College discusses downsized teaching load

Committees to review hypothetical 2:2 teaching plans

Acacia O'Connor Editor In Chief

They spend hours a day in a classroom and many hours more preparing for classes; they are on committees, head up groups and give presentations; they feel constant pressure to excel and often have little time to sleep, eat and spend relaxing with friends and family.

While fast-paced lifestyles and high leves of stress are familiar to students, Vassar’s faculty are also feeling the increasing strain of the frenetic collegiate environment.

“When you look at how expectations from faculty in terms of teaching, scholarship and service have risen in the last fifteen years, it is clear that the faculty feels overwhelmed and overly stressed,” Professor of Hispanic Studies Linda Paravisini-Gebert told The Miscellany News in March 2007.

The ever-increasing demands of teaching and scholarship, and recent policy changes at peer institutions, have led the College to examine its faculty teaching load. Currently, full-time professors teach five courses per academic year on a 3:2 plan (that is, three courses one semester, two in the other). For about four years Vassar has been investigating the possibility of joining colleges such as Williams, Wellesley, Amherst and Smith in implementing a scaled back 2:2 teaching load.

Paravisini-Gebert is a member of the ad hoc 2:2 task force established in Fall 2006. The ad hoc committee, which consists of 11 professors and associate deans of the faculty from different departments and programs, has made half a dozen recommendations regarding faculty teaching loads.

This year, the discussion of 2:2 has come to the foreground, and student and faculty committees may propose recommendations regarding the switch before the end of the academic year.

Gathering data on the switch

In late October, the College’s departments and programs submitted staffing plans for the upcoming school year. In these plans, the departments indicated which courses they would offer each semester, who would teach them, whether they needed to hire additional professors and how many.

Along with the traditional 3:2 staffing plan, each department and program created a hypothetical 2008-2009 staffing plan under a 2:2 teaching load. The plan will be used to analyze what shape Vassar’s curriculum would take under the proposed switch. Hypothetical 2:2 plans for the 2007-2008 academic year may be written out retroactively in the future, so there will be a more representative sample to evaluate.

At a recent faculty meeting, Vassar College President Catharine Bond Hill mentioned that she hoped a consensus could be made on the issue before the departure of Dean of the Faculty Ronald Sharp in July. However, both President Hill and members of the Committee on Curricular Policy (CCP) indicated that they are still very much in the investigatory stage of the process.

“Until we know more about the implications for governance and the curriculum, it is very hard to know when we will be able to make a decision about this,” Hill said in an e-mailed statement.

After reviewing the plans and considering the curricular ramifications of a 2:2 switch, the CCP and the Faculty Policy and Conference Committee (FPCC) will file reports on their findings.

“Until now it’s been, ‘what do people think?’,” said Vassar Student Association Vice President of Academics Jessica Cho ’08. “Once we see those plans we can figure out what else we should look at, and if the plans are enough to make a decision or if it could redirect the conversation.”

The task of the CCP, FPCC, the ad hoc committee and the faculty in general is to determine how a change to 2:2 would affect not only faculty stress levels and responsibilities, but Vassar’s curriculum, class size and programming.

Since the College is not likely to hire many new professors, fewer courses would be available each semester. This, however, would not necessarily require major shifts in the nature of the curriculum, according to Sharp.

“We have now something like 118 courses that have less than 5 students in them. Most of these would continue to be offered. But some of them might be taught every other year instead of every year, some might be combined,” Sharp said.

With professors teaching fewer classes per semester, Vassar’s average class size—currently at 16 students per class—may also increase, though the extent of the growth is still impossible to predict.

The Multidisciplinary question

Another significant concern is whether a lightened teaching load would be detrimental to interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary programs, which rely on faculty assigned to other departments to teach their courses.

“It’s by far one of the most important concerns in this discussion, because that is our niche as a college,” said Dean of Studies Chris Roellke of the concerns over the change’s affects on multidisciplinary programs. “I think the College has been very creative to actually build in joint appointments among other things.”

Professors with joint appointments dedicate a certain amount of time and energy to both their main department and another program. For example, before becoming Dean of Studies, Roellke taught in both the education and urban studies departments.

“We said at the outset that we would not go to 2:2 if it negatively impacted multidisciplinary programs…They are at the heart of Vassar and we are not going to compromise them,” Sharp told The Miscellany News in March.

Weighing positive and negative

Supporters of 2:2 say the lighter load will grant professors more time for course planning and research, and make the College more appealing and competitive in the search for new professors. Other members of the faculty have expressed concern that the switch could adulterate Vassar’s academic strengths and focus.

“I’ve seen that there’s a small number of faculty for and a small number against it—and the rest are, like me, I think, on the fence and still looking for more information,” Roellke said.

Indeed, faculty and administrators seem wary of making a change if it means it would in any way have a negative impact on Vassar students.

“I'm all for going 2:2 if we can maintain our institutional support of programs and our curriculum options for our students,” said Assistant Professor of English Kiese Laymon.

Peer institutions who have switched from a five course to a four course yearly teaching load have seen more positive results than drawbacks. Williams changed from a 3:2 to a 2:2 system in Fall 2002, a change that Ilona Bell, Professor of English at Williams, said has been much for the better.

“I think it was a wonderful change. It was very helpful to junior faculty and particularly new teachers that work very hard on their teaching but are under considerable pressure to publish,” Bell said. “I think the main difference is how carefully I’ve been able to plan classes, how much writing I’ve been able to assign and comment carefully on.”

Though the curriculum was downsized during the switch, Bell said that the transition went smoothly and after the first year, few students were affected by the changes.

In Williams’ 2:2 system, as opposed to Vassar’s, professors rarely get what is known as a course release for working with committees or serving in other capacities on campus. In Vassar’s current 3:2 system, faculty can receive between a one course release for heading a committee (and teach 4 classes per year) and a five course release (the entire teaching load) for a dean’s position. Another potential change that will be taken into account is adjusting or replacing this course release matrix.

“The question now is ‘what is a healthy faculty load?’” said Roellke. “Everyone wants to be at peak performance in their job. I think the goals are really laudible goals: we want to be good scholars, good servants and good teachers.”

The discussions of 2:2 will continue into the spring semester and potentially beyond. Faculty, student representatives and administrators admit that much is still up in the air.

“At the end of the day, it’s got to be about institutional improvement, not bettering the quality of life for professors at the expense of the institution,” Laymon said. “Maybe those two go hand in hand.”

Peer Institutions who have a 2:2 system or the equivalent
Amherst
Bowdoin
Dartmouth (on quarters)
Haverford
Mount Holyoke
Smith
Wellesley
Wesleyan
Williams

Peer Institutions who have a 3:2 or the equivalent
Barnard
Bryn Mawr
Colby
Colgate
Franklin & Marshall
Hamilton
Middlebury
Oberlin
Swarthmore
Trinity
Union