Compliance Status

Louisiana State University and A&M College is in compliance with this principle.

Narrative

Number of Full-time Faculty

Louisiana State University and A&M College (LSU) has an adequate number of full-time faculty members to support its mission and to ensure the quality and integrity of its academic programs. In fall 2012 the university employed 1,446 full-time faculty and 155 part-time faculty. Of the full-time faculty eligible for tenure, 1,081 (91%) were in tenured or tenure-track positions.  The total student population on the LSU campus in fall 2012 was 29,549, with 24,631 enrolled in undergraduate programs, 4,525 enrolled in graduate programs, and 393 enrolled in the Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Degree (DVM) degree program.

Definitions of Faculty

The faculty of the university consists of all full-time members of the academic staff having the rank of instructor or higher (or equivalent ranks) [1][2]. All tenured and tenure-track faculty must be full-time; the designation of “part time” indicates that an appointee is to serve on less than a 100 percent basis [1]. A description of faculty ranks is listed below [3]:

Instructor:  Individuals appointed to this rank normally should possess the highest degree requisite in the subject matter area (a minimum of a master’s degree).  The individual should show promise of the ability to perform successfully the duties (teaching, research, extension, or other scholarly activity) for which he/she was employed or which may be assigned in the future. The rank of instructor carries faculty status. Instructors do not earn tenure and are appointed for a specified term.

Assistant Professor: The individual shall meet the standards which govern appointment to the rank of instructor and shall normally possess the commonly accepted terminal degree in the subject matter area. The person should exhibit clear evidence of potential for excellence in teaching, research, extension, or other scholarly activity. Upon reappointment after seven years of service in rank on a particular campus, tenure is automatic, and appointments are for an indefinite period of time.

Associate Professor: The individual shall meet the standards which govern appointment and promotion to the rank of assistant professor. He/she shall have established a consistently good reputation as a scholar and have demonstrated a high quality of productivity.  Associate professors are tenured and are appointed for an indefinite period of time.

Professor: Individuals appointed or promoted to the rank of professor shall possess all of the criteria and meet all of the standards for associate professor. He/she shall have demonstrated an excellence in teaching, research, extension, and/or other scholarly activity in the subject matter area. The faculty member shall have established a commendable academic reputation through publications, extension, educational outreach and service, or other creative work. Normally, the individual will have had at least five years of successful service as an associate professor.  Professors are tenured and are appointed for an indefinite period of time.

Library Faculty: Library faculty ranks of general librarian, assistant librarian, associate librarian, and librarian correspond to the faculty ranks of instructor, assistant professor, association professor, and professor, respectively.

Special Faculty Ranks: Other faculty ranks (all of which can be at the level of assistant, associate, or full professor) that are also considered as “full time” (but do not acquire tenure) include [1]:

• “Visiting” professors who hold visiting full-time appointments or for individuals who are not on leave from another institution but who meet the standards for the rank specified and who are hired for a limited period;
• “Research,” “Clinical,” or “Extension” professors whose primary responsibility is research, providing patient care, or conducting educational programs, respectively;
• “Professional” professors whose primary responsibility is in teaching or serving programs associated with coordinating field work and supervising students in the field; and
• Adjunct professors, whose titles may be conferred upon them when their titles are outside of the department to which they are appointed. The rationale for adjunct appointments is that the system can benefit from the talents, abilities, and experience of persons in various field as consultants, for the conduct of formal courses, occasional lectures or seminars, or for other similar activities.

Faculty with the rank of instructor or above, including teaching personnel with the title of “Professional in Residence” who have been determined to be involved primarily with the university’s mission of instruction and/or research and who are considered by the university to be full-time employees, have been included in the “full-time” counts for purposes of these data. All other personnel teaching courses, excluding graduate teaching assistants, regardless of their percent of effort to the university have been counted as “part-time.”

