Program Review 2008 (Appendix A)
Departmental Plan for Growth 2007
Abstract
From 1995 to 2001, the Department of English at Cal State
LA rose from the fourteenth largest undergraduate degree
program in English in the CSU to the ninth largest,
increasing its number of undergraduate degrees awarded by
61%. Since 2001, the Department has managed to maintain
those advances despite losing nearly 25% of its full-time
faculty. However, maintaining those advances has come at a
significant cost. The present lack of full-time faculty has
resulted in strained graduate and undergraduate degree
programs, a significant reduction of full-time faculty
participation in 400-level service courses and upper and
lower division general education courses, and elimination of
full-time faculty participation in first-year writing
courses.
The lack of full-time faculty has not only had a serious
negative impact on the department’s ability to offer
graduate and undergraduate courses for majors, but it has
also affected and been exacerbated by the department’s
wide-ranging commitments to the university. The scale of
those commitments is daunting. In terms of FTES, the
Department of English is the largest department at Cal State
LA, accounting for nearly 6% of all FTES at the university
and about one-fourth of all College of Arts and Letters
enrollment. With the demands of supervising and coordinating
a dramatically expanding graduate program, a growing
undergraduate major, a large Teaching Associate program, and
a composition program that serves over 6,000 students a year—with
many members of the department actively involved in other
important administrative and supervisory roles that have
taken them out of the department—the department’s
remaining full-time faculty and staff are spread dangerously
thin.
This report delineates the short and long term actions
that will alleviate the strain of such severe understaffing
and also enable us to grow in the area that the department
has targeted: improved quality of courses, programs, and
services. By focusing on the quality of its offerings—where
quality refers to the content, timeliness, effectiveness,
and efficiency of its courses, programs, and services—the
department expects in the short term to remedy some of the
shortfalls outlined above and in the long term to lay the
foundation for further significant enrollment growth. To
improve quality, the department will require the following:
-
more tenure track faculty
-
increased reassigned time for advisement, assessment,
program coordination, and outreach
-
support for lower average class size in writing
courses
In addition to these primary needs, to maintain and
improve program quality the department requires additional
support resources. Operating expense allocations have never
been adequate to the department’s actual needs, and the
use of "soft" CERF monies has too often been
restricted. Finally, while the department has made efficient
use of its present office space, new hiring of both
tenure-track and adjunct faculty will necessarily strain our
already limited space resources.
Table of Contents
Abstract
A. Programmatic Growth
B. FTES Growth
C. FTEF Growth
D. Student Faculty Ratio
E. Space Utilization
F. Equipment Utilization
G. Operating Funds
H. Opportunities for Non-State Funding
I. Opportunities for Private and Corporate Support
J. Assessment
K. Conclusion
Table of Figures
Figure 1: Graduate Program FTES
Figure 2: Number of BAs Awarded in English at CSULA
Figure 3: Percentage of 400-level Courses Staffed by Full-time
Faculty
Figure 4: English Department SFR by Campus
Table of Tables
Table 1: Projected Graduate FTES
Table 2: Undergraduate Major FTES Tied to University Growth
Table 3: Proposed Increases in Reassigned Units
Table 4: Projected Full-Time Tenure-Track Hiring
Table 5: Projected Full-Time Headcount
Table 6: Operating Expenses Budget 2002-2007
A. Programmatic Growth
As the FTES, FTEF, and SFR data demonstrate, the English
Department at Cal State LA is large, growing, and seriously
understaffed. Our goal is to offer one of the largest,
highest quality MA and BA programs among comparably-sized
institutions in the CSU. Because we are already large, our
initial goal is improving quality for which we need
significant increases in the number of faculty, in
reassigned time, and in support of our writing courses.
Improvements in quality will enable us to continue to grow
in terms of enrollment.
Planning History
At the end of Spring Quarter, 2006, the English
Department began to develop a procedure for articulating
long-term goals, specifically as they relate to hiring. The
department Policy Committee, charged with proposing a
procedure for developing a 5-year hiring plan, organized a
one-day retreat, which was held early in Winter Quarter 2007
and facilitated by Dean Terry Allison. The primary goal of
the retreat was to develop an English Department Vision
Statement on which to base short-term and long-term hiring
plans.
Vision
While we are still refining a specific vision statement,
clear consensus emerged on several issues:
-
The centrality of literature and language study to
our BA and MA programs.
-
The need to be able to offer a greater number and
wider range of graduate seminars in both traditional
areas of English and American literature and in new or
emerging areas of interest in the discipline
-
The need to revise the undergraduate curriculum to
provide greater curricular freedom in the general
option, thereby providing more opportunities for both
faculty and students to pursue areas of special
interest.
In advance of the retreat, the Policy Committee developed
extensively documented analyses of FTES, FTEF, and SFR data,
comparing the English Department’s performance with that
of other departments in the university and across the CSU.
What this data demonstrates is that the department has
performed exceptionally well, growing at rates that exceed
those of most other departments in the university, of the
university as a whole, and of most other English departments
in the CSU. For example,
-
The number of undergraduate degrees in English
awarded at CSULA increased by 59% when comparing
1995-1996 to 2005-2006, the second largest percentage
increase among CSU English departments, and over six
times greater than the increase at CSULA (9%) during
the same period.
-
From 1995-1996 to 2005-2006, only three English
departments have managed to increase their share of
the degrees awarded on their campuses: Humboldt by 4%,
Dominguez Hills by 22%, and Los Angeles by 32%.
-
Since 2001, FTES related to the Graduate Program in
English have increased by nearly 50%, when over the
same period FTES related to graduate courses increased
0.5% for the College of Arts and Letters, and 14% for
the University.
-
The English department has moved from the
seventeenth largest graduate program (in terms of
FTES) on the campus to the ninth largest (fifth
largest, if programs in the Charter College of
Education are excluded).
