I. Teaching Responsibilities
The standard teaching load at Middlebury College is five teaching units for Fall and Spring terms, plus Winter Term responsibilities under the current one-on, one-off policy. Chairs have flexibility in distributing teaching loads as long as the department total is at least 5.0 units/FTE over the Fall and Spring semesters. Chairs should ensure, however, that each full-time faculty member teaches at least 2 units in a given semester and averages 5 units/year over a 3-yr period. In cases where the 5 unit/year obligation would result in more than 4 preparations for a faculty member, a chair should consult with the Dean of Faculty to determine the appropriate teaching load. See specific guidelines below.
(1) Five teaching units per year (exclusive of WT) remains the minimum, but this can be an average over a 3-yr period, with some variation depending on curricular needs.
(2) A maximum of four semester preparations per year should be the norm, with a minimum of three discrete courses offered by each faculty member.
(3) Where courses are taught in multiple sections, each course section is equivalent to a teaching unit, as long as the faculty member is teaching three discrete courses in the fall and spring semesters.
(4) Faculty will receive two units of teaching credit for a course with a minimum of 45 students and at least three discussion sections if they are also teaching an additional preparation that term.
(5) Faculty teaching a foreign language course with ten or more students that they meet for six hours or more will receive two units of teaching credit if they are teaching an additional preparation that term.
(6) A course that has at least 75 students, two or three lectures/week, and five discussion sections, will count as a "stand-alone" two unit course (a course that is the only teaching assignment for the term). No faculty member will teach more than one such course per year.
(7) A single laboratory course will count as more than 1.0 units, with the precise number of units depending on the number of labs taught by the instructor. Each 3-hr lab (in the case of multiple labs, each lab containing 9 or more students) will count as .5 units, so that a course that has one laboratory section taught by the primary instructor would count as 1.5 units towards his/her teaching load, a course with two labs would count as 2.0 units, and a course with four lab sections all taught by the instructor would count as a stand-alone 3-unit course.
(8) Team-taught courses in which both faculty participate equally throughout the semester will count as the same number of teaching units for each faculty member as they would if taught by a single instructor. However, faculty members may be limited to one team-taught course every other year, depending on curricular needs.
(9) Department chairs should attempt to distribute thesis supervision duties equitably. Where it is impossible to avoid overburdening a particular faculty member, his or her teaching load may be adjusted in consultation with the Dean of Faculty.
(10) A faculty member who is teaching only one semester of an academic year will teach the equivalent of three teaching units during the semester that he/she is not on leave or associate status.
rev. 2007