Case Study #2: Faculty Load Calculation

ISSUE:

Determining the teaching load for individual faculty is frequently complicated when faculty teach across disciplines and different divisions, if communication between the division Deans is not clear. In addition, managing the overall teaching faculty load on an annual basis requires information from all semesters, as well as considering release time for administrative activities if counted in their teaching load. A better way of viewing scheduled (and completed) faculty course instructional sections was required to better ensure that faculty met their desired teaching loads without unintended overloads.

SOLUTION:

In this situation, the college-wide scheduling Excel tool was also employed to provide the necessary data for this function. Many possible additional reports can be generated once the college-wide course section data are imported into the course scheduling Excel workbook. In the case below, all faculty assigned to teach one or more courses in the master spreadsheet are added to a simple dropdown list by pushing the button labeled “Create Faculty Dropdown”. Then when a specific faculty member’s name is chosen from the dropdown list, all course sections taught by that faculty are populated in the table, along with the total number of credits assigned. This feature is useful for supervising faculty members who teach in different disciplines within a division, or even across different academic divisions. When updates are made to the master schedule import file, the results here will also automatically refresh.