-
Since 2001, the English Department has lost 25% of
its full-time faculty. The result is the third highest
SFR for an English department in the CSU (behind only
San Bernardino and Cal Poly SLO).
Our vision for the next five years, therefore, is not to
target for FTES growth a new or existing area of our
program, but to direct our energies and resources towards
improving the quality of the programs we currently offer. As
mentioned, our goal is to become one of the largest,
highest-quality MA and BA programs among comparably-sized
institutions in the CSU. We believe that quality has played
a significant role in our past growth and, therefore, that
maintaining and improving the quality of our MA and BA
programs will result in future FTES growth.
Challenges to Growth
It is important to recognize the significance of the
department’s FTES and SFR achievements and the challenges
to further growth in these terms. The department provides
service in four broad areas: the MA program, the BA program,
the composition program, and other areas of GE.
Based almost exclusively on seminars, the English MA
program does not generate high SFR numbers. Courses in the
creative writing options, a currently small but growing part
of our MA and BA programs, are also necessarily small. The
composition program is currently run with higher than
recommended and higher than system-wide average class sizes,
but of necessity it has a lower SFR than our BA or other GE
programs. Furthermore, because of the size of the
composition program, it is difficult to achieve a
significantly higher departmental SFR with a few large
lectures sections in other areas. The greatest opportunity
for raising SFR through large lecture sections is generally
in lower-division and upper-division GE, but because nearly
all the humanities theme courses are offered by Arts and
Letters, most of the FTES gains and losses are within the
College.
In the English BA program, all upper-division literature
courses have a class limit of 30 (although all currently
begin with enrollment of 33 to allow for attrition). This
benchmark was established in 1989 following negotiations and
a signed agreement with Vice President Bill Taylor,
Undergraduate Studies Dean Alfredo Gonzalez, and English
Department Chair John Cleman. The agreement reached allowed
the class limits for these courses to be lowered from 40 to
30 on the condition that writing be taught (not just
required) in them. The Orange Book, staffing formula, and
class limits, as we have often been told, are no longer
operative, but the reason for maintaining these class limits
has not changed. One of the primary responsibilities of the
department is to teach writing, not only in the composition
program but also in the major courses, where to a
significant degree we are teaching prospective teachers,
many of whom will be teaching prospective Cal State LA
applicants. The department is considering some non-intensive
writing courses in the major for which the class limits
could be raised, but a significant increase in the
department’s SFR cannot be achieved in the BA or MA
programs without a serious sacrifice of quality.
Given these challenges, the department’s FTES and SFR
strengths are all the more remarkable, but the more
important point is that they indicate the limits of further,
dramatic growth in these terms, especially in SFR.
Recognition of these limits was a primary factor in the
department’s targeting quality rather than quantity as our
source of growth in the next five years.
Resource Needs
For the English Department to increase the quality of its
programs, its primary resource needs are the following:
-
more tenure track faculty
-
increased reassigned time for advisement, assessment,
program coordination, and outreach
-
support for lower average class size in writing
courses
The primary need to improve the quality of the MA and BA
programs is for more tenure track faculty in order to
increase class offerings. Graduate seminars are now filling
almost immediately with considerable unmet demand. However,
because the department does not generally use adjunct
faculty to staff classes in these programs, it is somewhat
difficult to determine specific area needs. In the MA
program especially, if there is no one on duty in an area of
British, American, or World literature, a seminar in that
area will not be offered, and to a significant degree,
coverage of areas of literary study in the MA program is
impacted by the need to cover specific required courses in
the BA program. From time to time the department has
utilized faculty from other departments, such as Patrick
Sharp from Liberal Studies, to offer required courses, and
Roberto Cantu, who has a one-third appointment in English,
serves some of our needs for American ethnic and world
literature, but these opportunities are limited and do not
address the larger need for faculty fully engaged in
programmatic development.
Following the general consensus of our retreat to center
our programs in the study of literature and language, the
department has requested authorization to search in 2007/08
for positions in 19th or 20th century
Anglophone literature, 18th century British
literature, Linguistics, and Drama. The first would enable
the department to offer graduate courses and develop
undergraduate curriculum in a burgeoning field of literary
study. The second position, for which the department
conducted an unsuccessful search this year, would fill a gap
in the department left by the retirement of Elaine Osio in
2004. The third position would enable the department to
reverse the increasing use of part-time faculty to teach
upper division linguistics classes, where now 44% are
staffed by part-time faculty, a trend that will only
increase with the departure this year of Rosemary Hake. The
fourth position would replace Chris Herr, who left in 2005.
Although not formally a joint appointment, this position in
Drama would provide opportunities for the individual to
teach and serve on thesis committees in both English and
Theatre Arts and Dance. The department has begun discussions
with the Chair of TA/D, Lena Chao, and with Susan Mason, who
teaches drama history, to explore how this faculty sharing
could be worked out.
In addition to teaching classes, the department needs
more faculty to improve the quality of our programs by
developing new curriculum and serving in a variety of
necessary administrative, advisement, and assessment roles
at the department, college, and university levels. There
need to be enough faculty to share duties equitably and,
thereby, create time for writing and developing new courses.
Then, beyond the longstanding department responsibilities to
provide leadership in improving student writing skills
campus-wide, the recently approved single-subject waiver
program will increase demands on the Credential Adviser, the
English Education Coordinator, and the Graduate Adviser.
-
A Principal Credential Adviser is required by the CTC
for waiver approval, and under the new program the
Credential Adviser will be required to monitor student
progress more frequently and in a more complex program
than is now the case. Currently, at peak times students
have to schedule appointments many weeks in advance.
-
The assessment requirements of the new waiver program
will fall heavily on the English Education Coordinator,
as well as on other department faculty who will need to
participate in the process. Portfolio assessment is a
labor-intensive process, and implementing such a process
was one of the conditions of waiver approval, as was
providing the English Education Coordinator with 8 units
of reassigned time to carry out these duties.
