For Information
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S-98-14
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SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY
Office of the Vice-President, Academic
Memorandum
To: Senate
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From:
David Gagan
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fr
Vice-President, Academic
Re:
Contribution to First-Year Level
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Date: ?
January 19, 1998
Teaching by Tenure-Stream Faculty
In response to Senators' questions regarding our low ranking in
Maclean's
weighting of this performance indicator, I can report the following:
1. ?
Methodology
(a)
Maclean's
bases its first year course instruction statistic on who teaches
the "primary meet" associated with each course. For example, in a
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lecture course with labs or tutorials, it is the lecturer who is counted.
In a laboratory course with neither lectures or tutorials, it is the lab
instructor who is counted.
(b)
Maclean's
definitions (and our practices) exclude our Lecturers and
Laboratory Instructors from the calculation, in spite of our confidence
in and reliance on their instructional expertise and experience.
2. ?
Performance by Faculty
(a)
Over all, 37% (77/208) of Simon Frasers 100-level "primary meets" in
96-3 were taught by tenure-stream faculty members (34 Professors, 26
Associate Professors, 15 Assistant Professors, 2 Limited Term Assistant
Professors).
(b)
In the Faculty of Applied Sciences the proportion was 37%
In the Faculty of Arts the proportion was 35%.
In the Faculty of Science the proportion was 43%.
(c)
If SFU was allowed to count "primary meets" taught by its Lecturers
and Laboratory Instructors, the proportion of 1996/97 first year courses
taught by instructors
continuously employed
by SFU would have been
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60% (125/208). The comparative proportions by Faculty are: Applied
Science, 90%; Arts, 54%; Science, 67%. (Note: Business
Administration and Education do not teach 100-level courses).
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3. ?
Conclusion
(a)
SF0 should continue to press
Maclean's
to adopt a more realistic
measure of instructional expertise and experience than the test (tenure)
that it currently applies.
(b)
We must nevertheless ask ourselves whether or not it is in keeping
with SFU's image of itself (academic mission, student recruitment,
commitment to undergraduate education) that in a given academic
year fewer than 15% of our tenure-stream faculty complement is
engaged in first-year instruction.
/pjs
misc/senatelst/2201
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