DATA-DRIVEN REALLOCATION OF TEACHING RESOURCESAcademic Leadership Retreat

August 26-27, 2014

Caula A. Beyl, Dean

College of Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources

Allocating teaching resources

Situation:One worm…So many mouths to feed!

Dean

Department Heads

CASNR’s Structure for Resources

Most new positions are split appointments

• Teaching needs must dove-tail with either AgResearch or Extension needs

• The teaching priority is to get required courses taught particularly those with strong enrollment trends

• Sometimes the department has very specific discipline needs or requirements linked to accreditation

%Teaching %Research

In a resource-lean environment• Historically, some colleges would leave vacant positions in

departments and just wait to fill them when resources became available.

• This led to an attitude of “ownership” of positions and a legacy approach to allocation of teaching resources

• In a resource-lean environment, we must reallocate• CASNR pulls back vacancies that occur after separations and

retirements.• DATA help us prioritize where we need to place our teaching

resources.

What we consider when allocating teaching FTEs

• Alignment with the University, UTIA, and CASNR strategic plans

• Enrollment growth in the department and projected enrollment

• How effectively is the department using its existing teaching FTEs

• Management of overall instructional program – advising quality, retention and graduation rates

CASNR 2020

UTIA Four

Pillars

Data that reveal teaching resource efficiency Number of under-enrolled courses in each department…..

Data that reveal teaching resource efficiency

Credit hour production per FTE from Academic Unit Statistics (OIRA)

Cautions about the data…

• Many factors affect how useful credit hour production data are:• Does not reflect credit hour production by departmental faculty

• Co-teaching with other faculty• Teaching cross-listed courses in other departments• Teaching in intercollegiate programs in other colleges

• Sometimes FTEs attributes to CASNR are inflated by endowed positions that do little actual teaching

• All results should be examined with a critical eye as credit hour production is assigned by course prefix and not by affiliation of the instructor

Data that reveal teaching resource efficiency

Management of individual faculty teaching loads with assigned teaching FTE

In 2011, a teaching workload committee within the college developed an algorithm that we use to estimate the percentage of a person’s effort that is devoted to teaching and advising.

Teaching role of proposed positions

• Is it a required course or an elective course?

• What has been the enrollment pattern for the last 5 years?

• What is its importance in the curriculum? Other curricula?

• Is it duplicated anywhere in the department or college?

• If a new course is being proposed, where will the students come from?

• Finally, does the chosen candidate have the teaching experience, flexibility, and expertise to teach several courses?

Of all the ways to make budget decisions,

Using data is better than the alternatives!