The guidelines for assigning credit units to faculty members have not been updated since 1992.

They predate our board of trustees, when Eastern had a board of governors, said Blair Lord, provost and vice president for academic affairs.

“They haven’t been updated, so a good deal of the practices in various departments and colleges are not necessarily consistent with the guidelines that are currently written,” he said. “So we have all these practices, formal and informal, guidelines that are formal but are out-of-date, all trying to do something that is inherently very difficult.”

Like their students, faculty members measure their class schedules in credit units.

Faculty can teach up to 24 credit units of classes, but like students, they can receive credit units for other activities.

For example, the president of the faculty union and the chair of Faculty Senate receive credit units for their positions.

Also, tenure-track faculty are required by contract to perform scholarly research and creative activities, therefore they cannot teach more than 21 credit units, leaving them with 3 credit units to fulfill this requirement.

Preparing for an advising session takes just as much preparation on the part of the faculty adviser as it does for the student. Therefore, faculty members who also advise students receive credit units.

English professor John Kilgore said he will meet with students for advising 160 times this semester. This does not include time spent with students who need to meet a second time for reasons such as an academic hold.

“Normally I would teach three classes,” he said. “Because I’m an adviser, I only teach two.”

He also devotes time to improving his advising skills by attending conferences.

“It’s very rewarding, but there’s no way to put a clock on it,” Kilgore said, when asked about how much time he spends preparing.

Faculty must work from 18-24 credit units, as determined by their departments. Faculty members who do take on an overload do so voluntarily.

The average number of credit units a faculty member has varies by department.

Most English faculty members teach 21-23 credit units because of writing intensive courses, Kilgore said.

The math department is around 21, said math professor and faculty union president Charles Delman.

In the college of education, it is not unusual for a faculty member to have more than 24 credit units, said Pat Fewell, secondary education and foundations professor.

While teaching is foremost in Delman’s mind, he said he feels faculty research and development strengthens teaching skills.

“In order to be a good teacher, I have to be a good researcher too, because I have to know what I’m talking about,” he said.

He added that students benefit from being taught by a faculty member who is active in and excited about their field.

The College of Education has a difficult time keeping faculty under the load limit because of practicum, which is observing students who are observing teachers in the workplace.

“Trying to keep everything balanced is difficult,” Fewell said.

Just because some departments generally assign more credit units per faculty member does not mean that faculty in other departments work less.

To use any given number as a good measure of effort of faculty across colleges is fraught with peril because of the inherent teaching and research differences in the disciplines, Lord said.

“You do so at great risk in saying, well obviously, they have 28 assigned here and 18 assigned over there, this person must be having a far less intense load than this person,” he said. “That may be true, and it may not be true, because you’re not measuring exactly the same things.”