-
For the Graduate Adviser, who is currently supported
by redistributed s-factor units at the equivalent of a
2-unit release per quarter, the increase in the number
of MA students has already strained available
appointment time, and the proposed modified admissions
requirements in which the adviser initially screens all
applications will place even heavier demands on the
adviser’s time.
The third major area of need is for additional faculty to
enable the department to more effectively meet its
responsibilities to improve student writing skills. Class
size reduction in writing courses will improve the quality
of instruction offered in these classes and the quality of
student writing on the campus generally. This applies not
only to courses vital to the major, such as ENGL 340 Writing
the Critical Essay, ENGL 407 Writing Fiction, and ENGL 408
Writing Poetry, but also to the first-year and
pre-collegiate writing program (ENGL 095, 096, 101, and
102). With regard to the latter, the department has for
years been burdened by the university’s willingness to
admit under-prepared students who then become the
responsibility of the department and by extension the
college. The serious investment required to prepare these
students for academic success has fallen disproportionately
on the department. Small class sizes are essential, and yet
because of the department’s own budget difficulties, it
has been unable to stem the steady upward creep of class
sizes in these courses, which are so essential to retention.
In a typical ENGL 095 class, for example, an instructor
will require students to write five essays, revise three,
and repeatedly revise two. If this class were limited to 15
students, the instructor would read, at a minimum, 150
drafts of essays. To read, mark, diagnose, and comment on
each essay requires a skilled instructor about 15 minutes.
To read, mark, diagnose, and comment on 150 drafts in a
quarter requires about 40 hours. However, the class size for
ENGL 095 has crept up to nearly twenty. That same instructor
now reads, marks, diagnoses, and comments on 200 drafts of
essays, or realistically cuts corners since it is physically
impossible to read, mark, and comment on this many essays.
Consider the ENGL 101 instructor, who usually requires four
4-page essays and has a class of 27. With drafts, revisions,
and portfolio preparation, that instructor will probably
read, mark, and comment on over 150 drafts of essays, or
about 600 pages of student writing for a single class, a
process that requires over 50 hours per section. The
literature on the importance of small classes for writing
instruction is large and unanimous, and professional
organizations such as the Association of Departments of
English and the National Council of Teachers of English have
called for capping developmental (basic or remedial) writing
classes at 15 and first-year writing classes at 20.
Effective writing instruction requires hands-on workshop
environments, where students have frequent opportunities to
write, receive feedback, revise, and meet one-on-one or in
small groups with the instructor. These instructional needs
are the basis of small class sizes for writing classes.
Smaller classes will enable instructors to return to
hands-on writing workshops. The results will be evident:
better writing instruction, greater probability of student
success, improved retention. Better writing instruction in
the major has an even greater long term effect. Because many
of our students are trained by our former students,
better-prepared graduates of our program would become better
teachers of writing and thus better prepare future CSULA
students.
Finally, in addition to these primary needs to maintain
and improve program quality, the department is already
severely strained in terms of staff support, OE, and office
space, and the demands are likely to be even greater in the
next decade. The burden on staff time of a composition
program as large as ours, especially under the quarter
system, is considerable. The department is blessed with
three superb individuals in full-time positions, but during
portions of the quarter the responsibilities created by the
composition classes, such as inputting permits, processing
various faculty transaction forms (hiring, separating,
obtaining GET accounts, key requests, etc.), answering
misdirected questions about the WPE, helping out with
orientation, and so on, compounded with the staff
responsibilities for the large BA and MA programs, can be
overwhelming. In the past we have had at least one Graduate
Assistant to help out in the office throughout the year, but
in the past two or three years we have relied entirely on
work-study students, who because of their rapid turnover
require frequent training. OE allocations have never been
adequate to our actual needs, and the use of
"soft" CERF monies has too often been restricted
in ways (e.g., such as proscribing travel) to ill serve the
department and reduce faculty incentives for adding extra
students. Although the department does utilize office space
efficiently, new hire of both tenure-track and adjunct
faculty will necessarily strain our already limited space
resources.
Thus, as our full report shows, while the English
Department has achieved impressive and unparalleled levels
of growth, expanding the number of faculty, administrative
reassigned time, and ancillary staff and space support will
enable us to continue to grow in terms of quality and
program size.
B. FTES Growth
The department’s goal of becoming one of the largest,
highest-quality MA and BA programs among comparably-sized
institutions in the CSU will be achieved by focusing on
improving the quality of the present program to better serve
our present constituencies (retention) and to become an
attractive choice for students both in and out of the
university (recruitment). The department has already
initiated a number of projects towards realizing this goal,
though that realization might not be evident given the sheer
scale of the department’s general education and service
offerings. While the department’s FTES totals have
fluctuated over the past five years, all decreases have been
due to decreases in university enrollment. Enrollment in the
graduate and undergraduate degree programs has increased, in
some cases significantly. Significant growth in the Graduate
Program in English and moderate growth in the undergraduate
degree programs in English have placed significant burdens
on the department.
If the department is provided with the resources to offer
additional classes in the graduate and undergraduate degree
programs, to supervise properly field work by students and
course development by faculty, to implement effective
assessments of all its programs, and to reduce class sizes
in writing-intensive courses, the department expects the
improved quality of its offerings will yield growth in FTES
related to its degree programs.
Graduate Program in English
Over the last six years, FTES growth in the Graduate
Program in English has been significant and, given staffing
shortfalls, perhaps even threatening. The largest graduate
program in the college, the department now accounts for 28%
of all graduate FTES in the college. As shown in Figure 1,
the enrollment in the department’s graduate program has
soared, increasing nearly 50% over 2001-2002.
Figure
1: Graduate Program FTES
To put this 50% increase in perspective, over the same
period FTES related to graduate courses increased 0.5% for
the College of Arts and Letters, and 14% for the University.
