UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
101 Main Building
Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0032
FIFTH-YEAR INTERIM REPORT
Submitted April 15, 2009
Monitoring Report
PREPARED BY
Dr. Constance A. Ray
Vice President for Institutional Research, Planning, and Effectiveness
(859) 257-6384
September 8, 2009
UNIVERSITY OF KENTUCKY
FIFTH-YEAR INTERIM REPORT
MONITORING REPORT
SEPTEMBER 8, 2009
Core Requirement 2.8: The number of full-time faculty members is adequate to support the mission of the institution and to ensure the quality and integrity of its academic programs.
Follow-Up Request Core Requirement 2.8 (Faculty): The institution did not provide sufficient information demonstrating the adequacy of full-time faculty members and their capability to ensure the quality and integrity of academic programs. In its additional report, the institution should demonstrate that the number of full-time faculty members is adequate by providing data by academic program, such as, the number of full-time faculty as opposed to part-time faculty, and the number of courses offered in each program that are taught by full-time faculty as compared to part-time faculty. (July 16, 2009 notification letter from President Belle S. Wheelan)
Response: In response to concerns of the Committee on Fifth-Year Interim Reports, the additional data as requested are incorporated into the original response presented below to provide a comprehensive case for compliance with Core Requirement 2.8.
The University of Kentucky is in compliance with Core Requirement 2.8. The University employs an adequate number of competent faculty members qualified to accomplish the mission and goals of the institution and to ensure the quality and integrity of its academic programs. This expectation suggests that an adequate number of faculty must possess necessary academic credentials and be deployed effectively to support the University’s three-fold mission of teaching, research, and service. To demonstrate compliance with this core requirement, descriptions of policies and procedures that govern faculty appointments and assignments are first presented. The number of full-time faculty, part-time faculty, and graduate teaching assistants is then presented in relation to student full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment at the undergraduate and graduate/first professional levels. The number of student credit hours generated and courses taught by faculty type is also presented to document how faculty resources are used to support the teaching mission. Next, to assess the effectiveness of the policies and procedures that were established to ensure qualified faculty as well as the adequacy of the number of faculty available for the critical mission area of teaching, the University examined its standing in relation to similar public research universities on five related performance indicators: the percent of faculty who are full-time; the percent of faculty with a terminal degree; the student-to-faculty ratio, the percent of classes under 20 students, and the percent of classes of 50 or more students.
Policies and Procedures that Govern Faculty Appointments and Assignments
Recruitment and Appointment. Educational units review faculty applications via search committees comprised of peers in the field who are knowledgeable of standards of excellence the applicant must have achieved to be considered for an appointment. In evaluating candidates, each college follows criteria described in the University of Kentucky Administrative Regulations. These criteria assist search committees in evaluating candidates and ensure the hiring of faculty with scholarly potential. Each title series (established to support the University’s three-fold mission) and each rank require that the candidate be evaluated based on specific criteria as set forth in Administrative Regulations 2:2 through 2:10 on appointment, reappointment, and promotion. These are listed below and presented collectively as Exhibit CR 2.8-1.
AR 2:2-1 Regular Title Series (1/1/2000)
AR 2:2-2 Regular Title Series (9/20/1989)
AR 2:3 Extension Title Series
AR 2:4 Special Title Series
AR 2:5 Research Title Series
AR 2:6 Clinical Title Series
AR 2:7 Librarian Series
AR 2:8 Adjunct Series
AR 2:9 Lecturer Series Faculty
AR 2:10 Voluntary Series Faculty
The University’s policy on part-time faculty appointments begins on page 4 of the Administrative Regulation 2:1-1 – Procedures for Faculty Appointment, Reappointment, Promotion, and the Granting of Tenure (see Exhibit CR 2.8-2).
For each initial faculty appointment, faculty employees are assigned to a particular rank, and a review of the prospective individual’s teaching is completed by each educational unit (i.e., department and college). For those individuals being considered for tenure and non-tenured appointments at the rank of Associate Professor or Professor a dossier is completed by the unit. The dossier contains details about the educational credentials, previous employment, and previous teaching, research, and service contributions. Each dossier is reviewed and approved by the faculty within the unit. The approved dossier is submitted to the Provost with a university appointment form, a teaching credentials certification form (Exhibit CR 2.8-3), a credentials justification (Exhibit CR 2.8-4) if needed, curriculum vita, affirmative action form, offer/acceptance letter, and a copy of the individual’s transcript.
