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Recast | Faculty Teaching Assignments in 21/22 and 22/23

by · January 12, 2021

From: McAvity, David <mcavityd@evergreen.edu>
Sent: Tuesday, January 12, 2021 12:21 PM

Dear Colleagues,

I am writing with a request connected to teaching assignments in 21/22 and 22/23. 

As you are aware, decreasing enrollments have led to a situation where the number of regular faculty is out of balance with the number of students that we have. This imbalance has budget and curricular implications. It is also one of the reasons we regrettably found ourselves turning to faculty furloughs this year. 

You are probably also aware that the imbalances are not evenly distributed across the curriculum. For example, we regularly have need for additional faculty to teach in our graduate programs. Next year we also anticipate a need for more regular faculty in Tacoma, the Native Pathways Programs, and programs that serve working adults, such as Evening and Weekend Studies. Moreover, there are not enough regular faculty to teach in some key high demand areas in the Olympia Undergraduate program such as business, psychology, and the arts. In addition, we are seeing high demand for courses, while many full-time programs have very low enrollments. I am looking for creative ways to address these imbalances to meet curricular needs and to mitigate pressure on our budget, which is no longer able to absorb the degree of over staffing we have.

The curriculum deans and directors of program are building staffing plans for 21/22 and looking ahead to 22/23. They have identified some key areas where there is a need for regular faculty to adapt their teaching plans in one or more of the following ways:

  • We need some faculty who normally teach in the Olympia undergraduate program to teach in one of the grad programs or in the Evergreen Tacoma undergraduate program.
  • We need faculty who can contribute to the curriculum in high demand areas such as business, psychology and the visual arts either through their own expertise or through the ability to partner with faculty who have expertise in those areas.
  • We need some faculty will who typically teach 16 credit programs to teach 12-credit program combined with 4-credit courses, or separately list 4 credit options in their 16 credit programs, in order to make more 4-credit options available to students, and to provide more options for students who wish to study with less than a fulltime load.
  • We need some faculty to develop certificate programs and consistent low residency and online-offerings that provide opportunities for non-traditional students who are place bound or who can only study part-time to get a credential or a degree.
  • We will need faculty to be flexible with their schedules, possibly teaching at times and locations when and where they do not normally teach.

Please contact the curriculum deans if you able to adapt your teaching plans to meet one or more of the needs listed above.

If deans and\or directors approach you to adapt your plans for 21/22 or 22/23 to meet a particular curricular need, please be flexible. They are asking because your help is needed. We are in a moment in the college’s history where your cooperation and flexibility are essential. Our ability to make such changes will tangibly improve our ability to meet the needs of our students and is one way to help mitigate difficult budget circumstances. 

I would be happy to engage in conversations with folks who are asked to making changes by deans to explain the situation in more detail.

Thank you, and best wishes,

David

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