic shortage of courses available to freshmen
3) the range of appropriate teaching models for the six-weeks term
4) mechanisms to ensure academic rigor during the spring term and to facilitate planning on the part of students and faculty
5) upper and lower bounds on student course loads during the spring term
6) models of the allocation of faculty teaching over a two-year cycle to meet the teaching and scholarly goals of the faculty
7) the resources needed to implement the recommendations of the Committee
The overall goal of the Committee is to seek ways by which we, as an academic community, can better avail ourselves of the opportunities presented to faculty and students by our calendar. The Committee is expected to solicit ideas and work interactively with all of the stakeholders. It will present a final report to the Deans who, after consultation with faculty, will place the report and its recommendations before the President.
We hope that you will agree to participate in the work of this group and anticipate your response to Dean Boetsch at your earliest convenience.
Cc: Art Goldsmith
Larry Peppers
Appendix B
Appendix C
Average Class Size
that “Strained” (more than 17 students per section) or “Stressed”
(more than 19 students per section) Departments by Term:
2000-2001 Academic
Year
|
DEPARTMENT |
FALL TERM |
WINTER TERM |
SPRING TERM |
Annual Ave >15 |
|
Accounting |
Stressed
|
Strained |
Stressed
|
yes |
|
Art |
|
|
|
Yes |
|
Biology |
Strained |
|
Stressed
|
Yes |
|
Chemistry |
Stressed
|
|
|
Yes |
|
Classics |
|
|
|
|
|
Computer Sciences |
|
|
|
Yes |
|
East-Asian Lang. |
|
|
|
|
|
Economics |
Strained |
Stressed
|
Strained |
yes |
|
English |
Strained |
Strained |
Stressed
|
yes |
|
Geology |
|
|
|
yes |