Individuals being considered for tenure-track appointments at the rank of Instructor and Assistant Professors submit the following information to the Provost’s Office: university appointment form, a teaching credentials certification form, credentials justification if needed, curriculum vita, affirmative action form, offer/acceptance letter, and a copy of the individual’s transcript.
Faculty being considered for part-time, visiting, temporary, voluntary, adjunct, or research appointments submit the following: university appointment form, a teaching credentials certification form, credentials justification if needed, and curriculum vita. Faculty lecturers submit the university appointment form, a teaching credentials certification form, credentials justification if needed, curriculum vita, and affirmative action form.
In each situation, the teaching credentials certification and justification data are reviewed by the Provost to ensure quality and compliance with appropriate qualifications.
Assignment and Distribution of Effort. As set forth in the faculty workload policy (Exhibit CR 2.8-5), faculty employees are assigned and evaluated on teaching, research, and service activities. Educational unit administrators assign and manage the workload of their faculty in consultation with faculty members of the unit and in consideration of the mission and goals of the unit. Faculty engaged in research-only or service-only assignments are given workloads that are equivalent in time and effort to that of faculty with teaching-only assignments. Each educational unit utilizes a Distribution of Effort (DOE) agreement (Exhibit CR 2.8-6) to track the percentage of time faculty members are engaged in the areas of teaching, research, and service in order to ensure that the unit meets it academic responsibilities and contributes to the mission of the University.
Evidence of Adequacy of Faculty
Evidence of the adequacy of the number and qualifications of UK’s faculty to ensure academic program integrity and quality is presented below using three approaches: 1) the number of full-time and part-time faculty by academic department along with the FTE enrollment by degree level for programs delivered by each department; 2) the number and percent of student credit hours generated and courses taught by program, level, and different faculty types; and 3) benchmark comparisons on five indicators of the adequacy and quality of instructional faculty, for which the data are regularly provided by offices of institutional research that use common definitions and methodologies established for the Common Data Set.
Number of Faculty. At the University of Kentucky, faculty members are appointed and assigned to an academic home unit, or department, that generally offers one to three levels of degree programs: baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral. Some academic units also offer first professional and/or other graduate programs. Faculty are not assigned to a particular degree program, but rather the faculty resources available to the department are deployed in the most effective manner possible to deliver courses required for each degree program offered by the department. Therefore, in response to the request for “data by academic program,” Table 1 in Exhibit CR 2.8-7 presents the fall 2008 faculty data for each academic department along with full-time equivalent (FTE) enrollment in degree programs offered by the department. The FTE enrollment is based on definitions established and used by Kentucky’s state coordinating board – the Council on Postsecondary Education. A word of caution must accompany the data presented by academic department -- the University of Kentucky encourages interdisciplinary collaboration in the delivery of courses to support degree program delivery. For example, the statistics department may offer courses to support degree programs in multiple departments across campus; anatomy courses support a variety of the healthcare programs; and even within colleges such as Agriculture, courses offered by one area such as animal and food sciences may support the degree production of another area such as the veterinary science program. Thus, the information presented in Table 1 should not be interpreted in a manner that is exclusive of all faculty resources available to departments and colleges.
Table 1 shows a total of 2,033 full-time faculty, 459 part-time faculty, and 736 teaching assistants for the fall 2008 semester. Of these, 1,605 full-time faculty and 455 part-time faculty are designated as instructional faculty. Also, the table shows the FTE enrollment by degree level for students enrolled in a major program of study delivered by the faculty in each academic department or program area if the program is delivered by multiple departments. In cases where degree programs are delivered by multiple departments within the college, these are noted as such. Undeclared and non-degree student FTEs are presented at the bottom of the table; undeclared students are advised by the Central Advising Services and Transfer Center until they declare a major and nondegree students may seek assistance from various sources. Finally, for each academic department, an overall student-to-faculty ratio is calculated using FTE Enrollment compared to FTE Faculty (FTE Faculty=FT Instructional Faculty + 1/3 PT Instructional Faculty). A summary of results shows that:
· Student-to-faculty ratios calculated at a department level vary widely depending on the level of programs delivered by departments and the manner in which colleges are organized for program delivery. In Table 1 the overall student-to-faculty ratios for the departments or programs range from 0.7 to 1 (plant and soil sciences) to 48.5 to 1 (management); at the college level, the student-to-faculty ratio ranges from 1.7 to 1 (Medicine) to 37.2 to 1 (Business & Economics); and the overall institutional student-to-faculty ratio is 13.5 to 1.