The English department has moved from the seventeenth
largest graduate program (in terms of FTES) on the campus to
the ninth largest (fifth largest, if programs in the Charter
College of Education are excluded).
Our success in recruiting graduate students enables us to
focus renewed attention on improving the quality of our
program. Such efforts have been underway for several years,
and include a revamping of the graduate program (now pending
approval), renewed commitment to course offerings that will
lessen the time to degree, and new admission standards that
will enable us to engage in effective enrollment management.
The upcoming academic year will be a transition year for the
new program, but by 2008-2009, incoming graduate students
will need to meet the more detailed admission criteria, and
so it is possible that the size of that year’s cohort
might be smaller. Ultimately, however, the department
anticipates that our focus on becoming a large and
selective program will produce a surfeit of applicants which
will in turn enable us to exercise control over both the
size and quality of our graduate program.
Growth in the graduate program depends upon
-
More full-time faculty
available to offer graduate
courses -
available to serve as
principle graduate adviser (to advise an increasing
number of students, coordinate and supervise
examinations, monitor the progress of all students but
especially thesis candidates, and review all
applications for admissions)
Additional Staff
Table 1 projects graduate FTES assuming the availability
of the above resources and based on the size of each year’s
cohort
Table
1: Projected Graduate FTES
|
|
2006- 2007* |
2007- 2008 |
2008- 2009 |
2009- 2010 |
2010- 2011 |
2011- 2012 |
|
Incoming Cohort |
62 |
65 |
60 |
63 |
66 |
70 |
|
FTES |
141 |
146 |
135 |
142 |
149 |
158 |
*Actual
While these projections result only in a modest
compounded annual growth rate of 2.3%, it is likely that
the department’s program will exceed these growth
projections. From 1999 to 2006, the Fall headcount
increased at a compounded annual rate of 3% and FTES
increased at a compounded annual rate of 8%.
This difference between headcount growth and FTES
growth is probably due to the department’s recent
decision to offer additional graduate courses (at the
expense of undergraduate offerings) to remedy bottlenecks
in the graduate program and lessen the time to degree.
Such shifting of resources is, of course, not a long-term
solution for the graduate program and represents a
short-term problem for the undergraduate program.
Undergraduate Degree Program
The department’s undergraduate degree program has
grown significantly over the past decade. Figure 2 shows
the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English at
CSULA between 1995-1996 to 2005-2006.
Figure
2: Number of BAs Awarded in English at CSULA
During this period, the number of degrees awarded
increased by 59% when comparing 1995-1996 to 2005-2006,
and 42% when comparing the first tertile (1995-1998) to
the last tertile (2003-2006). This increase in number of
BAs awarded is the second largest percentage increase in
the CSU, trailing only CSU San Marcos. This increase in
the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded cannot be
attributed to a rising tide of enrollment, either
system-wide or campus-wide. In the CSU system, the number
of bachelor’s degrees awarded in English has increased
15% from 1995 to 2006. At CSULA, the number of bachelor’s
degrees awarded in all disciplines has increased 9% from
1995 to 2006. The English Department’s increase of 59%
means that in terms of degrees awarded the department is
growing four times faster than the CSU and seven times
faster than CSULA.
The result is that between 1995-1996 and 2005-2006, the
English Department at CSULA moved from the fourteenth
largest undergraduate program in English in the CSU (as
measured by degrees awarded) to the ninth largest program.
What makes this growth more striking is that it has
occurred independent of the campus’ enrollment fortunes.
In 1995-1996, CSULA ranked twelfth in the CSU in terms of
the number of all bachelor’s degrees awarded. In
2005-2006, CSULA remained twelfth in this ranking.
The effect of the department’s marked increase in
degrees awarded while the campus’s growth has merely
kept pace with system-wide growth is an increased share of
the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded on the campus.
In 1995-1996, 2.2% of all CSULA bachelor’s degrees were
in English, a percentage which translates to 1 out of
every 45 undergraduate degrees. In 2005-2006, 3.2% of all
CSULA bachelor’s degrees were in English, or 1 out of
every 31 undergraduate degrees. It is difficult to
overestimate the extraordinariness of this shift. During
this same period, the percentage of all bachelor’s
degrees that are English degrees decreased system-wide by
13%. In the entire CSU, only three English departments
have managed to increase their share of the degrees
awarded on their campuses: Humboldt by 4%, Dominguez Hills
by 22%, and Los Angeles by 32%.
These gains have put significant strains on the
department, and more recently enrollment trends for the
department have become more aligned with enrollment trends
for the university. While the goal of the department is to
become increasingly independent of university enrollment
trends through improvements in the quality of the program
and better recruitment, given present uncertainties the
department will be happy to maintain the increases of the
past decade and keep pace with the university.
Our projections for FTES growth are based on historical
patterns. From 2001-2002 to 2006-2007 FTES for courses in
the major have increased 4.2% over the period, compared to
2.9% for the entire university. While modest, this growth
is nearly 50% greater than the overall growth of the
university. For the purposes of projecting FTES, Table 2
assumes a much more modest ratio, with English department
enrollment growth averaging calculated at 12.5% more than
the university enrollment growth. Using this ratio we can
project enrollment in department major courses based on
different growth projections for the university.
