Re: Lab/lecture ratio

[Michael Bowen <fizzbowen@MINDSPRING.COM>]

At 13:03 2002/01/30, Gordon Johnson wrote:

> What I would like to know is if anyone has ever encountered a situation
> similar to this. Also, any suggestions would be appreciated - beyond the
> obvious "don't do directed studies". I'm in the process of contesting this
> with our current administration, but I suspect that the only solution for us
> will be to attempt to get the contract language changed, and again in view
> of the small number of science faculty, I don't anticipate this happening.

In our community college district, science instructors get 3 hours of
credit for teaching 4 hours of lab (none of our labs is actually 4 hours,
but that's the ratio). The ratio changes to 1 for 1 if the assignment is
overload (anything in excess of 15 hours per semester) or if the instructor
is a part-timer (non-tenured). To take advantage of the better ratio for
overload, most science instructors teach 15 hours of lecture and then take
one or two labs if they want overload. Of course, many labs are taught by
part-timers, who for the most part are not required to hold office hours,
as a result of this policy.

We don't get any compensation for directed studies courses, regardless of
when they are offered. Needless to say, very few directed studies courses
are offered (only one such course in physics at our college in the last ten
years). Minimum enrollment to make a course "go" is 15 students, except in
rare special cases for advanced courses, where we can sometimes negotiate
for enrollments as low as 6 to 10. Such negotiations have become much more
difficult to achieve in recent years, however. The salary budgets somehow
seem to tighten even as our total enrollments (and, theoretically, total
dollars from the state) increase.