· First professional programs such as medicine and dentistry and stand-alone graduate programs such as library and information science, educational and counseling psychology, public administration, and public health have relatively low student-to-faculty ratios.
· Programs with heavy undergraduate FTEs such as nutrition and food science, biology, management, and education curriculum and instruction tend to have the larger student-to-faculty ratios. These departments use various scheduling strategies and have graduate teaching assistants to support delivery of courses. For example, biology had 34 TAs to help support instructional activities; the College of Business & Economics had 52 TAs, managed centrally, to support instructional activities, as necessary, in the management programs.
Credit Hours Taught by Faculty Type. To examine more closely the adequacy of the number of faculty in the delivery of instruction, the University of Kentucky analyzed student credit hours generated by faculty type and level for fall 2008. These analyses excluded distance learning classes, noncredit classes, and individual instruction (e.g., thesis or dissertation research, music instruction, independent studies, etc.), a method consistent with best practices in calculating this type of teaching productivity measure. The summary of findings below shows that the University relies on part-time faculty and teaching assistants (TAs) to a much greater extent at the undergraduate level than at the graduate and first-professional levels. This pattern of instruction by type of faculty is typical at doctoral research-extensive universities with research and graduate programs that support and help train future faculty by using qualified graduate students as TAs in undergraduate courses. In support of this practice, UK has a well-established policy on the use of TAs (Exhibit CR2.8-8) Also, as anticipated, graduate and first-professional instruction is carried out almost exclusively by full-time faculty, with somewhat more reliance on part-time faculty at the graduate level than at the first-professional level.
Undergraduate Instruction. During fall 2008, faculty delivered 265,826 student credit hours in undergraduate courses, as follows:
· Full-time faculty delivered two-thirds (67%) of the undergraduate credit hours.
· Part-time faculty delivered about one in five (21%) credit hours.
· Instruction delivered by Teaching Assistants accounted for just under 13 percent of credit hour production.
Graduate Instruction. During fall 2008, faculty delivered 22,731 student credit hours at the graduate level, as follows:
· Nine of 10 (90%) credit hours were delivered by full-time faculty.
· Part-time faculty delivered approximately one in 10 (10%) credit hours.
First-Professional Instruction. During fall 2008, faculty delivered 29,420 student credit hours at the first-professional level, as follows:
· Full-time faculty delivered 96 percent of all credit hours.
· Part-time faculty produced only 4 percent of credit hours at the first-professional level.
It is also important to review student credit hour data at the college level to understand better how faculty resources are distributed appropriately to support mission activities across a broad range of disciplines. The college-level analysis of student credit hours generated (Exhibit CR 2.8-9) documents the extent to which college differences in mission, program mix, and support for general education result in a differential distribution of faculty workload. The College of Arts and Sciences delivers a disproportionate share of the general education program, resulting in over 125,000 student credit hours generated for lower level courses; thus, there is considerable reliance on part-time faculty (27%) and TAs (15%) to deliver over 52,000 of those student credit hours. The College of Arts and Sciences distributes faculty workload in a manner that makes qualified faculty available to ensure the quality and integrity of its academic programs. For example, in the English department that delivers general education writing instruction to a freshman class of approximately 4000, a course coordinator provides extensive oversight to part-time faculty and TAs in accordance with the TA policy referenced above. As another example, the College of Arts and Sciences has developed an advising model that makes extensive use of professional advisors in order to give faculty more time to focus on delivering instruction, conducting research, and fulfilling service responsibilities. Thus, the College of Arts and Sciences is a good example of a college that fulfills its mission and goals through an optimal combination of available resources – faculty time distributed in accordance with faculty workload policy, innovative academic advising programs, and qualified TAs who seek teaching opportunities to support their development as future faculty.