Table
2: Undergraduate Major FTES Tied to University Growth
|
|
Base (Assume Historic 0.8%) |
2.25% Growth Rate (Based on University
Growth of 2%) |
4.5% Growth Rate (Based on University
Growth of 4%) |
6.75% Growth Rate (Based on University
Growth of 6%) |
|
2007-2008 |
1007 |
1022 |
1044 |
1067 |
|
2008-2009 |
1015 |
1045 |
1091 |
1139 |
|
2009-2010 |
1024 |
1068 |
1140 |
1216 |
|
2010-2011 |
1032 |
1092 |
1192 |
1298 |
|
2011-2012 |
1040 |
1117 |
1245 |
1385 |
C. FTEF Growth
Between 1995-1996 and 2001-2002 the number of
undergraduate degrees in English awarded at CSULA increased
by 61% and the number of graduate degrees increased by over
40%. These significant increases have been maintained but
not extended. In 2005-2006, the number of degrees awarded at
both the undergraduate and the graduate level was about the
same as in 2001-2002. It is surely not coincidental that
this earlier period of growth coincided with a nearly 24%
increase in the number of full-time faculty. Those gains in
the number of full-time faculty were short-lived, and at
present the department is smaller than it has been since it
was known as the Language Arts program at the Los Angeles
State College of Applied Arts and Sciences. Yet while the
number of full-time faculty has continued to fall, the
number of degrees awarded has remained at or near its 2002
peaks, FTES for graduate programs has increased nearly 50%
and FTES for the undergraduate major has increased 13%.
Maintaining these increases while also diversifying and
improving existing programs requires instructional and
administrative resources. The department has already grown
and further growth is only limited by its inability to offer
additional upper division and graduate level courses. This
difficulty is illustrated in Figure 3, which shows the
declining percentage of 400-level courses taught by
full-time faculty. The 400-level courses are almost entirely
courses for undergraduate majors in English.
Figure
3: Percentage of 400-level Courses Staffed by Full-time
Faculty
What Figure 3 does not include are the 400-level classes
that are simply not offered because the department lacks a
specialist in a particular area or because faculty with
expertise are assigned additional graduate classes or are
providing other services to the department or university.
Additional full-time tenure-track faculty are needed to
offer courses in our growing graduate program and
undergraduate degree programs. They are also needed to
reverse the following dangerous trends:
-
A possibly strained graduate program with the
department unable to offer enough sections of graduate
courses to ensure completion of an M.A. degree within
two years
-
Cuts in lower and upper division courses for the
major and the staffing of some lower and upper division
courses for the major with adjunct faculty
-
Erosion of full-time faculty participation in upper
division service courses
-
Erosion of full-time faculty participation in lower
division general education courses
-
Elimination of full-time faculty participation in
first-year writing courses
Furthermore, because of its expertise and the centrality
of the discipline in the university, the Department of
English has considerable administrative responsibilities and
is frequently called upon to provide faculty to other
departments and programs, further decreasing available
instructional resources. The scale is considerable:
-
The department FTES total exceeds that of the School
of Engineering and is more than half that of the Charter
College of Education.
-
In 2006-2007, the department offered over 360
four-unit classes.
-
In 2006-2007, the composition program handled the
placement, enrollment, education, and assessment of
nearly 6,000 students.
-
In 2006-2007, the department offered 253 writing
classes, three of which were staffed by full-time
faculty.
-
More than 50 lecturers are employed as part-time
faculty to meet unmet instructional needs, mostly in
composition but increasingly in lower and upper division
general education and even in the undergraduate major.
In addition, the department is required to perform
annual reviews of all part-time faculty.
-
Teaching Associates are trained and supervised as
part of a highly effective teacher training program.
-
The department’s English Education coordinator
provides expertise and guidance to the LAUSD Accelerated
School.
-
Monitoring of the early field experience of
single-subject credential option students will be
required by the California Commission on Teacher
Credentialing beginning Fall 2007.
-
The CSU Graduate Student Conference is organized and
hosted by the CSULA Department of English.
-
Statement literary magazine is published by the
CSULA Department of English.
These administrative demands are further exacerbated by
external demands on department faculty to provide service
and expertise to other areas on campus. While these
assignments are usually temporary, their sheer number
produces a considerable impact on the department. For
example, at present department faculty are serving as the
following:
-
Director of the campus Writing Proficiency
Examination
-
Director of the Center for Contemporary Poetry and
Poetics
-
Director of Service Learning at CSULA
-
Chair of Liberal Studies
Given the department’s focus on improving quality so as
to enable further significant enrollment growth, we require
increased administrative support. These increases, expressed
in terms of reassigned units, are shown in Table 3.
Table
3: Proposed Increases in Reassigned Units
|
|
Current |
Proposed |
|
Associate Chair |
0 |
8 |
|
Composition program coordination and assessment |
8 |
12 |
|
Undergraduate advising, recruitment and assessment |
16 |
16 |
|
Principal Credential Adviser/English Education |
8 |
16 |
|
Graduate advising, recruitment and assessment |
0 |
16 |
The department has begun to remedy recent staffing
shortfalls and has proposed an ambitious hiring plan for
the future. The department is in the process of adding one
tenure-track faculty member and has requested three
additional positions for 2007-2008. Projected over the
next five years, the department foresees the following
increases in full-time tenure-track faculty.
Table 4: Projected
Full-Time Tenure-Track Hiring
|
|
2006- 2007* |
2007- 2008 |
2008- 2009 |
2009- 2010 |
2010- 2011 |
2011- 2012 |
|
New Hires |
0 |
3 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
|
Retirements |
1 |
1 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
2 |
|
Net Gain |
-1 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
2 |
0 |
*Actual
Table 5 shows the relationship of projected full-time
tenure-track hiring to overall headcount for the
department.
Table
5: Projected Full-Time Headcount
|
|
2006- 2007* |
2007- 2008 |
2008- 2009 |
2009- 2010 |
2010- 2011 |
2011- 2012 |
2012- 2013 |
|
Full-time FTEF |
19.44 |
18.44 |
20.44 |
22.44 |
24.44 |
26.44 |
26.44 |
|
FERP FTEF |
1.33 |
1.33 |
1.33 |
1.00 |
1.00 |
1.00 |
0.67 |
*Actual
Part-time FTEF depends on three factors: university
enrollment trends (specifically first-time freshman);
availability of full-time faculty; class sizes in
composition courses (almost entirely staffed by part-time
faculty). University enrollment trends are outside the
scope of this proposal. The effects of full-time faculty
availability and changes in class sizes in composition
courses, however, can be determined. Additional full-time
faculty should offset the need for part-time faculty in
courses in the major and some lower and upper division
general education, though the correspondence is not
one-to-one because of the department’s significant
administrative and supervisory responsibilities and
commitments to other areas of the university.
