Course Assignments and Scheduling - General Principles

I have found it useful to share with faculty members the rationale that I follow in assigning courses, so that the process does not seem so mysterious and potentially arbitrary. I therefore share with them the following statement, which may of course be modified to suit any program.

While Policy 40 states that course assignments are the purview of the Chair, the Chair may gather advice from various parties in determining the final shape of the schedule; the Chair may also delegate some or all of these tasks to the Associate Chair. In general, the Chair follows a set of principles in determining course assignments for any given year;[1] these principles include, but are not limited to the following (in order of priority):

• The needs of the program(s). Core courses (the ‘spine’) will always need to be scheduled, and in principle, most or all faculty members should participate in covering these courses.
• The needs of the students. In addition to ensuring that the spine is scheduled every year, some attention should be paid to a natural progression from one year to the next for each successive cohort and to a balanced blend of courses in any given year.
• Rotation of electives. Elective courses should be scheduled at least once every three years; courses that have not been offered in more than three years should be considered candidates for inactivation.
• Historical enrollment patterns. Enrollment patterns shift over time and it is the obligation of the Chair to consider these shifts in deciding whether or not to schedule certain courses (and how many sections and what the enrollment limits should be).
• Instructor capabilities: all of us have particular strengths in particular types of courses or subject areas, though in an undergraduate program especially, faculty members should be capable of teaching a large swathe of the curriculum.
• Consideration of sabbatical leaves and available instructor expertise.
• Rotation of instructors through different kinds of courses (considerations: core, electives, course size, course format, etc.). In general, no one faculty member should have a lock-down on small senior courses or grad courses, and no one faculty member should have to repeatedly teach large service courses. In some programs, there may also be a rotation of instructors through the three terms.
• The individual interests of the instructors, whether that means teaching in the area of one’s research or teaching a course of which one is particularly fond. Alas that this consideration has to be last on the list!