CSIT-CS Teaching Assigment Policy

The Director of the School of Computational Science and Information Technology and the Chair of the Department of Computer Science have agreed upon a policy that we believe will reduce the amount of time and effort spent on negotiating annual teaching assignments for those faculty members who are on CSIT lines and hold tenured or tenure-earning positions in the Department of Computer Science. We will call those people the CSIT-CS faculty.

The policy is:

  1. The CSIT-CS faculty will collectively be responsible for teaching a specified set of n course offerings, where n is the number of CSIT-CS faculty and n/2 of the course offerings in the set are courses required for the bachelor's degree and the rest are courses required for the master's degree. Let this set of course offerings be called the CS-CSIT course offerings.

  2. Initially, the CS-CSIT course offerings will be chosen initially by the CS department chair, after consultation with the CSIT-CS faculty and taking into account the abilities and backgrounds of the CSIT-CS faculty, and submitted for approval to the CSIT director. The CS-CSIT course set may be changed, upon the initiative of CSIT or the CS department, by mutual agreement of the CSIT director and the CS department chair.

  3. The class size and organization of the CS-CSIT course offerings, and the duties of the responsible faculty member, will be whatever is typical for the CS department as a whole. In particular, if it is normal for a given course to be offered as a distance learning course, or as a multi-section lecture-recitation courses where the responsible faculty member runs all sections of the course with the assistance or one or more graduate teaching assistants, that will be the same for CSIT-CS faculty as it is for other CS faculty.

  4. The remainder of the teaching assignments of the CSIT-CS faculty will be determined by the CSIT-CS faculty and CSIT director, to further the mission of CSIT. These courses may be listed in CS or any other department. Let this set of courses be called the CSIT course offerings.

  5. The CS department chair will plan the terms, times, and places for the CS-CSIT course offerings in the same fashion as is done for other CS course offerings, considering faculty input along with projected student demand and constraints imposed by the sequencing of courses in the degree programs.

  6. Each spring, as part of the annual process of assigning faculty responsibilities for the coming academic year, the CS department chair will request the CSIT-CS faculty to decide who will teach the CS-CSIT course offerings for the following year, and also to decide similarly on the CSIT course offerings.

  7. The CSIT-CS faculty will caucus to decide how the responsibility for teaching the CS-CSIT and CSIT course offerings is apportioned among them, and designate a representative to report this decision to the CS department chair, within one month of the request from the CS department chair. If this report is provided on time, the CS department chair will use it as a basis for the annual assignments of responsibilities for CSIT-CS faculty the next academic year.

  8. If it later becomes necessary to change the teaching assignments of any of the CSIT-CS faculty -- for example, due to the hiring of a new CSIT-CS faculty member, a leave of absence, etc. -- the CS department chair will call for a new caucus as described above, by contacting the designated representative of the CSIT-CS faculty.

  9. CSIT-CS faculty will be expected to advise approximately the same total number of graduate students as other CS faculty. CSIT-CS faculty members will keep the CS department chair informed of any graduate students that a CSIT-CS faculty member is advising outside the CS department, and the CS department chair will then include those students along with CS students when balancing advising loads within the department.

Ted Baker
Chair, Department of Computer Science

Joe Travis
Director, School of Computational Science & Information Technology