The effect of proposed class size reductions in
pre-baccalaureate and first-year writing courses can be
shown using enrollment figures from 2006-2007. The
department offered 253 sections of ENGL 095, ENGL 096,
ENGL 101, and ENGL 102. If all sections are taught by
part-time faculty (only 3 sections were taught by
full-time faculty), the number of "full-time"
part-time faculty required to staff these classes is 28.1.
The following scenarios assume the same enrollment as in
2006-2007 and an enrollment capacity of 97%.
-
If these classes are returned to their prior class
size caps of 18 for ENGL 095 and ENGL 096 and 25 for
ENGL 101 and ENGL 102, the number of
"full-time" part-time faculty required to
staff these classes would be 29.9, an increase of 1.8.
-
If the class size caps for these classes are set at
the level recommended by the external reviewers in the
department’s last program review (16 for ENGL 095
and ENGL 096 and 24 for ENGL 101 and ENGL 102), the
number of "full-time" part-time faculty
required to staff these classes would be 31.8, an
increase of 3.7. To reduce the average class size for
ENGL 101 and ENGL 102 by one additional student would
require 1.6 "full-time" part-time faculty.
-
If the class size caps for these classes are set at
the levels recommended by the National Council of
Teachers of English (NCTE) (15 for ENGL 096 and ENGL
096 and 20 for ENGL 101 and ENGL 102), the number of
"full-time" part-time faculty required to
staff these classes would be 36.9, an increase of 8.8.
D. Student Faculty Ratio
While virtually all educators acknowledge the importance
of small classes, in some disciplines small classes are not
a luxury but a necessity. The department’s responsibility
to the university to provide effective instruction in
reading, critical thinking, and writing, and the emphasis in
our undergraduate and graduate degree programs on writing at
every level, requires small classes for effective
instruction. For this reason, when looking at class size
averages or related measures such as SFR, it is important to
compare like things—apples to apples and English
departments to English departments.
Some of the proposals outlined in this document will
lower SFR, but it is important to note that the department
already has one of the highest SFRs amongst English
Departments in the CSU. From 2002-2005 (last year of
available system-wide data), the CSULA English Department
had the third highest SFR in the system, surpassed only by
the CSU Bakersfield and Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Figure 4
shows the SFR for all English Departments in the system.
Figure
4: English Department SFR by Campus
During 2002-2005, the CSULA English Department SFR has
exceeded the system-wide average SFR for English
departments by over 12%. Furthermore, in 2003 (the last
year of reliable APDB data in this category), the SFR
related to graduate classes in English at CSULA was the
highest in the CSU, nearly double the system-wide average,
and nearly 3 standard deviations from the rest of the CSU.
The high SFR translates into average class sizes that
are among the highest in the CSU. When compared with other
English departments, CSULA has one of the highest average
class size for graduate programs and the seventh highest
for undergraduate programs.
Given the department’s focus on improving the quality
of its program offerings, from ENGL 095 to ENGL 590, the
overall SFR associated with the undergraduate and graduate
programs will likely decrease. The following initiatives
related to program quality will lower SFR:
-
Additional reassigned time devoted to
administration of the department, the composition
program, the graduate program, and the single-subject
credential option
-
Smaller class sizes in writing intensive major
classes
-
Smaller class sizes in developmental writing
classes (ENGL 095 and 096)
-
Smaller class sizes in first-year writing classes (ENGL
101 and 102)
The following initiatives will raise SFR:
If all of the above proposals are adopted, the net
effect will be to slightly lower the department’s SFR.
Given that the department’s SFR is already more than one
standard deviation higher than the system-wide average,
there is considerable room for moderate decreases.
E. Space Utilization
The English Department is currently assigned a total of
44 workstations, exclusive of the department offices, the
Chair’s office, a Teaching Associates’ office, a seminar
room, and a storage room. Given the size of the department
and the consequent need for administrative space (staff
workstations, duplicating equipment, materials and document
storage, etc.), none of the areas excluded is reasonably
convertible to faculty office space. University policy
defines all of our faculty offices as two-workstation
spaces, and T/TT faculty are given the option of sharing
their office with another T/TT faculty member or with one or
more adjunct faculty members, depending on the adjunct
faculty teaching loads. However, we try not to have adjunct
faculty share space with the Principal Undergraduate Adviser
to avoid the inevitable large overlap of office hour time.
By department policy, T/TT faculty workstations are
considered available to be assigned to adjunct faculty
during quarters when the faculty member is not on duty. When
assigning adjunct faculty to workstations, the department
recognizes the desire of 3-year contract faculty – and as
many 1-year contract faculty as possible – to remain in
the same location, and there is also an attempt to avoid
having faculty share office space if their schedules would
require them to hold office hours at the same time.
There are currently 17 tenured/tenure-track faculty and,
at present, two FERP faculty requiring workstations. This
leaves 24 workstations to be assigned to adjunct faculty, 26
when the FERP faculty are not on duty. As a general
principle, we consider each of the available workstations to
represent a maximum of four adjunct faculty classes
comparable to the 15 units represented by a full-time
faculty member’s occupancy of a workstation. By this
formula the department has office space to serve 96-104
classes taught by adjunct faculty. The Fall Quarter schedule
is significantly larger than any of the other quarters, and
in Fall 2006, there were 110 class taught by adjunct faculty
(another 11 were taught by TAs, all of whom used the TA
office). This meant that in this quarter, at least, several
of the workstations were significantly overloaded, which
creates a problem of overlapping office hours that is
exacerbated by the composition instructors’ holding
conferences with all of their students in the ninth and
sometimes the fifth weeks of the quarter. Although
enrollment and, therefore, the need for office space
declines somewhat in subsequent quarters, the change is from
significant overcrowding to a very tight fit.