Table 1 describes the number and percentage of faculty (full-time, part-time, and graduate teaching assistants) teaching in each of LSU’s undergraduate programs or disciplines in fall 2012 [4]. As shown in Table 1, the vast majority of classes taught at LSU are by full-time faculty.  Additionally, the majority of all student credit hours (SCHs) produced at LSU are taught in degree programs in which the percentage of full-time faculty is 75 percent or greater. 

Of the 70 undergraduate degree programs listed, only 13 had less than 60 percent of full-time faculty teaching in these programs; however, when examining SCHs produced for each degree program, only three programs—interior design, elementary education, and finance—have less than 60 percent of full-time faculty teaching.  Of these 13 degree programs, most are in the Schools of Kinesiology and Education within the College of Human Sciences and Education, which historically has used well-experienced, part-time supervisors for either student teaching or clinical supervision. Similarly, the programs in interior design and studio arts often include well-known, part-time interior designers, as well as artists specializing in such areas as painting, sculpture, and ceramics, among other areas. The E. J. Ourso College of Business’ strategic plan includes hiring a tenure-track professor in marketing in the 2013-14 academic year. Measures have been taken to improve the full-time faculty teaching ratio related to the BS in Finance. A new full-time faculty member was hired, and four part-time faculty members became full-time faculty. The addition of full-time faculty reduced the need for some adjunct faculty. Finally, the BS in General Business is a multidisciplinary degree program drawing from all academic disciplines in the E. J. Ourso College of Business. As of fall 2013, the BS in General Business is administered by the Department of Management. The faculty teaching ratio situation is being addressed with the departments having faculty members who teach courses in the BS in General Business.

Table 2 provides a careful examination of the role that the full-time faculty play in providing general education courses to the students [5]. For the purpose of this evaluation, the analysis describes the numbers of full- and part-time faculty and of graduate teaching assistants. The percentage of full-time faculty teaching in general education ranges from 46% to 92%; however, when examining SCHs taught by full-time faculty, participation is significantly higher and ranges from 55% to 96%. Thus, full-time faculty are teaching the majority of credit hours. The percent of credit hours taught by part-time and GTAs drop when looking at SCHs.                   

As a research institution, LSU encourages graduate teaching assistants to participate in the instructional process—a purposeful educational decision designed for qualified graduate students to instruct students under the supervision of a full-time faculty member.

LSU offered only two distance learning general education courses in fall 2012. Both of these courses were taught by full-time faculty.

Table 3 provides an overview of the number and percentage of faculty (full-time, part-time, and graduate teaching assistants) teaching in each of LSU’s graduate programs or disciplines in fall 2012 [6]. As shown in Table 3, LSU has both a very high percentage of its full-time faculty involved in teaching graduate students and the production of graduate student credit hours. More than 40 percent of LSU’s graduate programs are taught completely by full-time faculty.

Of the 114 degree programs, only three—human resource education (HRE), social work, and medical physics—had less than 60 percent of full-time faculty teaching in these programs. In fall 2012, two full-time faculty positions in HRE were open. Those two positions have now been filled. In social work, the program requires that 50% of the student’s degree program must be composed of field internships supervised by licensed clinical social workers. Part-time licensed social workers are utilized to ensure compliance with this degree requirement and to ensure that high quality supervision is provided to each student.  The Medical Physics Master’s program is a joint program with Mary Bird Perkins Cancer Center. Students take classes primarily at LSU and work in the clinics at Mary Bird Perkins. It is an applied physics program (in contrast to the fundamental physics and astronomy that characterize most of the rest of our program) in which students are prepared for jobs in hospitals and industry and so performs a valuable service for the state. Basic classes are taught mainly by the full-time LSU faculty, and the clinical, research, and patient-related work is supervised largely by the Mary Bird Perkins staff with their appropriate medical qualifications, expertise, and credentials.

