3-year extension of double course offering policy

Memos

This message announces a three-year extension to a pandemic-era policy. Ladder faculty whose teaching expectation is 2:2 may now apply to fulfill their teaching expectation in a given semester by offering two sections of the same Yale College seminar, provided the conditions outlined below are satisfied.

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To: FAS ladder faculty in departments with 2:2 teaching expectations
cc: FAS Steering, FAS Dean’s Office, FAS chair’s assistants in departments with 2:2 teaching expectations

[Summary: This message announces a three-year extension to a pandemic-era policy. Ladder faculty whose teaching expectation is 2:2 may now apply to fulfill their teaching expectation in a given semester by offering two sections of the same Yale College seminar, provided the conditions outlined below are satisfied.]

Dear Colleagues,
 
I write to announce the extension of a pandemic-era policy experiment for an additional three-year period. This policy applies to ladder faculty in departments whose teaching expectation is 2:2.
 
Ladder faculty in departments whose teaching expectation is 2:2 may now apply to fulfill their teaching expectation in a given semester by offering two sections of the same Yale College seminar, providing that certain conditions are satisfied:
 
  • The seminar is a Yale College seminar, directed towards Yale College undergraduate students. Appropriate seminars include first-year seminars, sophomore seminars, junior seminars, senior seminars, and open-level undergraduate seminars.
  • The seminar has been taught previously, with student interest significantly exceeding available spots in the course.
  • There is good reason to think that if the course is offered in two separate seminar sections in a given semester, each of the two sections will be robustly enrolled.
  • The faculty member agrees that if enrollments are insufficient to support two sections of the course, one of the sections may be cancelled. Faculty who do not obtain adequate enrollment across the two sections may be asked to devote course-equivalent effort to informal departmental advising and mentoring or other related teaching activities, and will be expected to take the opportunity to develop their teaching by taking workshops from the Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning.
If a faculty member would like to propose to do this for one of the semesters next year, they should complete the following brief process:
(a) send an e-mail to fas.dean@yale.edu with the course number and preferred semester in the subject line;
(b) attach to that e-mail the syllabus from the last time the course was taught.
 
As the FAS Dean’s Office retains records of shopping and enrollment interest, we do not need faculty to provide this information.
 
With best wishes for the term ahead,
 
Tamar
 
Tamar Szabó Gendler
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Vincent J. Scully Professor of Philosophy
Professor of Psychology and Cognitive Science

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