If, as we propose, the department is able to hire three
to five new faculty members in the next five years, the
number of workstations available for adjunct faculty will be
reduced further. And, if the funding is provided to maintain
the appropriate enrollments in the composition program, it
will increase the number of adjunct faculty hired and the
demand for workstations. If we assume that the 27 limits in
101 and 102 and the 18 limits in 095 and 096 are reduced to
24 and 16 respectively, this would mean approximately six
extra sections for each of these four classes or the
equivalent of six additional workstations. In sum, for the
department to grow in quality, we will need at least three,
and more likely four, additional two-workstation offices to
accommodate faculty needs. There are no additional offices
available in our current location on the 6th
floor of E&T, but we are using two offices in FA, and we
have in the past used offices in the library for adjunct
faculty.
F. Equipment Utilization
The English Department does not have significant
equipment needs compared with many other departments. The
equipment most valuable to us beyond our duplicating
machines are the computers and printers in faculty offices,
two DVD/Videocassette players and video equipment for
faculty use, a laptop computer and digital projector for
faculty use, and a scanner. The faculty computers have been
provided by the university, and the rest by Equipment or
CERF funds. To maintain the quality of our programs, the
department needs the following equipment:
An upgraded computer to use with the department
scanner (currently underutilized).
An upgraded laptop computer to enable use of more
advanced software with our digital projector.
A high-quality laser printer for faculty use.
The value of the scanner is considerable. Our faculty are
increasingly using WebCT and On-line Reserves in the
library, and while the library, the FTISC lab, and other
offices on campus can provide scanning services, we already
have the scanner and need the upgraded computer to make it
useable and convenient for faculty. The result will be a
considerable reduction in duplicating and paper costs.
In addition to these items, the following larger
equipment would enhance the department’s programs either
as computer assists to instruction or by boosting faculty
morale and augmenting the department’s ability to recruit
top-flight faculty and students:
-
A ceiling mounted projector and screen and wireless
internet access for the department’s seminar room,
E&T A631.
-
Expansion of access to digital archives through the
library.
-
Augmentation of the library’s holdings of primary
and secondary print materials in literature and language
(i.e., more books in the library).
-
Newer, more attractive, and more serviceable office
furniture in all offices.
The first two items would enhance the instruction in
graduate seminars by enabling faculty and students to draw
on digitized archival material during the class period. The
third item is important for program growth. With few
exceptions the desks, filing cabinets, and book cases in
faculty offices date from the 1960s (if not earlier) or are
hand-me-downs donated by a private company after the remodel
of E&T. Considerable effort and expense has been devoted
to improving the exterior physical environment of the
campus, thereby raising the morale of the campus community
and making Cal State LA more attractive to potential
students and faculty; the same should be done to interior
spaces.
G. Operating Funds
Table 6 presents expenditures from OE allocations and
CERF money for the past five years. These expenditures
included office supplies, equipment, duplicating,
departmental memberships, and faculty travel when permitted.
Travel expenditures beyond the University entitlement are
included in the CERF data and also listed separately in the
last row.
Table
6: Operating Expenses Budget 2002-2007
| |
02/03 |
03/04 |
04/05 |
05/06 |
06/07 |
|
OE |
10,958 |
8,766 |
0 |
8,766 |
8,766 |
|
Rollover |
6,273 |
5,366 |
14,318 |
5,161 |
0 |
|
Su-Sp |
18,164 |
18,259 |
20,157 |
11,344 |
*9,383 |
|
Total |
24,437 |
23,625 |
34,475 |
16,505 |
*9,383 |
|
Total |
35,395 |
32,391 |
34,475 |
25,271 |
*18,149 |
|
Travel (CERF) |
3,600 |
0 |
0 |
3,500 |
*0 |
*Expenditures and allocations do not include CERF money
for Spring Quarter.
Table 6 shows that the OE allocation for the English
Department has declined since 02/03 and then remained
constant (except for the anomaly of 04/05). CERF money has
been used to meet the department’s actual operating
expenses, which have remained fairly constant. The anomaly
of 04/05 illustrates this practice fairly clearly in that
without an OE allocation the department relied entirely on
CERF money for these purposes at the same expenditure
level as in the previous two years. Clearly the department’s
OE allocation has never been adequate to its needs, and
the department relies heavily on CERF money to continue
operating. However, unlike OE allocations, CERF money is
generated by the faculty and the department in permitting
students to enroll through the Open University, but
restricted in its expenditure by administrative control of
its use.
The availability of CERF money for travel is the
primary case in point. The $1,000 travel entitlement for
all faculty does not cover the travel expenses of a
faculty member who delivers a professional paper at an
Eastern or Midwestern conference site, much less the costs
of more than one trip. Many of our faculty are
professionally active and in the past have benefited from
the use of CERF money to supplement what the university
provides. Without the availability of such money, faculty
members either bear the expense or, more often, cease to
travel for professional purposes after they have achieved
tenure and promotion to full professor. The strength of
our academic programs, especially the graduate program,
depends on the strength of our faculty as
teacher-scholars, and if the faculty are to remain
professionally active and current, they must be encouraged
to participate in professional conferences and in other
scholarly activities on a regular basis. To achieve this
end the English Department needs to have its OE allocation
raised to $15, 000 and to have full control of the CERF
money its faculty generates.
H. Opportunities for Non-State Funding
I. Opportunities for Private and
Corporate Support
The Department is working toward a collective
prioritization of sources of non-state and private funding
that could support programmatic development. We are also
consulting with CAL Development Director Christopher Best
and with English Department colleague Barry Munitz, who has
offered us his expertise in fundraising and development, to
identify and approach sources of funding once we determine
which elements of our program would benefit from and be most
successful in securing outside monies.
