THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, June 25, 1996 TAG: 9606250289
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 72 lines
The traditional sight of a college professor in the front of a classroom - lecturing, pacing, challenging students - is becoming more common at Old Dominion University, according to school figures.
ODU's faculty averaged 3 1/3 classes and almost 90 students taught per semester this past school year, President James V. Koch told the Board of Visitors on Thursday.
That means the school's more than 600 faculty members are teaching more classes to more students than at any time in the past five years, Koch reported last week at the quarterly meeting of the board, the university's governing body.
ODU in 1994 raised faculty teaching loads 10 percent, to an average of three courses per semester, after the State Council of Higher Education in Richmond prodded all of Virginia's colleges to get their professors to teach more and research less. Also that year, the General Assembly mandated that more state college money go toward undergraduate classroom education.
A Virginian-Pilot computer analysis in 1993 found that ODU's faculty averaged 2 2/3 classes taught each semester, compared to the University of Virginia's average of slightly less than two courses.
The tense balance between classroom teaching and research has been controversial before and since.
State officials want to save public money, and the more professors teach, the fewer that have to be hired. Students also have said they like more contact with their professors.
But many college officials and professors around the state and country argue that academic research also is a school's job, that it creates expertise in its faculty and helps retain good professors.
The most recent figures available from the State Council come from a 1991 survey, when the state's colleges and universities that offer doctorates averaged a little more than 2 classes taught per professor.
``I bet if we are to do that study now, however, we'd see all those hours go up,'' State Council spokesman Michael S. McDowell said.
Virginia isn't alone in this trend of more full-time faculty teaching undergraduates.
``I think there's a real consensus building that teaching is important, and faculty should be teaching,'' said Iris Molotsky, a spokeswoman for the American Association of University Professors in Washington.
But, she added, ``I think the reality is that faculty always thought that teaching is important.''
A 1992 survey by the Pew Higher Education Research Program showed that the median course load of professors at research universities - like Old Dominion University - was 3.2 classes per semester. This represents only about 7 percent of all colleges and universities, though, Molotsky said; the same survey showed that the median course load for liberal-arts schools was 4.3 courses per semester.
ODU's Koch told the Board of Visitors that it's no more appropriate to completely judge professors by their time in classrooms than it is to judge ministers by their time in the pulpit, or legislators by their time on the General Assembly floor.
Preparation for class, advising students, research and writing, administrative duties such as chairing departments or directing programs, writing grant proposals - all are necessary and take time, Koch said.
The ODU president used himself as an example.
Koch this past spring taught an upper-level history class on World War II. When he broke down his work for his one-semester class - lecturing 18 students for 2 1/2 hours for each of 16 weeks; grading 180 short papers at 11 minutes each, 54 exams at 20 minutes each, and 18 term papers at 27 minutes each; plus preparing for class, meeting or exchanging electronic mail with students and so on - Koch calculated he spent 11 1/2 hours a week on the one class.
``Faculty time is a scarce resource,'' he told ODU's board. ``What we've been trying to do is increase faculty contact with students in and out of class, and increase faculty involvement in the community.'' by CNB