At 08:13 AM 11/11/2004 -0500, Richard Rice wrote:

>Jim [Hiestand] is being realistic in asking how we can continue to provide
>something
>valuable to the community with flat or declining budgets, and money rushing
>into non-academic endeavors. I have a few ideas we might want to consider,
>although I do not necessarily advocate these potential solutions.

...

>Second, we could restructure campus buildings to include large lecture
>halls so that we can have introductory classes in the 150-200 student
>range, taught by professors and evaluated by grading assistants. When I
>taught at Knoxville the Western Civilization classes were 250 students with
>five graduates assistants to lead discussions and grade. I much prefer the
>class sizes at UTC, but our student/faculty ratio and small classrooms make
>for an expensive system. Harvard undergraduate courses are also in the 200
>plus student range, so there is not a correlation with quality, provided
>you have students bright enough to learn on their own. By the way, this is
>how you fund expensive graduate programs; you milk the undergraduates.
>
>Third, we should look to low cost high volume programs like the new EDD
>degree program. With only three new modestly salaried (probably under
>$100,000) new graduate faculty and limited library costs, we will probably
>have a lot of graduate students and their tuition. This contrasts with the
>new Computational Engineering program outlined yesterday by Dean Bailey,
>which carries a very high per student cost. Still, maybe some will stick
>around to enjoy the quality of life in Chattanooga and make this the new
>Silicon Valley where shadows creep. As I said yesterday, they are now part
>of the UTC team, and we should all pray for their success. If they fail in
>attracting grants to become self-funding -- according to Harry McDonald
>they are ahead of projections now -- we will all feel the pinch at the end
>of the day.
I seem to recall that last year when the Senate was discussing the Ed.D.
program a question was raised about the timing of introducing a new
doctoral program so soon after taking on the prospective burden of the
CoSim Design program.  Senate was told that if ANY program failed to make
money after being promised it would, it could be discontinued.  This would
be true of both the Ed.D. program and the CoSim Design program, we were told.

This should not be allowed to become a frightening prospect,  just because
we ARE all in this together, and commitments of collegiality among tenured
funambulists, lion tamers, and clowns run both ways.  Whenever the time
comes to scrap CoSim Design, I'm sure Professors McDondald, Briley and the
rest of the crew will step up to the plate as ordinary professors of
engineering to take on a teaching load of 15 hours a term each, consisting
of five sections of freshman calculus, 300 - 500 students per section, and
no T.A.'s (which  UTC can hardly afford).

This, in turn, would set a new, higher standard for salary among teaching
faculty.  By the time the rest of us are raised to that standard we should
be sitting pretty.




Fritz W. Efaw, SB, AAdipl, PhD,
Rose of Cimarron Distinguished
Chair of  Excellent Edu-Babble.
         FACIEMUS !