J. Assessment
The English Department will implement the following
assessment mechanisms in order to determine progress in
achieving the desired growth in quality and size of
programs.
MA Program:
In order to determine progress in becoming one of the
largest, highest-quality MA programs in the region, with
excellent placement records in community college teaching
positions and Ph.D. programs, as well as excellent
preparation of secondary school teachers, the English
Department will monitor
-
Number of MA students enrolled
-
Number of MA degrees awarded
-
Average time to degree
-
MA comprehensive exam pass rate
-
Student GPA in coursework
We will also work with the Alumni office to track
graduates in terms of job placement and satisfaction with
the program.
BA Program:
In order to determine progress in becoming one of the
largest, highest-quality BA programs in the region, with
special emphasis on excellent teacher training, the English
Department will monitor
-
Number of BA students enrolled
-
Number of BA degrees awarded
-
Average time to degree
-
Student GPA in coursework
In order to assess student learning outcomes in the
single subject credential option, the English Department
will review teaching portfolios that the students develop as
they proceed through the program. For these portfolios,
students will be asked to provide artifacts, accompanied by
a reflective commentary, that demonstrate their competencies
in each of the required English Content Domains. The
Credential Option Assessment Committee (COAC) will assess
the portfolios of credential option students who have
applied for graduation or have requested certification of
subject-matter competency in English to determine if they
have met the learning outcomes for the preparation of
teachers. These assessments will be conducted quarterly, and
the prospective teachers reviewed will normally be enrolled
in the third quarter prior to the quarter in which they plan
to graduate. The COAC will report on the results of their
assessment in two ways:
1. For individual prospective teachers, the results
will be reported to the Principal Credential Adviser (PCA),
who will, when necessary, identify measures to meet
program requirements (e.g., revising the portfolio
and/or taking additional coursework to meet standards or
improve GPA).
2. For the program generally, the COAC, chaired by
the English Education Coordinator (EEC) and in
consultation with the PCA, will report annually to the
Department Chair on perceived strengths and weaknesses
in the program that were revealed through these
assessment activities.
The Chair will then forward the COAC report and any
recommendations for change to the department and proceed
as follows:
If the recommendations for change can be addressed
by adjustments in the syllabi of individual
instructors, the Chair will notify the instructors
concerned;
If the recommendations require course or program
modifications, the Chair will forward the
recommendations to the Department Undergraduate
Studies Committee (USC).
The Undergraduate Studies Committee (USC) will
develop the curricular modifications necessary and
forward them to the Department and subsequently to the
College of Arts and Letters Instructional Affairs
Committee for approval.
In addition, the COAC reports, along with other
information such as surveys of program graduates and of
credential program colleagues in the Charter College of
Education, will become part of the Department’s Self Study
Report for the University Program Review conducted every
five years. Any recommendations for further program changes
made by external reviewers will be forwarded by the
University Program Review Committee to the Provost and
Vice-President for Academic Affairs, who will, in turn,
request any necessary changes by the Department.
The Department is investigating how to expand this
portfolio-based assessment mechanism to assess student
learning outcomes in the other two options in the BA program
(the general and creative writing options).
K. Conclusion
The Department of English at Cal State LA has enjoyed
considerable success during the last decade, but significant
obstacles to future growth exist. Real solutions must
address a history of insufficient staffing and inadequate
resources. The department has historically taken its central
role in the university quite seriously, but the result has
been punishment for its good intentions. Responsibility for
the large number of under-prepared students who require
small classes and serious attention from experienced
instructors has fallen entirely to the department with no
additional funding from the university. The burden of
attempting to keep classes small for first-year writing
classes has fallen on the department’s service and major
offerings where class sizes have increased. The university’s
recognition of the knowledge, expertise, and competence of
its full-time faculty has drained the department of faculty
needed to teach graduate courses and courses in the major.
Real solutions include an aggressive hiring plan that
will at a minimum restore the department’s ability to
offer the courses needed by undergraduate and graduate
degree candidates to finish their degrees on time, and at
something more than minimum enable future growth for the
department’s graduate and undergraduate degree programs.
Additional full-time faculty, while arguably the most
important component of the department’s plans for growth,
remain only part of the solution. Besides people the
department needs time to do the work. Larger than some
colleges and probably more administratively complex than any
other department on campus, the department requires a
full-time chair and at least a part-time associate chair.
Advisement—so crucial to recruitment, retention, and
efficiency (in terms of reducing time-to-degree)—has been
key to the success of our undergraduate program. Our rapidly
growing graduate program requires a similar level of
commitment to advising and recruitment. In addition, changes
in teacher credentialing and certification will demand the
time and energy of department faculty, as will efforts to
improve the quality of writing instruction in developmental
and first-year writing classes.
The college and the university should also consider
committing the resources necessary to provide our students
with the writing instruction they need and deserve. It is
extraordinary that the campus with the second lowest
percentage in the entire CSU of incoming freshmen deemed
proficient in English also has some of the highest class
sizes for developmental and first-year writing classes in
the CSU. This failure of will has placed the burden of
writing instruction almost entirely on the English
Department, and while the efforts of a veritable army of
part-time instructors has been nothing short of heroic, the
department has long recognized that the composition program
could do much more. A significant investment in writing
instruction on this campus means smaller, possibly even
dramatically smaller classes, which will enable instructors
to conduct the kind of constructivist, hands-on writing
workshops that have proven successful elsewhere. That
investment, however, will pay off for the entire university,
not merely in producing better students for upper division
classes, but in having a positive effect on retention and
ultimately recruitment. In the long-term, the real payoff
might take a more intangible form as successful humanities
programs and effective writing instruction transform the
opinion of Cal State LA held by many outside the university
from the workhorse university that works hard to the world
class university that works.
|
