III. How We Schedule Classes

It used to be once you hit a certain number of students we open a new section and we just keep going! The thought was that we could just collect endless amounts of WSCH and cash in. Unfortunately, that's not the case. We were functioning "over cap" which means we were educating lots of students without reimbursement from the state, which led us to our current state of financial embarrassment. There IS a limit to the number of students we can enroll and be reimbursed for - we were confusing "Educational Opportunity For All" with "Educational Opportunity For Everyone".

Here's how we determine our course offerings:

a) is there a demand for the course? If yes, then
b) is the course content something the State of California recognizes as a legitimate discipline (click the link for a complete list). If so, then
c) is there an instructor available who meets minimum qualifications? (click the link above to see which disciplines require a Master's in the subject area and which do not).1 If so, then:
d) do we have a facility that can reasonably host such a class without spending money we don't have? If so, then:
e) is the course sustainable? (i.e., is it a technology or field of interest that will grow in the long term, or is it a fading subject, like Jazz Studies - my former area). If so, then
f) is it a subject that is offered in another department at Foothill or De Anza? If not, then
g) can it be effectively taught in numbers 20 and larger? If so, then:
h) do we have room to add this course within our FTEF allotment.2 If so, then sure, we can offer this course!

What's FTEF? It stands for Full Time Equivalent Faculty. Your minimum load for the academic year should equal 1 (or thereabouts). If you teach 9 classes per year that are loaded at .111 that equals .999, close enough to be an FTEF!

What's productivity? WSCH divided by FTEF = productivity. Let's take one of our really productive classes for example - 4 hours lecture, 1 hour lab, loaded at .118 with 50 students enrolled = 848.46 productivity. Great! The same class with 38 students enrolled = 644.07 productivity. Also great. The same class with 20 students enrolled, however, = 338.98 productivity. Not great. We need our total productivity, division wide, to be above 500. Last Fall (the last time I held this august position) our productivity was 498.7. Close doesn't count in my game :-) The average of every course offered and taught in our division equals our productivity. To put it in parlance a trombone player can understand, we need to balance large classes with smaller classes to meet our productivity goal. Currently, we have far too many courses scheduled that cannot meet our productivity goal, therefore we have to rethink our overall course offerings.

1 If the instructor needs to complete equivalency, they should do so before we offer the class.

2. We have a fixed number of FTEF available to work with this academic year.