Senior vice president and provost Jonathan Wickert said there was a "slight uptick" in instruction by non-tenure eligible faculty when he presented his annual report on NTE numbers at the Oct. 14 Faculty Senate meeting. He noted that the data was from October 2013 and did not reflect the net gain of 26 tenured and tenure-track faculty added in fall 2014 (105 hires, 42 retirements, 37 resignations).
"We really need to do this discussion after October, because it's at the end of October every year that we do the institutional payroll snapshot and that is how we get the official number of employees on campus," Wickert said. "Next year, I recommend we do this presentation after the October payroll snapshot."
Wickert said that NTE faculty, which includes professional clinicians, instructors and researchers, account for about one-third of instruction at ISU in each of the three methods of calculating instructional FTEs (full-time equivalents) -- by section credits, credit hours or course sections taught. By department, 22 have less than 25 percent total instruction by NTE faculty and 35 departments exceed that mark. Seven departments are under 10 percent and four have more than 50 percent NTE instruction.
"It all comes down to balance," he said. "It's a balance of resources, a balance of meeting enrollment demands and the types of classes that we offer. There are some constraints that we have there."
Wickert said departments with a "high professional component" -- for example, the Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communication, veterinary medicine and civil engineering -- often use practitioners to teach some of their classes.
"This really gets to the heart of who teaches our students. We want to make sure our students are getting the best education that they can and we're staffing our classrooms with the right mix of faculty who have the ability to teach core classes, specialized classes, theoretical classes and applied classes."
Other business
Senators unanimously approved a proposed minor in leadership studies. The 15-credit interdisciplinary program would be administered in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and coordinated through the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics.
