Amid rumors of having fewer courses and teachers because of phasing out instructors in the College of Arts and Sciences, administrative officials are offering a different perspective.
Provost Risa Palm said having fewer instructors is not a cut of personnel, but actually an expansion of faculty.
“We’re coming up with an elaborate plan to have more tenure-track faculty as opposed to one-year contract instructors,” Palm said. “The University has to be focused on research. It will make a big difference in the type of education students will have, and we’re trying to make an LSU degree worth more than it is now.”
She said instructors are doing a fine job of teaching students, but the administration is trying to raise the status of the University by having more professors who do extensive research within their fields.
The perception that students will have fewer classes to fulfill their majors on time is wrong, Palm said.
“We’re not going to eliminate the 20-person classrooms,” she said. “It’s a misperception to say that students are going to have less attention and large classes because of this.”
She said this process actually will change how the University teaches classes. Some changes, particularly within the English and mathematics departments, will call for more outside tutoring and office hours.
Guillermo Ferreyra, mathematics department chair, said his department plans to make business calculus and trigonometry classes much larger, but also will have more people around to help students.
“For those classes we may have 500 students to a class, but for lecture classes with large numbers of students, we will have layers of personnel,” Ferreyra said. “We’re going to have a Ph.D. professor teaching the class and another instructor and a few grad assistants to provide a safety net if students need more help.”
He said he thinks having larger lecture classes will not affect how students learn the material. Students who need more student-teacher interaction can go to graduate assistants and tutoring sessions during their free time.
“It’s not standard practice [to have small lecture classes] in other major universities,” Ferreyra said. “We’re planning to increase the number of tutor sessions in Allen Hall so people can get extra help if they need to.”
Jane Collins, College of Arts and Sciences dean, said larger classes will not give students an excuse to slack in their class work because someone will be in place to monitor students every week and contact them if they do not turn things in.
“The model that we’re coming up with is to see that there is the opportunity for one-on-one contact,” Collins said.
Ferreyra said the math department plans to hire six new professors next fall to teach classes that will require someone to be familiar with innovative practices.
One class that will need a researched professor will be a new math course for biology students, Ferreyra said.
“Some of the mathematics are very new, so it’s totally different preparation to teach,” he said.
Ferreyra attributed the need for more doctoral professors to the higher level of students coming to the University as standards continue to rise.
“We’ve phased out remedial courses, like 0091 and 0092, about three years ago,” he said. “We were teaching those because the students were unprepared for college algebra. But we’re seeing an increase of 2000- and 4000-level classes. We need to devote more personnel to those classes because instructors can’t teach the 4000-level courses.”
Chancellor Mark Emmert said students should not worry that hiring more tenure professors will mean having less enthusiastic teachers. He said the purpose of having more professors working toward tenure is to offer students the best teaching possible.
“There’s no indication that tenured professors cease to be good faculty,” Emmert said. “Having faculty at the top of their profession teaching our students is always a plus for the students. The University, and all universities, always seek to make sure its students have the best teachers.”
He said the University has not yet made any new hires, but he thinks there has been an enormous communication problem between administration, teaching personnel and students.
“Our effort is to increase the number of faculty,” Emmert said. “We’re about 150 to 250 short for a university of our size and scale, and we’ve compensated for this by having more instructors.”
Collins said there are no current plans to spread this “reduction” of instructors to other departments besides math and English.
She said she has heard from others that some instructors will become graduate assistants, and any instructors who may be working on terminal degrees can take advantage of becoming future tenured professors.
“We’re going to have tenure-track positions open, and they are welcome to apply,” Collins said.
Emmert said this fits in with the Flagship Agenda, which strives to make the University a stronger university.
“We’re becoming better with better instruction and research,” he said. “We can’t do that without a strong structure of faculty.”