Similarly, the percentage of full-time faculty teaching in the three distance education programs ranged from 80% to 86%, and each program employed only one part-time faculty member. Percentages for SCH production ranged from 45% to 91%. Course size was relatively small, thereby producing percentages that might be considered as low, but small class size may interfere with the interpretation of the SCHs in the human resource education program.

Number of Faculty is Adequate to Support LSU’s Mission

The number of full-time faculty is sufficient to support LSU’s mission of teaching, research, and service.  As the flagship institution of the state, the mission of LSU is to “be a leading research-extensive university, challenging undergraduate and graduate students to achieve the highest levels of intellectual and personal development.” To implement its mission, LSU is committed to:

• offering a broad array of undergraduate degree programs and extensive graduate research opportunities designed to attract and educate highly qualified undergraduate and graduate students; and
• employing faculty who are excellent teacher-scholars, nationally competitive in research and creative activities, and who contribute to a world-class knowledge base that is transferable to educational, professional, cultural, and economic enterprises [7].

Every faculty member is expected to be reliable, committed, and highly competent in the performance of his or her assigned teaching duties, to contribute to the teaching mission of the institution and department, and to perform an appropriate role in the development of curricula and of educational policy [8].

In addition to teaching, every tenure-track or tenured faculty member must engage in scholarship, which is defined as “contributions to knowledge, in the disciplines appropriate to the department, at a level of quality and significance that is competitive by national standards” and include, for example, books, articles, creative performances, and development of patents. Faculty are also expected to engage in service, defined as “other contributions to the department, the university, the academic profession, or the broader community that support the primary missions of scholarship and teaching.”

Number of Faculty is Adequate to Ensure the Quality and Integrity of Academic Programs

The work load of faculty members includes formal classroom and laboratory teaching; course development; scholarly activities; supervision of theses, dissertations, and independent study courses; student evaluation and advising; and professional, university, and public service duties. The distribution among these various duties may vary from one faculty member to another and from one semester to another. Assignments are made by the department chair in consultation with the faculty and must be consistent with stated departmental goals and objectives and with stated criteria for evaluating faculty performance. The normal classroom teaching assignment (for full-time faculty with minimum involvement in other faculty duties) is the equivalent of 12 semester hours of lecture per week. Classroom teaching assignments are adjusted according to research, service, and administrative assignments, and may vary according to student level (undergraduate, graduate, or professional). All full-time faculty members carry full workloads and normally have budgetary assignments that reflect the variety of assigned duties [9]. The faculty rosters included in Comprehensive Standard 3.7.1 documents the load of each faculty member. A review of this document reveals loads similar to other peer institutions.

In support of LSU’s mission of instruction, research, and public service, faculty workload is diverse and varied.  In addition to instructional duties, LSU places a high priority on faculty research, and often members of the faculty are released from teaching to focus primarily on research.   Faculty research is not only critical to the mission of the university, but it is also crucial in obtaining external funding and is often included in criteria for promotion and tenure.  In these instances, and because of budgetary constraints, the university will depend on part-time personnel with unique professional experience for teaching.  Additionally, teaching duties are often given to level 3 graduate teaching assistants as critical experience necessary for future careers in academia.

Summary

The data reflect a full-time faculty of an adequate size, and an analysis of the data differentiates undergraduate, graduate, and distance-learning contributions of the full- and part-time faculty and of graduate teaching assistants. Despite the loss in the total number of faculty in recent years, LSU reports the following achievements:

• The total degrees awarded (6,251) in 2011-12 was the highest number awarded ever at LSU and a 6.2% increase over the previous year.
• The total number of degrees awarded at each level increased over the previous year (bachelors, 3.6%; masters, 12.8%; doctoral, 26.3%; and professional, 9.3%).
• The six-year bachelor’s graduation rate of 65% was the highest ever in 2011-12.

These various indicators, coupled with the sufficient size of its full-time faculty, demonstrate LSU’s ability to ensure the quality and integrity of its academic programs.