Text of EVP Furmanski's October 11, 2010 Email to Paul Panayotatos Explaining and Transmitting
an Update to the 1999 Report on Balance of Full-time & Part-time Faculty Teaching at Rutgers University

In response to the Executive Committee's request at the September meeting for an update to the 1999 Report on Balance of Full-time & Part-time Faculty Teaching at Rutgers University, I am attaching a series of tables that parallel the data presented in that report to the best of our ability. The 1999 report calculated teaching distributions in terms of IUs (Instructional Units). We no longer calculate IUs, but have adopted a system that uses SCHs (Student Credit Hours) instead. The difference between the two measures follows:

IUs were weighted by a factor depending on the mode of instruction in each course section. For example, a laboratory section would get 1/3 the weight of a lecture section. Student Credit Hours (SCHs) use the assigned unweighted credit value of the course. Therefore, SCHs can take into account the courses with no defined time periods (such as "by arrangement" or TBD) by using the credit value of all the students that received credit for the course. We switched from calculating IUs to using SCHs because the latter is easier to understand, and tends to be the standard at other institutions, thus allowing for more direct comparisons.

The first attachment presents the distribution of SCHs by instructor type for the last four years; data for the university as a whole and for each campus are presented. In interpreting the data, please note that credit hours earned in online or hybrid courses or at off-campus locations are not included. With respect to instructor type, full-time "other" instructors include post-doctoral faculty and fellows who are teaching, visiting faculty, and teaching done by full-time administrators and professional staff; part-time "other" instructors include adjuncts (primarily at the Law Schools) and other part-time employees who are not part of the PTL bargaining unit. In trying to discern trends in the data over time, I call your attention to the small table under the universitywide distribution. This table presents the total earned SCHs in each year (and indicates increasing SCHs over time in accordance with increased enrollments), and the % of data captured in the distribution tables. Note that the data is annually collected by Institutional Research from departments and schools and that the reporting rate varies considerably from year to year, complicating over time comparisons.

The second attachment presents data comparing Rutgers to other AAU publics on average numbers of PTLs, TAs, and GAs employed in the last four years, and the ratios of PTLs to TAs, and PTLs to TA/GAs. In keeping with earlier findings, these tables suggest that Rutgers is different from its AAU peers in the balance of PTLs and TAs it employs. As in the past, the analysis of these data must take into account that some percentage of the employed PTLs are advanced graduate students who have exhausted their university support as TAs or GAs, but wish to continue teaching for financial or educational reasons.

I hope you find the attached tables useful. Should you have questions about the data or would like to request additional data or other configurations of these data, please let me know.

Thanks and all best, Phil