Faculty Adequacy – Methods to Meet the Standard

Diane Hills, Ph.D. Associate Dean Academic Affairs, COM Des Moines University Mary Pat Wohlford-Wessels Vice President for Institutional Research and Effectiveness KCUMB

Background For years, accrediting agencies have asked Colleges and Universities to articulate the adequacy of faculty in support of the mission Institutional responses have often been framed within faculty workload policies and faculty/student ratios

COCA Standard Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine must be responsible for addressing Standard Four: Faculty This presentation is about Standard 4.1.1 and its interpretive guideline.

Standard Four: Faculty 4.1 The COM must have sufficient and appropriately trained faculty at the COM and at its affiliated and educational teaching sites to meet its mission and objectives. 4.1.1 Faculty must include osteopathic physicians, basic scientists, and other qualified faculty to carry out the COM’s mission and objectives

4.1.1 Interpretive Guideline The COM should develop a faculty adequacy model appropriate to the COM’s mission and objectives and curricular delivery model. The method used by the COM to calculate the model should be fully described and documented.

COCA Glossary Definition A faculty adequacy model compares the total number of faculty hours necessary and the number of total hours available to deliver the curriculum. COMs determine the number of hours available for teaching, class preparation, research, scholarly activity, committee work, advisement, clinical service, and other activities deemed critical to fulfillment of the COM mission. The distribution across these activities may vary among individual faculty members. COMs which have more available hours than necessary hours are deemed to have adequate faculty.

Questions Academic Administrators Might Ask Related to the Faculty Adequacy Definition What is faculty adequacy? How are faculty counted? Are the needs of the preclinical curriculum being met by existing faculty? Are the needs of the clinical curriculum being met by existing faculty? How do initiatives outlined in strategic plans and quality improvement programs affect both the size and discipline mix of the faculty?

Questions Academic Administrators might ask related to the Faculty Adequacy Definition How is reported faculty effort used in adequacy assessment and planning? Does the workload of faculty appear to be equitable within each major portion of the curriculum and across the curriculum at large? How does the faculty evaluation process affect or support workload? And ultimately, are there adequate faculty to produce the desired outcomes related to teaching, student achievement, research, clinical practice and service?

Who Do We Count - Definition of Faculty AACOM Data Definition: Faculty are those staff members with the title of Department Chair, Professor, Associate Professor, Assistant Professor, or Instructor, or other professional staff as well as non-paid volunteers associated with a basic or clinical sciences department whose duties are primarily instruction, research or patient care. See also COCA definitions for Faculty, full time & Faculty, part time

Traditional Workload Policies Traditional workload policies describe faculty work in terms of expectations – typically time under contract. For example: 33% Teaching 33% Service 33% Research

Beyond Workload Adequacy requires that workload be measured and weighted. For example: One hour of Lecture equals 7 hours of time (six hours of prep & one hour of delivery) One hour of problem based learning requires two hours of time (one hour of prep and one hour of delivery)

Our Assumptions 33 % of faculty time is spent in teaching-related activities. Guest lecturers were not included in the calculations. Multipliers (preparation time) are shown on the following table. A full-time load = 1800 hours (45 weeks X 40 hours/week)

Application If a faculty member has 1800 hours in a year, and if 33% of their time is available for teaching (600 hours), their scheduled lecture hour threshold is 86 lectures annually.

Application – Total Reported Teaching Hours by FTE Faculty with Projected Multipliers Faculty Activity Total Contact Hours Multiplier Hours Required to Deliver Curriculum Percentage of Total Teaching Effort Lecture 1482.50 7.0 10377.50 25.62% Laboratory 2582.50 1.5 3873.75 44.63% Practical Exams 304.50 2.0 609.00 5.26% Exam proctor 283.80 1.0 4.90% Case-Based Lab 34.00 68.00 0.59% Small-group, PBL 356.00 712.00 6.15% Web Module 36.00 4.0 144.00 0.62% Interviewing 347.00 1388.00 5.99% Advising 360.00 720.00 6.22% Total 18174.00

Faculty Adequacy Model Application Number of FTE Faculty Full time Load Total Capacity 50.2 1800 hours 90,360 hours Total Capacity Fraction Teaching Teaching Capacity 90,360 hours 1/3 30,120 hours Teaching Capacity 30,120 hours Required to Deliver Curriculum -18,174 hours Excess Capacity 11,946 hours

Conclusion A faculty adequacy model can be built upon existing data that is reported by the faculty Adequacy data should be utilized when identifying new initiatives – assessing the availability of human resources in advance of project launch is always a good idea

Conclusion Teaching is easier to define and measure than service and research. Faculty adequacy definitions and measures should be consistent with Rank and Promotion definitions and should be consistent with language in faculty contracts. A workload policy is not an adequacy model – workload policies usually define expectations, but typically do not address capacity.

Conclusion Workload policies typically address workload in terms of an individual faculty member, not what is required to deliver an entire curriculum. Begin at the beginning, and develop the model over a couple years – multipliers may need to be refined over several years.

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