[COPLAC-IR] Departmental Student to Faculty Ratio

[Coghlan, Laura]

Our method is similar to the one that Archer described.  I determine the
number of student credit hours generated by the faculty member to
determine student FTE/faculty FTE.  I include all students that they are
teaching, not just the students in their department, since students from
many different fields can end up in a particular faculty member's
classes.  I also include any credits they are generating through
sponsorship of student independent research or internships, since these
are still part of their student load.  Once the metrics are calculated
for each individual faculty, they can be aggregated into departmental
measures, such as total FTE generated by faculty in each department and
average load measures.  I also design the database to compute graduate
vs. undergrad students separately before rolling them into total
FTE/faculty, since quite a few of our faculty teach students across both
levels concurrently, and the credits/student FTE are different depending
on level. 

 

At Evergreen, this is a periodic analysis, not a regular one, since the
college has not developed any system reports or datasets to assist.
Thus, I have to use a variety of sources from catalog information,
student enrollment data, and various "shadow-system" administrative
spreadsheets to build the dataset before I can conduct analysis.  While
student FTE generation by faculty is of primary interest (and can be
more readily adjusted for faculty working at less than full-time), I
also compute a measure of student headcount per faculty.  As the faculty
astutely noted, each student they serve requires some amount of their
time to evaluate work, etc. regardless of how many credits that student
is taking from them.  The difference between FTE/faculty and
headcount/faculty is not very large for full-time faculty, but it can be
very large for part-time and adjunct faculty.

 

I create an "other staff" department category to account for credits
generated by deans and other staff whose primary function is not
instruction, so that by the end of the analysis, I can account for all
student FTE generated, including instructors that fall outside of
faculty departments.   For team-taught classes, I divide the credits for
the course among those teaching each term.  This last piece is a bit
controversial, since all members of a teaching team are, in effect,
available to all students in the class; but if the credits are not
apportioned, it results in substantial over-counting of total
enrollment.

 

 

Laura Coghlan

Director of Institutional Research and Assessment

The Evergreen State College, Olympia, WA

(360) 867-6676

 

________________________________

From: coplac-ir-bounces at lists.onenet.net
[mailto:coplac-ir-bounces at lists.onenet.net] On Behalf Of Archer Gravely
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2013 7:23 AM
To: Jason Canales
Cc: coplac-ir at lists.onenet.net
Subject: Re: [COPLAC-IR] Departmental Student to Faculty Ratio

 

we generate student credit hours (SCH) per faculty FTE all the time.
This would include majors and non-majors and provides a measure of
instructional productiivty for the dept.  A lot of our faculty teach
outside the dept, so that adds complications and we usually include the
SCH (course enrollment X credit hrs) for courses outside the dept.
Science depts often have labs that have contact hours but no credit
hours thus 0 SCH.  So we also calculate contact hours per faculty fte.
The difficult part is how to account for the exceptions - e.g. lab
managers that teach and/or deans, etc.  These are just a few things to
think about.  You may want to look at the Delaware Study.

 

-archer

Archer Gravely, Director
Institutional Research
UNC Asheville
(828) 232-5118

 

On Wed, Feb 27, 2013 at 10:02 AM, Jason Canales <Jason.Canales at mcla.edu>
wrote:

Dear IR Colleagues

I have been requested to calculate a student to faculty ratios at the
departmental level.   I have done some research on this subject but have
not found allot of information on this topic.   I am know reach out to
my
fellow IR colleagues hoping that if you have developed departmental
student to faculty ratio that you would be willing to share the
methodology  you used to calculate these ratios.   Any help would be
greatly appreciated.
_______________________________________________
 Jason Canales
 Staff Associate, Institutional Research
 Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
 E: jason.canales at mcla.edu

 Office of Institutional Research, Assessment, and Planning
 375 Church Street | North Adams, MA 01247
 P: (413) 662-5413 <tel:%28413%29%20662-5413> 



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